Pearl Cove

by Elizabeth Lowell

  “Bloody big wind, bloody big mess,” Flynn said, his voice clipped. “This one was a destructive bitch.” He looked at Hannah. “Sorry, luv. I didn’t want to tell you until I was certain.”

  “What about next year’s oysters?” Archer asked. “How did they fare?”

  “We haven’t finished our recce yet, so we don’t know.”

  “Guess.”

  The cool command irritated Flynn. He started to push right back in automatic response to another man testing him. Then he looked at Archer’s measuring eyes and remembered the ridges of callus on the side of his hand. It might come to a fight with Archer, but before it did, Flynn would have to have permission from his own bosses. The thought grated worse than crushed shell.

  “They’re probably better off,” Flynn said. “The worst hit were the rafts of experimental shell. I told Len we should put them in a less exposed place, but he wanted them close enough to watch. He was a paranoid bastard.” He heard his own words and winced. “Sorry, luv. I—”

  “Hannah knew her husband better than you did,” Archer cut in. “What of the pearls in the sorting shed?”

  “There’s an American book,” Flynn said with a thin smile. “Gone With the Wind.”

  “Pearl Cove isn’t Tara. I find it hard to believe that every last pearl vanished in the wind.”

  “Believe it anyway.”

  “Oh, I believe the pearls are gone,” Archer drawled. “I just don’t believe the wind took them.”

  “What do you think happened?” Flynn asked angrily.

  “I think they’ve been . . . salvaged.”

  “Are you trying to tell me something, mate?”

  Hannah touched Flynn’s arm. “Archer isn’t accusing anyone.”

  The Australian looked at Archer with unfriendly eyes. “It doesn’t sound that way to me.”

  “I’ll need a written summary of what was lost, what was found, and what you’re doing about the missing,” Archer said.

  “I don’t have time for—”

  “Make time,” Archer cut in.

  The command took Flynn right up to the edge of his self-control. Archer watched the process with cool interest. Even eagerness.

  “I don’t take orders from you,” Flynn said. He turned to Hannah.

  “Wrong,” Archer said. When Hannah would have intervened again, he confronted her. “Changed your mind?”

  “What does that mean?” she demanded.

  “You made a call. I came. I can leave just as fast.”

  Anger snapped along nerve endings that were already frayed raw. Hannah started to tell Archer to leave if he wanted, and go to hell while he was at it. Then she glanced at her foreman and saw his barely concealed satisfaction.

  Divide and conquer. The oldest game of all.

  Because it worked.

  Hannah faced Flynn with a smile that would have frozen fire. “The Yank is a bit overbearing, but he has a point. I’ll need that report for my own records. By supper should do it.”

  “By supper?” Flynn said in disbelief. “I can’t do a proper job in that short a time!”

  “Then do an improper one. You had answers quick enough when Archer asked.”

  “That was different.”

  “Because he’s a man?” Hannah’s smile widened to show lots of teeth. “No worries, mate. I wear pants, too. I’ll see you before supper.”

  Flynn made a rough sound and stared down at his employer. Whatever the situation might have been when Len was alive, Hannah was in charge of Pearl Cove now. And she knew it. Flynn hadn’t expected things to turn out this way when he dropped by to console the sexy widow.

  “Right,” he said. “Supper.”

  The front door and then the verandah door closed behind Flynn. Hard.

  Hands on hips, Hannah turned on Archer. “Why were you so rude?”

  “Any manager worth his pay would have had a report on your desk within twenty-four hours of that cyclone.”

  “But—” A knock at the verandah door cut off her protest. She spun around, expecting to see Flynn again. “Oh, Tom. Come in.”

  Archer watched as Tom Nakamori opened the verandah door and then the front door. He was wearing the uniform of the day: shorts, tank top, sandals. In his case, all of them were a faded navy blue. His hair was thin and white. His eyebrows were a startling midnight black. A thin scar went from his collarbone to his chin. His knuckles were enlarged, but the hands themselves were still flexible. Like most of the workers, he showed the nicks, cuts, and bruises of trying to save Pearl Cove from the cyclone.

  Nakamori paused to make certain that the screens closed gently. He moved with the care of a man who had spent too many years dangling from a dive rope being towed over shell beds. If the physical labor itself didn’t get you, nitrogen bubbles in the blood would. Sooner or later, the bends crippled most divers. A special few, it killed.

  “Forgive the upset,” Nakamori said, half bowing. “The Perfect Pearl repairs better. With permission, I take divers and search lost shell early tomorrow.”

  “Of course,” she said quickly. “But check with Christian first. He’s preparing a report for me, so he might want you to start in a particular area.”

  Nakamori nodded and tilted slightly forward again.

  Archer had two distinct impressions. One was that English wasn’t Nakamori’s preferred language. The second was that the wiry, barrel-chested Japanese didn’t care much for Christian Flynn.

  “Is there room for another diver?” Archer asked Nakamori.

  He hesitated, then nodded. “Hai. Okay.”

  “When do you leave?”

  “After dawn. One hour.”

  “Is there extra dive gear?”

  Nakamori looked at Archer from head to heels. “Mr. McGarry gear fit chest. But bottom . . . ” The Japanese shrugged. “Sorry. No fit.”

  “If I get too cold, I’ll sit up top until I’m warm again. Make sure there’s room for Hannah, too.” Archer looked at her. “I assume you dive.”

  She smiled, thinking of the hauntingly beautiful ocean beneath the surface, where colors flowed into a thousand shades of blue and all was grace. “I haven’t really been diving since the storm. Christian said there wasn’t room, and I didn’t want to get in the way of salvage work. Then the engine started having problems. It’s fixed now?” she asked, turning to Nakamori again.

  “Not now,” he corrected. “Tomorrow.”

  “Right,” she said. “Tomorrow.”

  “If calm,” he added.

  She looked out at the sky. No huge clouds loomed or gathered in a solid western wall. “It will be fine.”

  Nakamori went through the front door, paused on the verandah, and looked back. “Mrs. McGarry?”

  “Yes?”

  “My divers must feed families. They ask if need find more work.”

  “Everyone who works for Pearl Cove will be paid,” Archer said, understanding the question Nakamori was too circumspect to ask outright. “Tell your men.”

  Nakamori’s black eyes scanned Archer with shrewd intelligence. “Flynn say Pearl Cove—ffft—no good. Banks not build again.”

  “If you work, you get paid,” Archer repeated.

  “How?” Nakamori’s voice was polite but insistent.

  “By a check drawn on a Hong Kong bank.”

  “Mr. Donovan,” Hannah said quickly, “is a partner in Pearl Cove. He is underwriting what needs to be done.”

  Surprise flicked like a whip over Nakamori’s face, followed by no expression at all. “Pearl Cove okay?”

  “Pearl Cove is a mess,” Archer said, “but you’ll be paid for every hour you work.”

  “Okay. I tell.” Nakamori bowed slightly and went out into the yellow violence of the sun.

  “I don’t want to leave you alone while I dive,” Archer said. “Are you comfortable diving?”

  “Is an ama?” she asked, smiling slightly, thinking of the famous female pearl divers of Japan.

  A smile split the darknes
s of Archer’s beard. “An ama? Do you wear what the amas wear, too?”

  “White blouse and trousers? No.”

  “They only wear that for the shows put on by the big Japanese pearl growers for tourists and government officials,” he said. “The amas of old wore nothing but a G-string. They wanted to slide like fish through the water while they dove for shell.”

  “Must have been chilly.”

  “In Japanese waters, it was damned cold,” Archer agreed. “But they worked hour after hour anyway. They kept up their energy by taking breaks to grill and eat whatever they found on the sea floor during their dives. And they gave a haunting, whistling cry when they surfaced after a long dive . . . .”

  Though he spoke to Hannah, his eyes were on Tom Nakamori, who was walking down the path to the pearling sheds. One more name to give Kyle to run through his computer. The Japanese man might be nearly sixty, with joints that screamed each one of his years as a diver, but he was plenty strong enough to slam an oyster shell between Len’s ribs. Especially if he whacked him over the head with a board first.

  “Any other players I should know about?” Archer asked, turning back to Hannah.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Flynn and Nakamori both have the strength and the access to murder Len. Who else benefitted?”

  She closed her eyes and fought a sharp battle with her stomach. “I don’t see how either Christian or Tom benefitted from Len’s death. If Pearl Cove goes under, they both lose their jobs.”

  “Jobs aren’t hard to find along this coast, especially for experienced pearl men.” And unless he was badly mistaken, the young Aussie had more than one job in any case. Archer turned away from the verandah and watched Hannah with eyes that showed only a ghost of green and no blue at all. “Who else?”

  “Ian Chang wants to buy Pearl Cove. Or seventy-five percent of it, anyway. He wasn’t here during the cyclone, so he can hardly be a suspect, but he does know about the special pearls. I don’t know how. Maybe Len told him.”

  “Secrets are hard to keep, especially one like that. Even Len couldn’t have done it year after year after year,” Archer added absently. He was running through his mental file marked “Chang.” Nothing that came back was good news. Maybe Ian belonged to a different branch of the Changs. Maybe . . . but somehow Archer didn’t think he would be lucky on this one. Not the good kind of lucky.

  “This past year was the worst,” Hannah said. “Len told me he was certain someone had stolen some of the experimental oysters just before we started harvesting.”

  Archer shrugged. “If Len hadn’t been so damned clever playing off one group against another, he would have been stolen blind years ago. Ian Chang, for instance. Would that be Sam Chang’s Number One Son? The Changs of Chang Enterprises International? The Changs who own a hefty slice of the Pacific Rim pearl trade and are looking to acquire more?”

  She looked at Archer warily, sensing the intensity beneath his neutral voice. “Ian’s father is called Sam and is a businessman. Otherwise, you seem to know more about the Changs than I do.”

  “What do you know about Ian Chang?” Archer asked.

  “He works for the family business, has interests from mainland China to New Zealand, and single-handedly helped Australia pry the pearling industry’s technology away from the Japanese monopoly. From what Christian has said, Ian—with Australia’s help—is now working on ending Japan’s pearl sales monopoly.”

  “Married?” he asked, surprising Hannah.

  “Yes. Five children. And if gossip can be believed, a mistress. Several, actually.”

  “Sounds like Sam’s Number One Son,” Archer said dryly. “How much did Chang offer for Pearl Cove?”

  “The Changs would assume all debts and rebuild the farm operation.”

  “Millions, I assume.”

  She closed her eyes for an instant. The thought of how much Len had allowed Pearl Cove to slide into debt did nothing to settle her nerves. “Yes. Millions.”

  “Did you turn Chang down?”

  “For Pearl Cove?”

  It didn’t take Archer a heartbeat to figure out what other offer Chang might have made. “Pearl Cove and anything else he might have put on the table.”

  “I turned down all of his offers.”

  “Why?”

  The calm question startled Hannah. “Because Pearl Cove isn’t mine to sell.”

  “And the rest?”

  “Ian is married. End of discussion.”

  “But not for him.”

  “His problem, not mine.”

  “I’m not married, Hannah.” Before she could manage a response, Archer asked another question. “Did you tell Chang you had a partner?”

  She nodded.

  “And?” Archer asked.

  “He didn’t like it. Said it changed everything.” She paused, gave a mental shrug, and decided it would be interesting to see Archer’s response. “Ian thinks you killed Len.”

  “Did he say why?”

  If Archer was irritated or surprised by the accusation, nothing showed. Part of the reason was his short, smooth beard, which concealed small shifts of expression. But most of the reason nothing showed was the self-control that Hannah found herself wanting to ruffle, and to hell with all the warnings about still waters and sleeping dogs. The longer she was with Archer, the more she remembered other things from the past, like the way heat had rippled through her the first time she saw him. She had been too innocent then to understand her elemental response to this one man. She wasn’t innocent now.

  “What Ian said to me was that Len finally buggered the wrong man,” she said flatly. “That you were as ruthless as they came.”

  “He’s half right. I didn’t kill Len.”

  “Yes.” She let out a breath she hadn’t been aware of holding. “And neither did I.”

  He nodded as though she had said the sun would set later in the day. “I know.”

  “How? Do you think I’m not capable of murder because I’m a woman?”

  He laughed, but it wasn’t a humorous sound. “Anyone is capable of murder, given the right incentive.”

  “Then why are you so certain I’m innocent?”

  “Simple. You asked me for help.”

  She blinked and watched him with eyes darker than indigo. “I could have killed Len and then asked for your help.”

  “You’re not that stupid. You didn’t need Chang to tell you that I wasn’t a nice guy.”

  The look in Archer’s eyes reminded Hannah of the night he had appeared on her doorstep with Len’s beaten, bloody body in his arms. At the time, they had lived on the outskirts of a dirty village on a hidden bay, a place where men made their living smuggling contraband or by outright piracy. Archer had fought their way to the potholed dirt strip that passed for an airport, loaded them aboard a stolen plane, hot-wired it, and kicked it into the sullen tropical sky while fights and fires raged all around and people fled in all directions as the plane pursued them down the runway.

  That night Archer had been everything Chang said he was: utterly ruthless.

  Abruptly Hannah was glad that all she was guilty of was failing Len as a wife. The bond between the two men was frighteningly strong. Archer had stayed with Len through all the endless rounds of surgery, all the physical and mental agony. Feeding Len, bathing him, giving him water, holding him like a child while he shrieked through drug-enhanced nightmares and cursed men who had lied to him, men he wanted to kill, men he had killed.

  Until finally Len had turned on Archer, screaming at him for wanting Hannah. The idea had shocked her, but not as much as the realization that she was drawn to Archer as she had never been to her husband.

  “Hannah? What is it?”

  For a moment she couldn’t speak. Ghostly emotion rippled over her skin as she watched Archer’s eyes, their bleak shadows and pitiless clarity, as though he was seeing everything she remembered, everything she had tried to forget.

  “I was thinking,” she manag
ed.

  “About what?”

  “The time Len screamed at you to leave. It was wrong,” she whispered. “You never would have touched me.”

  “No. I never would have. But I wanted to, Hannah. I wanted you until I couldn’t breathe.”

  “I . . . ” Her voice died. “I can’t believe. . . ” Yet when she looked at Archer’s eyes now, she believed. He had felt the same sensual heat that rippled through her unawakened body. “I didn’t know.”

  “I made sure of it. But Len knew me. He saw what you were too innocent to see.” Archer glanced down at his watch. If he drove like a maniac, there was enough time. Since everyone in Western Australia drove like a maniac, he wouldn’t stand out. “I’ll help you gather our dive gear. I want to look it over—and the boat—before we use it.”

  Hannah asked the one question she wasn’t afraid to ask, and ignored the one she was very much afraid of: Do you still want me? “Don’t you trust Tom?”

  “Haven’t you figured it out yet? I don’t trust anyone.”

  “What about me?”

  “You’re family.

  “Family,” Hannah said slowly, tasting the word. It was more than she had any right to expect, yet somehow much less than she wanted.

  And she hadn’t known that until this instant. Ten years ago she had been innocent and infatuated with a handsome mercenary who was fifteen years older than she was. Yet even then, Archer had tugged at her senses just by being alive. If she had met him first, before Len . . .

  “You don’t feel like family to me,” she said.

  “Give it time.”

  “Time.” She laughed abruptly.

  “Do you keep the diving gear here or on the boat?” Archer asked.

  “I keep it here.” Then, before she could think better of it, “And I don’t feel anything like your sister.”

  He didn’t move, but he changed. She could see it, the flare of intensity in him as vivid as the corona of the sun.

  “What do you feel like?” he asked.

  Unease and something more pricked through her. She wanted him with a rushing force that made her light-headed. But fear was greater. Just barely. Just enough to bridle her tongue. Years ago she had learned that sexual hunger led straight to bad judgment, which led straight to hell on earth. Now she was learning her own unexpected weakness for this one man.