“Not to me,” Hannah said, handing him the pearls. “I want reds and greens and golds and pinks along with the blue. Don’t you have something with more color?”
“This is a very fine necklace,” Paul said through gritted teeth.
She shrugged and wandered off to the next pedestal.
“Like I said,” Archer muttered, “we spent years looking for just the right shade of silver-blue diamond for her. That woman is downright persnickety when it comes to color. You have any idea how many shades blue diamonds come in?”
Paul managed a smile. He knew just how much a flawless, vibrant, three-carat, fancy blue diamond cost. That was why he wasn’t showing these exasperating peasants to the door.
“What about that little necklace in the window, darlin’?” Archer asked.
“No, thanks,” she said casually. “Some of the pearls aren’t a very good match.”
Paul winced and began wiping down the necklace she had just replaced on its pedestal. “Madame, I assure you, whether it is a question of shape, color, size, or orient, our necklaces are matched to the highest standards.”
“Yeah? Then they’re not as high as mine.”
“Like I told you,” Archer said cheerfully, “we searched for years. My baby has an eye for color.”
Paul folded his lips and said not one word.
She stopped at a third pedestal, hesitated, then went still. She would have sworn the pearls in this necklace came from Pearl Cove. Not the experimental rafts, but the ordinary black pearls that were the most profitable part of Pearl Cove’s production.
“So, all your pearls come from around here?” she asked. “Or is that just publicity crap?”
Hannah’s question pressed the button marked Sales. Words poured out of Paul like a swift tide. “If you speak of black pearls, you are speaking of Tahitian pearls. Tahiti has many, many pearl farms. Each of them produces a pearl that is superior to any other in the world. There is no need to search farther than my country’s own beautiful lagoons for the very finest in black pearls.”
“Uh-huh,” she said. Her tone said publicity crap.
Archer watched her closely. He didn’t know what she was seeing in those particular pearls, but the very stillness of her body told him that somehow, in some way, the pearls weren’t what she had expected. He eased closer, ready to step in if she forgot her role and started asking too many intelligent questions.
“Sugar, are we going Down Under?” Hannah asked, turning toward Archer. “You know, that place in Western Australia where they have miles and miles of pearl farms?”
“If that’s what it takes to get you the necklace you want, that’s where we’ll go.” He smiled at the jeweler. “Good thing they don’t grow pearls on the moon. Sure as hell, she’d be booking us a shuttle flight.”
Paul’s smile said he thought that was an excellent idea, and the sooner the better.
“Well,” she said, shrugging, “just because blokes—er, folks—in this store can’t tell the difference between a good color match and a great one is no reason for me to have pearls like the ones in the window.”
“The black choker?” Archer asked. “The one I liked?”
“Yeah. I could do better than that with my eyes closed.” She strolled past Paul, whose tongue was developing red skid marks from being restrained between his teeth.
“Darlin’, you’re being awful hard on the poor man,” Archer said. His eyes said he was enjoying every second of it.
“At more than fifteen thousand bucks a pearl, I haven’t even started being hard.”
“The cost of any necklace,” Paul said in a strained voice, “reflects the difficulty of matching the pearls, rather than the worth of each individual pearl.”
“Yeah, matching must have been tough,” she said indifferently. “Maybe you’ll get it right next time.”
“Perhaps Madame would show me which pearls aren’t up to her exacting standards?” Paul asked. The disdain in his voice said that he didn’t think she could.
Hannah flicked a sideways glance at Archer. He nodded so slightly that she would have missed it if she hadn’t been watching closely.
“You sure you want me to?” she said to Paul, but her eyes were still on Archer.
“Quite,” Paul said in a clipped voice.
It was Archer’s tiny signal, not Paul’s urging, that sent her strolling toward the front display window. Ignoring Paul darting around her like a nervous gazelle, she lifted out the expensive choker and looked around for a neutral surface to put the necklace on. The best she could do was a cream-colored satin tray she found on Paul’s desk. Instead of leaving the pearls in a neat circle as they had been in the window, she made the necklace into two roughly parallel lines. Pearls that had been separated by the width of a woman’s neck now lay side by side.
Saying nothing, Archer bent over Hannah’s shoulder. The expression on his face was that of a proud parent watching a beloved child perform. His hand on her butt wasn’t that of a parent. Absently he caressed one sleek, firm cheek.
“Like it, buttercup?” she muttered.
“Prime. Really prime.” He squeezed gently, deeply, before he released her.
When she turned and looked over her shoulder at his eyes, there was laughter and something much hotter in them. Slowly she licked her lips and made a soft, growling-purring kind of sound. Before he could recover, she bent back over the pearls. With a casual, deliberate movement, she slid her butt firmly over his thighs. It was caress, promise, and warning in one: two could play the intimate-couple game.
Archer laughed softly and wished he had nothing more on his mind but the feel of her taut cheeks nuzzling up close to his crotch.
“See this one?” Hannah said. “It doesn’t look so hot with this one.”
“Note the position of the clasp, madame,” Paul said quickly. “When on your neck, the pearls would not be next to each other.”
Disdainfully she lifted her elegantly outlined eyebrows. “So the deal is, a matched necklace means the pearls only have to match the ones touching them? Is that what the diamond spacers are for—distraction from a so-so color match?”
Paul’s teeth came together with a muted click. The bitch might have the class of a hooker, but she did have an exceptionally keen eye for color. The pearls were separated by the width of a necklace because they weren’t a truly fine match. Ninety-nine people out of a hundred wouldn’t have noticed that the match wasn’t excellent across the whole strand. Unfortunately, this woman wasn’t one of the ninety-nine.
“Pearls are as individual as people,” Paul managed. “Just as no two people are exactly alike, no two pearls are exactly alike.”
“Uh-huh,” she said. “But I’m not asking about a matched-people necklace.”
Archer snickered.
“I’m talking pearls here,” she continued, ignoring him and focusing on Paul. “Is this the best color match you have?”
“The silvery blue semibaroque necklace—” he began.
“No,” she cut in impatiently. “I told you, I want big, round black pearls with lots of color. So is this the best big, round black pearl necklace you have?”
“Black pearls are the most difficult to match. The differences in orient are very great, much more so than is the case with white pearls.”
“Uh-huh. So this is the best you have.” She looked at Archer and jerked her head toward the exit. “C’mon, darling. We’ll just have to tell the Rothenbergs that they were wrong about this shop being the best of the best. It ain’t.”
“However, we just happen to have an unstrung, triple strand necklace of large, round black pearls,” Paul said quickly. “They are exceptionally colorful, and exceptionally well matched.”
She froze as the words echoed in her mind. Black. Unstrung. Triple strand. Large. Round. Exceptionally colorful.
The Black Trinity.
“Yeah?” Archer said, drawing Paul’s attention away from Hannah. “Where are they?”
“In
the vault.”
She clicked back into her role. “Well, what are they doing in there? You’ll never sell them that way. God, don’t the French know anything but food and rags?”
“Excuse me,” Paul said, tight lipped. “I will need assistance.”
He stalked off to a back room.
Lazily Archer pulled Hannah close, nuzzled against her neck, and asked very softly, “What bothered you about that other necklace?”
The hidden, leisurely caress of his tongue against her skin sent heat scattering over her. “They looked like Pearl Cove goods.”
“What do you mean? They certainly weren’t bows.”
“I can’t remember every pearl I’ve ever sorted, but I do remember the difficult or special ones. I’d swear I’ve sorted pearls in just that combination of pink-orange orient and deep black background, with the faintest of parallel lines in the surface. They were a right bitch to match with the usual run of Pearl Cove product.”
“Probably because they came from Tahiti, not Pearl Cove.”
“Why would— Never mind. Quotas, right?”
“Bingo. Laundering pearls from Chang’s Tahitian pearl farms through Australia’s Pearl Cove would be a good way to evade quotas.” Archer hesitated, then gave in to temptation. With the tip of his tongue he tasted the soft, fragrant skin just behind Hannah’s ear. “Or the pearls could have been stolen and then sold at bargain rates to Len. Another kind of laundering. It’s possible the pearls could have been stolen from Len and sold to Chang, but it’s not likely. To my eye, the orient is Tahitian rather than Australian.”
“I agree.” She shivered, caught between the sultry heat of Archer’s tongue tracing her hairline and the cool assessment of his words. “Would Ian have known about this?”
“Likely. Why?”
“If Chang wasn’t evading the quotas, if Len was fencing stolen Chang pearls . . .”
“It would be a motive for murder, is that it?”
She nodded, though the thought of Ian Chang ordering Len’s murder made her cold. She had never wanted Chang as a lover, but she considered him a friend.
Abruptly Hannah turned her face in to Archer’s neck, burrowing, inhaling the musky mixture of heat and soap and man. Instead of being like rough silk, he felt rough, period. The individual hairs that just barely poked out from his skin were like wire.
“Why do they call it beard burn when you only get it from a man who shaves?” she muttered.
Archer laughed softly at the non sequitur. “Are you telling me I need to shave again?”
“I’m telling you I miss your beard.”
“I’ll throw away my razor.”
“Lovely.”
“Tell me that in a week.”
“Okay.”
He hesitated, then gave in to a need to touch, taste, cherish. He tilted up her chin and kissed her, a kiss as soft as his voice whispering, “You’re a very special woman, Hannah.”
“Because I like beards?”
“Among other things.”
“What other things?”
Before he could answer, the door leading into the back of the shop opened and Paul strode out. “Madame, monsieur, if you will come this way, I will show you the finest of pearls.”
“Matched?” Her voice was a nice blend of eagerness and doubt.
“Mais oui.” He turned and barked out some fast orders in Chinese. Another man appeared. Like Paul, he was slender, expensively dressed, and quite beautiful except for the suggestion of a sneer on his full lips.
The man bowed briefly and took up a station near the door.
“Come with me,” Paul said. “Please.”
Hannah took her time following the curt invitation. Her pulse was still speeding from the hot, delicate caress of Archer’s tongue and the stroke of his hand from her nape to her hips. She would have been unnerved by her headlong response to him if she hadn’t felt his own swift reaction, the quickening of his pulse and the hardening of his body against her belly.
The store’s vault was much larger than the ruined one in Pearl Cove. Like the store, the room leading to the vault was divided into sections. Unlike the store, the guards here were visible, for all their carefully tailored dark silk suits. Anyone hoping to grab and run wouldn’t make it to the front door.
Off to the left, two Chinese men discussed the merits of three enormous silver-white South Seas pearls. Just beyond the men, a Chinese dowager measured the weight and feel of a matinee-length necklace whose pearls were all as big as a man’s thumb. These, too, were silver-white pearls. A German man wearing a wool sport coat and slacks waved off one tray of undrilled pearls and demanded another. Despite the air-conditioning in the vault, the German was sweating. On the table in front of him was the beginnings of a golden South Seas necklace.
Paul gestured to a table and velvet-covered chairs that waited off to the right, just beyond the vault’s door. The decor here was a modern Asian take on Louis XIV magnificence—a deep teal blue and cream Chinese rug woven in ancient cloud patterns, gilt chairs with cream silk cushions and raised blue brocade ribbing, and gilt mirrors whose faintly curved frames matched those of the chair. The walls were a rich cream silk that matched the chair cushions. Raised blue ideographs wished the occupants health, serenity, and a fat bank account.
The video cameras that covered all angles of the room were also a tasteful cream color. The thick, curved lenses looked teal blue. Seeing the cameras, Archer almost smiled. By the time the Changs checked the videotape—if they became suspicious enough to check it at all—he and Hannah would be long gone. She would be safe with his family.
And he would be the way he had been years ago: alone, moving fast to stay ahead of the other predators, every sense raised to the burning edge of clarity by adrenaline, searching for someone who was also moving fast, looking over his shoulder, every sense burning.
“Madame,” Paul said with a faint sneer and a theatrical flourish, “one hundred and seventy-seven round, black, large, matched pearls.”
He opened the lid on the flat, gunmetal satin jewelry box and set it in front of her. Inside, lying within three oval, satin-lined channels, were round black pearls.
Not one was a rainbow.
She fought to keep her disappointment from showing, but doubted that she succeeded.
“Hey, these look good,” Archer said in a hearty voice. “A little small maybe, but not bad.”
“The smallest pearl is just under fourteen millimeters,” Paul said stiffly. “The biggest is over fifteen.”
She didn’t say anything. A single look had told her that these pearls, however beautiful, weren’t part of the Black Trinity. While colorful, the pearls lacked the splendor of rainbows swirling beneath black ice. They were indeed exquisitely matched, both within and across the “strands.” Someone had gathered together one hundred and seventy-seven very, very nice pearls.
But they weren’t the Black Trinity.
“Madame?” Paul asked smoothly.
“How much?” Archer cut in.
“Two million six hundred thousand dollars. American, of course.” Paul smiled in the manner of someone who has just trumped another player’s ace.
“Ouch. Oh well, she’s worth it and then some.”
She gave Archer a pouty air kiss and stood up.
“Madame would like to see something less expensive?” Paul asked smoothly.
“Madame would like to see something more colorful,” she said, her voice as flat as she felt.
“Madame asks the impossible. These are the best pearls the world has to offer. You will find no finer necklace anywhere.”
“In your dreams, mate,” she retorted, disappointed and not at all reluctant to share the pain. “It’s nice enough, but it needs more pinks and golds and reds and oranges.”
“I repeat. You ask the impossible. Believe me. Every year the cream of Tahiti’s black pearl farms passes through our owner’s hands. I personally oversee the choices for jewelry. The crème de la crègme is
made into matched necklaces. This necklace is the best Mr. Chang has ever assembled.”
When she would have responded, Archer restrained her by giving her hand a quick squeeze. “Maybe in Tahiti it’s impossible to find more colorful black pearls,” he said cheerfully, “but we’ve heard that Australia has some really special black pearls.”
Paul shrugged. “One hears many things, most of them false. One rarely sees a necklace such as this one.”
“Yeah, it’s a nice fistful of pearls,” Archer agreed, reaching into his pocket. “But once my darlin’ saw this, she never looked at another pearl in quite the same way.”
As he spoke, he pulled a ring box out of his pocket. Without taking his eyes off the jeweler, Archer flipped open the lid and tipped Teddy’s tear-shaped rainbow black pearl onto his palm.
Paul’s expression shouted that he had never seen a pearl like this in his life. His eyes widened, his jaw loosened, and he reached automatically for the rainbow gem.
Archer closed his hand.
Hannah reeled in her own jaw and waited for a signal from him as to how to act. She knew the gem had to be one of Pearl Cove’s. What she didn’t understand was how it had slipped through Len’s fingers.
“Where did you get that pearl?” Paul demanded.
It was exactly the question she wanted to ask.
“It must be treated,” Paul said without waiting for an answer. “Has it been drilled?”
“Don’t know about treatments,” Archer lied cheerfully, “but it hasn’t been drilled.”
Paul stared longingly at the other man’s closed hand.
Archer opened his fingers as coyly as a stripper playing with a G-string. Rainbows gleamed against midnight.
“May I?” Paul asked, inching closer.
“Don’t go losing it,” Hannah said quickly. “Nobody we’ve showed it to ever saw one like it.”
“If it is a virgin—that is, undrilled—no dye could penetrate the nacre,” Paul said. “Therefore the color would have to be natural.”
Archer rolled the pearl lightly on his palm, proving that there were no drill holes.
Pearl Cove Page 21
