Pearl Cove

by Elizabeth Lowell

  “Virgin,” Paul said reverently. “Where did you get it?”

  “Card game,” Archer drawled.

  “Where?”

  “Vegas.”

  “Who had it before you?”

  “A guy called Stan who wasn’t as good at five-card stud as he thought.”

  “What is his last name? Where did he—”

  “Look,” Archer cut in. “I don’t know how y’all play poker in Hong Kong, but when I sit down for a game, we don’t pass around last names and life histories. You put your cash on the table and you play until you’re busted or everyone else quits.”

  “I’ve heard of such pearls, but I’ve never seen one before now.” Paul looked hungrily at it. “May I?”

  Archer acted reluctant, but finally passed the pearl over.

  Paul weighed it in his narrow palm. It was an old test and still a good one; true pearls felt cool and heavier than their size would indicate. Pearls made of fish-scale paste, or plastic, or ceramic—or some unholy combination of all three—felt light and took on the temperature of whatever room they were kept in. Just to be certain that the pearl wasn’t fraudulent, he lightly ran the edge of his front teeth over the surface. It had the gently gritty texture that was the hallmark of a true pearl.

  “Hey, you said a pearl was delicate,” Hannah objected, “and now you’re chewing on it.”

  Wholly intent on the iridescent bit of midnight on his palm, Paul ignored her.

  “That’s okay, darlin’,” Archer said. “The jeweler in Vegas did the same thing and didn’t leave a mark.”

  She made a grumpy sound, even though she knew as well as either man that the tooth test was one of the most ancient ways to determine a pearl’s validity.

  Paul went to the nearby table, set the pearl down, and simply looked at it from all angles. After a time he opened a drawer in the table and picked up what looked like an ivory chopstick. He laid it very close to the pearl and looked for a reflection on the pearl’s shiny surface. It was there, and it was deep. The nacre on this pearl was thick. Gem quality.

  “Superbe,” he said simply.

  Archer scooped the pearl up and put it back in the box. “My darlin’ likes it, and that’s good enough for me. So where can I find more like it?”

  “Impossible. I have heard rumors, but never have I seen a pearl such as this.”

  “Well, shoot.” Archer tucked the box in his pocket. “C’mon, babe. Looks like we’ll have to go to Australia after all.”

  An instant after the front door closed behind them, Paul was on the phone.

  “Mr. Samuel Chang, please. It is urgent.”

  Sixteen

  Seattle lay beneath a thick lid of clouds. The moonlight that had kept the airplane company from Hawaii vanished into seamless night. It was seventy degrees colder than Hong Kong. By the time Hannah had gone the twenty feet from the airplane to the car waiting by the apron, she was shivering and wishing for the warmth of the wig she had ripped off and stuffed into the trash as soon as Archer handed her a passport in her own name.

  Despite being cold, she was exhilarated. The air was fresh enough to cut into squares and eat like candy. The streets were dark and glistening with what Archer called rain, but what was merely an invigorating mist by Broome’s tropical standards. It reminded her of her early childhood in Maine. She hadn’t known how much she missed the climate until right now.

  “Turn the heat up, Amy,” Archer said to the driver. “This one is a hothouse flower.”

  “Not too hot,” Hannah said, sliding into the sleek black car. “I like this wake-up-and-conquer-the-world temperature.”

  “Right,” he said dryly. “That’s why your teeth are chattering. Heat, Amy.”

  “Yessir,” the chauffeur said, and cranked the heat to the max. As she turned to check on traffic, her short silver hair glinted in the airport lights. Like her haircut, her clothes were smart and casually chic—peach silk blouse, unstructured black jacket, black slacks, and low-heeled shoes. The Donovans didn’t require a uniform, but Amy felt that it added a certain panache to her job. Sanity, too. Driving for a canny old entrepreneur and his unpredictable, highly artistic wife called for a level head and unflappable nerves. Amy Crow had both.

  “Are The Donovan and Susa at the condo?” Archer asked.

  “Yes. There’s a party tomorrow night.”

  He thought quickly. They had missed The Donovan’s birthday party, but with so many other Donovans, it was hard to keep track. “Birthday? Anniversary?”

  “Well, The Donovan has hopes.” Amy looked in the rearview mirror at the hothouse flower with sun-streaked chestnut hair, dark indigo eyes, and the kind of walk models would kill for. “You’ve never brought a woman home before. He’s celebrating.”

  Briefly Archer closed his eyes. He had wondered how The Donovan would deal with explaining Hannah, the widow of his bastard son. Passing her off as Archer’s “friend” would simplify the father’s problems greatly.

  And greatly increase the son’s.

  “Privacy, please, Amy.”

  A glass plate slid into place, dividing the back from the front of the car.

  Silently Hannah looked at him. He picked up her chilly hands, kissed them, and slowly rubbed heat back into her fingers.

  “Will you mind not mentioning the rest of it until I talk to Dad?” Archer asked.

  “You mean Len?”

  He nodded. “Just until I find out if Susa knows. After that . . .” He shrugged. “The Donovan is a big boy. He can deal with the past. So can his children.”

  “But not your mother?”

  He hesitated, then nodded again. “She had surgery two months ago. There were complications. She came back from it, but she hasn’t had the energy to paint yet. I don’t want her knocked down again because of something that happened when Dad was sixteen.”

  Hannah’s fingers threaded through his and squeezed gently. “I won’t mention the past.”

  “You can talk about everything but Len’s blood relationship to Dad.”

  “So how did you meet me?”

  “You were having trouble with pearl theft in Australia, your husband was dead, and you remembered that he once told you if anything happened to him, you were to call me.”

  She tilted her head thoughtfully, then asked, “Why would you care?”

  “I used to work with Len in some dangerous places, the kinds of places that lead to obligations and debts.”

  Her expression changed. She looked past him, out the mist-slicked window to the shimmering lights of the freeway. But she wasn’t seeing light. She saw only darkness, felt only a queasy, sinking fear. She kept forgetting that Len and Archer were so alike. Archer concealed the ruthlessness better, but it was there just the same.

  When she could trust her voice, she asked, “What if someone wants more details?”

  “Send them to me.”

  She nodded and sat without moving, letting the night slide by on either side of her. Though she had spent most of the time on the Donovan International plane sleeping—and the rest satisfying her hunger for Archer—she was still tired. Jet lag, she supposed. Or reality lag. So much had happened in so little time. No sooner did she catch her balance from one thing than she was knocked sideways by another. The cyclone. Len’s murder. The loss of the Black Trinity. The certainty that she was in danger herself. The sabotage of Pearl Cove.

  And Archer.

  Archer, who kept surprising her. She had never expected to find such passion and restraint in one man. Even as she told herself that it was stupid, that she had no business risking pregnancy, she could hardly wait to be in bed with him again, to pull him around her like darkness and fire, to wake with his warmth and scent and taste everywhere on her body.

  Even if there hadn’t been passion and release, she would have gone to him. The chance of having a child burned like hope in her soul. After years of believing that children weren’t in her future, the thought of feeling a baby grow inside her was a ple
asure so great it made her shiver.

  Turning in his seat, Archer watched out the rear window. It took less than ten minutes to be certain that someone was following them. He punched the car intercom button. “Amy, did you tell anyone what time we were coming in?”

  “Just The Donovan, sir.”

  “Thank you.”

  Impassively Archer watched the rear window. The style of the tail was federal—at least two cars shifting back and forth, passing off the lead position, dropping back, then switching again five or ten minutes later. The cars were American made, which was as good as wearing a light bar when it came to identifying cops; the West Coast of America was the home of imported cars.

  Silence settled in the car like a soft, contented cat. Archer turned away from the rear window and watched Hannah rather than the freeway. In the muted golden glow of the car’s interior lights, her face was an ever-changing arrangement of light and shadow. Just when he decided she couldn’t be more beautiful, he found another angle, another blending of light and dark that squeezed his heart.

  He was still watching her when Amy pulled up to the low-rise condominium building that served as the Donovan family headquarters in Seattle. She punched in numbers on a piece of hand-held electronics that was about the size of a hefty cellular phone.

  With a half smile, Archer waited to see if they passed the electronic scrutiny of Kyle’s latest invention. After a few seconds the garage door rolled up, allowing the black car to pass. He let out a long breath when the heavy steel links lowered again, shutting out the rest of the world.

  Home.

  The one place where the nape of his neck wouldn’t prickle each time he turned his back on someone.

  His past had taught him that no place was perfectly safe, but the Donovans’ Seattle residence came very close. He needed that safety, that relaxation of the merciless inner alertness that had begun with Hannah’s call and wouldn’t end until he found Len’s murderer.

  As he looked back at the heavy steel grid, headlights flashed by on the street. He smiled coldly. At 3 A.M., Seattle didn’t have much in the way of freeway traffic. Even the surface streets were nearly deserted. The cars that tailed them had tried to be discreet, but there wasn’t enough traffic to hide in.

  Amy eased the big Mercedes to a stop near a lighted entrance. Before she could stir from her seat, Archer opened his car door. A tug on Hannah’s hand sent her sliding over the seat toward him. He waited, watching her without any sign of the fatigue and rising hunger that gnawed at him.

  The expensive outfit she wore might have looked wilted and travel-worn around the edges, but her legs were as smooth and supple as ever. Desire turned like a knife in him as he thought of how she had wrapped those long legs around him on the plane, opening herself completely. He had pushed into her the same way. Completely.

  None of his thoughts showed on his face or in his touch as he took her arm. He knew she was too tired to be tearing up the bed with him for what was left of the night. Certainly he should be too tired to be thinking about it.

  He turned to his parents’ chauffeur. “Thank you, Amy. Is anyone else still awake?”

  “I don’t think so, sir. Jake, Honor, and Summer came in just after dinner. Faith is at a designer’s symposium in New York, but will be back soon.” She glanced at the electronic device in her hands. “Kyle might be up tinkering with this, er, thing again. He has something else he wants it to do.”

  “Pray for us,” Archer said under his breath.

  Amy laughed. “I’ll do that, sir. Good night.”

  Only family members knew the code that opened the entrance from the garage. He punched in the numbers on a lighted pad. Instantly the lock retracted and the door swung open. Hannah watched curiously as he repeated the process to get in an elevator, then again to get out of the elevator.

  “Different codes each time?” she asked. “I didn’t think Seattle was that dangerous.”

  “Kyle is that inventive,” Archer said easily. “And I’m that paranoid.”

  “I’m going to need a native guide to get around here. For me, numbers are like names. You say them, I listen, and fffft, gone.”

  Smiling, he tucked a stray bit of hair behind her ears. The hair was soft and smelled lightly of cinnamon. “Honor threatened to take a very sensitive part of Kyle’s anatomy and feed it to her cat unless he switched to voice recognition or retina patterns or something that doesn’t require learning new codes at random intervals.”

  “She has my vote.”

  Laughing softly, he unlocked the door to the suite and gestured her inside. The entryway was marble; the white rug recently had been replaced with hardwood. Over the wood lay carpets from India, China, and vanished Persia. The city view from the wall-to-ceiling windows at the far end of the room was magnificent, but couldn’t overcome the uncanny power of the landscape paintings that hung along one wall.

  Hannah walked forward, lured by the elemental presence of art. Even if she had lived all her life among the mountains and sand dunes and plateaus in these paintings, she would have been compelled. She rubbed her eyes as though waking up from sleep. The paintings were still there, still powerful.

  “Who?” she asked simply.

  “My mother. This way,” Archer said, keeping his voice soft. Though the rooms were well insulated to muffle noise, he had no desire to wake up the family and put Hannah through a lot of introductions when she was swaying on her feet from exhaustion.

  “But—”

  “The paintings will still be there tomorrow. You need sleep.”

  She couldn’t argue, though she wanted to. She looked back over her shoulder as long as she could see the paintings. Then she sighed and wished she had half the gift his mother had.

  Archer led Hannah down a hallway lined with ancient and modern black-and-white photographs of some of the wildest places on earth. The carpet was luxurious, vividly colorful, with random patterns that evoked the feeling of earth’s continents seen from space. Several doors opened off the short hallway before it ended in a circle. Six doors opened off the circle.

  “Everyone has separate suites.” He spoke in a low voice and smiled crookedly. “The Donovans all like space. It keeps the family arguments to a minimum. Most of the time.”

  She saw his smile and knew that the arguments, however lively they might get, weren’t bitter. “Do you all live here?” she whispered.

  “Jake and Honor live up north, near Anacortes. So does Kyle. Lawe and Justin use this as their home base, but they aren’t here more than a few weeks a year. Faith had a condo in San Francisco, but she moved here after Honor and Jake married. Dad and Mom have homes in several places.”

  “What about you?”

  He shrugged. “I’m like Lawe and Justin.”

  “Wanderlust?” she asked curiously, looking at him with eyes that were both clear and very dark.

  “At first.”

  “And now?”

  He opened one of the doors and nudged her into the room beyond. “For me, a home has to have more than one person in it.”

  She smiled sadly. “Numbers don’t count, Archer. There has to be love.”

  He yawned. “Guess I don’t love myself enough, then.”

  She snickered. “You know what I mean.”

  “Yeah.” He slid his arms around her and gave her a slow, easy, homecoming kind of kiss. “I know what you mean.”

  Still smiling, she enjoyed the kiss. He tasted of coffee and the tin of mints that someone had left aboard the Donovan company plane. She supposed she tasted of the single brandy she had taken like medicine in order to sleep.

  It didn’t matter. Before too long, their tastes would be the same.

  “You’re asleep on your feet,” he said, gently ending the kiss. “Get in bed.”

  She looked around. The sitting area looked as though one of the couches unfolded into a bed, but it wasn’t made up. The king-size bed in the room beyond was turned down for the night.

  “Don’t lau
gh,” she said, ducking her head, “but what will your parents think?”

  “That we’re single adults with high standards who got very, very lucky.” He brushed a kiss over her eyebrows. “It’s all right, Hannah. Mom and Dad aren’t in the business of passing judgment. If it really bothers you, though, I’ll put you in Lawe’s or Justin’s room. I don’t think they’re coming back here soon.”

  The thought of sleeping without Archer’s muscular warmth curling around her didn’t appeal. She didn’t know how much longer she had with him. Once they found the Black Trinity, they would go their separate ways. Then she would regret each minute she hadn’t spent with him, exploring their mutual, unexpected passion.

  “I want to stay with you,” she said. “It’s just . . . old habits.”

  “Good habits. Contrary to modern urban myth, there’s no such thing as safe sex. For people like us, sex comes two ways—dangerous and more dangerous.”

  She didn’t like the sound of that. “What do you mean?”

  “There’s no condom you can wear to protect your emotions.” Very gently he kissed the frown lines between her eyes. “Go to bed, love.”

  “What about you?”

  “You showered on the plane. I didn’t.”

  “But . . . ” Her voice faded when she looked at him. He no longer held himself as though he was ready to fight or flee on an instant’s notice. He was tired. She could see it in his eyes, in the lines of his body. Despite that, he looked years younger. The wary, unwavering calculation was gone.

  “But?” he asked.

  She kissed him gently and put desire on hold. “Ask me in the morning.”

  When he understood, his body changed in the space of a few heartbeats. He pulled her closer and opened her mouth with a twist of his head, sinking into her with a heady, slow luxury. A taste of brandy, a wisp of mint, and a swirl of something much hotter, more ancient.

  Dangerous.

  “You’re tired,” she said.

  “Dead on my feet. Take me to bed.”

  “You don’t have to.”

  “You’d rather I sleep on my feet?”

  Her smile curved against his lips. “You know what I mean.”