Hannah went to another booth. This one also featured Akoya pearls, but of a higher quality. Sighing, she fingered the cool, silky weight of several necklaces. They had the pale blue overtone that was common to Akoya pearls in their natural state. The weight of the necklaces suggested that the pearls had spent a year gathering nacre in the oyster shell rather than the six months she suspected was the maximum for the previous booth. This booth also had the pink Akoya as well, but they had been handled with care and dyed with discretion. The drill holes were smooth and uniform. Not surprisingly, the price reflected the higher standard of production.
Quietly Archer urged her on around the room, milling at random through the booths, trying to make sure that only the government was following him.
“Wait,” she said suddenly. “Aren’t these beautiful? Odd, but beautiful.”
He looked at her hand on his arm. She didn’t seem to be aware of having touched him. He wished he could say the same.
“Biwa,” he said curtly.
“What?”
“Freshwater pearls from Lake Biwa in Japan.”
“What a lovely, icy, iridescent white,” she murmured, fingering a strand of the oddly shaped yet nearly identical pearls. “A necklace of little crosses. Natural or cultured?” she asked, turning to him.
“Natural, probably. But the ones in the next booth certainly aren’t.”
She looked at the next booth and laughed softly. “Little Buddhas. How on earth . . . ?”
“Same way mabe pearls are produced, on the shell itself rather than in the mantle of the oyster. Take a bead shaped like a flattened Buddha. Cement it on the inside of the shell. Cement lots of them, actually, like measles erupting all across the interior of the shell. The oyster just covers the intruders over. Six months later, the shell is harvested and the Buddhas are cut away. The Chinese have been doing it since the eleventh century.”
“Like blister pearls.”
Archer smiled slightly. “Nothing is like blister pearls. They’re naturals all the way. I have one in my collection that’s as big as Summer’s fist.”
“The pearl?” Hannah asked, startled.
“No, the blister. I haven’t opened it up yet to see if there’s a pearl inside the blister.”
The rise and fall of conversations around Hannah faded as she concentrated only on Archer. “If there is a pearl, it would be natural. Priceless.”
“And if there isn’t, if the blister is full of organic goo, the shell is worthless.”
“You won’t know until you open it.”
“I’ve opened other blisters and found nothing but tar.”
“But you won’t know about this one,” she insisted.
“Would you open it?”
“Of course. Not knowing would drive me crazy.”
“Even if you had opened other blisters?”
“Yes. That’s what hope is all about. Knowing the odds are against you but going for it anyway.”
His black eyebrows rose. “I should have been an oyster.”
“What?”
“Then you wouldn’t be afraid to open me and see what’s inside. But you’re sure it’s tar and there’s no point to this conversation. Let’s go. The bureaucrats following us are getting impatient.”
Touching her for the first time, he put his hand under her upper arm and led her toward a bank of elevators. Though the touch would look familiar to anyone watching, Hannah felt its lack of intimacy like a slap. There was no hidden circling of her skin, no tender caresses, no sweet feeling of connection, nothing but an impersonal pressure that directed her through the crowd.
“Where are we going?” she asked as the elevator doors closed.
They were alone in the cage that smelled of musty carpet, spilled espresso, and Chinese cigarettes. Asian nicotine addicts simply didn’t get Seattle’s no-smoking rule.
“To the next floor.”
“And then?” she asked.
“To the next. Then the next.”
“Do you really expect to find the Black Trinity in one of the retail stalls?”
“It isn’t likely, but the Linskys aren’t expecting me until eleven. If I’m lucky, I’ll find a black rainbow in one of the wholesale booths. Then I’ll trace it. If I’m not lucky, I’ll have gotten a feel for what’s new at all levels of the pearl market, and the two government bureaucrats following us will have learned more than they ever wanted to know about pearls.”
Hannah smiled slightly. “What about the black pearl you already have? Why not trace it?”
“Dead end. Teddy bought it from a man who bought it from a woman who bought it from a man nobody can find, who supposedly got it in Tahiti. That’s the reason Teddy showed me the pearl. He thought I might know where it came from.”
“You did.”
“He doesn’t know that. That’s why he sold it to me. He’s been looking for over a year and found nothing more than rumors. He decided to take cash for a pearl curiosity rather than trying to assemble enough black rainbows to make a piece of jewelry.”
The elevator door opened. The second floor was slightly better maintained than the lower one, but its atmosphere still was more carnival than restrained luxury. Despite not having the studied elegance of a high-end jewelry outlet, the goods on the second floor were obviously more expensive than those on the street level. Video cameras covered every angle of the area. The booths were more spacious, less jewelry was dangling within reach, and rent-a-cops watched everyone with bored eyes and big holsters.
It didn’t take Hannah and Archer long to circle the second floor. The pearls were bigger and of better quality than on the first floor, but the emphasis was the same: finished jewelry. There was a very nice pair of Tahitian black earrings with violet overtones, and a tangerine South Seas parure consisting of brooch, necklace, bracelet, ring, and earrings. The latter made Hannah pause, but when the salesman came forward, she shook her head and moved on.
There were few loose pearls for sale. None of them was a black rainbow.
The elevator smelled the same on the way to the third floor. When Hannah and Archer stepped out, they were confronted by a desk and an armed guard who was even more bored than his buddies downstairs. Archer wrote his name, corporate identity, and wholesale number in the logbook on the desk, took two tags, and gave one to Hannah. He clipped his to his pocket. After several tries, she managed to clip hers on the neckline without wrinkling the material.
As he watched her smooth the borrowed dress beneath the tag, his hands itched to help her. Then he could savor again the creamy warmth and resilience of her breasts, feel their tips harden beneath his hands, his tongue.
Cursing silently, he turned away from the endless temptation of Hannah McGarry. A quick scan of the room told him that the same traders were in the same places. No new faces. In fact, he would have sworn that some of the same people were leaning across the same counters arguing the same prices as they had been six weeks ago, when he had strolled through the Pearl Exchange just for the pleasure of seeing so many varieties of loose pearls gathered under one roof.
Hannah scanned the various booths and almost smiled. This she understood: the people haggling over a tray of pearls, the other people watching as though placing side bets, the dramatic gestures of disdain on the part of buyer and seller, the handshakes, the voices rising and falling. Chinese, Japanese, Australian, American, European—the languages varied, but the focus didn’t.
Pearls.
Everybody was buying, selling, trading, wishing, living, and dreaming pearls. Some people wanted only to match pearls for a pair of earrings. Others wanted to create triple-strand necklaces or parures with hundreds of pearls. A few people went from booth to booth, collecting for purposes only they knew.
“You like this, don’t you?” Archer asked, watching Hannah because he couldn’t make himself stop. Right now her eyes were a vivid indigo with flashes of violet. Her whole body was alert, quivering, like a cat closing in on prey.
“I lo
ve it,” she said. “At first Len didn’t let me do any of the selling or trading. For the last few years I’ve done all of it. I never went beyond Broome, but I always wanted to. Pearl Cove has some of the best-matched, highest-quality pearls in the world.” Excitement faded as she remembered. “Or we had. Now . . .” She shrugged. “It depends on whether you want to resurrect the operation. Even if we find the Black Trinity, I don’t have the money.”
“Is that what you want? Pearl Cove up and running again?”
“It’s what I know.”
“That’s not the same thing.”
“It’s as close as I can come.”
“Why not do what you love?” Archer asked.
Eyebrows raised, she looked at him. “And what would that be?”
“This.” He waved a hand at the room where pearls were changing hands. “Trading pearls.”
She opened her mouth. No words came out.
He was right. What she loved most was weighing and balancing the merits of individual lots of pearls, pricing them, bargaining over them, coming away with a good deal because she had a better eye than anyone she had ever met when it came to matching pearls.
“All the professional traders I’ve known are men,” she said.
“Yet it’s a fact that most women’s color vision is better than most men’s.”
“No argument here, mate,” she said dryly. After a moment she smiled rather like a shark. “I’ll just have to be the first, won’t I? My color vision against theirs.”
And she laughed.
Archer wished he could pick her up and whirl her around, laughing with her, sharing the heady feeling of a new world opening up. But that was the kind of thing you did with family or friends or a mate. Sex alone didn’t qualify for the latter, sharing Len between them didn’t qualify for the former, and she didn’t like Archer well enough for them to qualify as friends.
“How do you go about becoming a trader?” Hannah asked.
“Get a reputation for knowing good pearls.”
“I have one, but it’s half a world away.”
“Then we’ll just have to work on it here.”
“Not when I look like a tart.”
The corner of his mouth kicked up. “What you look like is a sexy woman.”
Unconsciously she smoothed the creeping skirt farther down her hips. “I feel awkward.”
“Every time I’ve had my hands on you, you felt just fine.”
She shot him a sideways look that glittered like blue-black sapphires. “That isn’t what I meant.”
He shrugged. “You walk around in three patches and a handful of string and never worry, but you’re fidgety in a dress that covers you from collarbones to midthigh.”
“That was the tropics. This is here. Honor’s clothes just don’t fit me.”
“Then we’ll go shopping after we’re done here.”
“We?”
“You’re not getting out of my sight until all the players know that you’re off the table.”
“I was out of your sight last night,” Hannah said before she stopped herself.
“That’s different.”
“Bull dust.” She took a breath and a better grip on her too-quick tongue. “I can’t afford clothes.”
“I’ll give you—”
“No,” she cut in. “I owe you too much already.”
“You don’t owe me a cent.”
“You’ve got that right, mate. I owe you a hell of a lot more than a penny.”
“Wrong. You’re family, and family doesn’t owe family.” Archer held up his hand, cutting off the hot words he saw ready to boil out of Hannah. “But I’ll take whatever you spend on clothes out in work, if that will make you feel better.”
“What about the airline tickets and the—”
“Right,” Archer interrupted curtly. “You owe me a bundle. I’ll tally it to the last cent. When this is over, I’ll send you a goddamn bill, you’ll pay it, and you’ll be free of the Donovans.” He gave her a look that had her backing up. “Unless you’re pregnant. Are you pregnant, Hannah?”
“I—I don’t know.”
“I’ll get a test kit.”
She stiffened. “They’re not reliable.”
“Neither is life. We all get through it anyway.”
“Stop looming over me!”
“I haven’t moved an inch.”
“You don’t have to. You’re just—just—”
“Cold, ruthless, incapable of love,” he said neutrally. “I know, you’ve told me before.”
“I never said anything about love.”
“Then you think a cold, ruthless man like me is capable of love?”
She shut her mouth. “Why are you pushing me?”
“Because you’re pushing me. Let’s look at pearls. And forget the mistress bit. No one watching us would believe it. You stiffen every time I touch you.”
Hannah wanted to deny it. She couldn’t.
But it wasn’t distaste that made her stiffen. It was desire. She didn’t know how to handle it.
Or him.
“Right,” she said through her teeth. “I’m not your hired playmate. Then what am I?”
“A woman who wants to break into the pearl game.”
“What’s my name?”
“Hannah McGarry. You’re my partner in Pearl Cove.”
She blinked.
“Lying got us out of Australia alive,” Archer said. “Maybe the truth will get us to the pearls.”
And maybe it would get them dead. Either way, hiding wasn’t possible anymore.
Ian Chang stood fifteen feet away, staring at Hannah.
Twenty
The look on Chang’s face said that he wasn’t surprised to find Hannah McGarry in the Pearl Exchange. His clothes said he hadn’t been off the airplane long enough to change. He strolled forward, took her hands, and kissed her. If she hadn’t turned her head aside quickly, the kiss would have landed on her mouth.
“Well, well,” Chang said, looking Hannah over carefully. If he was bothered by the fact that her heels made her six inches taller than he was, it didn’t show. “I almost didn’t recognize you.”
Archer didn’t like the gleam in Chang’s eyes or the way he was running his thumbs over the backs of Hannah’s hands. But she wasn’t stepping away, even though the man’s breath was all over her low neckline.
“G’day, Ian,” she said automatically. She hoped he didn’t sense how unhappy she was to see him. “What are you doing in Seattle?”
The blunt question made Chang smile rather grimly. “I was worried about you.”
“Why?”
“Come now, Hannah.” Chang’s fingers tightened on hers. “Surely you realize that you’re half owner of a very valuable commodity. People who own things of value are always at risk.”
Sell Pearl Cove to the Changs. We’re big enough to weather the coming storm. You aren’t. Don’t follow Len into the grave.
Hannah wished she could forget Ian’s warning, and the threat implicit in it, but she couldn’t. She could only put on a smile and pretend that this was a chance meeting half a world away from Pearl Cove.
“Archer Donovan,” she said through stiff lips, “Ian Chang. Or have you met?”
“Indirectly,” Ian said, releasing one of her hands and holding his right hand out to Archer. “A pleasure to meet directly.”
“Mr. Chang,” Archer said neutrally.
“Hannah told me you own half of Pearl Cove. Is that correct?”
Archer nodded, concealing his surprise at Chang’s bald approach.
“The family of Chang is prepared to make you a very handsome offer for Pearl Cove,” Ian said.
“I haven’t considered selling.”
“Do.” Chang smiled. “It is worth considering, even for a man of your wealth and . . . connections.”
Archer heard what Chang wasn’t saying: Sell out or even Donovan International wouldn’t keep him from being at risk.
“If I won�
�t sell, you can always buy Hannah’s share,” Archer said mildly.
“My instructions don’t include Mrs. McGarry.”
Adrenaline slid through Archer’s veins. Not good. Not good at all. Someone has thrown Hannah to the wolves. “I see.”
Chang nodded curtly. “I hoped you would.” He handed over a business card. “Please contact me as soon as you decide.”
“You, the Australians, the Japanese.” Archer smiled. “A lot of interest for a pearl farm that has been only marginally profitable.”
“Under Chang leadership, Pearl Cove will be quite profitable.” Chang looked back at Hannah. Desire, regret, echoes of anger; all were in his sad smile. “I wish you had chosen me, Sister McGarry. I would have kept you safe. Now it is too late. Stay very close to the man you did choose. Very, very close.” With that, Chang released her hands and glanced at Archer. “Mr. Donovan, I look forward to doing business with you. Soon.”
Silently Hannah and Archer watched Chang turn away and walk to the elevator.
“Why do I feel like he was saying good-bye?” Hannah asked.
“Because he was.”
“He knew I would never be a married man’s mistress,” she said, and in her voice was the same mix of desire, regret, and anger as she had heard in Chang’s. “I thought Ian was my friend . . . .”
“He is.”
The sideways look she gave Archer was as sardonic as the curl of her lip.
“He just went against his family’s business interests and warned you not to trust him when it comes to Pearl Cove,” Archer said. “I call that an act of friendship.”
“Ian warned me in Australia, when he was trying to buy me out.”
Archer said nothing. He hoped she wouldn’t follow that line of thought to its logical conclusion.
She did.
“Now he’s not trying to buy me out,” she said. “Why? Does he think you’ll sell more quickly than I would?”
“What Ian thinks doesn’t matter anymore. His daddy is calling the shots now.”
“Right,” she said impatiently. “I figured that out. But does his daddy think you’ll sell?”
“Sam Chang thinks that I’ve got better protection in this game than you do. He’d rather buy me out than take me out.”
Pearl Cove Page 27
