Donovans 01 - Amber Beach

his inconvenient attraction to a thief’s—and probably a murderer’s—sister, Jake forced his attention back to the open area beneath the bench seat. That was where he stored his own PFDs when he was alone on the boat.
    That was where he would have found them a minute before if he hadn’t been thinking how nice it would be to reach beneath all that loose sweat suit cloth and find the warm, sleek leg beneath.
    “Here we go,” he said, reaching in. “Just what the Coast Guard ordered. One certified PFD.”
    She looked at the thick, bright orange jacket he was holding out.
    “Looks more like Halloween to me,” she said.
    “Shows up real well against the sea, no matter how dark it is. If you’re wearing this when you take a header into the drink, you’ll be floating and easy to spot. Keeps the coroner happy.”
    “Coroner? I thought the point of floating was to stay alive.”
    “Then stay out of the water. Summer or winter, it’s cold enough to kill you in thirty minutes or less.”
    Honor looked out the cabin windows at the blue-green water of the little cove. A fitful breeze had ruffled the satin surface into a shimmering kind of velvet. The ocean looked about as dangerous as cotton candy.
    Yet she knew how quickly the wind could deepen and strengthen, piling up dangerous waves. It had happened to her when she was a girl. Justin and Lawe had managed to bring the skiff back to shore right side up, but it had been a terrifying experience for her. She hadn’t been for a ride on a small boat since that day. If she had had her way, she never would. But finding Kyle was more important than leftover childhood terrors.
    Jake put the float coat back under the seat. Then he looked at the two cheap PFDs that were stacked at the far end of the opening. Each thick, awkward vest had a Coast Guard stamp of approval on the bright orange fabric.
    Silently he straightened and turned back to the woman who was either a fine actress or actually intrigued by him as a man. He kept hoping she was only an actress of the same high caliber as her brother. At the very least, she could have been as arrogant and high-handed as the rest of her family.
    Somehow he didn’t think he was going to be that lucky. Or unlucky. He couldn’t decide which. And that bothered him even more than the fresh, vaguely peppermint scent of Honor Donovan.
    Remember Kyle , Jake told himself savagely. You liked him, too. And he screwed you but good.
    At least getting screwed by Honor would be a lot more fun.
    “I assume your brother kept a log?” Jake asked impatiently.
    “Yes. Could you hand me my purse? I’ve been looking through the log, hoping to find where he . . . uh, fished.”
    Jake looked over his shoulder, where she was pointing. A dinette table stuck out between two more bench seats just across from the galley. The resulting booth could seat four, if they were friends. It made into a bed that would sleep two, if they were very, very good friends. Or planned on getting that way.
    “This is a purse?” he asked, lifting the black leather backpack on the table.
    “It works for me.”
    He held the backpack with one hand. “Find any?”
    “What?”
    “Good fishing holes.”
    “Er, no.”
    “So you decided to hire a fishing guide?”
    “Er, yes.”
    Jake decided that Honor needed a lot more practice lying. Unless she really was a world-class actress pretending to be the innocent sister of a larcenous brother . . . .
    Impatiently Jake told himself that it didn’t matter. Either way, the lady with the cat eyes and quick mind was definitely trouble in oversized sweats.
    “Why are you looking so skeptical?” Honor asked. “Surely you’ve seen a woman’s purse before.”
    “All sizes and shapes. I once saw a woman pull a live rooster and two chickens out of her purse. Of course, she was on the way to the market, so it wasn’t all that surprising.”
    “Any fresh eggs?”
    “Does scrambled count?”
    “Nope.”
    “Then there weren’t any eggs.”
    A smile changed the taut lines of Honor’s face. The smile was brief and all the more beautiful for it.
    “Ah, well,” she said. “Maybe next time. Where was this market?”
    Telling her that it was in Kaliningrad would raise the kind of questions Jake had no intention of answering.
    “In the country,” he said. “Is that the log?”
    “Yes, but there’s nothing interesting in it. Just rows of dates and gas consumption and maintenance records and that sort of