Donovans 01 - Amber Beach

family.” She laughed without humor. “That’s one way of putting it. Five large, overbearing males. Faith and I had to leave home to keep from strangling them one and all in their sleep.”
    Jake just shook his head. He knew what it was like not to get along with your family, to barely tolerate your parents and siblings, much less love or even like them. For all of Honor’s supposed trials with the men in her family, her voice softened with affection when she spoke of the Donovan males.
    It didn’t surprise Jake. He had learned the hard way that Donovans stuck together like wolves in a pack; and J. Jacob Mallory had been the dumb lamb nominated for the slaughter.
    “No mother?” he asked, pouring wine, fishing as always for information about the Donovan wolf pack. Know thy enemy was one of the oldest rules of survival.
    Honor took the glass of pale gold wine he held out to her and waited for him to pour his own.
    “Mom is incredible,” she said. “The woman barely comes up to my shoulder, but she manages to do exactly what she wants, when she wants, and not ruffle masculine egos in the process.”
    “Sounds like a good plan.”
    “I’ve tried it. Doesn’t work for me. Mom has this kind of cast-iron nonchalance. No matter what roadblocks the men throw up, she just kisses them on the cheek, gives their hairy chests a pat, and goes on her merry way.” Honor shrugged. “Maybe it comes of being an artist.”
    “Artist?” he asked, picking up his own wine.
    “Painter.”
    “What kind?”
    “Good.”
    Laughing quietly, Jake clicked his wineglass against Honor’s, and said, “To learning how to fish.”
    She grimaced. “To learning, period.”
    He raised his glass in silent salute, drank, and made a sound of surprise. “I didn’t know Australia had a good white wine.”
    “Kyle told me about it. Avoid the pure Chardonnays and head straight for the blends.”
    No new information for Jake in that. Kyle had been able to find decent wine in some of the most desolate rat holes in Kaliningrad. Then the two men would go back to what passed for a hotel, open tins of fine caviar and stale crackers, and discuss sex, politics, religion, loneliness, and how to negotiate long-term deals in a country that was even younger than the wine they were drinking.
    Kyle Donovan was as close to a friend as Jake had had in a long time. Too bad Kyle had turned out to be a con man, a thief, and a murderer. It would have been better if he were simply a fool whose brain was being run by his dick. Jake could understand that. He had been a fool from time to time himself. But Kyle had never struck Jake as the foolish sort.
    That left the crooked sort.
    “When will the bread be dry?” he asked.
    “Dry? Oh, hot. A few more minutes. What do you want on the crab?”
    “My mouth.”
    “The man is hungry.”
    “The man is ready to eat shell and all.”
    “You want it with lemon or seafood sauce?”
    “Both. I’ll make the sauce.”
    By the time Honor had salad on the table, the sauce was ready. They sat down and began eating. There was an intimacy about the informal meal that surprised her. It was hard to be standoffish with someone while sucking tidbits of crab from your fingertips.
    “You’re right about the bread,” Jake said, crunching into a piece.
    She had her mouth too full of crab to answer.
    “Isn’t that the sweetest crab you’ve ever eaten?” he continued.
    She nodded vigorously.
    “Next time I’ll show you how to kill and clean it before you cook it,” he said.
    Her hair whipped from side to side with the force of her silent, negative response.
    Laughing silently, he cracked crab legs between his fingers and picked out the meat using one of the smaller claws. With surprising speed a mound of succulent white meat grew on his plate.
    “I thought you were hungry,” she said.
    “I am.”
    “Then why are you ignoring all that luscious crabmeat?”
    Jake’s slow smile brought every one of Honor’s female senses to red alert.
    “I’m not ignoring it,” he said. “I’m anticipating it. Different thing entirely. Then I’ll savor it. Three times the pleasure that way.”
    “And only a third the calories. All the same . . .”
    He saw the look in her eyes as she measured the pile of crab on his plate.
    “Don’t even think about it,” he said.
    “What?”
    “Stealing some crab.”
    “It wouldn’t be stealing if you gave it to me.”
    Smiling, he slid his fork into the crab to give her some.