Donovans 01 - Amber Beach

Then he realized what he was doing and stopped. That old Donovan magic. People turned themselves inside out for it.
    “That wide-eyed charm may work with your other men, but it won’t get the job done with me,” Jake said, forking the crab into his own mouth.
    She stared at him in disbelief. “Wide-eyed charm?”
    He grunted and chewed crab.
    The idea of being thought charming silenced Honor more effectively than a hand over her mouth. None of the men in her life had accused her of being charming. Stubborn, impulsive, too smart for her own good; yes. Charming?
    Never.
    “Thank you,” she said.
    His head came up swiftly. Before he could ask her why she responded to his insult with thanks, the phone rang.
    Honor jumped as though she had been stung. She stood up so quickly that Jake had to catch her chair before it toppled over. The phone barely finished its second summons before she grabbed the receiver.
    “Archer?” she asked breathlessly.
    No one answered.
    “Hello?”
    Silence.
    She slammed the receiver back into the cradle.
    Jake’s eyes narrowed. He was beginning to understand that Honor was strung a lot tighter than she looked with her teasing amber-green eyes, quick smile, and casual, silky brown hair. At the moment she was rather pale, her mouth was drawn in anger or fear, and she held her hands clenched together as though to keep them from shaking.
    Fear, not anger. Something had frightened the charming Ms. Donovan.
    He had an unexpected urge to put his arms around her, to soothe and protect her. Ruthlessly he swept the impulse aside and concentrated on what had dragged him to Amber Beach in the first place. Murder, robbery, treachery, and Kyle Donovan.
    “Problems?” Jake asked.
    “Are cops into this kind of harassment?” Honor asked tightly.
    “What kind?”
    “One-sided phone calls.”
    Adrenaline stirred beneath Jake’s calm surface. He had wondered if he was the only one outside the law who had an interest in Ms. Donovan.
    “Heavy breathing?” he asked.
    “No. Just the kind of silence that makes your hair stand on end.”
    He pushed out her chair with his foot. She took the hint and sat down. Even though her appetite had vanished, the wine looked really good. She reached for it, took a drink, and then another.
    “Maybe the caller is a woman,” Jake said.
    “What makes you say that?”
    “This is your brother’s cottage, right?”
    “Yes.”
    “Your missing brother, right?” Jake asked, careful to sound like someone who had only read the newspaper accounts of one Kyle Donovan.
    Honor nodded.
    “Then the explanation is simple,” Jake said. “Someone who looks like Kyle would be scraping women off all the time. Hearing your voice on the phone would be an unhappy shock for a girl whose motor was humming and ready to go.”
    “I’m a girl and I don’t think Kyle is sexy.”
    “Siblings don’t count. They don’t see things the same way normal people do.”
    Kyle sure hadn’t, Jake thought sourly. He had mentioned his great-sense-of-humor, dead-bright twin sisters, but he hadn’t said that Honor had a sweet little body and a way of looking at a man that made him feel ten feet tall and solid as a stone cliff.
    “Besides, how do you know what Kyle looks like?” she asked.
    Jake hesitated just long enough to call himself a fool for not thinking that far down the road. Then he remembered the picture in the local paper. A passport photo, likely.
    “Newspaper,” he said. “They ran a photo.”
    “Not a good one.”
    She was right, but admitting it wouldn’t help his cause any. “Siblings,” he retorted. “Can’t see worth a damn.”
    Honor’s smile was wan. He could tell that she wasn’t buying the lovelorn explanation for the phone caller.
    “Have you been getting a lot of calls?” he asked after a moment.
    “For a while there were reporters who wouldn’t take no for an answer, but that dropped off in the past few days.”
    “How many times have you picked up the phone and no one answered?”
    “Oh, five or six times.”
    “A day?” he asked, startled.
    “No. In the last week.”
    “The phone system is going to hell.”
    “Maybe.” But she didn’t sound convinced.
    The fear lying beneath Honor’s careful smile made Jake wish that he had no more on his mind than helping her. That damned Donovan charm.
    “What are you thinking?” he asked without meaning to.
    “About the man who just called. That’s his second time tonight.”
    “If he didn’t say