Donovans 01 - Amber Beach

people who had been dead thousands of years. The Amber Room’s history was a lot more recent. The eighteenth century rather than thousands of years b.c.
    He let out another hidden breath. Let Ellen grab hold of the fairy dust. He had something more real to chase: a shipment of top-quality raw amber from Kaliningrad. He knew just what the shipment looked like to the last gram—he had packed it himself—but he didn’t know how much the Donovan family knew.
    “Kyle used to send jade he had collected back with the other stuff Donovan International bought,” she said. “When he started collecting Neolithic amber carvings, I assumed he would transport them home the same way, with a commercial shipment.”
    “So, any worked amber in the missing shipment was just old stuff for his own collection,” Jake said.
    “As far as I know. But he was working with another collector, too.”
    Jake tensed. “Who?”
    “Kyle just called him Jay. He really liked him. Said he was the kind of man I should be dating instead of—” She broke off sharply.
    Jake raised his eyebrows in silent question.
    “My brothers think I should date men like them. Stubborn. Arrogant. Too big for my comfort. Hardheaded.” Then Honor sighed and admitted, “Intelligent. Enough integrity and backbone for a regiment. Loyal. Occasionally quite wonderful.”
    “But only occasionally,” Jake said dryly.
    “Hey, I’m a sister. That’s as good as it gets.”
    “So you’ve been dating spineless, hesitant, stupid, weak men.”
    “They weren’t stupid!”
    “Okay. Smart, spineless, and weak.”
    “They weren’t weak. Not really.”
    “Spineless and hesitant.”
    “Polite.”
    “Spineless.”
    “Sold.” Then she laughed sadly. “But I’ll never admit it to my brothers.”
    “Something tells me they already figured it out.”
    “Yeah, well, Jay whatshisname can stay in Kaliningrad and collect Neolithic amber. I don’t want another big, overbearing man in my life.”
    “I doubt if he’s all that bad,” Jake said blandly.
    “I don’t. Anyone who can fight Kyle and win is no fragile little flower of chivalry.”
    “They fought?” Jake asked, surprised. He didn’t think Kyle would have passed along the tale of the beer barrel, the barmaid, and the boy who bit off more than he could chew.
    “Sure did. Kyle ended up on his butt in a puddle of beer. Jay put him there. But Kyle really respects him. Talks about him like he was a stepbrother to God or another Donovan. Same difference, I suppose.”
    Jake didn’t know what to say. Apparently Kyle had conned his family as thoroughly as he had conned Jake; they believed Kyle liked and respected the very man he had betrayed.
    It should have made Jake feel better that he wasn’t the only one who had been fooled by Kyle. It didn’t. He found himself hoping that Honor would never have to know how different Kyle was from what he seemed. The discovery had been painful enough for him; he could imagine how terrible it would be for Honor.
    “Okay,” Jake said. “What else do you know about amber and your brother?”
    “Not much. He called about six weeks ago and told me to start designing some fantastic stuff, the kind museums and very rich collectors buy. He had just heard about some big pieces of clear raw amber, chunks of a size for tabletop sculptures rather than earrings or inlay.”
    Jake hoped his surprise didn’t show. Kyle hadn’t said a word to him about that kind of treasure trove. But then, Kyle hadn’t said anything about a lot of things that were on his mind, as Jake had found out too late.
    “Sounds expensive,” he said carefully.
    “It would be. Big pieces like that are really rare. When Kyle first started working in Kaliningrad, I asked him to bring me a cantaloupe-sized chunk of clear red amber. He laughed so hard he nearly dropped the phone. How was I to know I might as well have asked for a ten-carat diamond?”
    “Um,” was all Jake could think of to say.
    He was trying hard not to laugh himself. He looked at the bright blue screen of the fish finder and hoped his face was as blank as the screen.
    Not a fish showing. Not a bump on the bottom worth investigating. He cleared his throat and turned back to Honor. “Then we’ll assume we’re looking for something that is bigger than a man and smaller than, say, a room in Kyle’s cottage.”
    “Why?”
    Jake thought fast. “Logic. Would he bring it here if he couldn’t hide it?”
    “How did he get it here,