Donovans 01 - Amber Beach

burden of being the youngest male, which meant that sometimes he had to fight his older brothers, too.
    “Donovan International,” Jake said slowly, looking at the radar. Three boats showing now. Apparently Snake Eyes had managed to find the bright orange of the Coast Guard again. “I’ve heard the name somewhere . . .”
    As he had hoped, Honor took the bait.
    “On Wall Street, likely,” she said. “Dad’s company discovers, recovers, buys, and/or sells metals and rare minerals.”
    “Nice setup. Your brothers will never lack for a job.”
    “Lousy setup. They want to be boss.”
    “Every Eden has a snake.”
    “Well, my brothers bypassed the old serpent and started their own company, Donovan Gemstones and Minerals.”
    Jake smiled despite the raw male hunger prowling through his blood every time he thought about Honor’s soft mouth and softer body. “The sons went into competition with the old man, is that it?”
    Honor winced, remembering. “That’s it. The salsa really hit the fan when Dad discovered that he had been outmaneuvered by his own sons.”
    “Did he disinherit them?”
    She looked shocked. “Of course not. Dad is bullheaded and stiff-necked, but he’s not vicious. The Donovan males went head-to-head for a year on various mineral surveys and such. When Dad was convinced the boys would make it without him, he offered a palace alliance.”
    “Did they take it?”
    “Sort of. They do work for him on a contract basis, but never enough that Donovan International is their only customer, or even their best one.”
    “Smart.” But then, Jake had already known that. The Donovan males he had met were as intelligent as they were hardheaded.
    “I suppose. Sure makes for some interesting Thanksgivings and Christmases, with Dad praying at every meal for stray lambs to return to the fold and said lambs running as hard as they can to stay out of reach of the old wolf.”
    The idea of the Donovan brothers as “lambs” made Jake laugh out loud.
    “Are your holidays like that?” Honor asked.
    “Like what?”
    “Fighting off family.”
    “Nope. We can’t get far enough away from each other.”
    “Sounds . . . lonely.”
    “You know what they say about freedom.”
    “No, what?”
    “Another way of saying nothing left to lose.”
    Jake changed course, ducked around a little island, shot across a narrow strait, and shut down to an idle at the base of a rugged stone cliff. He punched a button. The fish finder glowed in blue and red on the lower screen.
    Honor didn’t bother to ask where they were. Even with a chart, she had a hard time sorting out which San Juan island was which. There were a lot of islands, many so small they were barely rocks. She had tried orienting herself with the chart while they raced from place to place, but all she got for her efforts was a headache and a sour stomach.
    “Hot damn!” he said. “They’re here.”
    She leaned in for a better view. The screen looked like somebody had been drawing yellow dashes on it between forty and ninety feet. Before she could ask if the random clumps of color were fish, Jake was gone. She followed him out into the stern well and watched while he started the kicker engine and set up the fishing rods. The gear didn’t particularly interest her. Watching Jake’s easy, economical way of moving did.
    He mistook her presence for a desire to learn more about fishing.
    “We’ve dragged all the dead herring through the water that I’m going to for today,” he said. He bent over the white plastic bucket and picked up a lure that had been dangling from the rim. “Know what this is?”
    “Looks like two little hooks from here. Incredible. I don’t know if I can stand the excitement.”
    But there was no real sarcasm in her voice. She was having too much fun watching Jake enjoy himself. And she knew he was enjoying. It was there in his voice, in the brilliance of his eyes, in the springy way he moved. The man loved fishing.
    Well, she reminded herself, nobody is perfect. I’ve got some industrial-strength flaws myself.
    “The hooks,” he said, “are attached to a nifty, semi-flexible lure called the Tormentor. I’m going to bend it just enough so that it imitates the action of a cut-plug herring. Now I’m going to attach the Tormentor’s leader to the dodger and—”
    “Foul!” she interrupted.
    “What?”
    “You aren’t going to teach me fishing. I signed on for boat handling, period.”
    “I didn’t think you