Donovans 03 - Pearl Cove

was her problem. Obviously he didn’t have one. His hand had been steady while he’d stroked cosmetics over her face.
    Impatiently she tugged at the forest-green dress she had borrowed from Honor. The dress kept trying to creep up her hips. Hannah was an inch taller and at least two inches more around the bust and hips than Archer’s sister. As a result, the silk sheath dress fit too well. She was certain her hips were stretching the seams across the butt. The bra she had borrowed made the most of her breasts, pressing them front and center so that they mounded above the scoop of the neckline.
    Borrowed jewelry finished out the picture of a well-shaped, well-kept woman. To keep up with—or live down to—the new image, Hannah had switched the blue diamond wedding set to her right hand. The rest of her jewelry was also borrowed. She hoped that Susa truly wouldn’t mind a stranger wearing her diamond-and-citrine rope and diamond stud earrings.
    Impatiently Hannah ran her hands over her hips again, trying to coax the dress to lengthen by an inch or two. Then she made herself stop fussing. She was supposed to be for sale, wasn’t she? Or at least up for a short-term lease.
    Archer certainly looked the part of a man who could afford to keep her. Though he had dumped the Euro-silk and Krugerand, the handmade pearl-gray Egyptian cotton shirt he was wearing didn’t look like a Kmart special. Nor did the black wool slacks and soft leather shoes. The thick black stubble on his face set off his pale eyes and the clean line of his mouth. A black Gore-Tex jacket with high-tech fleece lining was carelessly folded over one arm. The jacket was Honor’s, on loan to Hannah.
    The stubble should have made Archer look badly groomed. Instead, he looked so sexy she was having trouble keeping her hands to herself.
    When Hannah realized that she was staring at Archer’s mouth, remembering what it felt like all over her, she forced herself to focus on the pearls and ignore the explosion of heat deep inside her, heat turning her bones and her body to warm honey. After a few moments she managed to see the booth in front of her. It was draped with pearl jewelry. The pearls were six to eight millimeters in size and of one dominant hue. Pink.
    “Akoya rules here,” she said. “They didn’t stint on the pink dye, either.”
    “Americans like pink.”
    Hannah picked up a strand and ran it through her fingers. “Decent surface. Uneven drill holes. Poor depth of nacre. Adequate matching. Good graduation in size.”
    “Japan has tons of Akoya pearls,” Archer said. “Literally. Size matching is rarely a problem.”
    Relieved to find something neutral to talk about, she dove into the discussion. “Color matching shouldn’t be a problem either, if the stalls on this floor are any example. If the pearl doesn’t look good, throw it back in the pink dye for a while longer. Or the black. How can they sell this?” she asked, holding up a steel-colored string of dyed pearls. “Ball bearings would have more character. If you want black, stick to the South Seas. The color comes from the oyster, not from a chemical bath.”
    He didn’t pick up the conversational ball. Instead, he watched the room around them with eyes as clear and hard as diamonds. It beat watching Hannah fidget and wiggle in Honor’s clothes—clothes that had never looked like that on his sister. It was all he could do to keep from lowering his head and running his tongue deep into the cleavage that was so nicely displayed.
    Irritated by his body’s relentless hunger for the woman who had no use for him beyond sex and protection, Archer turned his back and forced himself to focus on the room. The tail they had picked up as soon as they left the condominium was somewhere in the crowd behind them, fingering pearls as though she cared. The man who was with her didn’t even pretend to care. He looked at everything but pearls.
    Wistfully Hannah ran her fingertips over strands of gleaming dyed pearls. It had been nice to have a neutral conversation with Archer, if only for a few moments. Perhaps he could be lured back into it.
    “Culturing pearls,” she said, “inserting a bead, feeding and scrubbing the oyster for a year or two, then harvesting and grading the pearl—I understand that. Once the seed is in place, the oyster is responsible for the color and luster of the pearl. How can they call this kind of manufactured dyed stuff pearls?”
    “No problem.” Deciding