Donovans 03 - Pearl Cove

she had managed to conceal her shock very well. Angelique Dupres was Coco’s half sister, who had stayed in Tahiti to have babies and run a tiny pearl farm for the family.
    “What’s the name?”
    “Moonbeam Limited.”
    Archer almost smiled. “After the old legends?”
    Seng smiled. “I hadn’t thought of that.” He saw another customer approaching. “Is there anything else?” he asked Archer politely.
    “Nothing that we haven’t already talked about.”
    “I will be in touch,” Seng promised. Then he smiled at the elegantly dressed, very large woman who was looking into the display case. “Mrs. Janzen, thank you for taking time from your busy schedule to see me. Is your family well?”
    Leaving Seng and his formidable customer to exchange greetings, Archer and Hannah drifted off to another booth.
    “Unless there are two women named Angelique Dupres—” Hannah began.
    “Later,” Archer cut in softly.
    She looked around. While no one was close enough to overhear what they were saying, that could change at any moment as people wandered from booth to booth.
    “Okay. What’s this about moonlight and legends?” she asked.
    He took the change of subject without a pause. “Some folks—Pliny the Elder was among them—believed that pearls were formed when oysters swam up to the surface of the sea at the full of the moon, opened themselves, and were delicately impregnated by moonbeams.”
    The tension in Hannah’s face dissolved into a smile. “Talk about the ridiculous and the sublime . . .”
    “It gets better. In India, where pearls have been pursued for thousands of years, both Buddhists and Hindus have a category of god called nagas. They’re snakes that have a human head.”
    “I think I’ve met them,” Hannah said wryly.
    A smile flickered over Archer’s mouth. “Nagas are guardian gods. They guard pearls, drops of rain, and the elixir of immortality.”
    “Maybe Jung was right about all those archetypes running around in human brains,” she said. “Not to mention Freud. He would have a lot to say about snaky phallic symbols and pearly drops and all.”
    This time Archer’s smile stayed on his lips. “I can imagine.”
    So could she. And what she was imagining made heat slide into her blood. She wanted to hold Archer like that again, only this time she would taste as well as touch the liquid pearls that escaped his restraint.
    He saw the small shiver that coursed through her. “Do you want Honor’s jacket?”
    “What?” she asked, dragging her mind away from the image of him naked and potent as she bent down to him.
    “This,” he said, holding up the jacket that had been folded over his arm. “You’re shivering. You’re used to temperatures a lot warmer than the open floors of the Pearl Exchange.”
    Rather than tell him that the goose bumps coursing over her came from thinking about getting him naked, Hannah let him settle the jacket over her shoulders like a cape. The casual touch set off another shiver.
    “Why didn’t you tell me you were cold?” he asked, rubbing her arms briskly, careful to keep the jacket as a barrier to direct touch.
    “I didn’t notice.”
    He gave her an odd look.
    She looked straight ahead and wondered how other women dealt with being ambushed by passion in public places. Especially when they were with a man who was doing everything but walk on the ceiling to avoid touching her, skin to skin.
    “Angelique Dupres is Coco’s half sister,” Hannah said in a low voice.
    He simply nodded and filed the information away.
    Side by side, not touching at all, Archer and Hannah went to every booth in the room. They traded off asking about the special black pearls. Some people had heard of them. No one owned any. Or if they did, they were keeping it secret.
    “Here they come again,” Hannah said under her breath.
    “Our shadows?”
    “Um,” she agreed. “What would they do if we walked up and introduced ourselves?”
    “Chat with us until backup arrived. Then we’d have to go to the trouble of picking the new bureaucrats out of the crowd.”
    “Better the devil you know, is that it?”
    “Sometimes.”
    “Is this one of those times?”
    “So far.”
    “And when it changes?”
    “We’ll lose them.” He looked at his watch.
    “You’re really angry underneath all that calm, aren’t you?”
    Archer looked at her with steel-colored eyes. The realization that she could see so well into him made him even more angry.