Donovans 03 - Pearl Cove

throat, a large pearl choker of dubious quality, and just enough cleavage to tempt a man. The black jeans she wore fit her like a shadow and were so new they whispered when she walked.
    From a man’s point of view, it was a walk worth watching.
    Susa glanced from her suddenly icy son to the tall woman with stunning eyes and a chip as big as a fist on her shoulder. “What’s wrong?” Susa asked bluntly.
    Archer looked at his father. “Unless you object, I’m telling her all of it.”
    His father shrugged. “Go ahead. She’d get it out of me before morning anyway.”
    In the neutral, concise manner of a man giving a report, Archer told Susa about Pearl Cove, Len, the Black Trinity, and the danger to Hannah until Len’s murderer was found. Archer didn’t mention the Red Phoenix Triad, April Joy, or the international pissing match over the luxury pearl trade.
    Susa listened, but it was Hannah she watched, Hannah she weighed as though she was an incomplete canvas.
    “I see,” Susa said when Archer was finished. “You’re welcome here as long as you want to stay, Ms. McGarry.”
    “I won’t impose long. With luck, we’ll find the Black Trinity tomorrow. Then we can ask Yin how a Pearl Cove employee came to have a fortune in stolen pearls.”
    “Yin is your employee?” Don asked sharply.
    “He was,” Archer said. “Obviously he’s gone freelance.”
    Don grunted, gave his son a glance from wintry, cobalt blue eyes. He knew Archer was leaving out some important things; he didn’t want Susa to know what those things were. “Are the girls here yet?”
    “Jake and Summer are dressing,” Archer said. “Honor and Kyle are frosting a cake in the kitchen, Lianne is on the phone with Hong Kong about some jade, and Faith is facedown in her room. She’s been working eighty-hour weeks, and those are the short ones.”
    Susa smiled rather grimly. “She could work twice that and still be better off without that . . . without Tony.”
    “No argument here,” Archer said. “One of the best days of my life was two weeks ago, when she showed up without that son of a bitch.”
    Kyle strode in from the kitchen area. “Hi, Mom and Dad. Are we speaking of the shit-eating insect?” he asked cheerfully between licks on a frosting-covered spoon.
    “Do tell us how you feel about your sister’s ex-fiancé,” Susa said in a dry tone.
    “I just did.” He bent down and kissed the corner of his mother’s mouth. “You’re looking good enough to frost and eat.”
    Warily Susa licked her now sweet lips and watched the masculine hand waving a spoon heaped with icing. “Try it and I’ll make you sit for a portrait.”
    “Oh, God, anything but that.” Grinning, he kissed her again, gave his father a hard hug, and held the spoon out to Hannah. “Want some?”
    She might have been an only child, but she knew a dare when it was waved under her nose. She took the spoon and gave it a good long lick. “Mmm, chocolate and what else?”
    “Grand Marnier.” Kyle laughed. “I didn’t think you would do it.”
    “Luv, I’ve eaten stewed monkey parts from a communal pot.”
    “Yuck.”
    “Amen.” Spoon in hand, she turned to Archer. “Want some?”
    “Monkey parts? I’ll pass.”
    “Icing.”
    He looked at the spoon, then at the dark frosting that clung to the indentation of her upper lip. At that instant he wanted nothing more than to grab her and lick her more thoroughly than any sweet and sticky spoon. His raw, relentless hunger for her infuriated him almost as much as her challenging smile.
    “No, thanks,” he said, looking right in her eyes.
    The tone of his voice said it wasn’t just the icing he was refusing.

Twenty-three
    “K yle, take Hannah and your mother into the kitchen and feed them some of that icing,” The Donovan said. And it was The Donovan, not Don or Dad, who was speaking.
    Susa gave him an approving look, hooked her arm through Hannah’s, and pushed Kyle ahead of them. “Come along, children. I feel an urgent chocolate craving coming on.”
    As Archer watched the others walk away, he knew he was going to get the rough edge of his father’s tongue. He didn’t care. In fact, he was looking forward to it. One of the pleasures of being an adult was going toe to toe with The Donovan and coming out on the other side even closer to him than before.
    “You were rude to a guest,” The Donovan said. “Why?”
    “She’s not a guest. She’s family.”
    “The question stands.”
    “I