Donovans 03 - Pearl Cove

stubborn to the core.
    “If you go, I go,” she said to Kyle.
    “No,” the brothers said as one.
    “Why is it,” she asked sweetly, “that every time you two agree on something, I’m the loser? Like hell I’m staying here.”
    “You’re both staying here,” Archer said. “If I need anyone, you’ll be the first to know.”
    “Damn it—” Kyle began.
    “No.” Archer’s voice was cold and deadly. Like his eyes. It was the very part of himself he had tried to keep from his family. “Don’t push me on this, Kyle. Neither one of us will like what happens. But it will happen just the same.”
    Beneath the table Lianne’s small hand settled on her husband’s thigh and squeezed with surprising strength, silently asking him to use his head on this one instead of his balls. Slowly the tension seeped out of Kyle’s clenched muscles.
    “We’ll try it your way first,” Kyle said finally. “If that doesn’t work—”
    “You’ll do whatever it takes,” Archer finished, hearing his own words from the past, seeing some of his own dark shadows in his brother’s eyes. Silently Archer held his hand across the table, but he held it as someone looking for contact rather than a handshake.
    Kyle took his brother’s hand. They both gripped hard.
    “Thank you,” Archer said simply. He slid out of the booth, turned to Lianne, and brushed his fingertips over her cheek. “You’re good for him, little sister. For us.”
    Kyle watched his brother walk out of the warm yellow light of the kitchen. When he turned to Lianne, he was surprised to find tears in her eyes.
    “Hey, it’s all right,” he said. “Donovans fight and then it’s over. Not like the Tang family, where no one fights and everything festers.”
    Lianne thought of her father’s family and shook her head. The difference between Chinese and American families wasn’t what was bothering her. “It’s not that.”
    “Then what?”
    “Archer’s eyes,” she whispered. “What happened before I knew him?”
    “He worked for Uncle Sam in a lot of ugly places. Then he quit. Now he’s Donovan International’s troubleshooter.”
    “I think . . . ” Her voice died.
    Kyle bent down, licked a faint shadow of syrup from one corner of her mouth, and settled his big hand over their children. “What do you think, sweetheart?”
    “I think Archer has shot enough trouble in his life.”
    * * *
    Hannah was staring at the computer when she heard a car pull up in front of the house. Fear and anger battled within her. Anger because it might be Ian Chang, back to press his offer of business partnership and a much more intimate relationship. Fear because she didn’t know who was out there.
    With tight motions she closed Pearl Cove’s accounts and shut down the computer. It was pointless to stare at the screen any more. She was so tired she was seeing double. She hadn’t slept in days, hadn’t even dozed in the fifteen long hours since she had talked to Archer Donovan. She kept hearing his voice, seeing the past . . . .
    She pushed away from the computer and headed for the living room. Before she got there, a knock came from the front door. She froze. She knew the verandah floor near the front door creaked, yet she hadn’t heard footsteps. When she looked through one of the gauzy front curtains, she saw the silhouette of a man. A big one. Her heart squeezed in fear.
    “Hannah? It’s Archer Donovan.”
    Relief was so great it left her momentarily lightheaded. Until that instant she hadn’t realized just how much she was running on sheer nerve. Four days, five. She didn’t know how long it had been. She only knew that finally she could look at another human being and trust him not to kill her.
    And if Archer’s voice also made her cold with memories of the most brutal hours of her life, she would just have to get over it. Swallowing hard, she gathered herself.
    “Just a moment,” Hannah said.
    Her voice was too hoarse, too strained, but it was the best she could do. She felt like a doll stuffed with sand, and now the sand was running out at every seam. She fumbled with the bolt as she opened the door.
    And then she could only stare. She had forgotten Archer’s dark male beauty, the intelligence in his light, changeable eyes, his height and physical power, the sensual promise of his mouth. Her husband had been a wild blond Viking. Archer was a dark angel who made a woman want . . . everything.
    Unnerved, she stepped back and said,