Donovans 03 - Pearl Cove

didn’t like it. Said it changed everything.” She paused, gave a mental shrug, and decided it would be interesting to see Archer’s response. “Ian thinks you killed Len.”
    “Did he say why?”
    If Archer was irritated or surprised by the accusation, nothing showed. Part of the reason was his short, smooth beard, which concealed small shifts of expression. But most of the reason nothing showed was the self-control that Hannah found herself wanting to ruffle, and to hell with all the warnings about still waters and sleeping dogs. The longer she was with Archer, the more she remembered other things from the past, like the way heat had rippled through her the first time she saw him. She had been too innocent then to understand her elemental response to this one man. She wasn’t innocent now.
    “What Ian said to me was that Len finally buggered the wrong man,” she said flatly. “That you were as ruthless as they came.”
    “He’s half right. I didn’t kill Len.”
    “Yes.” She let out a breath she hadn’t been aware of holding. “And neither did I.”
    He nodded as though she had said the sun would set later in the day. “I know.”
    “How? Do you think I’m not capable of murder because I’m a woman?”
    He laughed, but it wasn’t a humorous sound. “Anyone is capable of murder, given the right incentive.”
    “Then why are you so certain I’m innocent?”
    “Simple. You asked me for help.”
    She blinked and watched him with eyes darker than indigo. “I could have killed Len and then asked for your help.”
    “You’re not that stupid. You didn’t need Chang to tell you that I wasn’t a nice guy.”
    The look in Archer’s eyes reminded Hannah of the night he had appeared on her doorstep with Len’s beaten, bloody body in his arms. At the time, they had lived on the outskirts of a dirty village on a hidden bay, a place where men made their living smuggling contraband or by outright piracy. Archer had fought their way to the potholed dirt strip that passed for an airport, loaded them aboard a stolen plane, hot-wired it, and kicked it into the sullen tropical sky while fights and fires raged all around and people fled in all directions as the plane pursued them down the runway.
    That night Archer had been everything Chang said he was: utterly ruthless.
    Abruptly Hannah was glad that all she was guilty of was failing Len as a wife. The bond between the two men was frighteningly strong. Archer had stayed with Len through all the endless rounds of surgery, all the physical and mental agony. Feeding Len, bathing him, giving him water, holding him like a child while he shrieked through drug-enhanced nightmares and cursed men who had lied to him, men he wanted to kill, men he had killed.
    Until finally Len had turned on Archer, screaming at him for wanting Hannah. The idea had shocked her, but not as much as the realization that she was drawn to Archer as she had never been to her husband.
    “Hannah? What is it?”
    For a moment she couldn’t speak. Ghostly emotion rippled over her skin as she watched Archer’s eyes, their bleak shadows and pitiless clarity, as though he was seeing everything she remembered, everything she had tried to forget.
    “I was thinking,” she managed.
    “About what?”
    “The time Len screamed at you to leave. It was wrong,” she whispered. “You never would have touched me.”
    “No. I never would have. But I wanted to, Hannah. I wanted you until I couldn’t breathe.”
    “I . . . ” Her voice died. “I can’t believe. . . ” Yet when she looked at Archer’s eyes now, she believed. He had felt the same sensual heat that rippled through her unawakened body. “I didn’t know.”
    “I made sure of it. But Len knew me. He saw what you were too innocent to see.” Archer glanced down at his watch. If he drove like a maniac, there was enough time. Since everyone in Western Australia drove like a maniac, he wouldn’t stand out. “I’ll help you gather our dive gear. I want to look it over—and the boat—before we use it.”
    Hannah asked the one question she wasn’t afraid to ask, and ignored the one she was very much afraid of: Do you still want me? “Don’t you trust Tom?”
    “Haven’t you figured it out yet? I don’t trust anyone.”
    “What about me?”
    “You’re family.
    “Family,” Hannah said slowly, tasting the word. It was more than she had any right to expect, yet somehow much less than she wanted.
    And she hadn’t known