Donovans 03 - Pearl Cove

mind. He wasn’t the kind to yearn for what he would never have. Hannah was married. For Archer, marriage—family—was one of the few things left in the modern world that had meaning. Old-fashioned of him, even mulish, but there it was. The twenty-first century was big enough to have room for everyone, even unfashionable throwbacks.
    “So you don’t think this is a Tahitian pearl?” Archer asked almost idly.
    “What makes you say that?”
    “You’re asking questions in Seattle, not Tahiti. Either you ran into a dead end there, or you already know where the pearl came from and want to know if I know, too.”
    Teddy sighed. “If I knew where it came from and how to get more, I wouldn’t be wasting time talking to you. I’m here because I’m tired of banging my head into walls. As for Tahiti, none of the suppliers and farmers I’ve talked with admit to seeing this pearl or one like it before. Ever. And it’s not the type of gem a man would forget.”
    Unique, fascinating, never the same twice. Like Hannah McGarry. The thought came and went from Archer’s mind with the quickness of the colors sliding just beneath the surface of Teddy’s amazing black pearl.
    “What are you asking for it?” Archer said, surprising both of them.
    “What’ll you give me?”
    “Not as much as you want. You can’t match the pearl’s color, so the usual kinds of jewelry won’t work. Maybe one of my sisters—Faith, most likely—could design an interesting setting for it as a brooch or a pendant, but then the artistry and workmanship rather than the pearl would become the true value. I’d be paying Faith, not you.”
    Teddy didn’t argue the point. Though cultured by man, pearls weren’t mechanically produced: it still took an oyster to make a pearl. Being a natural, organic product, relatively few pearls matched well enough to be combined in jewelry. Lining up pearls for a necklace was like lining up a thousand redheads to match nineteen. Once you got past the superficial similarity, the differences came screaming through.
    “It could be a ring,” Teddy said after a moment.
    “It could, but not many people would spend thousands of dollars on a ring whose irreplaceable centerpiece could be ruined by a careless motion of a woman’s hand. Or a man’s.”
    The Hawaiian grumbled.
    “Your pearl is big,” Archer continued, “but not nearly big enough to interest high-end collectors or museums. They already have black pearls twice that size. Round black pearls.”
    “But the luster,” Teddy protested. “And have you ever seen a pearl with half the color? It’s like a black opal!”
    Archer had seen one pearl that put Teddy’s in the shade, but all he said was, “Yes, the orient is lovely. To someone who collects unusual pearls—”
    “Like you,” Teddy cut in.
    “—this one would be worth perhaps three thousand American.”
    “Three? Try twenty!”
    “You try it. I wouldn’t pay more than five.”
    “Bad joke. It’s worth at least fifteen and you know it.”
    Archer looked at his watch. He had a few hours before he had to help his sister Faith close her little shop in Pioneer Square. Though it didn’t look like much from the outside, his sister’s store carried a multimillion-dollar inventory of international gems and one-of-a-kind jewelry. Normally one of the guards from Donovan International escorted Faith and her stock to and from the Donovan vaults. Today it was Archer’s job. In the past her useless live-in boyfriend, Tony, had guarded her, but to the great relief of the Donovans, Faith recently had rubbed the fairy dust out of her eyes and dumped him.
    “What else do you have to show me?” Archer asked.
    Teddy looked at the tall American, measured the steely green of his eyes, and put the pearl back into its small velvet box with a sigh. “I keep hoping for a free lunch.”
    Archer smiled. “It’s part of your charm, Teddy. That and your relative honesty.”
    “Relative!” he yelped. “Relative to what?”
    “If I knew the answer, you would be, in effect, completely honest.”
    The short, thickset man frowned. It wasn’t the first time he hadn’t been able to follow the other man’s baroque mental twists.
    “Hungry?” Archer asked.
    Teddy smacked his stomach with a broad palm. Though hefty, his belly was more muscle than flab. “I’m always hungry.”
    “Bring your case to the kitchen. I’ll scrape up a sandwich for you. While you eat, I’ll look over the rest of the