Donovans 03 - Pearl Cove

murder. She never forgot that.
    Yet in the blue-on-blue dream of the ocean, she had a hard time focusing on death as an absolute evil. There were worse things than sliding into the radiant blue, feeling each shift of tone as a separate caress, shades of turquoise dissolving her slowly, slowly, until her eyes finally closed . . .
    And opened as pearls, sightless and serene. No grave on earth could be more beautiful, no memorial more perfect.
    And no man could be more compelling in her eyes than Archer, a man she shouldn’t want at all. Swimming in the serene womb of the ocean, she could admit to herself what had always been true: she wanted Archer Donovan. She wanted the strength and the gentleness that surprised her each time he revealed it. A gentleness that disarmed her, made her yearn . . . and then his ruthlessness would surface, sending a chill that went all the way to her soul.
    She couldn’t risk her unborn children on a man who could shut off his emotions between one heartbeat and the next. Like Len, so much like Len.
    And yet . . . and yet. . .
    Different.
    Len had made a naive girl dream. Archer made a woman hunger, even though experience had taught her how quickly such hunger vanished in the face of life’s demands. Like a comet across night, sexual desire was wild, beautiful, and utterly doomed. No one risked their future on a comet, but surely she could risk a few days, a handful of weeks, however long it took to drink the wine of passion to its last bittersweet drop.
    Surely she could risk that much. All she would lose riding the comet with him was time, time that would pass in any case, with or without the blazing arc of passion.
    The risk was hers. The choice was hers. She was no longer a girl whose possibilities were limited by her parents. She was no longer a wife whose possibilities were limited by her husband. She was a woman who answered only to herself.
    She didn’t have to marry in order to enjoy passion. She was free.
    An angular line at the edge of Hannah’s vision sliced through her reverie. She turned toward it, focusing eyes and mind. At first she saw only the graceful undulations of sea snakes. Then she saw what could have been a right angle.
    Even before her eyes were certain, she yanked her tow line twice and released it. Above and ahead of her the ceiling churned as the lugger’s propellers kicked over, turning against the water rather than passively drifting. The signal to stop had been passed to Nakamori, who would attempt to hold the lugger stationary on the shifting surface of the sea.
    The instant Hannah let go of her line, Archer swung toward her. He released his own line and finned after her. When he saw where she was heading, he doubled his speed. It wasn’t the rectangle of the oyster cage that galvanized him. It was the graceful, deadly streamers of snakes playing above the cage.
    Hannah reached the cage first. Finning rhythmically, easily, she approached the snakes even as she ignored them. One of them swam gracefully through the cage as though taunting the stolid oysters within. The other two snakes simply fluttered like ribbons in a dreamy wind, ignoring everything. Since nothing preyed on the snakes, they had no fear of anything, even man.
    While Hannah snapped an inflatable float onto the cage, the natural drift of the tide over the sea floor slid the two snakes away from the cage like decoys painted on a carnival conveyer belt. The third snake, caught by whatever passed for curiosity or play in its reptilian mind, twined around the cage for a while before swimming free and drifting off with the restless tide.
    Archer took a breath, discovered that it had been too long, and took another. Bubbles whirled around him with the grace of laughter, but he wasn’t feeling humorous. Hannah must have known how deadly the snakes were, yet she had gone swimming with them as though they were pets. The feeling of helplessness he had had while he watched was as bad as anything he had ever known.
    She triggered a carbon dioxide cartridge and watched the rapidly growing yellow float shoot to the surface. A thin line trailed down from the float, anchoring it to the cage. Soon a heavier line would sink down from the lugger. She would attach it and then let herself be towed up with the cage.
    Wishing he could haul her off “upstairs” and yell at her for being a reckless idiot, Archer swam past Hannah. Without a glance in her direction, he started examining the heavy wire