Donovans 03 - Pearl Cove

and shoulders within reach of the wand, he let the tepid water sluice over him. While he rubbed his face, he thought about shaving his beard. Teddy Yamagata was right. A beard itched in the tropics. But then, so did razor burn, which was what had made Archer give up shaving in the first place; he had inherited his father’s touchy skin.
    When Archer cleared the water from his eyes enough to see again, he nearly dropped the wand. While he had been sluicing off, Hannah had been peeling out of her dive gear. She was down to tropical Australia’s second uniform—a handful of string and three patches of indigo fabric that were smaller than his palm.
    He had seen women wearing less, but he had never wanted one of them more.
    Then Hannah turned away and he saw bruises along her left shoulder and hip. He remembered last night, when he had knocked her off her feet and slammed her to the floor while pieces of roof rained down. He had shielded her head from the hard tile, but not the rest of her. There simply hadn’t been time.
    “I’m sorry,” Archer said.
    The emotion in his voice surprised her as much as his words. “For Len’s enemies?” she asked, looking over her shoulder.
    “No. For this.”
    Hannah didn’t understand until she felt his fingertips tracing her bruises with a gentleness that loosened her knees. She started to speak, couldn’t, and tried again. “Not your fault,” she managed.
    “The hell it wasn’t. I knocked you down.”
    “Only to protect me.”
    “Damn poor job I did.”
    She turned fully around. “Don’t be ridiculous. Just because I was too rattled to thank you doesn’t mean that I don’t know what happened. I’m still rattled. No one ever did anything like that for me.”
    “Knock you down?” he asked ironically.
    “Protect me at their own expense,” she shot back. “My parents were too busy saving the Yanomami, and Len—well, Len figured he had done enough by marrying me. If I got into trouble after that, I could get out of it the same way I got in. Alone.”
    Archer wondered if her pregnancy, illness, and miscarriage had been the kind of trouble she was supposed to take care of alone. He couldn’t ask without raising more questions than he was willing to answer. How he knew about her past history was foremost among those questions.
    Shutting off the water, he stepped out of the tub. He expected her to back away from him, because the bathroom was small. Instead she went back to collecting wet diving gear.
    “Is your shoulder stiff?” he asked, looking at the bruise while she bent down to snag the last fin.
    “No.”
    “Your hip?”
    “I’m not a china doll.” Hannah straightened and gave him a hard look. She was amused, irritated, and touched by his concern. And being within inches of him was making her heart beat as though she was swimming too fast. “I’m an active, physical kind of woman, Archer. I get bumps, bruises, cuts, and scrapes all the time.”
    “Not from me.”
    She made an exasperated sound. “Take off the ruddy dive gear so I can hang it on the verandah to dry.”
    With a hidden smile, Archer unzipped the borrowed wet suit and began peeling it off.
    Hannah had spent her life surrounded by men of many races, athletic men, hunters in the Amazon and divers in Australia, men whose bodies were honed by the demanding physical necessities of their lives, men who often wore little more than a pouch to cover their sex. She was quite accustomed to the naked muscularity of a fit male.
    And she was staring at Archer like a convent girl turned loose on a beach in Rio de Janeiro.
    When she realized it, she forced herself to look away, or at least to look at him from the corners of her eyes under cover of her eyelashes. Then she saw the bruises striping his back and forgot everything else.
    “Why didn’t you tell me you were hurt! You had no business diving with—”
    “I’m fine,” Archer interrupted without looking up from his dive gear.
    “Bloody hell you’re fine. Your back looks like someone worked you over with a club.”
    “So does your shoulder and hip.”
    “That’s different.”
    “Yeah?” He turned and looked at her. “How?”
    “I know my limits.”
    “That’s a relief,” he muttered, not believing a word of it. “I do know mine. My shoulder is a little stiff, that’s all. The rest is just colorful.”
    “A little stiff. What a load of bull dust.”
    “Bull dust? Is that what they call it here?”
    “They call it stupid