Donovans 03 - Pearl Cove

Kowloon.”
    Her mouth thinned. The fever that had killed her pregnancy had begun in Kowloon. It had ended in another country.
    And now it all seemed very far away, the world shrinking to one room, one man, the gritty depth of his voice and his eyes watching her as though he had just discovered life.
    “I didn’t give up,” he said. “I’d been looking for Len too long. I couldn’t just let him go. He was a blond Viking like Kyle and Justin, with the Donovan smile, his way of looking over his shoulder, even his laugh. I couldn’t believe that Len wasn’t like the rest of my family.”
    “Believe it,” Hannah said huskily. “He wasn’t. At least, for your sake, I hope he wasn’t.”
    “Though he looked like us, Len was different. I know that now. Too late to help you.” Archer’s fingers trembled on Hannah’s face. “Way too late to change the pain. There was something bent or broken or missing or stunted in Len. Part of it was the way he was raised. Part of it was the sum total of all the choices he made when he was old enough to know better. The whys don’t matter anymore. What I learned too late does matter.”
    Hannah watched Archer’s eyes change, felt him retreat from her even though he didn’t move an inch physically. The emotion beneath his neutral voice made her heart twist. She knew what it was like to bleed silently beneath the careful mask she showed the world.
    “Too late,” he said, “I learned that Len resented me as much as he liked me. Instead of seeing us as a team, he saw us as locked in some kind of destructive competition. He was always playing all the angles to come out on top.”
    “He wanted to prove that he was the best man around,” she said.
    For an instant Archer’s eyes shut, veiling the shaft of guilt and pain. “Is that what he said?”
    “Not in so many words. But he used to taunt me for choosing the wrong man in Rio. If there was a wrong man in Rio, there must have been a right one. You.”
    Wearily Archer swore beneath his breath and started to step back. The bathroom was too small for him to move. Hannah was too close, her hands over his, holding his palms against her cheeks. Holding him close. He felt as though he was absorbing her through his palms pressed against her skin. Her warmth and softness and strength went through him like a double shot of whiskey, making his blood ignite and his heart speed.
    “That was another thing I learned too late,” Archer admitted huskily. “Len knew how much I wanted you before I admitted it to myself. You were so young, so vivid, so—”
    “Stupid,” she cut in.
    His smile flickered and vanished. He lifted her right hand and kissed the cool center of her palm. “You were innocent. That’s why I couldn’t admit I wanted you. So I had a hell of a shouting match with Len. I was going to send you to the Donovans. They would have taken care of you.”
    The feel of Archer’s lips against her palm made Hannah light-headed. “I was nineteen. An adult.”
    “You were raised with a Stone Age tribe. You weren’t ready for the tenth century, much less the twenty-first.”
    “It wasn’t that bad.”
    “It was worse.” Tenderly he bit the pad of flesh at the base of her thumb. The swift breaking of her breath went through him in a shock wave of desire. He hadn’t expected her to respond so quickly, so openly. Not after living with Len. “You’d never seen a flush toilet, never seen a sink, never seen a computer, never watched television, never flown in an airplane, never driven a car, never—”
    “I remember better than you,” Hannah interrupted, hearing the huskiness of her own voice, knowing its sultry source, not caring. If she didn’t use her newly discovered freedom, it would become just another kind of cage, one filled with regrets and might-have-beens. “Anyway, my parents had a radio phone.”
    He laughed softly and bit her again with great care. “For emergencies, right?”
    She watched his teeth close on her flesh for a third time. Warmth flashed through her with an intensity that made her bones loosen. “Yes,” she whispered, though she had forgotten the question. Somehow she was so close to Archer now that she could feel his body heat, breathe in the salt and mystery of his scent, feel the stark reality and lure of his erection brushing against her with each deep breath.
    “Ever use the radio phone?” he asked.
    She shook her head, watching his eyes the whole time. If fog could burn, it