Donovans 03 - Pearl Cove

asked.
    “Yes. There’s a party tomorrow night.”
    He thought quickly. They had missed The Donovan’s birthday party, but with so many other Donovans, it was hard to keep track. “Birthday? Anniversary?”
    “Well, The Donovan has hopes.” Amy looked in the rearview mirror at the hothouse flower with sun-streaked chestnut hair, dark indigo eyes, and the kind of walk models would kill for. “You’ve never brought a woman home before. He’s celebrating.”
    Briefly Archer closed his eyes. He had wondered how The Donovan would deal with explaining Hannah, the widow of his bastard son. Passing her off as Archer’s “friend” would simplify the father’s problems greatly.
    And greatly increase the son’s.
    “Privacy, please, Amy.”
    A glass plate slid into place, dividing the back from the front of the car.
    Silently Hannah looked at him. He picked up her chilly hands, kissed them, and slowly rubbed heat back into her fingers.
    “Will you mind not mentioning the rest of it until I talk to Dad?” Archer asked.
    “You mean Len?”
    He nodded. “Just until I find out if Susa knows. After that . . .” He shrugged. “The Donovan is a big boy. He can deal with the past. So can his children.”
    “But not your mother?”
    He hesitated, then nodded again. “She had surgery two months ago. There were complications. She came back from it, but she hasn’t had the energy to paint yet. I don’t want her knocked down again because of something that happened when Dad was sixteen.”
    Hannah’s fingers threaded through his and squeezed gently. “I won’t mention the past.”
    “You can talk about everything but Len’s blood relationship to Dad.”
    “So how did you meet me?”
    “You were having trouble with pearl theft in Australia, your husband was dead, and you remembered that he once told you if anything happened to him, you were to call me.”
    She tilted her head thoughtfully, then asked, “Why would you care?”
    “I used to work with Len in some dangerous places, the kinds of places that lead to obligations and debts.”
    Her expression changed. She looked past him, out the mist-slicked window to the shimmering lights of the freeway. But she wasn’t seeing light. She saw only darkness, felt only a queasy, sinking fear. She kept forgetting that Len and Archer were so alike. Archer concealed the ruthlessness better, but it was there just the same.
    When she could trust her voice, she asked, “What if someone wants more details?”
    “Send them to me.”
    She nodded and sat without moving, letting the night slide by on either side of her. Though she had spent most of the time on the Donovan International plane sleeping—and the rest satisfying her hunger for Archer—she was still tired. Jet lag, she supposed. Or reality lag. So much had happened in so little time. No sooner did she catch her balance from one thing than she was knocked sideways by another. The cyclone. Len’s murder. The loss of the Black Trinity. The certainty that she was in danger herself. The sabotage of Pearl Cove.
    And Archer.
    Archer, who kept surprising her. She had never expected to find such passion and restraint in one man. Even as she told herself that it was stupid, that she had no business risking pregnancy, she could hardly wait to be in bed with him again, to pull him around her like darkness and fire, to wake with his warmth and scent and taste everywhere on her body.
    Even if there hadn’t been passion and release, she would have gone to him. The chance of having a child burned like hope in her soul. After years of believing that children weren’t in her future, the thought of feeling a baby grow inside her was a pleasure so great it made her shiver.
    Turning in his seat, Archer watched out the rear window. It took less than ten minutes to be certain that someone was following them. He punched the car intercom button. “Amy, did you tell anyone what time we were coming in?”
    “Just The Donovan, sir.”
    “Thank you.”
    Impassively Archer watched the rear window. The style of the tail was federal—at least two cars shifting back and forth, passing off the lead position, dropping back, then switching again five or ten minutes later. The cars were American made, which was as good as wearing a light bar when it came to identifying cops; the West Coast of America was the home of imported cars.
    Silence settled in the car like a soft, contented cat. Archer turned away from the rear window and watched