Donovans - Pearl Cove Part 37

Impatiently Hannah stared at the cafe doorway as she tapped her short, buffed fingernails over the forest-green Formica of the table. Two tall double Americanos sent heat and fragrance up into the air. Archer was halfway through his. She had taken only a few sips. Espresso was a taste she hadn't yet acquired.

"Why don't we just invite them over to have coffee with us while we wait for Yamagata?" she asked irritably.

Archer didn't need to look over his shoulder to know who Hannah was talking about. The Feds were discreet but hardly invisible. They were parked just inside the front door of the small cafe, sucking up prime caffeine with the grat.i.tude of stakeout cops who were more accustomed to muddy sludge than the kick-b.u.t.t espresso of good Seattle coffee.

Outside the warm little cafe, wind blew clouds and rain sideways. Though it was only two o'clock, the streets were dark slices of autumn-to-winter gloom. The interior of the cafe was bright, colorful, and painfully retro. Neon light fixtures arced down the wall to end up in pots whose tall plants were made of welded junk. Vintage Rolling Stones pounded out of speakers the size of fists. Two espresso machines screamed and frothed, slamming steam through darkly aromatic coffee.

He glanced at his watch. If Teddy didn't put a hustle on, they would be late for the party that The Donovan had rescheduled when his oldest son left so abruptly for Australia.

"Do Feds always work in pairs?" Hannah asked.

"Except when they work in fours, sixes, eights, and more."

"Is that your government's answer to unemployment?"

"It's your government, too."

She blinked. "It's been so long that I forgot. Tell me again why my government is following me."

"To see where you go."

"Right. Why can't I remember that?"

When she saw the small smile tugging at Archer's mouth, she wanted to lean forward and brush her lips over his. Then the smile vanished, leaving behind a man with remote gray-green eyes and a midnight stubble accenting the hard lines of his face. That was the face he had showed her since last night: cold, hard, distant. If he touched her, it was as impersonal as rain. About as warm, too.

She told herself it was better that way.

And knew she lied.

She wanted his incandescent sensuality again. She wanted to feel her body ignite, to burn from the inside out, to be drawn on a rack of pa.s.sion until she shattered into a million bright pieces of ecstasy... and then to sleep tangled with him, certain that he felt as she did. Complete.

She hadn't known that kind of pleasure existed between a man and a woman. Knowing, she couldn't forget, couldn't ignore, couldn't stop wanting more.

Tonight, she promised herself. Tonight I'll get past his pride. I know he wants me. His eyes are controlled, but his body isn't. Not always. I can raise his heart rate just by leaning against his arm. He can raise mine just as easily. We're adults who owe nothing to anyone. There's no reason not to be lovers.

Unbidden, memories of Summer flicked through Hannah's mind. The relaxed, satin weight of the child resting against her arm and her hip. The sweetly drooling smile. Clear gray-green eyes watching her, glinting with laughter and intelligence.

Archer's eyes.

If you wanted a child without complications, you should have gone to a sperm bank.

He and Len were alike in so many ways, it irritated Hannah that they couldn't have been alike when it came to children. Len hadn't worried when she miscarried. If anything, he was pleased; he didn't want children. Ever. After her miscarriage, she agreed with him. She would have no more children, not with a man who was too ruthless to be trusted with a child's fragile heart. She had taken great care not to become pregnant. After Len's accident, the question of children was answered. There would be none. Ever.

Then Len had died and she had fallen headlong into pa.s.sion with another man who was too ruthless to be trusted with a child's heart; enjoying a niece wasn't the same as having the patience and generosity of spirit to raise a child.

Bitterly she wondered if there was something wrong in her, if unsuitable men would be the only kind she ever responded to s.e.xually.

Beneath her bitterness was fear, the growing certainty that whatever man she finally chose as her mate, the pa.s.sion she felt with Archer was unique to him. Even before Len's spine was severed, her husband had only skimmed the surface of her sensual possibilities. Other men hadn't managed even that. She had never looked at them and speculated how they might be as a lover; they simply didn't interest her s.e.xually.

But Archer had and did. Instantly. Urgently.

Fear snaked through Hannah as she understood that she might marry and have children someday, but they wouldn't be conceived in blinding ecstasy. She would respond to no other man as she did to Archer Donovan.

The certainty made her both angry and bleak, like Archer's eyes watching her right now.

"Teddy's coming in the front door," Archer said. Then, reluctantly, "Are you all right?"

"b.l.o.o.d.y wonderful. Why?"

"You look..." Frightened. Exhausted. Hun. "... pale."

"Then I should fit right in with the natives." The emptiness in Hannah's voice was as unmistakable as the lines of tension and pain etching her face.

"You should have let me take you back to the condo," he said. "You need rest."

"Don't worry, boy-o. I'm not made of frigging French gla.s.s."

It had been one of Len's favorite sayings. Repeating it in Len's cadences gave Hannah a certain bitter pleasure. Seeing the narrowing of Archer's eyes gave her more.

"I'm with you every step of the way to the Black Trinity," she said in a low, savage tone, "so stop trying to dump me on your family while you run off and play without me."

Teddy dragged out a chair and sat down. Drops of water sparkled on his high forehead and his red pullover rain jacket. He unzipped the neck opening as far as it would go, revealing a startling pineapple-yellow s.h.i.+rt with a bright explosion of leaves strewn across the front. He nodded to Hannah before turning to the man who was watching him with an unsmiling face and eyes that were a lot colder than the rain outside.

"I'm supposed to be at SeaTac in an hour," Teddy said to Archer. "What's on your mind?"

"The pearls you sold to the Linskys."

"I've sold lots of-"

"You start bulls.h.i.+tting me and you'll miss your plane."

Teddy smiled slightly and leaned back, prepared to do what he was best at: bargaining. "Oh, those pearls."

A server appeared and looked at Teddy expectantly.

"He won't be here long enough for coffee," Archer said.

"I can make it to go," the server said, then took a good look at Archer. "Uh, never mind. Do you want your check, sir?"

"Not yet."

The server smiled brightly and got out of Archer's line of sight as fast as she could.

Archer never took his eyes off Teddy.

"I would have offered the pearls to you, but you were in Australia," Teddy said.

"Who sold them to you?"

"None of your business."

"Wrong answer."

Teddy s.h.i.+fted uncomfortably in his seat. "I have a connection."

"Who?"

"d.a.m.n it, that's-"

"Who sold you those pearls?" Archer cut in coldly.

Teddy had heard a few things about Archer's past. Right now he believed every one of them. There was no bargain to be struck here, only the kind of trouble a wise man avoided.

"A man from Broome."

"A man from Broome," Archer repeated neutrally, praying Hannah would stay out of it. "Name?"

"He didn't tell me."

"Keep it up and you'll miss that plane and every one after it until we're finished talking."

Unhappily Teddy took off his gla.s.ses, polished them, and put them back on. Cleaner lenses didn't help. Archer still looked like an executioner.

"Well, h.e.l.l," Teddy muttered. His wife had been right: He shouldn't have bought the pearls from a man he didn't know. A nervous man, at that. Yet the pearls had been so extraordinary. And so cheap. "Qing Lu Yin."

Hannah stiffened.

"He was the original owner," Teddy said, glancing at her curiously. "He gave me a bill of sale. It was all done on the books and aboveboard."

"Where's the bill of sale?" Archer asked.

Sighing, Teddy pulled a breast wallet from his rain jacket's belly pocket. He had hoped he wouldn't need the bill of sale for this meeting, but he had been afraid he would. Something about those pearls had fairly shouted of trouble. Reluctantly he took out a sheet of paper.

"It's a copy," he said, pa.s.sing the sheet over to Archer. Ideographs marched down the right-hand side of the page. A smudged thumbprint sat crookedly on one corner. Letters and numbers were neatly written under the print.

"Keep it," Teddy said. "I have the original in my files."

"I didn't know you could read Chinese," Archer said.

"I can't. For all I know, it could be a laundry list. That's why I insisted on a thumbprint and a driver's license. Was.h.i.+ngton, state of. That's the number below the print."

"How did you meet him?" Archer asked.

"A cold phone call from an intermediary who saw my ad in the phone book."

"In Australia?"

"No. Seattle."

Adrenaline licked lightly beneath Archer's skin. A man who wrote only Chinese, yet had a Was.h.i.+ngton driver's license-probably a fake, or one that was borrowed/stolen from another Chinese. But all he said was, "He's here?"

"He was two days ago."

"Where is he staying?"

"I don't know."

"Where did you meet him?"

Unhappily Teddy tugged at one earlobe. "Some dump on Third Street called the Dragon Moon."

"Didn't we pa.s.s it on the way to the Pearl Exchange?" Hannah asked.

Archer nodded. Like any city, Seattle had some open civic sores despite persistent urban renewal. The land where Donovan International and the Donovan condo had been built was part of an urban renewal project. The Dragon Moon was one of the oozing pockets that had escaped razing and rebuilding. It was only three blocks away from the Donovan condo.

"You're a brave man," Archer said.

"Or a dumb one." Teddy sighed again. "h.e.l.l, it's hardly the first Asian dive I've been in."

"You're lucky it wasn't the last."

"Yeah, I got that impression. The customers were as tough a bunch as I've seen, and I've seen more than a few. I made real sure we conducted our business at the table closest to the front door and my back was to the wall."

One corner of Archer's mouth kicked up. Beneath the easy grin and loud s.h.i.+rt, Teddy was no fool.

"Cash?" Archer asked.

"What do you think?"

"Cash. How much?"

Teddy grimaced. "Five hundred each. Fifty-five hundred total."

With no change of expression, Archer filed the fact that the thief either didn't know what the pearls were worth or didn't have the contacts to get a better price. "You must have thought you'd died and gone to heaven."

"Not until I was out the door, in a cab, and across town," Teddy admitted. "Then I smiled a lot."

"Where are the rest of the pearls?"

"What pearls?"

"The ones you didn't buy until you were sure these were good."

Teddy's jaw dropped. "How did you know?" Archer just smiled. It wasn't a friendly gesture. "How many pearls does he have?"

"He didn't say."

"What kind?"