Donovans - Pearl Cove Part 17

No doubt that was what Len had been trying to do in his sane periods, which meant that any of the big pearling operations might have decided they could live well without him. The quickest way to find out was to catch the murderer and convince him to talk.

"Personal," Archer said. He knew more about the rest than Hannah did.

She opened her mouth, hesitated, and sighed. "Except for me, Len didn't know anyone personally, only through the pearling business."

"Too bad. Murder up close is a real personal kind of crime."

Bending to get his head 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 h.e.l.l it wasn't. I knocked you down."

"Only to protect me."

"d.a.m.n 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 b.u.mps, bruises, cuts, and sc.r.a.pes 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 s.e.x. 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.

"b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l 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 here when you dive injured. Just strapping on the dive tanks must have hurt you."

Archer heard what Hannah hadn't put in words: the thought of him hurting made her angry. If she could have taken his pain, she would have. The fact that he had six inches and eighty pounds on her and easily twice her pure physical strength didn't seem to matter to her at all.

Amus.e.m.e.nt and something much more intense rippled in his voice when he spoke. He liked the concern in her eyes. He would like even better to turn it into s.e.xual need. "You saw me dive. Was anything wrong?"

She took a deep breath, ready to chew him up one side and down the other for being a macho idiot.

"Was it, Hannah?" he asked calmly.

Her breath came out in a rush. "No. You dive like you were born to it. It's just..."

He waited.

"No one ever..." She moved one hand jerkily. "I'm not used to being..." Her voice died.

"Helped?"

"Protected. I don't need it."

"Everyone needs it."

"Even you?" she retorted.

"I must."

"What do you mean?" she asked warily. There was something beneath his calm that made her breath catch.

"You raced to beat me to that cage full of snakes."

"I didn't know if you knew that they were... um..." Her voice faded again. She almost smiled despite the turmoil that had come when she saw his bruises and remembered how he got them. Protecting her.

And now he had boxed her in quite neatly, using her own reasons, her own rules.

"You wondered if I knew the snakes were lethal?" Archer asked with superficial calm. "As in the deadliest d.a.m.n venom on the planet?"

"Um, yes."

He took a half step forward. It was all the small room allowed. The palms of his hands slid across her cheeks as his fingers probed through her short, wet hair. He tilted her face up so he could see into her dark, dark eyes.

"Let's make sure I understand what you're saying," he said. "You can play with sea snakes so that I won't have to, but I can't take a few lumps for you when the roof caves in."

"That's right," she said defiantly. "Wrong answer. Try again."

"Archer " Her voice broke. She had thought his eyes were like gray-green stone, hard and cold. Now she was close enough to see flashes of blue, gemlike shards buried in the smoky crystal iris. "You have blue in your eyes."

"That's because the bathroom is blue. Stand me up in a greenhouse and my eyes are green. Make me mad enough, and I'm told they go steel gray. About that answer, Hannah."

"I hate knowing you were hurt because of me," she said in as calm a voice as she could manage.

"What do you think it does to me knowing that you could have been killed by that roof? What do you think it does to me knowing that I should have yanked you out of here the instant you called me in Seattle? What do you think it does to me when I see bruises on you and know I "

Her fingertips on his mouth were light, but they cut off his words like a fist.

"I want Len's killer, too," she said. "Whatever happens to me along the way is my responsibility, not yours."

Archer closed his eyes for an instant, not trusting himself to look at her without kissing her. If he kissed her, he wouldn't stop until she was naked and wet and he was buried so deep in her heat that he would forget what it was like to be separate, cold.

"Hannah."

The huskiness of his voice sent tongues of fire licking through her. It had been a long time since she had lain under a man, but she hadn't forgot the glittery excitement, the hot rush, the rhythmic urgency of body against body.

"If you keep looking at me like that " Archer began.

"Like what?" she cut in.

"Like you're wondering what it would feel like to have me inside you."

"Are you wondering?"

"I've been wondering for ten years."

Her eyes widened. Ten years.

Len.

Memories broke over Hannah in a cold, endless wave, drowning her heat. She had been so sure of herself ten years ago, so certain that Len was right for her. And now she was standing a breath away from a man who was just as hard, just as ruthless as Len.

Len, who had been so wrong for her.

Len, who hadn't cared when their child died at birth. He literally had not cared. Though she was so ill her baby died and she nearly did, he had dumped her in a hospital where no one spoke English and took off. As always, he was pursuing another hot rumor about a black pearl whose orient was all of G.o.d's rainbows wrapped together.

G.o.d's or the devil's. She still wasn't sure which. She no longer even cared. She had learned not to care. Just as she had learned not to risk any more unborn children to the whims of their careless father. She would never forgive herself for that. No punishment could be too great for such misjudgment, even the h.e.l.l of living with Len McGarry.

In the instant before Hannah stepped back, Archer felt the change in her resistance where there had been fluid ease, restraint where there had been hunger, distance where there had been heat. He let her slip between his hands like fire, because like fire, he couldn't hold on to her without being burned. "What did Len do to you?" he asked softly.

Eleven.

For several heartbeats Archer thought Hannah wouldn't answer.

And so did she.

Then she remembered the freedom she had discovered floating deep in the turquoise sea, and she wondered if she would ever find the courage of that freedom on land, face-to-face with the man she both feared and desired.

"Len taught me to be careful," she said finally. "Very, very careful." Her voice was ruthlessly neutral, concealing the stark female hunger and the much more complicated yearning that coiled just beneath. "Not a bad thing to learn."

"There's such a thing as being too careful."

"Sure, I'll bet you know all about it." Her tone was sardonic. "Turn around so I can check the bruises on your spine, the ones you got by being so b.l.o.o.d.y careful."

Despite Hannah's brisk words, her hands were gentle as she turned Archer around. The simple heat of his body and the complex slide of his muscles beneath her palms made her wish that Len hadn't taught her how necessary it was to protect her soft center beneath a harsh sh.e.l.l of experience. Touching Archer made her yearn for things she couldn't name, only feel.

"I was careful ten years ago," Archer said. "I've regretted it as I've regretted nothing else in my life."

Hannah's hands paused in their slow probing of his back. "What do you mean?"

He moved so that they were facing each other again. The feel of her fingers sliding on his bare skin did nothing to cool his blood. When she lifted them, he had to bite back a protest. The depth of his hunger for her would have shocked him, but right now he could feel nothing except his own heat, see nothing except her eyes shadowed by a past he couldn't change.

Too late. Too d.a.m.ned late for everything except pain.

"Len and I had a complicated relationship," Archer said evenly. "I didn't know how complicated until it was too late."