Free Donovans 03 - Pearl Cove by authors_sort

handsome, confident male in Hannah’s house made the Aussie’s blue eyes narrow. “Who the devil are you?”
    “Hannah’s partner,” Archer said calmly. He hadn’t missed the automatic movements of someone trained in unarmed combat. Beneath that charming grin and shoulder-length, sun-bleached hair lurked a fighter. Archer knew how bad his mood was when the thought of testing the young Aussie’s fighting skills appealed to him.
    “Partner!” Flynn’s head snapped around toward Hannah. “Did you sell to this bloke?”
    “No. Mr. Donovan has been a partner in Pearl Cove since it was founded.” She looked at Archer. “This is Christian Flynn. He manages the water end of Pearl Cove.”
    “Len never mentioned a partner,” Flynn said. His voice was even less welcoming than his expression.
    Archer just stood there, taking in the good-looking, angry Australian. He wondered why Len had put up with having the muscular young stud around Hannah. Len hadn’t wanted Archer within seventeen thousand miles of his wife, and had said so in words that still echoed bleakly deep in Archer’s mind.
    Get the hell out of my life and stay out. All the way out. You think you can have her now that I’m paralyzed, but you’re wrong. You come near her and I’ll get even. Not with you. With her.
    At the time Archer had told himself it was just the drugs, just the fear, just the rage of a newly paralyzed man speaking. He had tried to get through to Len, to reassure him that he had no intention of seducing Hannah. All he wanted to do was help his brother.
    Len hadn’t listened. The harder Archer tried, the more wild Len become. So Archer did as his brother asked. He got the hell out of Len’s life. All the way out.
    “There was no reason to talk about having a partner,” Hannah said warily, sensing the currents of tension coiling between the two men. “Archer wasn’t an active partner.”
    Something shifted in Flynn’s stance. “Archer? Would that be Archer Donovan?”
    “Yes,” she said.
    “Bloody hell,” Flynn muttered. Anybody who knew anything about buying pearls had heard of Archer Donovan. The man was a legend. He had a shrewd understanding of pearls, people, and the marketplace. Unhappily Flynn kneaded his neck with his left hand while he thought about how Archer’s presence changed an already fluid situation. None of the possibilities made him smile. But he turned to Archer anyway, smiled, and held out his right hand. “Sorry if I was rude, mate. I’m short on sleep. After the big wind, things are a right bitch around here.”
    Archer smiled from the teeth out and took the other man’s hand. “No worries. I’m short on sleep, too.”
    The ridges of callus on Flynn’s hand told Archer a lot about the other man’s training. Whether he could put that training to effective use in face-to-face combat remained an open question.
    The sudden flare of speculation in Flynn’s eyes told Archer that his own calluses had been noted.
    “How long before Pearl Cove is up and running?” Archer asked, distracting the other man.
    Flynn looked sideways at Hannah. She was watching Archer. It rankled the Aussie.
    “I don’t know,” he said carefully. “We had just moved the newly implanted oysters to the grow-out areas. Some of those rafts broke loose and sank. We repaired the floats and lines and have been stringing up the cages as fast as we find them. We’re losing shell, though. Too much jigging around.”
    “How much of this year’s shell is a total loss?”
    Again Flynn looked uneasily at Hannah.
    “Tell him,” she said without looking away from Archer.
    “Sixty-five percent. Maybe more.”
    “How much more?” Archer asked.
    “Worst case?” Flynn asked.
    Archer smiled like a wolf. “It’s the only case that matters, isn’t it?”
    “Ninety-five percent,” Flynn said.
    Hannah made a harsh sound. She had been told fifty-five percent loss, sixty percent tops.
    “Total loss, in other words,” Archer