Read Online Donovans 03 - Pearl Cove by authors_sort - Free Book Online

finally, breath breaking. “I mourn the man who could laugh. But that man died seven years ago. I’m through mourning him. The man who took his place, I can’t mourn. He taught me too well.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “Len came to hate me as much as he loved pearls, and he loved pearls more than my parents loved God. Len taught me not to love him, not to like him, not to care about him at all.” She looked up at Archer with eyes that were as bleak as his own. “If that shocks you, I’m sorry.”
    “It doesn’t. I knew Len better than you did.” Archer wanted to ask why Hannah had stayed with Len, but he had no right to that answer, either. It had nothing to do with Len’s death. And that was the only reason Archer was here: his half brother’s death.
    If he told himself that often enough, maybe the message would sink through his skull all the way to his crotch.
    “Why do you think someone killed Len?” Archer asked.
    “Pearls,” she said simply.
    “Greed?”
    “Greed. Money. Power.” Hannah closed her eyes. “Maybe he was killed because someone could, so someone did.”
    “Who do you think killed him?”
    Hannah went still. It was a question she had asked herself over and over again. She had no answer but the one she gave Archer. “I’m only sure of two things. I didn’t kill him. You didn’t kill him. After that, there’s a whole bloody world of people who hated Len.”
    “What makes you think I didn’t kill him?”
    “You had no reason.”
    Archer looked at her short, sun-streaked hair, spiked by careless combing and shining like a dream. Her lashes were long, thick, the color of bittersweet chocolate, and her eyes were an indescribable color from the dark end of the rainbow. Her lips were too pale, too tight, yet nothing could hide the promise of sensuality in their full curves. As for the rest . . . she was long, slender but for her breasts, even more elegant than his memories.
    If he had known how it was going to turn out, he would have fought Len McGarry ten years ago and let hell take the leftovers. But Hannah had watched Len with worshipful eyes, and Archer had told himself that she was what Len needed, that her lush, sweet innocence would heal the breaks in his half brother’s soul.
    Remembering his own naïveté, Archer smiled. The curve of his lips was about as comforting as a scythe. No reason to kill Len? “You have no idea how wrong you are, Hannah.”
    Her breath stuck in her throat at what she saw in his face. At that moment he reminded her chillingly of Len. Dangerous. Distant. Ruthless.
    “But in one thing you’re right,” Archer said. “I didn’t kill Len. Where were you when he died, Mrs. McGarry?”
    She met his eyes straight on, as controlled and remote as he was. “I didn’t kill Len.”
    “You had a better motive than most.”
    “If I wanted his death on my conscience, all I had to do was walk out on him.”
    “What does that mean?”
    “Hating me kept him alive. Loving pearls almost kept him sane.”
    “Almost,” Archer repeated softly, understanding much of what Hannah didn’t say. Even ten years ago, Len had gone off on rages of laughter or drinking or screwing. Or mayhem. “Yet you stayed with him. You’re either very brave or very stupid, Hannah.”
    “I’m neither. Life happens one day at a time, like water dripping on stone. You don’t notice the change except over years.” She rubbed her aching eyes. “As for the rest, no one deserves all the good or the bad that comes their way. You just take it the way it comes, one day at a time.”
    “Echoes of a missionary upbringing?”
    She shrugged and stuffed a slippery piece of hair behind her ear. “I no longer thank God for the good that happens or blame my inborn evil for the bad. I just . . . ” Her voice faded.
    “Survive,” Archer finished.
    “Yes. What else is there?”
    “Everything.”
    “For some people, perhaps. Not for me.”
    There was no self-pity in Hannah’s voice, no