She walked quickly to the door, opened the locks, and gestured Jake inside with a smile that was too bright, too brittle.
“A fishmonger who delivers,” she said. “I’m in heaven.”
“Wait until you taste these beauties.”
He reached into a paper shopping bag and pulled out one of the “beauties” for her to admire. She stared at the huge, rust-red crab dangling from his hand. Half a crab, actually. A ragged half.
“What happened to it?” she asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Crabs in the shell come whole, with their legs tucked so that they can crouch neatly on your plate. What you’re holding looks like the loser in a crustacean demolition derby.”
“That’s because I cleaned it before I steamed it.”
“That makes a difference?”
“A big one. No belly flavor.”
“Belly?”
“Guts. I clean the crabs after I kill them, rather than boiling them alive, guts and all, the way most people do. You clean everything else before you cook it, why not crabs?”
“Ugh. I’m sorry I asked.”
“Supermarket predator, huh?”
“Devoutly.”
He smiled. “Have any plates?”
“I’ll get them.”
“Where do you want me to put the Chapman?” he asked.
Honor glanced at the big, open book that covered half of the table. “It would make a heck of a tablecloth.”
“It makes a better reference. It’s saved my butt more than once. Besides, this table doesn’t need protecting. Look at those scars. It’s been through wars you’ve never even heard of.”
She glanced from Jake’s scarred eyebrow to the scar on his lip that was almost hidden beneath his mustache. “Like you?”
He gave her a sideways look and wondered if Archer had called his sister again and started comparing notes on her “fishing guide.” Kyle had always called him Jay rather than Jake, but that was no guarantee that Archer wouldn’t put the two names together and come up with one J. Jacob Mallory.
Ellen’s deadline was bad enough, but he might be able to talk her into an extension, especially if he was getting closer to the truth about Kyle. The instant Honor knew what Jake was after, the game was over. He had to make sure Honor didn’t find out the truth too soon. Despite the female interest in her eyes when she watched him, he had no doubt that she would slam the door in his face as soon as she found out what he really wanted.
Without seeming to, Jake watched Honor pick up the big reference book and put it on the kitchen counter. He liked the way she moved, no hurry, no fuss, no fluttering. He liked the way she looked when she stripped off the man-sized sweatshirt. The blue-green knit top fit over her like a hungry man’s hands. The curve of her black jeans told him what he had already guessed: with Honor, a man would have a soft landing and a snug, hot fit.
Damn it, Jake thought angrily, looking away as his body leaped with hunger. Honor turned him on like he was a teenager again, but her last name was Donovan. He had to remember that. The Donovans stuck together and let everyone else go hang.
“Here,” she said, handing Jake plates and silverware. “Put these on the table while I do the bread.”
Watching her from the corner of his eyes, he started setting the table. She surprised him by wetting her hands and running them over a loaf of French bread.
“Do you have some kind of clean fetish,” he asked, “or are you part raccoon?”
She gave him a blank look.
“Not many people wash their bread before they eat it,” he pointed out.
“French bread crust is more crunchy that way.”
“Washed, huh? Well, that’s a new one.”
Honor had a feeling that not many things were new to Jake. There was a seasoned look about him that went deeper than the scars and the lines at the corners of his eyes and mouth. It should have warned her away. Instead, it lured her.
“You’ll need something to crack the crab shell,” he said, looking at the silverware he had put out.
“Two crab crackers, coming up.” She began sorting through a drawer of kitchen tools. “I hope.”
“I can get by without one. Dungeness shells aren’t that hard. Red rock crabs are different. You have to take a hammer to them to get the meat.”
“I’m sure Kyle has something in this rat’s nest. He loves crab as much as I do.”
Jake’s mouth flattened at being reminded of her brother, but all he said was, “I’ll open the wine.”
“It’s in the freezer.”
“Of course. Wash the bread and freeze the wine. Why didn’t I think of that?”
“You’re too conventional?” she retorted.
“Yeah, that’s it. I’m too conventional.”
He pulled the wine bottle out of the freezer, peeled off the foil, upended the bottle, and whacked the bottom with the palm of his hand until the cork came halfway out. He pulled it the rest of the way with a quick twist of his fingers.
Honor stared. “I suppose you catch bullets in your teeth, too.”
“I don’t catch any bullets I can avoid.”
“Could you teach me to?”
“Avoid bullets?” He looked at her, startled.
“Open a bottle of wine without benefit of corkscrew,” she said with exaggerated patience.
“Why? It’s easier with a corkscrew. I just didn’t know where one was.”
“I’d like to see Kyle’s jaw drop. Archer’s, too. Maybe even the Donovan himself.”
“Who?”
“Dad,” she said, handing Jake an empty wineglass.
“Sounds like you come from quite a family.”
“Quite a family.” She laughed without humor. “That’s one way of putting it. Five large, overbearing males. Faith and I had to leave home to keep from strangling them one and all in their sleep.”
Jake just shook his head. He knew what it was like not to get along with your family, to barely tolerate your parents and siblings, much less love or even like them. For all of Honor’s supposed trials with the men in her family, her voice softened with affection when she spoke of the Donovan males.
It didn’t surprise Jake. He had learned the hard way that Donovans stuck together like wolves in a pack; and J. Jacob Mallory had been the dumb lamb nominated for the slaughter.
“No mother?” he asked, pouring wine, fishing as always for information about the Donovan wolf pack. Know thy enemy was one of the oldest rules of survival.
Honor took the glass of pale gold wine he held out to her and waited for him to pour his own.
“Mom is incredible,” she said. “The woman barely comes up to my shoulder, but she manages to do exactly what she wants, when she wants, and not ruffle masculine egos in the process.”
“Sounds like a good plan.”
“I’ve tried it. Doesn’t work for me. Mom has this kind of cast-iron nonchalance. No matter what roadblocks the men throw up, she just kisses them on the cheek, gives their hairy chests a pat, and goes on her merry way.” Honor shrugged. “Maybe it comes of being an artist.”
“Artist?” he asked, picking up his own wine.
“Painter.”
“What kind?”
“Good.”
Laughing quietly, Jake clicked his wineglass against Honor’s, and said, “To learning how to fish.”
She grimaced. “To learning, period.”
He raised his glass in silent salute, drank, and made a sound of surprise. “I didn’t know Australia had a good white wine.”
“Kyle told me about it. Avoid the pure Chardonnays and head straight for the blends.”
No new information for Jake in that. Kyle had been able to find decent wine in some of the most desolate rat holes in Kaliningrad. Then the two men would go back to what passed for a hotel, open tins of fine caviar and stale crackers, and discuss sex, politics, religion, loneliness, and how to negotiate long-term deals in a country that was even younger than the wi
ne they were drinking.
Kyle Donovan was as close to a friend as Jake had had in a long time. Too bad Kyle had turned out to be a con man, a thief, and a murderer. It would have been better if he were simply a fool whose brain was being run by his dick. Jake could understand that. He had been a fool from time to time himself. But Kyle had never struck Jake as the foolish sort.
That left the crooked sort.
“When will the bread be dry?” he asked.
“Dry? Oh, hot. A few more minutes. What do you want on the crab?”
“My mouth.”
“The man is hungry.”
“The man is ready to eat shell and all.”
“You want it with lemon or seafood sauce?”
“Both. I’ll make the sauce.”
By the time Honor had salad on the table, the sauce was ready. They sat down and began eating. There was an intimacy about the informal meal that surprised her. It was hard to be standoffish with someone while sucking tidbits of crab from your fingertips.
“You’re right about the bread,” Jake said, crunching into a piece.
She had her mouth too full of crab to answer.
“Isn’t that the sweetest crab you’ve ever eaten?” he continued.
She nodded vigorously.
“Next time I’ll show you how to kill and clean it before you cook it,” he said.
Her hair whipped from side to side with the force of her silent, negative response.
Laughing silently, he cracked crab legs between his fingers and picked out the meat using one of the smaller claws. With surprising speed a mound of succulent white meat grew on his plate.
“I thought you were hungry,” she said.
“I am.”
“Then why are you ignoring all that luscious crabmeat?”
Jake’s slow smile brought every one of Honor’s female senses to red alert.
“I’m not ignoring it,” he said. “I’m anticipating it. Different thing entirely. Then I’ll savor it. Three times the pleasure that way.”
“And only a third the calories. All the same . . .”
He saw the look in her eyes as she measured the pile of crab on his plate.
“Don’t even think about it,” he said.
“What?”
“Stealing some crab.”
“It wouldn’t be stealing if you gave it to me.”
Smiling, he slid his fork into the crab to give her some. Then he realized what he was doing and stopped. That old Donovan magic. People turned themselves inside out for it.
“That wide-eyed charm may work with your other men, but it won’t get the job done with me,” Jake said, forking the crab into his own mouth.
She stared at him in disbelief. “Wide-eyed charm?”
He grunted and chewed crab.
The idea of being thought charming silenced Honor more effectively than a hand over her mouth. None of the men in her life had accused her of being charming. Stubborn, impulsive, too smart for her own good; yes. Charming?
Never.
“Thank you,” she said.
His head came up swiftly. Before he could ask her why she responded to his insult with thanks, the phone rang.
Honor jumped as though she had been stung. She stood up so quickly that Jake had to catch her chair before it toppled over. The phone barely finished its second summons before she grabbed the receiver.
“Archer?” she asked breathlessly.
No one answered.
“Hello?”
Silence.
She slammed the receiver back into the cradle.
Jake’s eyes narrowed. He was beginning to understand that Honor was strung a lot tighter than she looked with her teasing amber-green eyes, quick smile, and casual, silky brown hair. At the moment she was rather pale, her mouth was drawn in anger or fear, and she held her hands clenched together as though to keep them from shaking.
Fear, not anger. Something had frightened the charming Ms. Donovan.
He had an unexpected urge to put his arms around her, to soothe and protect her. Ruthlessly he swept the impulse aside and concentrated on what had dragged him to Amber Beach in the first place. Murder, robbery, treachery, and Kyle Donovan.
“Problems?” Jake asked.
“Are cops into this kind of harassment?” Honor asked tightly.
“What kind?”
“One-sided phone calls.”
Adrenaline stirred beneath Jake’s calm surface. He had wondered if he was the only one outside the law who had an interest in Ms. Donovan.
“Heavy breathing?” he asked.
“No. Just the kind of silence that makes your hair stand on end.”
He pushed out her chair with his foot. She took the hint and sat down. Even though her appetite had vanished, the wine looked really good. She reached for it, took a drink, and then another.
“Maybe the caller is a woman,” Jake said.
“What makes you say that?”
“This is your brother’s cottage, right?”
“Yes.”
“Your missing brother, right?” Jake asked, careful to sound like someone who had only read the newspaper accounts of one Kyle Donovan.
Honor nodded.
“Then the explanation is simple,” Jake said. “Someone who looks like Kyle would be scraping women off all the time. Hearing your voice on the phone would be an unhappy shock for a girl whose motor was humming and ready to go.”
“I’m a girl and I don’t think Kyle is sexy.”
“Siblings don’t count. They don’t see things the same way normal people do.”
Kyle sure hadn’t, Jake thought sourly. He had mentioned his great-sense-of-humor, dead-bright twin sisters, but he hadn’t said that Honor had a sweet little body and a way of looking at a man that made him feel ten feet tall and solid as a stone cliff.
“Besides, how do you know what Kyle looks like?” she asked.
Jake hesitated just long enough to call himself a fool for not thinking that far down the road. Then he remembered the picture in the local paper. A passport photo, likely.
“Newspaper,” he said. “They ran a photo.”
“Not a good one.”
She was right, but admitting it wouldn’t help his cause any. “Siblings,” he retorted. “Can’t see worth a damn.”
Honor’s smile was wan. He could tell that she wasn’t buying the lovelorn explanation for the phone caller.
“Have you been getting a lot of calls?” he asked after a moment.
“For a while there were reporters who wouldn’t take no for an answer, but that dropped off in the past few days.”
“How many times have you picked up the phone and no one answered?”
“Oh, five or six times.”
“A day?” he asked, startled.
“No. In the last week.”
“The phone system is going to hell.”
“Maybe.” But she didn’t sound convinced.
The fear lying beneath Honor’s careful smile made Jake wish that he had no more on his mind than helping her. That damned Donovan charm.
“What are you thinking?” he asked without meaning to.
“About the man who just called. That’s his second time tonight.”
“If he didn’t say anything, how can you be sure it was a man, much less the same one?”
While Honor picked at her crab, she thought of ways to sidestep the question. None came to mind. Nor did any explanation that wouldn’t make her sound like a New Age wacko.
“Honor?”
Sighing, she quit fiddling with the crab leg and looked across the table at Jake.
“Are you the macho kind who feels all superior when a woman talks about pretty reliable, really nonlinear ways of getting information?” she asked.
It took Jake a moment to sort out what she was trying to say. Even then he wasn’t sure, until he remembered Kyle’s famous hunches, a kind of gambler’s luck that he laughingly said came to him from the Druid side of the Donovan blanket
. His mother’s side.
“Nonlinear information,” Jake said neutrally. “Is that a fancy way of saying your woman’s intuition is at work?”
“I prefer to call it a hunch. Men don’t make sarcastic jokes about hunches.”
“Okay. You have a hunch that the same man has called you twice tonight and had nothing to say. What else?”
“You’re going to think this is weird.”
“So are crabs. Did that stop me?”
She smiled crookedly.
If he hadn’t already known she was Kyle’s sister, Jake would have been certain now. That off-center smile was a big part of the Donovan charm.
“One of the men who answered my ad in the paper made my skin crawl,” Honor admitted.
“Did he touch you?”
Though Jake’s voice hadn’t changed, her breath caught. She sensed that he was angry as certainly as she had sensed the mysterious caller’s malevolence.
“No,” she whispered. “I didn’t even let him in the front door.”
“Why?”
“His eyes.” A shudder worked through her. “They made a snake look friendly.”
“Most of them are.”
“You and Faith. She says the only kind of snakes she worries about have two legs.”
“Drink some more wine,” he said, filling her glass. “You look tighter strung than a steel guitar.”
She took a few quick sips, then a healthy swallow. With a whispery sigh she settled into her chair and began looking at the crab with interest again.
“Other than eyes,” Jake said, “was there anything memorable about the guy?”
She hesitated, fork halfway to her mouth, and thought about the short time the man had been at her front door.
“He was Caucasian,” she said, “over thirty, medium height, medium weight, medium brown hair, medium everything except his voice. He had an odd accent.”
“European?”
“Maybe, but it wasn’t French, Italian, or German.”
“Are you sure?”
“Pretty sure. Faith and I have worked with a lot of Europeans in our business.”
“There’s a group of recently arrived Russians in Anacortes,” Jake said slowly. “They’re day workers, mostly. Then there are the Finns and the Croatians, but those families have been here so long that only the grandparents talk with an accent.”