Part 27 (2/2)

She looked at him. Her breath caught at the drawn lines of his face, as though he had his hand in fire and was fighting not to show pain. Yet it was there. Agony. Stark and real.

Something terrifyingly like his agony sliced through her to her soul.

Then he opened his eyes. They were the color of steel. They belonged to a man who knew no mercy.

”Look in the mirror,” she whispered. ”You'll see why.”

”Tell me.”

”You're like Len!” Her breath broke on a sob. ”d.a.m.n you, you're like Len! Great smile, great body, and underneath it all, as cold a b.a.s.t.a.r.d as ever walked the earth. That kind of ruthlessness makes love impossible. It makes everything impossible, even the most simple affection.” She took a tearing breath. Tears blocked her view of Archer, but it didn't matter because all she could see was the past. ”I was pregnant once. When I miscarried, I wanted to die. I almost got my wish. Later, much later, I went down on my knees and thanked G.o.d that I didn't have a child to raise in Len's cold shadow. I'll never expose my child to that kind of ruthlessness. Never.”

Once, years ago, Archer had been beaten to the point that it was agony to breathe, to move, even to blink his eyes. He felt that way now. ”I would never hurt any child, much less my own.”

She just shook her head. ”You don't understand. You can't. Like Len. He didn't get up each morning and decide to be the way he was. He just... was.”

Silence stretched, stretched, thinned. Snapped.

”Let's see if I understand,” Archer said, his voice low and flat. ”Marriage is out because you don't trust me and you don't like me, but you don't mind having s.e.x with me.”

She gave a broken laugh and wiped her eyes. ”I trust you. That's why I called you. I know you won't kill me.”

”You trust me with your body, but not your emotions, your future, and your children, is that it?”

The blunt words made her flinch, yet she didn't argue. ”I like you. I didn't want to, but I do. And the the s.e.x is good.” She s.h.i.+vered. ”Very, very good. Can't that be enough?”

It had been enough for Archer in the past, with other women. It wasn't nearly enough now.

”s.e.x and protection, that's all you want from me?” he asked, driven to be certain.

Again his blunt words sc.r.a.ped over her emotions, touching raw spots she didn't even know she had. ”Yes.” Her voice was bleak. ”That's all.”

Archer looked at Hannah's bruised eyes and trembling lips, at her chin tilted up and her shoulders squared. He remembered the girl who had stood on a street corner in Rio de Janeiro with empty pockets and a raw determination to survive. With a distant sense of surprise he realized that he had fallen in love with Hannah then: her courage and her fear, her despair and her hope, the life that burned so incandescently within her, giving her a beauty no other woman had ever equaled in his eyes.

Nothing had changed in ten years.

Nothing would change.

He would never have the woman he loved.

The mattress. .h.i.tched suddenly as Archer got up and began dressing. ”If you're pregnant, I will support you and my child.”

”No, I-”

”The child will know his or her cousins, aunts, uncles, and grandparents,” he continued relentlessly, zipping up his pants with a quick jerk. ”Most of all, the child will know me.” He b.u.t.toned his s.h.i.+rt with quick flicks of his fingers. ”If that upsets you, I regret it, but it's not negotiable. If you wanted a child without complications, you should have gone to a sperm bank.”

”But I-”

”See that intercom?” he cut in, pointing to a lighted panel on the wall by the bed.

She nodded.

”If you want protection or s.e.x, punch number six.”

Seventeen.

Ian Chang shut off his car engine and got out while the red dust was still boiling up toward the gunmetal sky. As he strode over the walkway to the verandah, he ran through all the points his father wanted him to cover with Hannah McGarry who was buying what, who was selling what, and the gradations of threat to apply at each point in the negotiation.

Sam Chang wanted Pearl Cove, even if it meant partners.h.i.+p with Donald Donovan's Number One Son.

Unfortunately Hannah had refused to answer her phone or return messages left on her answering machine, which meant that Ian Chang had been forced to make the boring drive from Broome just to talk to her. Irritated, he knocked hard enough to rattle the verandah door on its hinges. The thunderous sound startled a flock of c.o.c.katoos. They took off in a swirling, darting, shrieking cloud of white.

It was the only response Chang's knock got.

”Hannah, it's Ian,” he said loudly. ”Let me in.”

No one answered. It was the same for the back door. Nothing but silence and the muted echo of his fist thumping on the door. Cursing in a sizzling mix of Cantonese and English, Chang lit a cigarette and headed for the scattering of cottages where the workers lived.

Coco waited on the front porch of the third cottage, leaning languidly against the wall. She had been leaning there since she saw Chang's car roar up to the McGarry house. She could have saved him the trip down to the cottages, just as she could have saved him the trip to Pearl Cove by returning the messages she had listened to in the middle of the night, when no one would notice her inside the McGarry house.

But Coco wasn't in a mood to save anyone trouble. She was in a mood to cause it. Especially with Ian Chang, who had forgotten their date a few nights ago. She wasn't used to a man forgetting her. Just as she wasn't used to a man looking past her to Len McGarry's pale, s.e.xless wife. The memory still stung.

”Is Hannah diving again?” Chang demanded in English without so much as a greeting.

”No.”

”Is she in what's left of the sheds?”

”No.”

”Then where the h.e.l.l is she?” He drew in smoke and sent it out again in a rush of silver.

Coco shrugged, but her black eyes gleamed with cold amus.e.m.e.nt. She liked seeing Chang upset. ”She gone.”

”What do you mean, she's gone?”

The angry demand in his voice was like wine to Coco. She had his full attention now. ”Just that. Gone. Fffft.”

”Where?” he snarled. ”Did Christian get her?”

Laughter that was both soft and hard curled out of Coco. ”No, it is Donovan.”

Uneasiness cooled Chang's anger. He took another pull on the cigarette, swallowed smoke, and let his temper damp down. ”She's with Donovan?”

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