Part 32 (2/2)
”Dead end. Teddy bought it from a man who bought it from a woman who bought it from a man n.o.body can find, who supposedly got it in Tahiti. That's the reason Teddy showed me the pearl. He thought I might know where it came from.”
”You did.”
”He doesn't know that. That's why he sold it to me. He's been looking for over a year and found nothing more than rumors. He decided to take cash for a pearl curiosity rather than trying to a.s.semble enough black rainbows to make a piece of jewelry.”
The elevator door opened. The second floor was slightly better maintained than the lower one, but its atmosphere still was more carnival than restrained luxury. Despite not having the studied elegance of a high-end jewelry outlet, the goods on the second floor were obviously more expensive than those on the street level. Video cameras covered every angle of the area. The booths were more s.p.a.cious, less jewelry was dangling within reach, and rent-a-cops watched everyone with bored eyes and big holsters.
It didn't take Hannah and Archer long to circle the second floor. The pearls were bigger and of better quality than on the first floor, but the emphasis was the same: finished jewelry. There was a very nice pair of Tahitian black earrings with violet overtones, and a tangerine South Seas parure consisting of brooch, necklace, bracelet, ring, and earrings. The latter made Hannah pause, but when the salesman came forward, she shook her head and moved on.
There were few loose pearls for sale. None of them was a black rainbow.
The elevator smelled the same on the way to the third floor. When Hannah and Archer stepped out, they were confronted by a desk and an armed guard who was even more bored than his buddies downstairs. Archer wrote his name, corporate ident.i.ty, and wholesale number in the logbook on the desk, took two tags, and gave one to Hannah. He clipped his to his pocket. After several tries, she managed to clip hers on the neckline without wrinkling the material.
As he watched her smooth the borrowed dress beneath the tag, his hands itched to help her. Then he could savor again the creamy warmth and resilience of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, feel their tips harden beneath his hands, his tongue.
Cursing silently, he turned away from the endless temptation of Hannah McGarry. A quick scan of the room told him that the same traders were in the same places. No new faces. In fact, he would have sworn that some of the same people were leaning across the same counters arguing the same prices as they had been six weeks ago, when he had strolled through the Pearl Exchange just for the pleasure of seeing so many varieties of loose pearls gathered under one roof.
Hannah scanned the various booths and almost smiled. This she understood: the people haggling over a tray of pearls, the other people watching as though placing side bets, the dramatic gestures of disdain on the part of buyer and seller, the handshakes, the voices rising and falling. Chinese, j.a.panese, Australian, American, European the languages varied, but the focus didn't.
Pearls.
Everybody was buying, selling, trading, wis.h.i.+ng, living, and dreaming pearls. Some people wanted only to match pearls for a pair of earrings. Others wanted to create triple-strand necklaces or parures with hundreds of pearls. A few people went from booth to booth, collecting for purposes only they knew.
”You like this, don't you?” Archer asked, watching Hannah because he couldn't make himself stop. Right now her eyes were a vivid indigo with flashes of violet. Her whole body was alert, quivering, like a cat closing in on pray.
”I love it,” she said. ”At first Len didn't let me do any of the selling or trading. For the last few years I've done all of it. I never went beyond Broome, but I always wanted to. Pearl Cove has some of the best-matched, highest-quality pearls in the world.” Excitement faded as she remembered. ”Or we had. Now...” She shrugged. ”It depends on whether you want to resurrect the operation. Even if we find the Black Trinity, I don't have the money.”
”Is that what you want? Pearl Cove up and running again?”
”It's what I know.”
”That's not the same thing.”
”It's as close as I can come.”
”Why not do what you love?” Archer asked.
Eyebrows raised, she looked at him. ”And what would that be?”
”This.” He waved a hand at the room where pearls were changing hands. ”Trading pearls.”
She opened her mouth. No words came out.
He was right. What she loved most was weighing and balancing the merits of individual lots of pearls, pricing them, bargaining over them, coming away with a good deal because she had a better eye than anyone she had ever met when it came to matching pearls.
”All the professional traders I've known are men,” she said.
”Yet it's a fact that most women's color vision is better than most men's.”
”No argument here, mate,” she said dryly. After a moment she smiled rather like a shark. ”I'll just have to be the first, won't I? My color vision against theirs.”
And she laughed.
Archer wished he could pick her up and whirl her around, laughing with her, sharing the heady feeling of a new world opening up. But that was the kind of thing you did with family or friends or a mate. s.e.x alone didn't qualify for the latter, sharing Len between them didn't qualify for the former, and she didn't like Archer well enough for them to qualify as friends.
”How do you go about becoming a trader?” Hannah asked.
”Get a reputation for knowing good pearls.”
”I have one, but it's half a world away.”
”Then we'll just have to work on it here.”
”Not when I look like a tart.”
The corner of his mouth kicked up. ”What you look like is a s.e.xy woman.”
Unconsciously she smoothed the creeping skirt farther down her hips. ”I feel awkward.”
”Every time I've had my hands on you, you felt just fine.”
She shot him a sideways look that glittered like blue-black sapphires. ”That isn't what I meant.”
He shrugged. ”You walk around in three patches and a handful of string and never worry, but you're fidgety in a dress that covers you from collarbones to midthigh.”
”That was the tropics. This is here. Honor's clothes just don't fit me.”
”Then we'll go shopping after we're done here.”
”We?”
”You're not getting out of my sight until all the players know that you're off the table.”
”I was out of your sight last night,” Hannah said before she stopped herself.
”That's different.”
”Bull dust.” She took a breath and a better grip on her too-quick tongue. ”I can't afford clothes.”
”I'll give you ”
”No,” she cut in. ”I owe you too much already.”
”You don't owe me a cent.”
”You've got that right, mate. I owe you a h.e.l.l of a lot more than a penny.”
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