Amber Beach by Elizabeth Lowell

From the Publisher

Deadly secrets are buried on Amber Beach ...

Donovan International is a power to be reckoned with in the dazzling and cutthroat worldwide gem trade — and is therefore a target for the murderous greed of unscrupulous competitors. Though a shrewd businesswoman, Honor Donovan has been effectively shut out of the dangerous family enterprise by the Donovan males — until her favorite brother, Kyle, mysteriously vanishes along with a fortune in stolen amber.

Now, linking up with "fishing guide" Jake Mallory — whose previous association with the Donovans has bred mistrust and suspicion — Honor sets out for the Pacific Northwest in search of answers. But old wars and new politics have lured ruthless, high-stakes players from around the globe into a deadly game. And suddenly, elusive trust can be the only salvation — and death the penalty for deceit — if Honor and Jake hope to survive the perilous intrigues surrounding a breathtaking lost Czarist treasure known as the Amber Room ...

Publishers Weekly

A wild-goose chase for the legendary Amber Rooma collection of 18th-century Russian artifacts that vanished after WWII provides the backdrop for Lowell's (Winter Fire) fun but forgettable contemporary romantic thriller. Gem trader and suspected murderer Kyle Donovan is missing, along with a panel rumored to have been part of the Amber Room, and officials from Russia, Lithuania and the U.S. are hot on his trail. His sister Honor, a sassy, naive jewelry designer, is determined to find Kyle first and prove that her brother is neither a thief nor a killer. When Honor hires one J. Jacob Mallory to teach her how to 'fish' the Puget Sound, he pretends not to know that she actually wants to learn how to pilot her brother's boat well enough to search for Kyle on the surrounding islands. And Honor is clueless that hunky Jake is her brother's business associate, who is suspected of conspiring to appropriate the stolen amber. Constant bickering doesn't stave off their mutual attraction, and they end up in the sack only hours before Honor realizes she's been duped. Meanwhile, a busload of incidental international players has arrived at the scene, complicating the already convoluted political intrigue. Still, the moderately paced plot, solid main characters and an up-to-the-minute premise fortify a satisfactory, if unexceptional, romance.

Kirkus Reviews

A well-made, completely predictable and unchallenging second hardcover from Lowell (Winter Fire, 1996)—a romance that offers all the sexual tension, adventure, and squishy clichés that fans of the genre could possibly want.

Tough Jake Mallory (Jake being this year's romance-novel nom de choice for soldiers of fortune and macho men) passes himself off as a fishing guide in order to keep tabs on Honor Donovan, a jewelry designer who's searching for her lost brother Kyle in the San Juan Islands. (Honor needs a boat to find Kyle, and she doesn't know how to pilot a boat; in fact, she hates boats, and she hates fishing.) Kyle, it seems, has disappeared from Russia with a million dollars' worth of Baltic amber and, perhaps, a priceless panel from the famous Amber Room, which had been disassembled and taken from a czar's palace by the Nazis. Jake ("Been there . . . done that . . . got the T shirt") is a former government agent who now manages his own international investment company. Like most heroes of his ilk, he comes complete with scars, black stubble, and the requisite "clean fingernails" (which is typical for the genre: only villains have problems with personal hygiene). Jake believes that Kyle and the Donovans, a colorful family, have framed him for the crime; Kyle's family believes that Jake has set Kyle up; and the CIA is trailing Jake and Honor to get its hands on the Amber Room, as are the Russian mafiya, a Lithuanian freedom fighter, ex-employees of the former KGB, and the Coast Guard. While he strives to clear his name, Jake teaches Honor how to drive a speedboat, catch salmon, and have good sex, which heretofore she'd always found pretty "boring." Some parts of his job are, obviously, more fun than others.

Much livelier than Winter Fire, and perhaps the beginning of a series.

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Product Details

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Table of Contents

Read an Excerpt

Chapter One

Honor Donovan took one look and knew the man was trouble. On the other hand, she was already in the kind of trouble even tier family's company, Donovan International, couldn't handle.

"if you're from the police, shut the door on your way out," she said. "if you're a reporter, go to hell."

"Been there. Done that."

"You have the T-shirt to prove it?"

He reached for the buttons on his stained denim jacket.

"Never mind," she said quickly. "Are you a reporter?"

"No. I'm a fishing guide,"

"Piranha?"

You are the Ms. Honor Donovan who advertised for a person with expertise in Pacific Northwest waters in general and SeaSport boats in particular'?"

She sighed and accepted the inevitable. The big man with the black beard stubble, light eyes, scatted left eye- brow, and clean fingernails hadn't wandered by accident into her missing brother's Puget Sound cottage. Despite this man's less-than-cozy looks, her instincts said he was a better candidate than the others who had come looking for the job.

One of the men had been a cop trying to pass for a fisherman. Another was a recent immigrant whose English defied understanding. A third man was convinced she really wanted the body he was so proud of. The fourth man's English was good, but his eyes had made her think of things that lived in swamps.

It had been three days since anyone else had applied for the job. She was going nuts counting minutes and waiting for Kyle to appear suddenly in the doorway with his crooked grin and a good explanation of why the cops thought he had stolen a million bucks in amber. She refused to consider any other reason forhis disappearance, especially the one that kept her from sleeping, the one that made her throat close around tears she wouldn't cry.

Kyle had to be alive. He just had to be.

"Miss Donovan?"

Belatedly Honor realized that the most recent applicant was still waiting for her to say that she was indeed the one who had posted ads all over the small town of Anacortes.

"I'm the one," she said.

"You took the words right out of my mouth."

She looked at his mouth and knew how Little Red Riding Hood felt when she first saw "grandmother's" teeth.

"Excuse me?" she asked.

"Your ad could have been written with me in mind," he explained

"Do you have references?"

"Driver's license? Fishing license? Boat handier's ticket? Tetanus shot?"

"How about rabies?"

The retort popped out before Honor could think better of it. It came front a lifetime of dealing with big brothers.

"Sorry, Mr.

"Mallory."

"Mr. Mallory."

"Try Jake. Saves time."

"Um, Jake. I meant references given by people you worked for in the past."

"You don't know much about fishing guides, do you?"

"If I did, I wouldn't have to hire one, would I?"

He smiled.

She thought of poor Little Red. "You should work on that smile. It really isn't reassuring."

Jake tried to look downcast. It wasn't any more convincing than his smile.

"If your hands are half as quick as your tongue," he said, "I'll make a fisherman out of you in no time."

"Fisherwoman."

"Ain't no such animal."

"Fishersan, then."

"Fishersan?"

"Man and woman both end in an. Do you want the job?"

"Fishersan," he said, rolling the word around on his tongue. "Yeah, I want the job. We'll be the only fishersen on the water."

This time Jake's smile was slow, warm, amused, and something more. It reminded Honor that she was a woman as well as the seared younger sister of a missing man. She looked down at her hands and cleared her throat.

"Fishersen?" she asked, distracted. "Oh, I get it. En. Plural. Men and women. You're pretty quick yourself. When can you start?"

"Do you have a fishing license?"

"No."

"Then we can't start yet. Too bad. The sun is out. The wind isn't- Slack tide in a few hours. It doesn't get any better than this in the San Juan Islands."

"What would we be fishing for?"

"Whatever we catch. Less disappointment that way."

"Is that your life philosophy?"

"Only after I grew up."

She lifted her head and looked at him intently.

"What's the matter?" Jake asked. "Are my ears on backwards?"

"I was just trying to imagine you as a child in need of growing up."

"Funny. I have no problem imagining you that way. Can you swim?"

"Like a fish."

"Considering my profession and all, you might want to rethink that description."

"You have a point."

"It's on the business end of the hook. First lesson of fishing."

Ambushed by Jake's slow, unexpected smile and deadpan humor, Honor laughed almost helplessly. Then she had to fight tears that were burning behind her eyes.

In the past few weeks she had been through too many sleepless nights. That was why after only two minutes with Jake Mallory she felt like she had been hit by a truck. His particular combination of rough edges, male warmth, and wry intelligence would have appealed to her under any circumstances. Right now, when her defenses were down and her emotions were all over the place, he was lethally attractive to her.

Bad choice of words, she thought. Really bad If she started thinking about death she would cloud up and rain all over Kyle's messy desk,

Blinking hard, Honor stared through one of the cottage's many small windows. Beyond the panes of glass, fit trees swept down rocky slopes to the cold blue-green waters of Puget Sound. Amber Beach was a strip of tawny sand ringed by dark rocks and stranded logs bleached pale by the sea. Kyle's twenty-seven-foot powerboat gleamed whitely next to the floating dock he had built. He had named the boat Tomorrow, because he rarely had time to go fishing today.