His Black Pearl by Colette Howard Read Free Book Online

the room was too dark to pick out the details.
    “Is this all one cut?”
    “Yes.” He had moved from behind the desk and was standing beside her, his hand on her elbow.
    She didn’t budge. “Turn a light on.”
    He moved back to his desk, opened a drawer and the room’s recessed lights brightened. She took a few steps back. The carving was monstrously huge, its theme playing off that of the Carracci painting with the three-headed dog. She smiled, wondering how she’d fallen in lust with the Armani version of a Goth Boi.
    “Obsidian?”
    “Yes, from Lipari.”
    She returned to stand in front of it, her hands exploring the contours of the dog’s heads. All three had their teeth bared, the fangs razor sharp. It was amazing -- the size of the stone, the workmanship. And he’d kept her from it by keeping her out of his office.
    Glancing over her shoulder, she frowned at him, but he just lifted his brows, as if to repeat his earlier question.
    “I’m here to tell you that if you think you’re stamping a deadline on the commission all of a sudden, you can eat it.”
    He had moved closer to her again and she flounced away, her gaze in search of the room’s next extraordinary curiosity. She noticed it a second later on a table at the opposite end of the room. She approached the piece and kneeled in front of the table to study it. A cast iron set of scales, the plates held a black feather on one side and a carved heart on the other. Only, somehow, the carved stone balanced equal to the feather. She lifted each plate separately and tested their weight.
    “How does it work?”
    “Magic.”
    Hallie responded with a hiss. She had researched enough about Aaron before their first meeting to know he had a truckload of patents to his name across more than one branch of science, although most were in engineering and mining processes. She lifted the carved heart off the scales and the plate holding the feather slowly lowered. “C’mon. How do you get it to balance? I’m not going to run out and file a competing patent or anything.”
    He had followed her over to the table and he took the heart from her. “It doesn’t always balance.”
    Aaron put the heart back on the scales, its plate sinking as it should. “It depends on the heart.”
    She pointed at the heart at last weighing heavier than the feather. “Oh, and whose heart is that?”
    “A thirty-six-year-old investment banker on the upper east side of Manhattan. He overdosed on ecstasy this morning while sexing up the family’s nineteen-year-old au pair.”
    “Ooo-kay. You’re kinda cute when you’re being weird.” She gave him a side glance and asked, “And my heart?”
    He put his finger on the plate holding the feather and slowly pushed it down so that the feather balanced heavier than the heart. When he took his finger away, the plates remained in place.
    “Nice trick.” She turned to him and studied his expression. She put her hand on his chest. He was an odd one -- not as eccentric as some millionaires she’d read about, but he certainly had a taste for the darker side of existence as long as it was beautiful and mysterious, like the scales or the obsidian Cerberus.
    She gently tapped his chest. “And yours?”
    He shook his head, his gaze darkening. “I’m all out of magic for the day, Hallie.”
    He turned, his steps quickly taking him to his office door.
    Shit. He had to be headed for her studio now that she’d invaded his office. She followed after him, trying to read the set of his shoulders, the way he held his hands close to his hips despite the long strides. His mood seemed to have done a one-eighty after her last question. Not that she was sure -- a month in his bed and the only sure thing she could read was his passion.
    “You can’t put a timeline on creativity,” she reminded him as his hand came down on the door handle to her studio. “And…”
    She trailed off as he entered the room and turned a slow semi-circle.
    “I suspected