A Woman Without Lies

unfolding.

Angel opened her eyes. They were clear, as deep as the sea.

“What do you want, Mr. Hawkins?”

Hawk took a swift, silent breath. In the brief time that he had been with Angel, he had seen her shocked and afraid, had seen relief and the first stirrings of passion darken her eyes, had seen her hurt and enraged. This eerie calm was unexpected.

He had seen nothing like it except in his own mirror, when he had been young enough to still feel emotions and old enough to know that he had to conceal what he felt or be destroyed.

Now he was simply controlled, utterly self-possessed.

It angered Hawk that Angel seemed so composed. She was too young to have such discipline, and too shallow to need it. She flitted from man to man and feeling to feeling like the pretty, mindless little butterfly she was.

But she’s one hell of an actress, Hawk thought. I’ll give her that. It was the most convincing appearance of real emotion and real control that I’ve seen in years.

“Derry will tell you what I want,” said Hawk curtly, not releasing Angel’s wrist.

He walked quickly toward a waiting limousine. Angel followed, because she had no choice. She got in for the same reason.

As the limousine pulled out into traffic, Hawk dumped Angel’s shawl in her lap.

“Where are we going?” Angel asked calmly.

“To your one true love,” retorted Hawk.

Angel simply looked at him, waiting.

“That’s what I thought,” said Hawk in his caustic voice. “Women like you have so many true loves that they can’t tell the players without a scoreboard.”

She looked at Hawk with wide, calm eyes.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. And,” Angel added coolly, “neither do you. You know nothing about me, and you prove it every time you open your mouth.”

Hawk’s lips took a downward, sardonic curve.

“I know one thing,” Hawk said. “I’m going to do Derry a big favor this summer.”

“Buying Eagle Head isn’t a favor, Mr. Hawkins. It’s a shrewd business decision.”

Hawk shrugged. “I didn’t mean the land.”

He looked at the woman beside him, remembering how she had softened against his body when he held her. The clean summer smell of her hair caressed his senses, making him take a deep, involuntary breath.

Why the hell does she look so aloof, so untouched? Hawk asked himself bitterly. She’s just like every other woman – emptiness and lies.

In silence Hawk watched Angel’s coolness and reserve, and remembered her softness and sighs. He decided then that he was going to have her.

And when he was finished, he would strip her of her bright facade.

I’ll be sure Derry knows that his sweet Angie is no angel. Derry is much too young to cope with a woman like this. Derry would be hurt as I once was hurt.

But unlike me, Derry is too soft to survive that kind of lesson.

Hawk had no softness in him.

He had known about women like Angel since the night of his eighteenth birthday – women who took and took and took, giving only the casual use of their bodies in return.

Hawk didn’t mind that. Not anymore. He had become a taker too. Once Angel got used to the idea that he saw through her, they would get along just fine.

Users, both of them. Using each other.

Angel looked out the window but all she really saw was the image of Hawk as she had first seen him in the dark bar – lonely, aloof, untamed. If he hadn’t been gentle with her for those few instants, she would have decided that he was merely cruel, and avoided him.

Yet Angel’s first impression of Hawk’s loneliness had been oddly reinforced by his comforting touch. She knew that loneliness could give a person both a capacity for cruelty and, eventually, a capacity for empathy.

Empathy took longer to develop than cruelty, however. First, you had to heal.

Once Angel had raged at Derry for dragging her out of the wreck, for forcing her to live when the man she loved had died. Derry had been appalled. Then he had wept and she had held him, hating herself for hurting him, hating herself for being alive, hating everything except Derry. He was as alone as she, yet he wasn’t cruel.

That realization had been the turning point in Angel’s long climb out of agony and despair. From that instant she had cherished Derry.

In time she had even thanked him for dragging her out of the wreckage of her past into an uncertain future.

Angel wondered what Hawk’s turning point would be. Then she considered his strength and harshness and wondered if there was anything powerful enough to penetrate the ruthless shell that surrounded him as deeply as sky surrounded a hunting hawk.

Or perhaps, like a hawk, he preferred the lonely, icy reaches of the sky to anything human.

Yet Hawk had been so warm for just a moment, so close.

The motion of the limousine changed as it turned toward Vancouver harbor. Angel swayed slightly, caught herself, and recognized her surroundings. Island Taxi’s bright sign poked above the calm water. Just beyond the sign a pontoon plane floated.

Angel turned quickly to Hawk.

He was watching her.

She sensed that he had been watching her the whole time. With a shock, she noticed that he had a mustache, a smooth band of midnight just above his hard mouth, black hair shifting and gleaming subtly as he moved his head.

She hadn’t noticed the mustache before, not with those hard, dark eyes watching her.

“Hawk – Mr. Hawkins – ”

“Hawk,” he said, watching for her reaction as he spoke. “Call me Hawk, Angel. It will help both of us to remember what we really are.”

“What does that mean?”

“That I’m a hawk and you’re an angel.”

He laughed briefly, a sound without humor or warmth.

“Well,” he added, “that’s half the truth, anyway. One of us is just what he seems.”

“Are we flying to Vancouver Island?” asked Angel, irritated with the enigmatic conversation.

“Don’t tell me an angel is afraid to fly?” he asked softly.

“No more than a hawk,” she retorted. Angel frowned. Hawk had a devastating effect on her temper. She took a slow breath, then another, until she felt calm again.

“My car is at the gallery,” Angel said. “I’d planned to take the ferry over to see Derry.”

Hawk pulled a small leather-bound book and a gold pen from his pocket. He handed both to her.

“Write down the gallery’s address, the car’s license number, and a description of the car,” he said. “You’ll have it by tomorrow.”

Angel hesitated, then gave in.

The pen was warm to Angel’s touch, radiating the heat of the man who sat so close. She wrote quickly, feeling as though the pen were burning her skin.

Hawk took the keys she pulled out of her purse, the book, and the pen. For a moment his fingertips caressed the smooth length of the gold metal.

Angel knew that Hawk was feeling her heat as surely as she had felt his. The knowledge shortened her breath.

Then Hawk looked quickly at her, catching the sensual knowledge in her eyes. The corner of his mouth tilted sardonically.

He replaced the pen in his pocket. The sound of paper tearing was very loud in the silence as he removed the page Angel had written on. He handed the paper and the car keys to the chauffeur.

“When – when did Derry hurt himself?” asked Angel, hating the breathless quality of her voice, yet unable to