It was still dark outside, almost an hour until dawn. Angel worked quietly in the kitchen, putting food into grocery bags, wrapping sandwiches, and turning strips of bacon in the pan.
When she heard the thump of Derry’s crutches in the hallway, she peeled off another handful of bacon and put the strips into the pan to fry.
“You’re up early,” Angel said, turning to smile at Derry. “Did I wake you?”
“No.”
Derry grimaced as he shifted his weight. Normally he was cheerful – maddeningly so – in the morning. His present state told Angel that his ankle was throbbing.
“How did you sleep?” she asked, searching his face.
Derry glowered. Between that and his tousled blond curls, he looked a surly sixteen.
“Lousy,” he muttered. “I feel hung over.”
“You look it, too. Orange juice?”
Yawning, ruffling his hair with one hand, Derry nodded.
“Please,” he said. Then, hopefully, “Coffee?”
“Sit down. I’ll bring it to you.”
While Derry went to the little breakfast nook that had a view of the strait, Angel fixed up a tray with coffee, juice, toast, and homemade jams. The latter were courtesy of Mrs. Carey, a neighbor who made the best jams on Vancouver Island. Two months ago she had tripped over her cat and broken her hip. The cast was off now, but Angel still shopped for her, as well as for two other temporary shut-ins.
“Where’s Hawk?” Derry asked as Angel set the tray on the table.
“Telephone.”
Derry shook his head. “He works too hard. The sun isn’t even up.”
“It is in London. He’s talking to Lord Someone-or-other.”
“Must be the island he’s trying to buy.”
“A whole island?” asked Angel.
“Yeah,” Derry said. “He wants to turn it into a cracking plant for North Sea oil.”
Angel hesitated, then went back to the stove.
“Hawk must be very rich,” she said.
“I guess. When I asked the bank to check him out as a potential buyer for Eagle Head, I got no further than the name Miles Hawkins. Old Man Johnston’s eyes lit up like a Christmas tree.”
“Orange juice,” Angel said.
Obediently Derry drank the juice.
“Hawk has quite a reputation in what Johnston refers to as ‘the international financial community,’ ” Derry added. “A bona-fide high roller.”
Derry paused long enough to take several long swallows of the fragrant coffee. Sighing, he looked hopefully at the coffee pot.
Smiling, Angel picked up the coffee pot and topped off his cup.
“Odd, though,” Derry said after a moment. “Hawk doesn’t act rich.”
Shrugging, Angel returned to the bacon.
“How does someone ‘act rich’?” she asked.
“You know. Throwing money everywhere. Dropping the names of the right resorts, the right people. Private jets and cars faster than the speed of light.”
“Like Clarissa?”
Derry paused, then sighed. “Yeah. She was something else, wasn’t she?”
Angel suppressed a smile.
“I’d tell you what that something was,” Angel offered, “but I’m not supposed to know the word. Thank God you saw through her, Derry. She was gorgeous, sure, but she had the intelligence of a clam.”
“You’re slandering clams,” Derry said dryly.
Smiling openly, Angel set strips of bacon out to drain on paper towels.
“How many eggs?” she asked.
“Five.”
“Hungry, aren’t you?”
“I slept through dinner, remember?”
“Ummm,” Angel said, wielding a chopper over the crisp bacon.
She remembered dinner very well. She and Hawk had spent an hour working on a schedule. She had made up a list of things to do and the approximate times involved in doing them right. Hawk had scanned the list very quickly and set it aside.
Then Hawk had questioned Angel in detail, missing none of the thirty-seven items on the list that he had looked at for less than sixty seconds. His questions had been concise and incisive. At the end of the hour Angel had felt wrung out.
When Hawk had all the information he required, he – without looking at the list again – wrote out a tentative schedule, handed Angel several thousand dollars for expenses, and excused himself.
Hawk had spent the next hour talking to Tokyo’s equivalent of the stock exchange.
The beaten eggs hissed as they slid into the hot omelet pan. Angel swirled the pan deftly, adding ingredients as the omelet formed. Her hand hovered over the mounds of freshly prepared ingredients heaped on the breadboard by the stove.
“Mushrooms?” she asked.
“The works,” said Derry instantly.
The omelet thickened, glistening with melting cheese. Just as Angel folded it in half, a timer went off.
She slid Derry’s omelet onto a warm plate, then pulled a pan of croissants out of the oven and put them into a napkin-lined bun warmer. The marvelous fragrance of fresh croissants and steaming omelet preceded her to the table.
Derry smiled up at her.
“Thanks, Angie,” he said softly. “This beats hell out of peanut butter and toast.”
“Anything beats that.”
“Creamed liverwurst?” Derry asked innocently.
Angel shuddered.
Derry took a bite of the omelet and sighed. “Clarissa was right about one thing,” he said.
“Oh?”
“You’re gonna spoil me for any other woman.”
Angel laughed and ruffled Derry’s hair affectionately. Then she turned to go back to the stove – and nearly walked right into Hawk.
“Oh!” Angel stepped back, her eyes wide and startled. “Good Lord, but you’re light on your feet!”
Hawk simply looked down at Angel with a cold expression. The planes of his face seemed unusually harsh, his eyes black in the artificial light.
Angel would have backed away even farther but Derry’s plaster-encased leg prevented it.
“Didn’t you sleep well?” Angel asked, searching Hawk’s face.
“As well as I ever do.” Hawk’s voice was clipped, as cold as his eyes raking over her.
He turned and picked up a mug from the counter. Then he grabbed the coffee pot and poured a dark stream into the mug. As he took a sip of coffee, he eyed the omelet ingredients heaped colorfully on the counter.
“Sit down,” Angel said quickly to Hawk. “How many eggs do you want in your omelet?”
“Don’t bother.” Hawk gave her a dark glance. “I’d hate like hell to be spoiled for other women.”
Derry made a choking sound that rapidly escalated into unrestrained laughter.
Angel’s lips flattened in the instant before her normal control asserted itself. She wished she could find Hawk’s caustic comments as entertaining as Derry did. Instead, she forever seemed to take them personally.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Angel said, crossing quickly to the stove. “How many eggs?”
“Six.”
Angel looked startled. She glanced covertly at Hawk and realized that he was even bigger than she had
