A Woman Without Lies

Chapter 6

When Hawk heard his own words, his face settled into its normal enigmatic lines, concealing thoughts and emotions behind a mahogany mask. Silently he helped Angel carry everything out to the car. There was quite a lot. Groceries, a pile of fishing gear, jackets, and even a sketchbook Angel had thrown in at the last instant.

Hawk looked up from the gear heaped in his BMW.

“Are we going to Alaska?” asked Hawk dryly.

“What a wonderful idea,” Angel said in a wistful voice. “I’ve always wanted to sail the Inside Passage.”

Hawk gave her a hooded, assessing look.

“But that’s not on our list this summer,” Angel said.

She started shifting the bags around until she could close the trunk of the car. Hawk started to help, then stopped, riveted by the high, wild whistle of an eagle calling to the dawn.

He looked up into the sky with dark, fierce eyes, searching for the bird.

A black shape plummeted down, wings flared, talons outstretched. The prey was hidden from Hawk’s sight in the tall grass, but the raptor had no such problem. The bird struck and mantled its dying prey with half-spread wings, protecting it from view.

Then the eagle’s uncanny eyes spotted the two people standing so quietly. With a high, angry cry, the eagle took flight, carrying its prey to the treetops.

The sky was flushed with the delicate, transparent colors of true dawn. Across the strait, serrated ranks of mountains loomed like fragments of night, black and yet strangely radiant. Overhead a few tufted clouds burned scarlet, then molten gold.

A feeling of exhilaration speared through Hawk. He lifted his face to the sky, letting sunrise wash over him. He had spent too much time indoors since he had left the farm. He hadn’t known how much he had missed the sky until this moment.

From the thrusting rock summit of Eagle Head came again the untamed cry of a bird of prey.

Angel looked up, saw the fierce pleasure on Hawk’s face, and felt desire shiver through her. The feeling shocked her in the instants before she accepted it.

I shouldn’t be surprised by passion. I chose to live after Grant died in the wreck. Love and desire are a natural part of life.

Just because I haven’t wanted any man for three years doesn’t mean that I would never want a man again.

Even as Angel admitted the intensity of her attraction to Hawk, she knew that she could be hurt badly by him. Hawk was as hard a man as she had ever met. Yet beneath that hardness she sensed a yearning for beauty, for warmth, for… love. Without that yearning, she wouldn’t have been attracted to him.

But Angel knew there was no guarantee that she would be the one to touch Hawk’s yearning. There was no guarantee that anyone could touch it, even Hawk himself.

He was strong. He had lived a long time alone.

So had she.

Am I ready to risk my hard-won serenity for a man who might no longer believe in love?

She closed the trunk with a sharp, metallic sound that brought Hawk’s attention back from the sky. He watched as she got into the car. After a moment’s hesitation he slid behind the wheel, reluctant to break the luminous silence of the British Columbia dawn.

Angel said nothing during the drive, however, apparently as pleased as Hawk was by the quiet and the colors radiating through the sky.

They parked at the marina and stepped out to the keening of gulls and the smell of the sea. As one, Angel and Hawk began to carry supplies down the wooden dock to the slips.

When Angel saw Hawk’s boat, she stopped in the middle of the dock and stared. The yacht was over thirty feet long and had the sleek lines that were the hallmark of Italian powerboats. A single glance told her that the boat would handle beautifully, riding the often rough water of the Inside Passage with the ease of a hawk soaring on boiling currents of air.

“She’s beautiful,” Angel said simply, turning toward Hawk. “What’s her name?”

“I haven’t given her one.”

Angel realized that the boat was as new as it looked, polished and shining like the sun rising over the sea.

“Don’t name her too quickly,” Angel said. “A boat gets only one name. This one deserves the best.”

“Because it’s pretty?” Hawk asked casually, stepping onto the boat’s shifting deck without hesitation.

“This boat isn’t pretty,” said Angel, looking at its lines with appreciative eyes. “It’s magnificent. Form and function perfectly married. Nothing unnecessary. Nothing missing.”

Hawk turned and looked back over his shoulder at Angel. She didn’t notice. She had eyes only for the glistening white boat.

His lips curved sardonically.

“Expensive, too,” Hawk said.

Angel looked at the boat for another long moment before she sighed and answered.

“Yeah, I’ll bet. The Italians aren’t bashful about pricing their works of art.” She glanced at Hawk. “Can you, er, handle this boat?”

“I used to race powerboats.”

“I thought Derry said you raced cars.”

“I did both. There was more money in cars.”

“And more danger?” Angel asked.

Hawk’s eyes narrowed.

“Does the idea of danger turn you on?” he asked.

“No.”

“It turns on a lot of women.”

“Does it?” asked Angel. “Why?”

Hawk made a harsh sound. “Adrenaline, honey. It tells them that they’re alive.”

“Or that someone else is dead,” Angel said, her eyes too dark, too large.

Memories rose, threatening to choke her.

Hawk saw the haunted expression pass over Angel’s face. Then she shifted the bags in her arms and stepped onto the boat as though nothing had happened.

And, Hawk realized, nothing had. Whatever ghosts haunted Angel weren’t new. They were an accepted part of her life, just as his ghosts were part of his.

Or else the haunted look was simply an act, as seamless as the night.

With a mental shrug, Hawk dismissed the subject.

Act or reality, it doesn’t change what Angel is. Even animals twitch in their dreams, haunted by whatever ghosts their limited minds called up.

“I’ll show you how to handle the boat when we’re out in the strait,” said Hawk. “If you want.”

“Of course I do. Besides, that’s the only way you’ll get to fish.”

Hawk lifted one black eyebrow in silent query.

“It’s almost impossible to fish alone in a boat this size,” explained Angel. “Someone has to be at the helm, especially if you hook up with a big salmon when the water is crowded with other boats and the tide is running.”

Together Hawk and Angel finished loading supplies on board. The sun was well over the mainland mountains by the time Hawk eased the boat out of the marina and into the grip of the Campbell River current.

To the left of the boat scattered evergreens and flatlands gave way to a forested headland that thrust powerfully out of the sea. To the right a spit of land stuck out like an impudent tongue, dividing the sea from the intertidal waters.