All Angel could control was herself, her own reactions and conclusions.
Deliberately, as she had learned to do in the terrible months following Grant’s death, Angel created again in her mind a vision of the most beautiful thing she had ever seen…
A single rose unfolding in the summer dawn. The petals were crimson, luminous, serene. The possibility of beauty that had endured through the cruel winter and uncertain spring was consummated in radiant silence.
A simple thing.
A single rose, victorious and serene.
Calmness spread visibly through Angel as the rose unfolded in her mind. Confidently she put her hands on the boat’s controls, her body and mind united in a sensitive appraisal of the unnamed boat.
Fascinated by the change that had swept over Angel, Hawk watched her every move with narrowed, measuring eyes. He sensed that she had retreated.
Angel slid the throttles up, increasing the revolutions on the twin diesels. She watched the gauges carefully. The engines were beautifully balanced, performing in exact synchronization with each other.
With a sound of approval, she decreased the revs, shifted the engines into gear, and began to put the boat through its paces under Hawk’s intense, and finally approving, scrutiny. The boat responded eagerly to her touch, the prow curving and recurving through green water, sending chaotic wakes slapping across the shifting surface of the sea.
Angel flipped on the sonar and watched the changing pattern as the boat roved up and down the strait. Hawk looked curiously at the plate-sized screen that looked like green TV.
“Ever used a fish finder before?” asked Angel.
“No.”
She pointed toward the lower part of the screen, then indicated the depth scale alongside.
“Right now,” Angel said, “the bottom is about twenty fathoms. There’s nothing between us and the bottom but – wait!”
Without looking away from the screen, Angel cut back on the throttles and turned the boat, retracing her path slowly.
“There,” she said, pointing to a bright, shifting series of lines that had appeared at about ten fathoms on the scale. “A school of fish. Herring, probably.”
“How can you tell?”
Angel shrugged slightly, a graceful movement that caught Hawk’s eye.
“Experience,” she said simply. “Herring are erratic yet dense. See how quickly the lines shift?”
Hawk watched the screen, but much of his attention was on the slender hands that had so quickly learned how to handle the powerboat. Whatever else Angel was, she had the confidence and coordination of a race driver.
“What do salmon look like on the screen?” asked Hawk in a quiet, deep voice.
He bent over as though to see the screen more clearly, but it was the woman that filled his senses. His nostrils flared as he smelled the delicate perfume he had come to associate with Angel, a blend of sunshine and wind and hidden flowers.
“Salmon look less well defined, unless you happen onto a good school.”
Angel closed her eyes for an instant, sensing the heat radiating from Hawk’s body. Her thoughts scattered. Grimly she recalled them.
“Salmon are rarely on the bottom,” she said. “If you see a school just above the bottom, you’ve found cod, not salmon.”
She felt caged by Hawk’s heat, serenity burning away with each breath she took, bringing his male scent deeply into her body.
“Are you nearsighted?” Angel asked tightly.
“Nearsighted?” There was surprise in his voice.
“As in not able to see things unless you’re right on top of them,” Angel explained dryly.
Hawk glanced sideways. His face was only inches from hers. In the slanting morning light her eyes were as green as matched emeralds.
“Sorry,” he said. Then, “Am I crowding you?”
“No more than I’m crowding you,” Angel retorted.
“Good,” Hawk said huskily, “because I don’t feel a bit crowded.”
Angel turned the wheel suddenly and gunned the engines. The motion forced Hawk to step back in order to keep his balance. She took the boat closer to the cliffs looming on the east side of the passage.
Hawk watched the cliffs approach at an alarming speed. He glanced at the sonar. The bottom was thirty-three fathoms and getting deeper every moment. He measured the cliff with narrow eyes.
Huge evergreens clung to cracks in the cliff’s face, but the trees looked no bigger than weeds against the immense expanse of rock.
With a sideways glance, Angel measured Hawk’s response to the cliff. To someone unaccustomed to the Inside Passage, it would seem like insanity to approach the shore at such speed because of the danger of running aground.
But Angel knew the land and the sea.
“Geologists call this land the drowned coast,” Angel said, automatically pitching her voice to carry above the sound of the engines.
“As in drowned people?” Hawk suggested sardonically.
“Nope. During the last ice age the sea level was several hundred feet lower. Then all the ice melted, flooding the land. That cliff ahead of us goes straight down about three hundred feet below the sea. There’s no way to run aground here unless I ram the cliff itself.”
“Like Norway,” Hawk said, understanding. He looked at the land with new eyes.
“That’s what one of my fishing clients said,” Angel agreed. “He was born in Norway. Said that all these fjords made him homesick. It was the first time I’d realized that a fjord is nothing but a valley drowned in salt water.”
Amused, Hawk glanced sideways at Angel.
She didn’t notice. She was easing back on the throttles and turning the boat so that they paralleled the cliff face at a distance of about twenty feet. Then she put the engines in neutral and left them idling while she estimated the amount of drift that would be caused by wind and currents.
The boat moved slowly away from the cliff.
“How much do you trust these engines?” Angel asked matter-of-factly.
“To do what?”
“Start the first time.”
“I wouldn’t bet my life on it. But then, I don’t bet my life on anything anymore.” Hawk shrugged. “They’ll start ninety-nine times out of a hundred.”
“Good enough. I wouldn’t mind a little silence.”
Angel cut the engines, then restarted them. They caught immediately. She turned them off again, giving the boat to the subtle movements of wind and water.
Silence flowed over Angel like a benediction. Unconsciously she closed her eyes and smiled with pleasure.
Hawk saw her pleasure and was tempted to run first his fingertip and then his lips over her smile. He did neither. For the first part of the chase he was content to let the prey set the course and the speed.
That didn’t mean he wouldn’t crowd Angel from time to time, just to watch sensuality deepen the color of her eyes and soften her mouth. But the crowding would be gentle, would seem utterly natural, and would give her no excuse to retreat too far.
Hawk sensed that Angel was not nearly so aggressive as many of the women he had taken. With those women,
