That was the first of many times when the demands of Hawk’s business interrupted Angel’s guided tour of Vancouver Island and the waters around Campbell River. Hawk had flown to Vancouver three times, where he had met with lawyers and signed papers.
When he stayed in the Ramsey house, he was often on the phone. In ten days Angel had managed to get Hawk out fishing only twice. Each time phone calls had made them miss the tide.
Not that it really mattered. The run of the silver salmon had not yet begun. Even the commercial fishermen were catching only a handful of fish for each day spent on the water.
In the end, Angel settled for giving Hawk a slow-motion tour of rocky heads and tiny bays as she showed him how to troll for salmon. To her it was the least interesting method of catching salmon. The stiff rods required for trolling masked the energy and vibrancy of the fish.
But trolling was the price of missing the tide changes, when the shifting balance of water and moon coaxed the salmon to feed closer to the surface.
Angel was determined that there would be no more missed tides. Word had come through the fishing grapevine that the first true run of summer salmon was sliding silently down the Inside Passage. Yesterday the catch had been up at the north end of the passage.
If the fish followed past patterns, one of Angel’s favorite stretches of coastline should be hosting the salmon for a while on their run south to the countless rivers that drained the mountainous land. By boat, it would take nearly six hours to get to Needle Bay, but Hawk had finally agreed that he could take time away from the phone for a five-day trip. In order to do so, though, he had worked steadily.
Other than mealtimes Angel had seen very little of Hawk for three days.
Angel had been busy too. The used kiln she had bought and shipped up from Seattle for her summer use had finally arrived. With it had come a surprise, a large crate full of carefully packed cullet – scrap glass – sent by her Seattle gallery owner. The note on top of the box said only:
The delivery men had just finished carting everything into the north wing of the Ramsey house. Under Derry’s amused eyes, Angel was attacking the crate with a crowbar. He was perfectly content to lounge in an overstuffed chair and watch her handle the brilliant, incredibly sharp pieces of glass.
“Sure you don’t want me to do it?” Derry asked lazily.
Angel smiled across the room at him and then went back to work.
“You’d probably break every piece of glass in the crate,” she said.
“You’re just going to make it all into little pieces anyway,” Derry pointed out in a reasonable, teasing voice.
“But there’s method in my madness. In yours there’s just muscle.”
The top came off to the accompaniment of high squeals from the nails used to secure the crate. Angel set aside the crowbar and pulled on a pair of thin, supple suede gloves. Scrap glass had edges sharper than any razor she had ever used.
“Careful,” said Derry.
Angel gave him a long-suffering look. He smiled and shrugged lightly.
Neither of them noticed that Hawk had come to stand just outside the doorway of the studio, drawn by the sound of nails screaming against green wood.
“That stuff’s lethal,” Derry persisted, eyeing the glass.
“Only if you’re careless.”
“And who bandaged your hand the last time you slipped up?” asked Derry in a dry voice.
“I did,” Angel said without looking up from the glass. “You were carousing in Vancouver with your friends.”
“Slander!”
“Bald truth.”
Angel set aside a mound of packing material and made a delighted sound.
“Jess found me a batch of muff!” she crowed.
Eagerly, but carefully, Angel drew out the layers of packing material and began to sort the biggest pieces of scrap glass into the rows of cubbyholes that lined one wall of her studio.
Most of the cullet was muff, a special kind of glass that was treasured for its flaws rather than its perfection. A single sheet of muff had infinite variability in texture, thickness, and color. Muff added a depth to stained glass designs that never failed to excite Angel.
“That piece looks like hell,” said Hawk.
Startled, Angel turned and looked over her shoulder at Hawk, then back at the tray-sized piece of muff she was putting away. Its purples varied from ultrapale to nearly black. Swirls, ripples, and bubbles randomly distorted the surface of the glass.
Angel pivoted gracefully, holding the piece up to the light streaming through the north window. Instantly the glass was transformed into something alive, light pooling and sliding, every tint and tone of purple the eye could see, glass haunted with radiant shadows and flashing possibilities.
“It’s magnificent,” Angel said, slowly lowering the glass.
“It’s flawed,” said Hawk.
“So is life. That’s the most complex part of its beauty.”
Hawk went very still for a moment, held as much by Angel’s words as by the jeweled flash of color when she turned and carefully slid the unique glass into a cubbyhole that held other shades of purple. Though Hawk said nothing, he watched her with an intensity that made his narrowed eyes glitter like shards of clear brown crystal.
Angel didn’t notice. She had just seen a shaft of unusual color in the crate.
“What’s this?” she asked, working quickly.
Packed in with the muff were several partial sheets of flashed glass. The dominant color of the two-layer glass was an amazingly clear, rich chestnut. Beneath the thin layer of luminous brown was a layer of bronze-toned glass. When the top layer of glass was etched with acid, the bronze would show through, giving depth and highlights to the brown.
“Like sunlight on a hawk’s feathers,” murmured Angel.
But Angel didn’t say that aloud, for she sensed Hawk walking toward her, closer with every second. A frisson of heat went through her, a tiny shiver of response that she couldn’t control.
The more Angel was around Hawk, the more she was drawn to him. She didn’t know if it was the same for him. She could not read his silences.
Hawk stepped forward, drawn by the beauty of the glass and the woman holding it. When he stopped, he was so close to Angel that he could feel her hair drift across his chest when she turned to look over her shoulder at him.
“Is this glass more to your taste?” Angel asked.
She stepped slightly away from Hawk as she held the transparent, deep brown glass up to the northern light.
The glass blazed like a cinnamon diamond.
Angel looked critically at the pattern of illumination and announced, “Flawless.”
Hawk simply looked at Angel’s hair, shining with the same light that had transformed the glass. He was still consumed by the echoes of her earlier words about life and flaws and beauty.
Then Hawk realized that he had softly wound a tendril of Angel’s hair around his finger and was bringing it toward his lips. Instantly he let go, angry at himself for revealing the obsession that Angel had become to him. He planned to purge himself of it, and her, on their five-day trip.
Abruptly Hawk turned away from Angel and the light pouring incandescently through her hair.
“I have a few more calls to make before we can leave,” he said curtly.
Angel watched Hawk walk away, her eyes dark. She had sensed a vague stirring in her hair, the warmth of Hawk’s breath and his body, and then his withdrawal. She looked over at Derry and smiled crookedly.
“I seem to annoy your Mr. Hawkins,” said Angel, her voice light. “All I have to do is breathe.”
