A Woman Without Lies

Hawk hesitated. Angel had spoken with such conviction that he felt he should know what her answer meant.

“I don’t understand,” he said finally, loosening his grip on her arm.

“I know. There’s a lot about people – and me – that you don’t understand.”

“Don’t push me, Angel,” Hawk said, anger tightening the already harsh lines of his face, “or I’ll go ask Derry my questions and then tell him some things he really doesn’t want to know.”

Angel closed her eyes. She knew that Hawk would kill Derry’s dreams as casually as he had killed hers. That must not happen.

“Derry came within twenty-four hours of being my brother-in-law,” she said, her voice empty.

Hawk’s eyes narrowed.

“Grant,” he said. “That was his name, wasn’t it? Grant?”

“Yes.”

“What happened?”

“He died.”

“When.”

The word was flat, the demand unavoidable. Angel had known it would come to this. She had prepared herself for it every step of the way down the cliff.

Maybe if I tell Hawk, he can find enough human compassion in himself not to make my life hell for the next four weeks.

Maybe there could be a truce.

The thought gave Angel the strength to take a slow breath, to reach for the colors cascading through her mind, to make of those colors a single rose unfolding.

“Grant – ” Angel’s voice thinned into hoarse silence.

She rarely spoke Grant’s name aloud. The hurt of hearing it surprised her. When she spoke again, her voice was without emotion or music.

“Grant died four years ago last night, the night before our wedding. His mother died then, too. So did my father and my mother.”

Hawk went absolutely still. He had no doubt that he was hearing the truth.

He would rather have heard lies. Lies can be disregarded, discarded, ignored. Truth could not. It hurt too much.

Like Angel, hurting.

He could sense the intensity of her emotions breaking over him in waves of rage and helplessness and pain. Yet her voice didn’t show any of it, nor did her face. Only her eyes, haunted by shadows, the color of the sea torn apart by hidden rocks.

Her words continued calmly, relentlessly. Her eyes were dry. The tiny bells she wore shivered and cried with inhuman beauty, inhuman pain.

“I would have died, too,” Angel said, “if Derry hadn’t dragged me out of the wreckage as it burned. I was badly injured. He came to me in the hospital, fought for my life harder than I did. And then he took care of me until I could walk again.”

“Then why the hell didn’t you sleep with him?” snarled Hawk, angered by the deep emotion he sensed beneath Angel’s calm words.

“That’s not the kind of love we feel for each other.”

Hawk waited.

Angel’s eyes focused on Hawk. There was nothing of comfort in them.

“I don’t know if I can make you understand,” she said simply. “Derry is the only person on earth who shares my memories of growing up, of my parents and Grant and summer picnics on the beach… laughter and firelight and the beauty of falling in love for the first time. Derry is the only one who remembers the night Grant and I announced our engagement, the words and the – ”

“Why don’t the two of you build a god-damn shrine?” Hawk asked coldly.

He didn’t question the unreasonable rage that coiled within him at the thought of Angel loving anyone.

Even a dead man.

Fury tore at Angel like steel talons. With an effort that made her tremble, she kept her voice even.

“You are well named,” she said carefully. “Bird of prey. I was very easy prey, wasn’t I?”

“Is that why you raced home last night? Were you afraid you’d end up in bed with me again?”

The harsh expression on Hawk’s face steadied Angel as nothing else could have.

“No,” Angel said quietly. “I’m not afraid of ending up in bed with you again. I’ve learned the meaning of the old saying about casting pearls before swine.”

“Is that how you thought of your virginity – a real pearl?” asked Hawk caustically.

“No. But you made up for it. You were a real swine.”

There was a moment of savage silence.

Then Hawk said softly, dangerously, “Why did you give yourself to me, Angel? Because you did. I didn’t take you. Or is that the lie you’re consoling yourself with this morning? Poor little Angel,” he said mockingly, “done in by an experienced Hawk.”

Suddenly Angel was glad for the tears that she had cried last night. It made it possible not to cry now. Deep inside herself the silent, tearing question changed from Why? to How?

How did I so badly misjudge this man?

When the answer came to her, Angel spoke it aloud without thinking, without caring.

“I thought I loved you,” Angel said. “That was very stupid of me, I confused desire with love – and ended up with neither.”

Hawk’s pupils dilated, then narrowed to ebony points in brown eyes that were deep and clear. He said nothing, for he was too surprised to speak.

She had said love with the same mocking emphasis that he habitually used when he spoke the word. And in speaking that way, Angel had told Hawk that he had hurt her as badly as he had once been hurt.

The thought sank like a hook deep in his gut, twisting with each breath he took.

Hawk hadn’t even believed it was possible to wound Angel so savagely. To be hurt like that, you must first love. But Hawk hadn’t believed in love since he was eighteen.

Not for him.

Not for anyone.

“No more questions?” Angel asked, her voice even.

Hawk said nothing. There was nothing for him to say.

“Good,” Angel said crisply. “Let’s go fishing.”

The controlled chill of her words rocked Hawk, angering him. His mouth tightened.

“Cold as the sea, aren’t you?” he asked.

Angel looked out over the shimmering, cloud-shadowed expanse of water in front of her.

“The sea isn’t cold,” she said. “It teems with life. I’m as cold as a bird of prey. Death, not life. Do you want to go fishing this afternoon?”

“I’d like to break your neck.”

“That would be a pity, ” Angel said, her voice indifferent as she turned to face Hawk once again. “It’s about the only part of me that hasn’t been broken.”

Hawk’s voice changed as he leaned toward her.

“Including your heart?” he asked softly.

“My heart was broken long before I met you.”

“Angel… ”

Hawk’s voice was a warmth brushing over her temples. Emotions twisted inside her, trying to elude her control.

“Don’t call me that,” Angel said tightly.

“Why? Because he called you Angel?”