colors flashing and expanding in a silent explosion of beauty.
He stopped, unable to move, consumed by colors. Silence stretched into one minute, two, three, but he didn’t notice. He tilted the panel first one way and then the other, wholly caught in the fantastic sensual wealth of colors pooling in his hands.
Finally he looked up and saw Angel watching him.
“That’s why I love stained glass,” she said, looking at the brilliance shimmering in Hawk’s grasp. “It’s like life. Everything depends on the light you view it in.”
The words had no more than left Angel’s lips that she realized that the words could be applied to Hawk. Silently she closed the door behind him, hoping that he hadn’t noticed.
“Are you trying to tell me that my point of view on life is too dark?” Hawk asked.
The question told Angel that he had not only noticed, he had understood all the subtle ramifications.
“No,” Angel said. “I was merely making an observation on the nature of stained glass and light.”
She walked toward her car, not looking at Hawk. In the three days since she and Hawk had talked on the beach, she had carefully avoided anything that hinted of personal topics.
“Nothing personal, is that it?” Hawk asked with a black lift of his eyebrow.
“As you say. Nothing personal.”
Angel opened the trunk of her car, shook out an old quilt, and gestured for Hawk to put the panel on the quilt.
“How much is a piece like this worth?” Hawk asked.
She watched as he handled the awkward panel with an ease she envied. Powerful, supple, hard, his body moved with a male grace that surprised her anew each time she noticed it. Like stained glass, Hawk kept changing with each angle, each moment, each shift of illumination.
And like glass, he could cut her to the bone in the first instant of her carelessness.
“A small panel like this would bring between ten and twelve hundred dollars,” Angel said, wrapping the stained glass with deft motions. “Minus the gallery commission, of course, and the cost of materials. Good glass is very expensive.”
She closed the trunk lid.
“How many pieces did you have in the show in Vancouver?” persisted Hawk.
“Thirty-two.”
Angel opened her purse and rummaged for her keys.
“Did they sell?” Hawk asked.
She looked up, only to find herself impaled on eyes as brown and clear as crystal.
“All but three,” she said.
“The ones that sold – were they small?”
“No. They were quite large. Why?”
Hawk ignored the question.
“How many shows do you do a year?” he asked.
Angel pulled her keys out of her purse and faced Hawk, wondering why he cared. But it was easier to answer than to argue. In any case, it didn’t really matter.
Money was a safe topic. It wasn’t personal, like emotions.
“Three shows this year,” Angel said. “One in Seattle, one in Portland, and one in Vancouver.”
“Did they all go well?”
“Yes.”
“You really don’t need the money from Eagle Head, do you?” asked Hawk.
“No.”
“But Derry does.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Angel hesitated, then shrugged. Hawk could always ask Derry. It was hardly a secret in any case.
“Derry wants to be a surgeon,” she said. “That means between six and ten more years of advanced training. He’s been accepted at Harvard, but no scholarship was offered because, technically, Derry is wealthy.”
“Eagle Head.”
“Yes.”
“I see.”
“Do you?” Angel asked, looking swiftly at Hawk. “For once, let me be sure there’s enough
She took a swift breath, steeling herself for the words to come.
“This isn’t a boyish whim on Derry’s part,” Angel said. “My parents were killed instantly in the wreck. Derry’s mother wasn’t. His brother wasn’t. Derry dragged them free – and then watched them bleed to death because he didn’t know enough to save their lives.”
Hawk’s face was expressionless, utterly still, his eyes almost black. There was a question he wanted to ask but he didn’t know how to word it without watching ghosts darken Angel’s eyes.
“And you?” he asked finally, softly. “Were you conscious after Derry pulled you out of the wreckage?”
“Yes. I couldn’t help Derry.”
Angel heard the question Hawk didn’t quite know how to ask. She knew how to answer it, though.
And she knew how much the answer would hurt her.
“My collarbone was smashed, my ribs were broken, I had multiple fractures of both legs,” she said neutrally. “Derry’s mother was unconscious. His brother wasn’t that lucky. So I lay there, I couldn’t move, and I listened to Grant – ”
Her voice stopped. When the words resumed, they were like powdered glass, no color, just sharp edges abrading everything they touched.
“When it was over,” Angel said carefully, “Derry wept and beat his fists against the road until there was no skin, only blood. I could do nothing about that, either.”
“Angel,” Hawk said softly, touching her cheek with gentle fingertips, regretting his question and her pain.
She stepped away from the touch.
“Derry swore then to become a doctor, saving lives to replace the lives he hadn’t known how to save,” Angel said. “It’s his way to make peace with a life that was cruel enough to leave him uninjured so that he could watch his mother bleed to death and his brother die in agony.”
Angel looked up and her breath caught. She had seen enough sadness and pain to recognize it in Hawk’s dark features.
“You really do like Derry, don’t you?” she said, surprised that Hawk could feel that much emotion. “He likes you, too. God knows why,” she added absently, frowning.
She had never understood Derry’s smiling acceptance of Hawk’s razor tongue.
Hawk’s face became expressionless again.
“Maybe I remind Derry of Grant,” suggested Hawk.
“You’re nothing like Derry’s brother.”
“Oh?”
The black arc of Hawk’s eyebrow irritated Angel.
“Grant was capable of love,” she said coolly.
“Then he must have been loved,” Hawk shot back.
“What do you mean?”
“Grant’s mother loved him. Derry loved him. You loved him.”
“Yes.”
“That must have been nice,” Hawk said.
His voice was flat. His words were simple statement rather than ironic mockery: It must have been nice to be
