A Woman Without Lies

of a man who cooked eggs more than once in a while.

“My method?” Angel asked.

“Putting on clean clothes before getting in bed,” explained Hawk. “I’d forgotten how cold clothes get when they’re left out all night.”

“Especially when you’re all warm from bed.”

“Fried,” Hawk said.

“What?” asked Angel, off balance. “Oh, you didn’t break the yolks. Congratulations. I’ll have two.”

Angel watched in fascination as the corner of Hawk’s mouth curled upward. She was close enough to see that the corners of his eyes crinkled slightly too. She held her breath, hoping to see him really smile. When he didn’t, she sighed quietly. Maybe when he caught a salmon…

The thought made her start guiltily.

“We should be out on the water,” Angel said. “I overslept.”

“I don’t think it matters.”

“Why?”

“Wind,” said Hawk succinctly. “Whitecaps until hell won’t have it.”

He gestured with the spatula toward the bow windows.

Angel eased past Hawk for a better look. The aisle was so narrow that she couldn’t prevent her body from brushing over his, couldn’t help but notice the width of his shoulders and the narrowness of his hips, the muscular lines of his body beneath jeans and wool shirt.

She took a deep breath to steady herself. It only made things worse. The smell of soap and clean aftershave, wool and male warmth, assailed her.

Abruptly Angel pushed past to the bow. She had known that the mornings would be the worst for her. They always were. Her mind woke up several beats behind her senses. With a man like Hawk around, that could be dangerous.

Or would it? Angel thought. Hawk hasn’t crowded me with anything but questions since our disastrous attempt at making love.

No, she corrected instantly. Sex. If it had been love, it would have ended a lot differently.

The sight of wind-churned water took Angel’s mind off Hawk’s male presence and the difference between sex and love.

The ocean beyond Needle Bay’s protective cliffs was a seething mass of whitecaps and spray torn off by the wind. Fishing of any kind was out of the question.

“You’re right,” Angel said. “Whitecaps until hell won’t have it. I wouldn’t risk that water unless a life was at stake.”

Hawk looked beyond Angel to the violence of wind and sea. Nothing had changed.

“Do these winds usually last long?” he asked.

“Anywhere from an hour to a week. Nothing was predicted, though. It should blow over by evening.”

“If it doesn’t?”

Angel sighed. “Do you know how to play cribbage?”

Again the corner of Hawk’s mouth curved up.

“I’m willing to learn,” he said simply.

Angel listened to Hawk’s deep, gritty voice and found herself wondering if cribbage was all that he was willing to learn from her. No matter how she fought it, she was still haunted by the feeling that beneath Hawk’s harshness there was capacity for love as great as his capacity for cynicism and hate.

It had been that way with her. Her rage and hatred at life had been as deep as her love for Grant. In the end she had survived both the love and the violent rage.

What would it have been like if I had known only violence, only rage, only cruelty? What would it be like never to have known love?

Then she remembered what Hawk had said, and the bittersweet acceptance in his tone. Love linking to love. A beautiful closed circle.

And Hawk, always on the outside.

How long can a man live on the outside before he loses the ability to love? Angel asked herself silently. How long before there’s no more hope?

“Your eggs are getting cold.”

Hawk’s matter-of-fact voice cut across Angel’s thoughts. She sat and ate the food that Hawk had cooked for her, drank the coffee that he poured into a mug and handed to her. When he sat across from her to eat his own breakfast, their knees met briefly under the table.

The enforced intimacy of the boat was as unsettling to Angel’s serenity as the northern wind was to the surface of the sea. By the time she finished her breakfast, she knew that she wasn’t going to spend the day on the boat with nothing between her and Hawk but a cribbage board.

Quickly Angel got up and rinsed her dishes in the small galley sink.

“Do you like bouillabaisse?” she asked a bit grimly.

“Yes.”

Hawk watched Angel work with narrowed eyes. He had sensed her flinching away from even the most casual kind of physical contact with him. That fact that he had earned her fear didn’t make it any easier to take.

“What I have in mind is closer to beachcomber’s stew,” she admitted. “I wish I’d thought to bring a crab trap.”

Hawk gestured toward the lower row of cupboards that lined the hull.

“Try in there,” he said. “First door to the left.”

Angel bent and opened the cupboard door. A coil of yellow plastic rope and a bright, collapsible metal mesh basket met her eager fingers. She stood and smiled at Hawk, holding the new trap triumphantly.

“How did you know?” she asked.

“Derry said you loved to eat crabs. The man at the bait store said that trap would be fine for casual crabbing.”

For a moment Angel simply stared at Hawk, realizing that he had gone out of his way to find something that would please her.

“Thank you,” she said slowly, almost uncertainly. “You didn’t have to.”

“I know.” Hawk’s voice was soft, as deep as the color of his eyes. “That’s why I enjoyed doing it.”

As Angel looked into Hawk’s clear brown eyes, her hands tightened on the trap. She had never thought of brown as a warm color before.

But it was.

The brown of Hawk’s eyes was deep and warm with flecks of gold like laughter suspended, waiting only for the right moment to be set free.

Suddenly Angel felt as though she couldn’t breathe. It wasn’t fear of being close to Hawk. Not quite. And that was most unnerving of all. She turned away from him in a rush.

“First,” Angel said huskily, “clams.”

“Clams?”

“Clams,” she repeated firmly. “And a bucket.”

“Third cupboard from the end.” Then, amusement rippling beneath his words, Hawk added, “The bucket, not the clams.”

Hawk saw Angel’s eyes widen with understanding. He stretched out his leg and hooked the cupboard open with his toe.

“Buckets, digger, and beach shoes,” he said.

“You thought of everything.”

“No,” softly, “but I’m trying to learn.”

Angel’s hands tightened painfully in the wire mesh. She knew that Hawk wasn’t referring to beachcombing.

“Don’t look so frightened, Angel,” Hawk said. His voice was low, almost harsh. “I’m not asking you to do anything except be yourself.”