good reflexes and a kid’s belief in life everlasting. I won more than I lost.”
Breath held, Angel waited.
“I gave the money to Jenna,” Hawk said, “and she kept the bank from closing us down during the dry years. Then we had two good years, rain and sun in just the right amounts at just the right times.”
Hawk looked at Angel and realized that the washcloth had fallen from her back.
“Lie down,” he said quietly.
Angel hesitated. She wanted to see Hawk’s face while he talked.
Strong hands pressed gently on her shoulders.
She gave in, lying down again. But her eyes never left his face as he wrung out the wash-cloth in hot water. She hardly noticed when the cloth again rested on her back, held in place by the light pressure of Hawk’s hand.
“I kept on racing,” Hawk said. “The money was better than anything I could make working on the farm. Then Jenna came to me with a plan – sell the farm and buy a real car for me to race.”
Hawk’s voice was lazy, but cold contempt for himself and Jenna made every word distinct, cutting.
“I couldn’t believe my luck,” he said. “Not only was I screwing the hottest piece of tail in all of Texas, but she was willing to give me her half of the farm so that I could race in the big time. What more could any boy ask?”
But she said it only to herself. She was learning why Hawk thought love such a bitter sham.
“So we went to the lawyer and signed the papers,” Hawk continued. “The money would come to me on my eighteenth birthday, the day Jenna stopped being my guardian. We were going to get married, buy a race car, and live happily ever after.”
Hawk said no more.
Angel tensed. She didn’t want to ask, knew she shouldn’t, she had no right… but she couldn’t stop herself.
“What happened?” Angel asked starkly.
Chapter 22
At first Angel didn’t think that Hawk was going to answer. Then he shrugged and began speaking again. His voice was cold and remote.
And so was Hawk.
“I came back from a race the day of my eighteenth birthday, grinning like an idiot, a shiny plastic trophy in my hands,” Hawk said. “There was nobody in the house but a young woman. A stranger. She was pregnant, and as surprised to see me as I was to see her.”
When the silence became more difficult than words, Angel said, “I don’t understand.”
“Neither did I. Then she told me that her husband had bought the farm from Jenna, paid cash, owned every damn thing except the clothes on my back.”
The silence stretched so long that Angel was afraid Hawk wouldn’t speak anymore. Finally he did. His voice was flat, bland, as though the past no longer had the power to hurt him.
It hurt Angel, though. She kept thinking of the boy who had hoarded a Christmas candy cane and still treasured the sweet memory, a tangible symbol of someone caring for him, if only a little, and only once.
“Seems that I’d signed my half of the farm over to Jenna in that lawyer’s office,” Hawk said.
Contempt and amusement laced his voice and made his eyes as bleak as a winter sky.
“Seems that Jenna had been sleeping with that lawyer for a while,” Hawk said. “Seems that I was on my own. And Jenna? Well, Jenna was gone. Big city lights and men who didn’t have Texas dirt ground into the skin of their hands.”
“What did you do?” asked Angel after a moment.
Her voice was soft, almost afraid. The Hawk she knew today would have hunted Jenna down. Then Angel realized that the Hawk she knew today wouldn’t have been taken in by Jenna.
Hawk wouldn’t have cared enough to hunt anyone down.
“I raced cars,” Hawk said.
The clipped words told Angel more than she wanted to know. She saw a younger Hawk driving like a man possessed, not caring about living or dying or anything in between.
“I had women, too,” Hawk said. “As long as I was winning, anyway. Too many losses, a crash, and the women went away. Start winning again, and they came back like great, buzzing black flies.”
Angel closed her eyes at the contempt in Hawk’s voice, contempt for the women and for himself.
“You’re lucky you didn’t kill yourself,” she said when she trusted her voice.
“It took me a while to figure that out,” Hawk admitted. “At first, I was kind of disappointed by all the near misses.”
Angel shuddered.
“Then a funny thing happened,” Hawk said slowly. “Each time I nearly died, life became more valuable to me. By the time I was twenty-three, I knew that racing wasn’t a bright way for a grown man to make a living. It took me six months to come back from that crash, and another three years to make enough money to get out of the race game altogether.”
“What did you do?”
“Played the stock market. Bought and sold land. I had a flair for it. Like racing. And like racing, I didn’t really care whether I won or lost. The adrenaline was enough.”
“And now?” Angel whispered.
Hawk’s hand hesitated. Without touching her, he traced the smooth line of her spine and thought of all the women he’d taken and then left, the cold emptiness of the sky and his heart, the hunt and the kill and the taste of ashes.
“Now, adrenaline isn’t enough,” he said. “But it’s better than nothing.”
The bleak acceptance in Hawk’s voice was a talon sliding into Angel, pain searing through her. She closed her eyes for a moment, unable to bear looking at him without touching him, giving him a simple moment of human contact, human caring.
But she was still afraid of him, afraid of herself. Most of all, she was afraid of the sensual hunger that rippled tightly through her when she remembered the initial beauty of their lovemaking.
She hadn’t forgotten how it ended, pain and contempt and fury.
Hawk lifted the cloth, touched Angel’s skin gently, and reached for the antibiotic salve. He had picked it up along with his jeans – the jeans he had pulled over his swimsuit, blurring the blunt outline of his desire.
He rubbed the balm into Angel’s skin so carefully that she hardly felt it.
“How does your back feel now?” he asked after a time.
“Better,” she said, sitting up. “Much less sore.”
Angel’s words reassured Hawk, but her voice was frayed and she refused to look at him.
“Angel?”
Silently she shook her head. Her hair fell over her face, veiling her tears before Hawk could see them. He had heard them in her voice, though.
Gently he smoothed back the bright fall of hair. Tears sparkled on her eyelashes.
“I’m sorry,” Hawk said, afraid to touch her, to wound her again. “I never meant to hurt you, Angel. Not you. I didn’t realize that you were different from the others.”
Angel’s eyes opened, releasing the glittering tears. Through them she saw the pain on Hawk’s face, the regret shadowing his eyes and making his voice hoarse.
“I know that now,” she whispered.
Slowly, Hawk gathered Angel into his arms, holding her lightly, murmuring words of comfort. Tears welled transparently, for she was helpless to stop them.
Hawk’s life had been so different from Angel’s. She knew now why he had become harsh, merciless, predatory, a man with neither softness nor love in him.
Yet he wanted love, needed it, longed for it with a fierceness that would have frightened Angel if it hadn’t been so like her own hunger. She touched his cheek with a hand that shook very slightly.
