her past and future, to know if he could ever love as she did, sweetness and fire and courage in equal measure. Yet even as he opened his mouth, he knew he couldn’t ask that of her.
So Hawk asked the only question he could, and Angel heard the other question beneath it, the one he couldn’t ask.
“Are these wild raspberries?” Hawk asked, looking at the thicket that all but surrounded him.
“No. They’re like a house cat that has gone feral,” Angel said. “Bred and created by man, for man, and then abandoned to live alone. Most things that are treated like that wither and die. Some things survive… and in the right season the strongest of the survivors bear a sweet, wild fruit that is the most beautiful thing on earth. Like you, Hawk.”
Hawk let the bucket of raspberries slip from his hand. He picked up Angel in a single, swift movement, and then he held her tightly, saying all that he could, her name a song on his lips until his mouth found hers in a kiss that left both of them shaking.
He carried her to the quilt and undressed her as though it were the first time, his hands exquisitely gentle, his mouth a sweet fire consuming her. When she could bear no more he came to her, filling her mind and her body, loving her in the only way he could.
It was the same later that night, a beauty that destroyed and created Angel, death and rebirth in the arms of the man she loved. She touched Hawk equally, fire and hunger, the promise of her mouth both hot and sweet, innocent and knowing, worshipping his body until he pulled her around him and was burned to his soul by an angel’s ecstatic fire.
Long after Angel fell asleep in his arms, Hawk lay awake, watching the patterns of moonlight and darkness beyond Angel’s windows. Then he slowly eased away from her, holding his breath for fear that she would wake.
If she awakened, Hawk wouldn’t have the strength to leave her. He would stay and stay, drinking from the well of her love, giving nothing in return.
For long, long minutes, Hawk stood beside the bed and watched his angel sleep. He bent down, aching to touch her, but did not. His hand hesitated over the pillow next to her head.
Then Hawk turned and walked soundlessly out of the house, into the night.
Sunlight woke Angel, sunlight spilling in golden magnificence across her pillow. She murmured sleepily and reached for Hawk. Her hand touched emptiness. She sat up quickly, looking around. And then she froze.
Resting on Hawk’s pillow was a small candy cane wrapped with a shiny green ribbon.
Angel put her head in her hands and wept, knowing that Hawk had gone.
Chapter 26
Derry looked at Angel’s wan face and determined smile.
“I don’t have to leave for Harvard right away,” he said. “I’ll wait until Hawk wraps up whatever he had to do and comes back.”
“Don’t be silly.”
Angel’s voice was calm, but her eyes too dark in a face that was too pale, her skin almost transparent.
“Are you sure?” Derry asked.
“Yes.”
Angel said no more. There was no reason to disturb Derry’s assumption that Hawk had left her only long enough to put his business in order. Derry had enough to worry about with moving thousands of miles and learning to walk on his leg again. He didn’t need to add Angel to his list of problems.
Nor was there any reason for Derry to stay with her. Not really. She needed to be alone, but she didn’t think Derry would understand that.
“Do you need any help packing the last of your things?” she asked.
“No. Matt, Dave, and I got it done while you were out berrying yesterday. Hawk told me not to worry about the furniture or anything. Said to leave everything just as it is.”
Emotion seethed through Angel, fighting against the serenity that she had finally imposed over her grief.
It was only yesterday that she and Hawk had been together, feeding berries to one another, laughing, staining their hands and mouths with the bursting summer sweetness of ripe fruit until passion flared and they kissed each other deeply and tasted a wilder, sweeter fruit.
“All I have left here is the suitcase that I’m taking on the plane,” added Derry, “and it’s already packed.”
A horn sounded out front. One of Derry’s friends who was also going to the mainland had come to take him to the ferry. The horn sounded again.
Angel looked at the clock in her studio. She bent down and picked up the small suitcase Derry had set by the door.
“You’d better hurry,” she said.
“Angie – ”
Angel turned and walked into Derry’s arms. For a long time they hugged each other.
“I love you, Derry,” Angel said, her eyes bright with tears. “I’ll always be here if you need me.”
“I don’t feel right about leaving you,” Derry muttered, concern showing in his voice. “I know how much you’re missing Hawk.”
Angel looked up and saw Derry’s love for her.
“Get out of here before I cry all over the shirt I just ironed for you,” she said softly, giving him a smile that trembled.
Derry smiled in return. He handed Angel a piece of paper.
“I’ll be at that number by eleven o’ clock tonight. Call me, okay? I’m going to be homesick as hell.”
Derry kissed Angel quickly, grabbed his suitcase, and walked down the hall, limping slightly.
Angel watched him from the window until she could see nothing but her own tears. Then she went down to the beach and walked until darkness came and she could see nothing at all.
She had not known how much she loved Hawk until she felt the pain of his loss. It was like breathing shattered glass, each instant a new lesson in agony.
After dark, Angel paced through the empty house until it was time to call Derry. Then she went to her studio, turned on every light, and began to sketch. As the dark hours melted into dawn she drew and discarded design after design, seeking one that would summarize her pain and love, and in doing so, forge new beauty from the painful shards of the past.
By dawn Angel had found her design.
She worked all day, submerging herself in the demands of her creation. She enlarged the proportions of the sketch until it would fill a panel six feet tall and four feet wide, as wide as the window in her bedroom.
She traced the working drawing onto heavy paper, using a black marker as wide as the lead bead holding the glass would be. Then she pinned the working drawing to the wall and numbered each segment of paper according to the color she had chosen for it.
Choosing the glass consumed many more hours. Every piece had to blend with and enhance the bronze and brown flashed glass Angel had chosen for the major figure. She tried several shades of gold muff glass before she found one that she liked.
Satisfied, she went to her bedroom, propped the muff against the floor-to-ceiling window there, and watched light pour through it. She turned the glass several times.
Suddenly Angel stood absolutely still. The hair on her arms stirred in primal response as she looked into the extraordinary flawed glass… and saw the suggestion of a woman’s awakening smile.
Quickly Angel marked out the area to be cut. Though she never cut glass piecemeal, this time she did. She pinned the pattern to the light table and cut out the golden cloud that had first emerged on her sketch pad.
As soon as the cloud was cut, Angel broke another rule and continued working out of sequence. She took a fine brush and filled in the vision she had seen in the glass. The shadow of a smile, the suggestion of eyes slowly opening, a few elegant strokes to evoke hair rippling in the wind, and it was done.
