Elizabeth Lowell - A Woman Without Lies

“Look,” said Hawk.

He touched Angel’s arm and pointed to her right, fifty yards away, along the sheer face of a cliff. Gulls were diving from the rocks into a seething ball of herring. Protected from the wind, the sea was green and slick, showing each bubble, each darting silver body.

Angel checked the angle of the sun, measured it against the amount of water yet to travel, and shook her head.

“I’d love to throw a few lines into that,” she said longingly.

“But?” asked Hawk, accurately reading Angel’s decision not to fish.

“This can be a nasty stretch of water when the tide is running full. We have four days to fish. I’d rather not be caught in these currents after dark.”

Only then did Hawk notice the subtle gradations of green in the water, the sinuous drift of debris marking boundaries of competing currents.

“Isn’t this slack tide?” he asked.

“Close.”

Hawk eyed the seething water with real respect. If it was this lively at the slack tide, he could imagine what it was like when the tide was running full – unthinkable masses of water racing between islands, shouldering against rocky channels, heaping into froth and silent, violent whirlpools.

Where Angel and Hawk were now, the Inside Passage had unraveled into a multitude of tiny openings winding among a maze of islands. Into that maze poured the power of the Pacific, a power that was constricted by rocks and narrows, currents and countercurrents.

Some of the islands were large, some were no bigger than boulders fringed with rock reefs. Even with a navigational map, Hawk knew that he would have difficulty picking his way through the obstacle course of rock and sea in full daylight at slack tide.

With darkness and the tide coming on, piloting the boat would be as demanding as racing a car with a broken wrist.

Hawk had done that once, when he was young and hadn’t cared whether he lived or died. It wasn’t an experience that he was eager to repeat.

Angel, however, seemed well in control of the situation. She reminded Hawk of himself during a race, alert and coordinated, hands firm on the wheel without clenching, eyes picking out the safest course. He sat back and enjoyed her skill, pleased with his guide through the unexpected beauties and dangers of the Inside Passage.

The pressure of Hawk’s attention finally became too great to ignore. Angel glanced sideways quickly, wondering what lay behind the enigmatic, very male lines of his face.

“Is something wrong?” she asked.

“No. You’re very good,” said Hawk distinctly. “I enjoy watching such a high level of skill.”

Angel’s eyes widened with surprise. “Thank you.”

“Did Grant teach you?”

Dark lashes closed for an instant, concealing the blue-green color of Angel’s eyes.

Then, clearly, she said, “Yes.”

Angel waited, but no more questions came.

Hawk eased out of the triangular bed that filled the bow of the boat. It was absolutely black in the bow except for a lighter patch of darkness where the vent was. Carefully he opened the door to the cockpit cabin, trying to make no noise. His moccasins made no sound as he walked across the runner of indoor-outdoor carpeting.

The cabin beyond the cockpit was empty.

As Hawk had suspected, Angel had chosen to sleep outside, in the stern of the boat. It was as far away from him as she could get without sleeping on the rocks that lined Needle Bay’s shore. The built-in seats and the raised platform covering the engines combined to form an area the size of a double bed. Custom-made pads ensured that the bed was reasonably comfortable.

It was a chilly bed, though. The predawn air had a definite bite. Angel had slid down into her sleeping bag until no more than a pale cloud of hair showed.

Hawk crossed to the stern and touched her hair very gently, taking care not to wake her. Away from her face, her hair was cool, almost cold, yet oddly alive. It gathered light like a pearl, shimmering and shifting with each touch of Hawk’s hand.

He remembered how her hair had looked a few days ago when he had laid her down on the dark quilt in the bow of the boat. The pale fire of her hair and skin had made him want to bury himself in Angel like a warm pool.

She had been so beautiful, and he had been so cruel.

The lines on Hawk’s face deepened as he gently wound a strand of Angel’s hair around his finger. He knew so little about her, and so much.

She had given to him what she had given to no other man. He had taken, unknowing, giving her nothing in return, not even pleasure. Then he had raged at her for destroying his world, for taking his certainties about life and love and women and smashing each one of them.

He had thought Angel was aware of what she had done to him, that she had done it deliberately.

Today Hawk knew that wasn’t true. Angel had no more known the depth of his cynicism than he had known the depth of her innocence.

But he knew now.

Angel had taught him that there was a woman without lies.

He had taught her that there was a man without love. Her eyes darkened when she looked at him. She walked around tables to avoid being close to him. All that touched her were his questions, questions like talons sinking into her, making her writhe with pain.

Yet Hawk had to ask, had to know. He had never in his life found anything more compelling to him than the truths spoken by her soft lips.

As gently as Hawk had gathered it, he released the pale ribbon of Angel’s hair that he had wound around his finger. His skin suddenly felt chilled, missing the warmth of her silky hair. He touched the blond softness once more, sliding his fingertip down until he felt only the cold material of the sleeping bag.

Then he turned and went back into the cabin, making no more noise than the sunrise staining the eastern horizon.

Angel woke to the smell of coffee and fried bacon. She sat up quickly, her heart pounding, her mind disoriented in the instant before awakening. The cold air and multicolored sky told her that she was outside at dawn. Then she felt the subtle motions of the boat and remembered.

Hawk.

The first day of their fishing trip.

“How many eggs?” asked Hawk, opening the cabin door and watching Angel’s tousled emergence into awareness.

“Fried or scrambled?” she asked.

“I’ll know as soon as I crack the shells,” he said.

A smile curled the corners of Angel’s mouth. “Keep me posted.”

With a curt nod, Hawk turned back toward the stove. The sight of Angel’s sleepy disarray made his whole body clench with hunger. Once that had made him angry. Now it made regret stab through him as deeply as desire.

Angel unzipped the sleeping bag, shivered, and walked quickly to the cabin door, closing it behind her to keep in the heat from the galley stove.

“Do you want me to make omelets?” she asked, hesitating.

The cabin seemed very small. Hawk’s height and wide shoulders all but filled the area.

Hawk looked over his shoulder, sensing Angel’s sudden unease.

“That’s all right,” he said. “I enjoy cooking breakfast once in a while.”

Angel hovered just inside the doorway. Her hair was rumpled, her shirttails showed beneath the hem of her dove-gray pullover sweater, and her stocking feet looked oddly vulnerable. Obviously she had changed her clothes last night and then crawled into her sleeping bag.

“I’ll have to try your method tonight,” Hawk said.

With an effort he forced himself to look away from Angel. He cracked eggs into the frying pan with the deftness 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.