Elizabeth Lowell - A Woman Without Lies

“I’ve fished once or twice,” Hawk said, his voice husky, almost yearning.

The changed quality of Hawk’s voice made Angel’s throat tighten. She saw the poignant shadow of memories cross his face, softening for a moment the harsh lines around his mouth.

Without warning, Angel felt tears burn behind her eyelids. She sensed that Hawk’s memories were like he was, bittersweet and lonely, complex and sometimes cruel. She wanted to ease the bitterness, enhance the sweetness, enrich the complexity with all the colors of emotion.

As for Hawk’s occasional cruelty, it didn’t frighten Angel. For a time after the car wreck she had been unspeakably cruel to those around her. Finally the time of cruelty had passed, leaving her purged.

Angel looked up into the dark eyes that were so close to her. Her fingers curled around a fork that still retained the heat of Hawk’s body.

“You’ll catch a dawn salmon this summer,” she said softly to Hawk. “I promise you.”

Before Hawk could answer, Angel straightened and turned, removing Hawk’s plate and silverware. In silence she stacked dishes into the dishwasher, moving quickly. Even though they had missed the tide, she was eager to be out on the water.

“Ready?” she asked, looking up.

Hawk was watching her, had been watching her since she had promised him a dawn salmon in a voice vibrant with emotion. Without making a sound, he set down his empty mug.

“I’ve been ready since I was eighteen,” Hawk said.

When Hawk heard his own words, his face settled into its normal enigmatic lines, concealing thoughts and emotions behind a mahogany mask. Silently he helped Angel carry everything out to the car. There was quite a lot. Groceries, a pile of fishing gear, jackets, and even a sketchbook Angel had thrown in at the last instant.

Hawk looked up from the gear heaped in his BMW.

“Are we going to Alaska?” asked Hawk dryly.

“What a wonderful idea,” Angel said in a wistful voice. “I’ve always wanted to sail the Inside Passage.”

Hawk gave her a hooded, assessing look.

“But that’s not on our list this summer,” Angel said.

She started shifting the bags around until she could close the trunk of the car. Hawk started to help, then stopped, riveted by the high, wild whistle of an eagle calling to the dawn.

He looked up into the sky with dark, fierce eyes, searching for the bird.

A black shape plummeted down, wings flared, talons outstretched. The prey was hidden from Hawk’s sight in the tall grass, but the raptor had no such problem. The bird struck and mantled its dying prey with half-spread wings, protecting it from view.

Then the eagle’s uncanny eyes spotted the two people standing so quietly. With a high, angry cry, the eagle took flight, carrying its prey to the treetops.

The sky was flushed with the delicate, transparent colors of true dawn. Across the strait, serrated ranks of mountains loomed like fragments of night, black and yet strangely radiant. Overhead a few tufted clouds burned scarlet, then molten gold.

A feeling of exhilaration speared through Hawk. He lifted his face to the sky, letting sunrise wash over him. He had spent too much time indoors since he had left the farm. He hadn’t known how much he had missed the sky until this moment.

From the thrusting rock summit of Eagle Head came again the untamed cry of a bird of prey.

Angel looked up, saw the fierce pleasure on Hawk’s face, and felt desire shiver through her. The feeling shocked her in the instants before she accepted it.

I shouldn’t be surprised by passion. I chose to live after Grant died in the wreck. Love and desire are a natural part of life.

Just because I haven’t wanted any man for three years doesn’t mean that I would never want a man again.

Even as Angel admitted the intensity of her attraction to Hawk, she knew that she could be hurt badly by him. Hawk was as hard a man as she had ever met. Yet beneath that hardness she sensed a yearning for beauty, for warmth, for… love. Without that yearning, she wouldn’t have been attracted to him.

But Angel knew there was no guarantee that she would be the one to touch Hawk’s yearning. There was no guarantee that anyone could touch it, even Hawk himself.

He was strong. He had lived a long time alone.

So had she.

Am I ready to risk my hard-won serenity for a man who might no longer believe in love?

She closed the trunk with a sharp, metallic sound that brought Hawk’s attention back from the sky. He watched as she got into the car. After a moment’s hesitation he slid behind the wheel, reluctant to break the luminous silence of the British Columbia dawn.

Angel said nothing during the drive, however, apparently as pleased as Hawk was by the quiet and the colors radiating through the sky.

They parked at the marina and stepped out to the keening of gulls and the smell of the sea. As one, Angel and Hawk began to carry supplies down the wooden dock to the slips.

When Angel saw Hawk’s boat, she stopped in the middle of the dock and stared. The yacht was over thirty feet long and had the sleek lines that were the hallmark of Italian powerboats. A single glance told her that the boat would handle beautifully, riding the often rough water of the Inside Passage with the ease of a hawk soaring on boiling currents of air.

“She’s beautiful,” Angel said simply, turning toward Hawk. “What’s her name?”

“I haven’t given her one.”

Angel realized that the boat was as new as it looked, polished and shining like the sun rising over the sea.

“Don’t name her too quickly,” Angel said. “A boat gets only one name. This one deserves the best.”

“Because it’s pretty?” Hawk asked casually, stepping onto the boat’s shifting deck without hesitation.

“This boat isn’t pretty,” said Angel, looking at its lines with appreciative eyes. “It’s magnificent. Form and function perfectly married. Nothing unnecessary. Nothing missing.”

Hawk turned and looked back over his shoulder at Angel. She didn’t notice. She had eyes only for the glistening white boat.

His lips curved sardonically.

“Expensive, too,” Hawk said.

Angel looked at the boat for another long moment before she sighed and answered.

“Yeah, I’ll bet. The Italians aren’t bashful about pricing their works of art.” She glanced at Hawk. “Can you, er, handle this boat?”

“I used to race powerboats.”

“I thought Derry said you raced cars.”

“I did both. There was more money in cars.”

“And more danger?” Angel asked.

Hawk’s eyes narrowed.

“Does the idea of danger turn you on?” he asked.

“No.”

“It turns on a lot of women.”

“Does it?” asked Angel. “Why?”

Hawk made a harsh sound. “Adrenaline, honey. It tells them that they’re alive.”

“Or that someone else is dead,” Angel said, her eyes too dark, too large.

Memories rose, threatening to choke her.

Hawk saw the haunted expression pass over Angel’s face. Then she shifted the bags in her arms and stepped onto the boat as though nothing had happened.

And, Hawk realized, nothing had. Whatever ghosts haunted Angel weren’t new. They were an accepted part of her life, just as his ghosts were part of his.

Or else the haunted look was simply an act, as seamless as the night.

With a mental shrug, Hawk dismissed the subject.

Act or reality, it doesn’t change what Angel is. Even animals twitch in their dreams, haunted by whatever ghosts their limited minds called up.

“I’ll show you how to handle the boat when we’re out in the strait,” said Hawk. “If you want.”

“Of course I do. Besides, that’s the only way you’ll get to fish.”

Hawk lifted one black eyebrow in silent query.

“It’s almost impossible to fish alone in a boat this size,” explained Angel. “Someone has to be at the helm, especially if you hook up with a big salmon when the water is crowded with other boats and the tide is running.”

Together Hawk and Angel finished loading supplies on board. The sun was well over the mainland mountains by the time Hawk eased the boat out of the marina and into the grip of the Campbell River current.

To the left of the boat scattered evergreens and flatlands gave way to a forested headland that thrust powerfully out of the sea. To the right a spit of land stuck out like an impudent tongue, dividing the sea from the intertidal waters.

A small plane took off out over the water. The engines revved hard, pushing pontoons through the water faster and faster until the plane lifted into the pale blue sky.

Hawk took it all in with swift, sweeping glances. As soon as the last speed limit buoy fell astern, he smoothly fed power to the twin diesels. The boat lifted slightly, splitting the blue-green water into silver foam.

He kept the speed well below the boat’s capability, for small craft were thickly clustered to the right, beyond the spit of land. As though there were invisible markers, all the boats circled within a defined area. Rods sprouted from the sides and stern of the boats. The rods curved like whips against the clean sky, bent by the combined weight of lures and sea.

“Must be God’s own fishing hole,” Hawk commented.

Angel smiled.

“That’s Frenchman’s Pool,” she said, her voice pitched to rise above the potent mutter of the diesels. “Before the dam was built, Campbell River used to flood in the spring. The floods dug out a huge hole in the ocean floor.”

Hawk glanced over his shoulder. No dam was in sight back there, and no hole visible below.

“Salmon coming in from the ocean school up there,” Angel said, pointing toward the crowded area. “Some people say the fish are adjusting to fresh water after years at sea. Others say they lie up there waiting for just the right sensory signals to lure them into the river itself.”

“Which do you believe?” Hawk asked.

For a long moment Angel didn’t answer.

Hawk looked at her profile with curiosity and a hunger he was having a hard time concealing.

Against the sun, the tendrils of hair that escaped from Angel’s single French braid burned like pale flames licking over her clear skin. There was an unusual purity of line in her profile, a harmony of forehead and nose and chin that was very strong without being in the least unfeminine.

And when she turned to face him, her eyes were as transparent and deep as river pools. Her eyes were unfocused, looking inward rather than at Hawk or the restless sea.

“I think,” Angel said slowly, “that the salmon school up in Frenchman’s Pool come to terms with themselves and the fresh water that will be both their consummation and their death.”

“You make the salmon sound almost human.”

“Do I?” murmured Angel, smiling sadly. “Most people aren’t that brave. They look no further into the future than their next meal. The salmon look at death and beyond.”

“Beyond?”

“Birth. The eternal cycle, death and renewal blending together like Campbell River and the sea.”

A shout came across the water, followed by an excited babble of French. Angel leaned over the rail, peering into the brilliant light.

“Look!” she said. “He’s got one on!”

Angel pointed toward a small rowboat that appeared to be pinned to the iridescent surface of the sea. Impatiently she slid open the cabin window beside the boat’s helm. Her fingers fastened onto Hawk’s arm.

“Can you see?” she asked urgently. “The rowboat next to the yellow inboard. Oh, they’ve got a dandy! Look at that rod bend!”

For a moment Hawk was aware only of Angel’s nearness, her sweet scent, her fingers pressed against the muscles of his upper arm.

Then his glance followed her pointing finger. He saw a small boat being towed against the current by an invisible force. There was no engine on the boat, nothing but a broad-shouldered man rowing steadily and another man straining against the coiled rod.

“What happened to their engine?” Hawk asked.

“The boat is from the Tyee Club. No engines allowed.”

“Why?”

“The whole idea is to hunt the salmon as the first Englishmen did – wooden oars and wooden lures, nothing but your human strength and the power of the salmon.”

Hawk watched with sharpened attention. The small boat was going nowhere, pinned in place by a tug-of-war between man and salmon.

“People come from all over the world just to try to catch a thirty-pound salmon from a rowboat,” Angel said. “If they succeed, they become members of the Tyee Club.”

“Are you a member?” asked Hawk softly.

“Yes.”

“Who rowed for you? Derry?”

The question sliced through Angel, leaving memories welling in its wake like blood from a fresh wound.