A Woman Without Lies

Chapter 20

Angel pulled on her own jeans, rolled them to her knees, and helped Hawk carry everything up beyond the high-tide mark. There was a small patch of grass near the stream. They put everything but the clam buckets and digging tools there. Angel led the way to the beach.

The sky was absolutely clear, as deep and cold as time. The ocean reflected every shade of blue, except along the cliffs. There the water became green, reflecting the color of cedar branches sweeping low over the sea. Small fragments of wind found their way into the bay, barely enough to ruffle the sun-struck surface. It was silent but for the nibbling of the sea at the rocky shore.

Angel gauged the line of beach revealed by the ebbing tide. Narrow, but enough.

“Ever dug for clams?” she asked.

“Not too many clams in west Texas.”

Angel smiled slightly. “No, I guess not.”

She sat on her heels near a stretch of mixed rock and sand beach that was just above the water.

“Clams are easy to find at low tide,” Angel said. “You only have to go down a few inches. If you find one, you’ll find more nearby.”

Hawk sat on his heels near Angel, watching her rake through the sand and rock with a digging tool. It wasn’t a true clamming fork. There were too many rocks for that. What she used was a three-pronged, hand-held garden tool that was sturdy enough to survive stones, salt water, and abuse.

With a triumphant sound, Angel held her sandy hand out to Hawk. Several clams lay in her palm. At least, Hawk assumed that the lumps were clams. They were so covered with sand that he couldn’t tell.

“Clam?” he asked doubtfully.

“As ever were. Watch.”

Angel rinsed off the clams, revealing their smoothly curving, plump shells.

“Clams,” Hawk agreed.

Smiling, Angel filled the bucket halfway with salt-water and chucked in the clams. Then she returned to scrounging happily in the sand and occasional patches of sea slime that covered the intertidal zone.

“Most people wait a day or two before they eat the clams,” Angel said. “Gives them a chance to get the sand out of their systems. But I haven’t had bouillabaisse since last summer and I can’t wait. Do you mind?”

Hawk’s expression softened into something very like a smile.

“No,” he said, “I don’t mind.”

Caught by the unexpected gentleness in Hawk’s voice, Angel looked up. Hawk was very close, his leg all but brushing hers as he began to dig in the sand with another tool.

She looked down quickly at the sea, disturbed by having him so near. Not that it was his fault. The beach was very narrow, and he was only following her lead, digging through cold sand in search of succulent bits of flesh.

But she wished his sheer maleness didn’t affect her so deeply.

“I never asked,” Angel said after a moment, struck by a sudden thought. “Do you like clams?”

“I’ll find out tonight.”

For a time there was only silence and the low sounds of steel grating over rocks and sand. Hawk set aside his digger and probed through the sand he had raked up. His sensitive fingertips quickly learned to distinguish between the random rough surface of rocks and the curved, gently ribbed surface of clam shells.

“I’ll be damned,” Hawk murmured as he pulled out a handful of clams. “You’re quite a teacher, Angel.”

She looked up into his dark features and smiled almost shyly.

“Clamming is easy to teach,” she said.

After that, Hawk and Angel dug clams in a companionable silence that reminded her of the time she and Hawk had spent before the fishhook has gone into her back. She was aware of him, definitely, but not afraid.

Angel was aware of the hook wound, too. It was more tender today than yesterday or the day before. She had meant to have Derry check her back, but every time she had thought of it, he had been immersed in formulas as long as his cast. She had tried cleaning the wounds herself and had given up in disgust. It would take a contortionist to effectively treat that particular place.

In time, Hawk and Angel pursued the ebbing tide to a line of bedrock where no clams lived. She stood and stretched, wincing slightly as the motion pulled against the sore spot near her shoulder blade. Automatically she put the pain out of her mind as she had learned to do when she forced herself to walk again.

As Carlson had taught her with great clarity, what can’t be cured must be endured.

“That should do it,” Angel said, lifting the clam bucket. “Twenty for you and twenty for me.”

“What if I don’t like clams?” asked Hawk, his tone amused rather than worried.

Angel licked her lips with delicate greed.

“I’ll think of something,” she promised.

One of Hawk’s black eyebrows lifted in silent skepticism.

“They’re not very big,” Angel said reasonably.

Hawk’s strong hand wrapped around the bucket handle, lifting it from her grasp. Under her watchful blue-green eyes, Hawk rinsed the clams, scrubbed them with a stiff brush, then rinsed them again. He filled the bucket with clams and saltwater and turned to Angel.

“Now what?” he asked.

“Put the bucket in the shade and let nature take its course. We,” she said triumphantly, “are going crabbing.”

Angel went over to the grass, retrieved the crab trap and a chunk of bacon, and returned to Hawk.

“This is a littler trickier than clamming,” she said.

“Crabs are faster?” suggested Hawk dryly.

She smiled. “Much.”

With that, Angel led Hawk to a shelf of rock that slanted out into the bay. The shelf ended in a deep green shaft of water. Deftly Angel wired the hunk of bacon to the bottom of the trap and lowered the metal mesh into the water. The trap itself consisted of little more than concentric mesh rings of graduated sizes, rather than a blunt funnel.

“Now,” she said, “the crabs get a whiff of bacon and come running.”

“There’s no top on that thing,” Hawk pointed out. “What keeps the little beasties from getting out the same way they got in?”

“That’s the tricky part,” Angel admitted. “You have to be faster than they are.”

The trap hit bottom, invisible beneath the green sea.

Angel counted beneath her breath. When she got to one hundred, she began to pull up the trap up hand over hand, hauling as fast as she could.

Just as she pulled the mesh above the surface, a crab flipped over the edge and back into the sea.

“Damn!” Angel said. “He was keeper size.”

Hawk watched the crab disappear. “I like crab.”

“So do I. Good thing they’re stupid. Sooner or later, he’ll be back for more.”

Hawk watched while Angel repeatedly lowered the mesh, counted beneath her breath, raised it quickly, and looked with varying degrees of disappointment at the contents of the trap. The crabs were either too small or of the wrong kind.

After twenty minutes, Angel and the bait were looking equally frayed.

“May I?” Hawk asked, holding out a hand for the trap.

Without a word Angel handed over the bright yellow rope. She peeled off her sweater and tied it around her neck. Sun reflected off the rocks and water, heating the air. Despite the wind beyond the bay, it was warm within the sheltering cliffs.

Hawk lowered the trap, counted, then pulled. The basket came up empty, not so much as one tiny crab.

He looked at Angel.

“I forgot to tell you,” she said, blowing wisps of hair off her hot forehead. “You have to pull straight up. If the basket tips over – ”

“The crabs get away,” finished Hawk.

After a few more tries, Hawk got the feel of it. Angel sat on the slanting shelf and watched him work. His powerful arms brought up the basket so quickly that whatever lay inside was all but flattened.

Hawk seemed tireless, raising and lowering the trap with the same ease after twenty tries as after two. Angel put her head on her knees and memorized the male grace and power of his body, designing a stained glass panel in her mind, the man and the rock and the sea.

Then Angel realized that Hawk had snagged a huge crab and was casually reaching in to take it out of the trap.

“No!” Angel said.

She lunged for Hawk’s wrist, yanking his fingers out of the mesh before he could get to the crab. And vice-versa.

Startled, Hawk looked from the slender hand wrapped around his wrist to the blue-green eyes only inches from his.

“Those pincers can hurt,” Angel explained.

Cautiously she approached the large crab from the rear, slid her thumb underneath and her fingers on top, and lifted the crab out of the trap. The crab was a male, more than eight inches across the shell. Its pincers waved and clicked angrily.

Hawk looked at the thick claws and realized that once again Angel had put herself between him and possible injury.

“First the hook, now the crab,” Hawk said softly. “Thanks. For both.”

His fingers touched Angel’s cheek for an instant. His hands were cool from the ocean and Angel’s cheeks were flushed with sun. The contrast only increased the sensual impact of his touch.

Angel stared at Hawk for a moment, too surprised to move. Then she turned her head away.

“I should have warned you about the crab,” she said, her voice even.

Hawk’s hand returned to the cold yellow rope.

“How many crabs do we need?” he asked.

“This should do it.”

Hawk gave Angel a sideways look.

“I suppose I can always swap my clams for your half of the crab,” he said.

“Not a chance,” she said quickly.

The corner of Hawk’s mouth lifted as bent over and lowered the trap into the sea again. While he counted, he watched Angel walk across the narrow beach and drop the crab into the clam bucket.

The faded jeans Angel wore fitted softly, firmly, to every curve of her hips and legs. Her hair had been gathered at the nape of her neck, but time and exertion had loosened the clip. Bright wisps burned around her face and across the gray sweater. She walked confidently despite the uneven surface and the rubber beach sandals snapping at her heels with each step.

Watching her grace, Hawk found it hard to believe that Angel had ever been broken, in agony, doomed but for Derry’s strength pulling her from the twisted wreckage of her life, her dreams.

Distantly Hawk realized that his hands were aching from the force with which he was holding the yellow rope. The thought of Angel lying in helpless agony was unbearable to him. He had known too many women that had no truth.

He had come too close to never knowing a woman who had no lies.

“Are you giving the crabs a free lunch?” asked Angel lightly, coming back to stand beside him.

Then his bleak expression and the coiled intensity of his body struck her.

“Hawk?”

Angel saw the tremor that went through him. When he turned and looked at her, hunger and hope and loneliness radiated from him. Transfixed, she stood without moving while all the colors of his emotions poured through her, illuminating man and woman alike.

The force of the moment overwhelmed Angel. Nothing in her life had prepared her for a man like Hawk.

Hawk saw Angel tremble and step back reflexively, even as her hand reached toward him.

“Hawk?” she whispered.

He turned away and pulled up the trap with swift, powerful movements.

“It’s all right, Angel,” he said quietly. “I was just thinking.”

“About what?” Then, quickly, “I’m sorry, it’s none of my business.”

“I was thinking about women and lies,” Hawk said. “And about truth and angels.”

Angel tried not to ask, but found it impossible. She had to know what had made Hawk turn his back on emotion, on love.

“There’s more to it than your mother abandoning you, isn’t there?” Angel asked.

“More to what?”

“Your hatred of women.”

Hawk pulled up the trap. It was empty. He lowered the trap again.

“I don’t hate all women,” he said finally. “Not anymore.”

“It isn’t easy, is it?”

“What isn’t?”

“Not hating me.”

Stillness went through Hawk, Angel’s truth sinking into him.

She’s right.

Not hating Angel went against every reflex Hawk had acquired during a lifetime of surviving in a harsh world.

Yet it was impossible to hate Angel. She had the aching purity of one of her stained glass creations, all the colors of life distilled into a woman with haunted eyes and a mouth still willing to smile.

“It’s frighteningly easy not to hate you,” Hawk said, watching Angel with eyes that consumed her gently, utterly.

Angel’s breath wedged in her throat as she began to understand.

Frightening.

Yes, it was all of that and then some to have your personal beliefs shattered in a single savage instant.

It had happened to Angel twice. Once with Hawk, when she had learned to distrust her own judgment. And once in the wreck, when she had learned to distrust life itself.

It had been very hard for Angel to crawl out of the wreckage of her world, to learn to walk again in a new world, a world that never could be as secure as the old had been.

Love had given her strength. Derry’s love. Carlson’s love. And finally, painfully, her own memories of Grant had been allowed to return, healing much of the regret and all of the bitterness.

How much worse it must be for Hawk to stand naked and alone amid the shattered pieces of his beliefs, Angel thought painfully. Hawk, who has never known love.

The sound of the trap being pulled from the sea’s green embrace startled Angel. She saw the dark, angular shape clinging to the mesh and came quickly to her feet, drawn again into the world she had chosen, the world she loved. She stood on tiptoe and peered over Hawk’s arm.

“It’s keeper size,” she crowed. “Just look at that beauty!”

Hawk’s eyebrow climbed at Angel’s enthusiasm. The black-eyed crab was crouched against the trap, waving its thick, serrated pincers around.

“Looks mean as hell to me,” Hawk said.

“The harder the shell, the sweeter the meat.”

“That’s not the way I remember that particular bit of folk wisdom.”

“New world, new saying,” Angel retorted blithely.

She shook the trap soundly. Then, swiftly, she grabbed the distracted crab and headed back up the beach.

Hawk coiled the yellow rope, hefted the trap, and followed, wondering with each step how something as soft and silky as Angel had survived a world where teeth and claws were the rule.

Then he remembered her deft capture of the wicked-looking crab. The corners of Hawk’s mouth lifted.

Maybe the better question would be how teeth and claws could survive in the presence of an angel.