A Woman Without Lies

Chapter 2

Hawk’s left eyebrow lifted, emphasizing the ruthless lines of his face. He turned away from Angel and took a step back toward his table.

As he turned, he spoke. “What do you drink, Angel?”

“Sunlight.”

Hawk turned back so suddenly that Angel couldn’t suppress a startled sound. She had never seen such quickness in a man. Yet for all his speed, his motions were smooth, utterly controlled, and as graceful as wind.

“Sunlight,” he said, gesturing to the smoky room, “is in short supply here.”

“I didn’t come here to drink, Hawk. I came because Derry needs me.”

Though Angel’s voice was soft, there was real determination in it. It was the same tone that had warned Bill she wasn’t prepared to be reasonable on the subject of Derry.

“What does Derry need?” Angel asked.

Hawk hadn’t missed the changed quality of Angel’s voice.

“A new leg,” he said bluntly. “He had an accident.”

The room swirled darkly around Angel, sound spinning into cries of pain, red light splintering into broken glass frosted by moonlight, the smell of raw gas choking her, fear and pain clawing in her throat.

Angel tried to say something, to ask questions, to reassure herself that Derry was all right, that this wasn’t a return to the horrible car wreck three years ago when her mother, her father, and her fiancé had died, and she had been broken almost beyond healing.

But Angel could ask nothing, do nothing, except tremble and fight for breath.

Derry had saved her life three years ago. She could not bear to think that he was hurt, needing her, and she wasn’t there.

Even in the Stein’s dim light, Angel’s sudden loss of color was obvious. Hawk heard her harsh intake of breath, saw her sway, felt the coldness of her skin as he grabbed her, steadying her.

“D-Derry?” asked Angel, forcing the word between gritted teeth.

“It’s just a broken leg,” Hawk said harshly.

As he spoke, he shook Angel to make sure that he had her attention. Then he saw the fear and pain in the depths of her eyes and his hands instinctively gentled.

“He’s all right, Angel.”

Angel stared at him. Hawk’s voice had been gentle, reassuring, sympathetic. It was surprising in a man who looked so ruthless.

“Just a broken leg,” Hawk repeated. “Derry’s all right.”

“Car wreck,” Angel said hoarsely. “All that glittering broken glass and twisted metal. And screams. Oh God, the screams…”

Hawk’s eyes narrowed as a chill moved over him. Angel sounded so positive that Derry had hurt himself in a car wreck. The certainty was there in her eyes. And the horror.

His hands tightened on Angel’s arms, drawing her attention back to him.

“Soccer, not a car wreck,” Hawk said distinctly.

“S-soc – ”

The word was impossible for Angel to form.

“Derry and some friends were playing soccer,” Hawk said clearly. “He went up to deflect the ball, came down wrong, and broke his ankle in two places.”

For an instant Angel sagged against Hawk. Then her head came up and her spine straightened. She looked up at him with eyes that were too large and too dark for her face, wondering if he had meant to be cruel with his first, brutal words describing what was wrong with Derry.

He needs a new leg.

Angel searched the uncompromising lines of Hawk’s face for long moments. Finally she realized that he could have had no way of knowing the impact his words would have on her. He didn’t know about the car wreck that had shattered her life.

And her.

“Angel?”

Hawk’s fingertips found the pulse beating erratically in her throat.

“Did you hear me?” he asked deeply.

“Yes…”

Angel’s voice was so soft that Hawk had to lean close to understand. His fingers slid around her throat and lost themselves in her smoothly curling hair, but his thumb remained on her pulse. Hawk pulled Angel close, cradling her against his chest, rocking her slowly. The gestures were instinctive, surprising him as much as they surprised her.

Yet what he did was natural, what he wished someone had done for him when he was young. Or even when he was not. He had seen horror-shadowed eyes before, seen broken glass and wrecked cars and death. The horror and some of the wrecks had been his, but nobody had comforted him.

Is that why I’m holding Angel now? Hawk asked himself silently. Or is it because she’s soft and smells like sunshine and her skin is warming beneath my touch?

When Hawk’s lips brushed Angel’s temple, her closed eyes, the sensitive corner of her mouth, he felt the sudden surge of her heartbeat beneath his thumb. She moved subtly, clinging to his comforting touch without holding him, and her breath came out in a ragged sigh.

Hawk’s expression changed, cynical again. Angel was indeed like other women he had known.

When she isn’t with the man she loves, she loves the man she’s with.

Angel sensed the sudden distance in Hawk’s touch. She looked up at him, confused. She hadn’t expected comfort from him. Nor had she expected to find herself suddenly adrift from his warmth while he watched her with eyes that were calculating and as cold as the line of his mouth.

“Save those big haunted eyes for Derry,” said Hawk. “He’s young enough to believe anything.”

Abruptly Angel became aware of the noisy bar, the amused glances from nearby patrons, the dense scarlet light giving a satanic cast to Hawk’s already harsh features. She didn’t know what kind of game Hawk was playing with her.

She didn’t want to know.

It was bad enough that her skin was warm everywhere he had touched her. The warmth had begun with his comforting touch and then had subtly altered into a heat that she had not felt in three years.

Angel turned and walked toward the door, leaving Hawk holding her silk shawl, all that had remained behind when his hands had tightened to prevent her from leaving.

Hawk looked at the black silk draped like broken wings in his hands. Then he swore.

The sun blinded Angel as she stepped outside. She clutched her purse and walked quickly to the street, looking for a taxi. When her vision cleared, she spotted one. She raised her arm, only to have her wrist caught by lean, brown fingers.

Angel didn’t have to turn around to know that she was in the grip of Hawk. She didn’t bother to struggle against his grasp, knowing it was futile. His fingers were like… talons.

Turning, she confronted Hawk with her silence and sea-green eyes.

“Going somewhere?” asked Hawk.

“To Derry.”

“Lucky Derry,” said Hawk, sarcasm making his voice bite like a whip.

For an instant Angel looked as though she had been struck. Her eyes narrowed with anger. Then her expression changed as she remembered two simple truths: Hawk was important to Derry’s future; Derry was important to her. For Derry’s sake she would hold her tongue and her temper.

And for my own sake. Uncontrolled emotions will destroy me. Haven’t I learned that lesson?

Hawk saw Angel change in the space of two breaths. Where there had been emotions and color, now there was nothing. She waited to be released with a stillness and controlled patience that was more infuriating than any struggle would have been.

He was holding on to her, but she was utterly removed from him.

“Nothing to say?” challenged Hawk. “No pretty-pleases and practiced sighs and enticing little struggles?”

Angel waited, controlling her anger. She had had a lot of practice at that since the wreck. The rage she had felt at her parents’ deaths, at Grant’s death, had nearly destroyed what Derry managed to salvage from the wreck. Angel hadn’t begun to live again until she had learned to control her savage fury at the unfairness of life and death.

Like the ability to walk again, serenity had been won at an appalling cost. She wouldn’t surrender to anger now.

Angel thought of sunlight and colors in more shades than she had words to describe. She gathered the colors in her mind like a miser hoarding gold. She stood beneath them like summer rain, colors bathing her, washing away destructive emotions.

Colors, extraordinary colors. Cerulean and ruby, topaz and citrine, sapphire and wine and jade… But most of all, she sought the perfection of a crimson rose climbing toward dawn, soft petals triumphant and serene in their unfolding.

Angel opened her eyes. They were clear, as deep as the sea.

“What do you want, Mr. Hawkins?”

Hawk took a swift, silent breath. In the brief time that he had been with Angel, he had seen her shocked and afraid, had seen relief and the first stirrings of passion darken her eyes, had seen her hurt and enraged. This eerie calm was unexpected.

He had seen nothing like it except in his own mirror, when he had been young enough to still feel emotions and old enough to know that he had to conceal what he felt or be destroyed.

Now he was simply controlled, utterly self-possessed.

It angered Hawk that Angel seemed so composed. She was too young to have such discipline, and too shallow to need it. She flitted from man to man and feeling to feeling like the pretty, mindless little butterfly she was.

But she’s one hell of an actress, Hawk thought. I’ll give her that. It was the most convincing appearance of real emotion and real control that I’ve seen in years.

“Derry will tell you what I want,” said Hawk curtly, not releasing Angel’s wrist.

He walked quickly toward a waiting limousine. Angel followed, because she had no choice. She got in for the same reason.

As the limousine pulled out into traffic, Hawk dumped Angel’s shawl in her lap.

“Where are we going?” Angel asked calmly.

“To your one true love,” retorted Hawk.

Angel simply looked at him, waiting.

“That’s what I thought,” said Hawk in his caustic voice. “Women like you have so many true loves that they can’t tell the players without a scoreboard.”

She looked at Hawk with wide, calm eyes.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. And,” Angel added coolly, “neither do you. You know nothing about me, and you prove it every time you open your mouth.”

Hawk’s lips took a downward, sardonic curve.

“I know one thing,” Hawk said. “I’m going to do Derry a big favor this summer.”

“Buying Eagle Head isn’t a favor, Mr. Hawkins. It’s a shrewd business decision.”

Hawk shrugged. “I didn’t mean the land.”

He looked at the woman beside him, remembering how she had softened against his body when he held her. The clean summer smell of her hair caressed his senses, making him take a deep, involuntary breath.

Why the hell does she look so aloof, so untouched? Hawk asked himself bitterly. She’s just like every other woman – emptiness and lies.

In silence Hawk watched Angel’s coolness and reserve, and remembered her softness and sighs. He decided then that he was going to have her.

And when he was finished, he would strip her of her bright facade.

I’ll be sure Derry knows that his sweet Angie is no angel. Derry is much too young to cope with a woman like this. Derry would be hurt as I once was hurt.

But unlike me, Derry is too soft to survive that kind of lesson.

Hawk had no softness in him.

He had known about women like Angel since the night of his eighteenth birthday – women who took and took and took, giving only the casual use of their bodies in return.

Hawk didn’t mind that. Not anymore. He had become a taker too. Once Angel got used to the idea that he saw through her, they would get along just fine.

Users, both of them. Using each other.

Angel looked out the window but all she really saw was the image of Hawk as she had first seen him in the dark bar – lonely, aloof, untamed. If he hadn’t been gentle with her for those few instants, she would have decided that he was merely cruel, and avoided him.

Yet Angel’s first impression of Hawk’s loneliness had been oddly reinforced by his comforting touch. She knew that loneliness could give a person both a capacity for cruelty and, eventually, a capacity for empathy.

Empathy took longer to develop than cruelty, however. First, you had to heal.

Once Angel had raged at Derry for dragging her out of the wreck, for forcing her to live when the man she loved had died. Derry had been appalled. Then he had wept and she had held him, hating herself for hurting him, hating herself for being alive, hating everything except Derry. He was as alone as she, yet he wasn’t cruel.

That realization had been the turning point in Angel’s long climb out of agony and despair. From that instant she had cherished Derry.

In time she had even thanked him for dragging her out of the wreckage of her past into an uncertain future.

Angel wondered what Hawk’s turning point would be. Then she considered his strength and harshness and wondered if there was anything powerful enough to penetrate the ruthless shell that surrounded him as deeply as sky surrounded a hunting hawk.

Or perhaps, like a hawk, he preferred the lonely, icy reaches of the sky to anything human.

Yet Hawk had been so warm for just a moment, so close.

The motion of the limousine changed as it turned toward Vancouver harbor. Angel swayed slightly, caught herself, and recognized her surroundings. Island Taxi’s bright sign poked above the calm water. Just beyond the sign a pontoon plane floated.

Angel turned quickly to Hawk.

He was watching her.

She sensed that he had been watching her the whole time. With a shock, she noticed that he had a mustache, a smooth band of midnight just above his hard mouth, black hair shifting and gleaming subtly as he moved his head.

She hadn’t noticed the mustache before, not with those hard, dark eyes watching her.

“Hawk – Mr. Hawkins – ”

“Hawk,” he said, watching for her reaction as he spoke. “Call me Hawk, Angel. It will help both of us to remember what we really are.”

“What does that mean?”

“That I’m a hawk and you’re an angel.”

He laughed briefly, a sound without humor or warmth.

“Well,” he added, “that’s half the truth, anyway. One of us is just what he seems.”

“Are we flying to Vancouver Island?” asked Angel, irritated with the enigmatic conversation.

“Don’t tell me an angel is afraid to fly?” he asked softly.

“No more than a hawk,” she retorted. Angel frowned. Hawk had a devastating effect on her temper. She took a slow breath, then another, until she felt calm again.

“My car is at the gallery,” Angel said. “I’d planned to take the ferry over to see Derry.”

Hawk pulled a small leather-bound book and a gold pen from his pocket. He handed both to her.

“Write down the gallery’s address, the car’s license number, and a description of the car,” he said. “You’ll have it by tomorrow.”

Angel hesitated, then gave in.

The pen was warm to Angel’s touch, radiating the heat of the man who sat so close. She wrote quickly, feeling as though the pen were burning her skin.

Hawk took the keys she pulled out of her purse, the book, and the pen. For a moment his fingertips caressed the smooth length of the gold metal.

Angel knew that Hawk was feeling her heat as surely as she had felt his. The knowledge shortened her breath.

Then Hawk looked quickly at her, catching the sensual knowledge in her eyes. The corner of his mouth tilted sardonically.

He replaced the pen in his pocket. The sound of paper tearing was very loud in the silence as he removed the page Angel had written on. He handed the paper and the car keys to the chauffeur.

“When – when did Derry hurt himself?” asked Angel, hating the breathless quality of her voice, yet unable to change it.

“Two days ago. I didn’t know about it until he got out of surgery.”

“Surgery!”

Instantly Angel forgot about everything, including her reaction to Hawk.

“But you said he just broke his leg!” she cried, turning on Hawk.

Hawk saw the fear darkening Angel’s eyes again.

Hell of an actress, he thought sardonically. Able to control her body on command. The best actresses are always like that. While they’re playing the part, they believe. Change the scenes and the lines, and they believe in that part, too, and the next and the next.

Beautiful, shallow creatures living on lies.

Once Hawk had believed the soft words and softer kisses. Then he had learned to see through the shimmering, sensuous light to the darkness beneath.

“He broke his ankle, to be precise,” Hawk said in a clipped voice. “Clean through. The surgery was to put in a pin until everything grew together again.”

“Oh, my God,” Angel said hoarsely, fighting nausea. “I should have been with him! To come out of anesthesia alone, in pain and confusion, no one there to touch you, comfort you… ”

Hawk’s intense brown eyes narrowed, searching Angel’s face. He knew what it was to wake up in a hospital, disoriented and in pain, the horrible moments until memory came and told you what had happened.

It surprised him that Angel, too, seemed to know how it felt.

“You sound like you’ve been there,” said Hawk.

For a moment Angel didn’t answer.

Then, softly, “I have.”

Before Hawk could ask another question, Angel turned on him, her voice cold and controlled.

“Is there anything else you haven’t told me about Derry?” she asked.

“He refuses the painkillers.”

“Why?”

“He says that pain has a purpose.”

Angel closed her eyes, remembering the months after the wreck when she had thrown away her painkillers and her cane and forced herself to walk again. Derry had wept with her, supporting her for those first few steps.

Then she had made him leave, telling him that it was all right, that pain had a purpose. It told her that she was alive.

Hawk started to ask another question when the limousine eased to a stop in the Island Taxi parking lot.

Automatically Angel groped for the door handle, not wanting to face the curiosity in Hawk’s eyes. Before the chauffeur could get out to open Angel’s door, Hawk was out and standing beside the car, extending his hand to Angel across the seat.

She hesitated, then put her hand in his. The male heat and power of him shocked her, but it was too late to retreat.

With the same easy strength that Hawk did everything, he pulled Angel out of the limousine. As he released her hand, he let his fingertips glide from her wrist to the sensitive pads of her fingers, stroking her as he had stroked the gold pen. He felt the sudden surge in her pulse, saw the delicate bloom of color beneath her pale cheeks.

She looked up at him, confusion in her startled blue-green eyes.

His left eyebrow lifted in a black arc.

“Is something wrong?” he asked mildly.

Angel’s flush deepened. She felt like a fool for being so physically aware of this hard stranger. With a quiet breath, she recalled serenity to herself, yet she could not help puzzling over the enigma that was Hawk.

At times it almost seems that he wants me, Angel thought, yet more often it seems that he dislikes or resents me.

Hawk’s emotions were complex, quick, and very intense beneath his utterly controlled exterior. He was unlike any man Angel had ever known. She had no way to measure him. She could only respond to his searching intelligence, and to the loneliness and male sensuality she had glimpsed beneath his cold exterior.

Silently Angel looked at Hawk, nearly afraid of him.

And almost afraid of herself.

Hawk watched Angel, measuring the emotions that were conveyed so clearly on her face. With a sense of triumph, he realized that he had found Angel’s weakness.

A gentle touch will unravel her.

Hawk almost smiled. Like a raptor soaring on the wind, he had caught the flash of movement, of vulnerability, far below. The prey had revealed itself. Now would come the swift darts and turns, sudden shifts of direction, a chase to heat the blood.

And then she would be his, an angel brought down by a hawk, an angel shivering and crying in his arms.