Elizabeth Lowell - A Woman Without Lies

“Where would you like this hung?” Hawk asked, switching his attention to Mrs. Carey.

“Right there, where I’ll see it every morning. When you’re my age, you need something to look forward to when you get out of bed.”

“You need that at any age,” Hawk said, glancing quickly at Angel.

While Hawk hung the panel so that it would take full advantage of the sunlight, Angel and Mrs. Carey worked on a list of what she would need for the upcoming canning season. By the time they were finished, so was Hawk. He took the list from Angel and skimmed it swiftly.

“Will you want these right away?” Hawk asked.

“Oh, no. Not for a week or more.”

“Good. Angel is going to take me fishing for a few days. Our last trip was… delayed.”

Angel wanted to object, but knew she couldn’t. When she had agreed to take up guide duties again, she had known that those duties would probably include the fishing trip.

Two days ago the thought hadn’t frightened her.

But it did now, for now when she looked at Hawk she saw more than his harsh, predatory features. She saw the shadow of a boy who had carried a green ribbon in his pocket until there was nothing left but a few bright threads.

It was an unusually quiet Angel who followed Hawk out to the car. She hadn’t thought to be vulnerable to him again, not like this, feeling his pain as though it was her own.

“I’ll stock the boat while you take Derry to the doctor,” Hawk said, watching Angel’s profile.

She nodded without looking at him.

“Do you have any calls to make before we leave?” Angel asked.

“No. The second part of the deal is launched. There will be one more crunch before it either all comes together or falls into a million pieces.”

The indifference in Hawk’s voice intrigued Angel.

“You sound like you don’t care,” she said.

“One way I’m rich. One way I’m not.” Hawk shrugged. “I’ve made and lost several fortunes since I quit racing cars. Either way, the adrenaline flows. Money is just a way of keeping score.”

Angel thought about Hawk’s words while she drove home. She was still thinking about them while she waited for Derry to be finished at the doctor’s office. Even when she and Hawk walked down the wharf to his boat, she was still turning his words over and over in her mind, like pieces of glass that she couldn’t quite fit into the overall design.

There was a wind blowing out of the north. Hawk’s black hair lifted and rippled thickly. The motion of his hair and the light sliding through it were distinctly uncivilized.

Angel glanced at Hawk’s profile, then quickly away. It was his watch she needed to see, not the untamed gleam of his eyes.

She frowned as she read the face of the watch. North winds usually blew up trouble. She had hoped to fish the tide turn at Indian Head, nearly three-quarters of the way up to Needle Bay, their destination.

But if a good blow was coming up, they would be lucky to make Needle Bay by dark. If the wind came too hard, they would have to shelter somewhere else along they way. Despite the protection of mountains and islands, the Inside Passage was treacherous to small craft in a storm.

Angel took the boat out of the marina as quickly as the law allowed. Without a backward look, she left Campbell River behind, ignoring the boats bobbing on Frenchman’s Pool and the log rafts floating along the shore.

The wind stayed constant, just hard enough to make some whitecaps and set up a distinct chop. She turned up the volume on the radio, listening to fishermen coming down from the north. From what she heard, the wind was no worse up there than it was here. Reassured, she settled in for the long ride.

After a few hours, Hawk gave up his exposed position in one of the boat’s padded stern seats. At first he had stayed out of the cabin deliberately, not wanting to make Angel nervous with his presence. Finally the sustained roar of the engines, the tangled white ribbon of the wake, the mountains rising green and gray from the sea, had all combined to relax him.

The wind and spray, however, were getting to the point that Hawk would be first chilled, then wet, unless he moved into the cabin.

Angel looked up, sensing Hawk’s presence.

“Getting rough out there?”she asked.

“A little.”

Hawk looked through the windshield and over the bow. In a gap between islands, solid ranks of whitecaps marched across the blue-black surface of the sea.

“Not as rough as it’s going to get, from the looks of that,” he said.

“That should be the worst of it,” agreed Angel, measuring the amount of rough water to cross. “We’ll duck into the narrow channel between those two islands and cut over to another route north. It will take longer, but it’s more protected.”

Hawk braced himself along the padded bench seat that ran around three sides of the table that was behind the cockpit. Without talking, he watched Angel handle the powerful boat. The stretch of wind-whipped water surrounded them, shook them playfully, pummeled the sleek white hull, then let the boat slide into the lee of an island where gulls wheeledand cried.

“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.