“No,” she whispered. “That’s not too much to ask. But – ”

Her voice broke. She closed her eyes and rebuilt a rose in her mind, petal by scarlet petal, until her pulse was steady and her throat was no longer tight.

Hawk watched her, wondering if she was remembering a hook and a hawk buried in her, making her bleed. He felt an almost overwhelming need to hold her, to protect her from sadness and hurt, to replace pain with pleasure.

The intensity of the feeling shook Hawk. He had felt nothing like it before in his life. All that kept him from gathering Angel into his arms was the certainty that she would fight him, and then they both would lose.

Quickly Angel gathered everything she and Hawk would need for the beach. The tide was out, leaving behind a small sandbar at the mouth of the creek that drained into Needle Bay.

The bay itself was long and narrow, more a notch in the mountains than a true bay. Several hundred yards deep and less than eighty feet wide where it opened into the Inside Passage, Needle Bay was walled by cliffs and steep-sided hills bristling with rock and cedars. Where Needle Creek came in, the cliffs gave way to a narrow ravine.

The beach was tiny, filled with coarse sand and small pebbles. As it blended into the cliffs, the beach became more rocky. That was where clams burrowed and oysters clung stubbornly to gray stones.

With great care and gentle nudges of the throttle, Angel lightly beached the bow of the boat on the sandbar. Hawk vaulted over the bow and landed with the lithe grace she had come to expect from him. She handed equipment to him, then backed the boat off a few feet to allow for ebbing of the tide. She anchored, peeled off her jeans, and prepared to wade ashore.

Hawk had beaten her to it. He was waiting for her by the bow. Like Angel, he had taken off his jeans to reveal a swimsuit beneath. His red wool shirt looked incongruous above the black trunks. A few inches of tanned, powerful thigh showed above the chilly water. The result was startling in its sensual contrast, the heavy shirt and muscular bare legs with a sheen of black hair slicked into small curves by water dripping down.

With a face as impassive as the sea, Hawk watched Angel hesitate at the railing. He held his arms up to carry her to dry land as though she were just one more parcel of equipment.

If it had been Carlson or Derry, Angel would have stepped off the bow without a second thought. But this was Hawk. She paused before she remembered what he had said about being herself.

“How did you know that I hate cold water?” Angel asked lightly.

Hawk’s face relaxed into something close to a smile. His eyes warmed.

“A lucky guess,” he said, lifting her off the bow.

Angel held on to her jeans with one hand and Hawk with the other. When she felt the heat of his hand on her bare leg, something uncomfortably like fear shot through her. She couldn’t help the stiffening of her body.

Nor could Hawk help feeling it. In silence he waded the short distance to the beach. He set Angel on her feet immediately, not prolonging the moment of intimacy.

“Thank you,” Angel said.

Hawk wondered whether she was thanking him for being carried above the chilly sea, or for being set down so quickly.

“No trouble,” he said with a shrug. “Angels don’t weigh much.”

Smoothly Hawk turned away and began to pull on his jeans. He concentrated on the stubborn fabric clinging to his wet legs, on the cold rivulets of water running down to his ankles, on the coarse sand caught between the soles of his feet and the rubber beach sandals he wore.

He concentrated on everything except the tactile memory of Angel’s smooth flesh burning into his hand… and then her withdrawal, a reflex as involuntary as breathing.

It took a great amount of pain to instill such a reflex after only one lesson.

With every moment Hawk was close to Angel, he was learning how deeply he had wounded her. He hadn’t thought it was possible for a woman to feel that much emotion, that much pain. Nor had he thought it possible to share another’s hurt the way he was coming to share hers.

The complexity of the emotions flowing between himself and Angel was as baffling, difficult, and compelling to him as the truths she gave to him so painfully, not knowing that each truth was a separate talon rending the certainties of Hawk’s past.

Hawk took a slow, tight breath and wondered how much more he could bear to learn.

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.