Elizabeth Lowell - A Woman Without Lies

Angel’s hand stilled.

“Beach walking would be impossible,” Hawk continued. “Especially down these cliff trails.”

Angel said nothing.

“Derry said you could do it,” Hawk said, watching her closely. “In fact, he said you were a better fisherman than he was. Better at clamming, too. He said you could cook like a European chef and knew all the best places to be for a hundred miles in all directions.”

“He exaggerates.”

Hawk shrugged. “It’s up to you.”

Angel looked only at Derry.

Then, coolly, Hawk added, “You do understand that I won’t buy a pig in a poke. No tour, no sale. Sorry, but that’s the way life is. There’s no such thing as a free lunch.”

Hawk watched the realization sink into Angel. No tour. No sale.

And no money for her twenty-five percent of the land.

Derry had told Hawk about that – Angel and a quarter of Eagle Head. Hawk assumed that it was payment for services rendered. How else could Angel afford to laze away three months of the year and her holidays, too?

Somebody had to pay for the privilege of Angel’s company. A quarter interest in Eagle Head wasn’t bad wages for three years of “work.”

Angel didn’t see Hawk’s cynical appraisal of her. She was watching Derry, seeing the shadows of pain and sleeplessness beneath his tanned skin. Derry looked very young, but she knew that he wasn’t. Not really.

No one who had lived through the wreck three years ago would ever be young again. Inexperienced, yes. Young, no.

Angel sighed.

Derry must like Hawk very much to promise him me as a tour guide, Angel thought unhappily.

Derry, too, must have sensed the loneliness beneath Hawk’s proud surface. As lonely as a hawk riding a cold wind. And as compelling.

Power and grace and darkness, eyes that see all the way through to the core.

Angel’s hand hesitated over Derry’s hair, then resumed stroking him almost absently.

There’s no real reason not to show Hawk the leisure possibilities of the Pacific Northwest. I would spend my summer roaming the Vancouver Island and the Inside Passage anyway.

It’s hardly too much to ask that I take Hawk along, and in so doing help Derry fulfill a dream.

Angel looked up at Hawk, not surprised to find that he had been watching her. She met his hard, enigmatic eyes without flinching.

“How long will you need me?” Angel asked calmly.

A corner of Hawk’s mouth turned down in a cynical curve. Not more than a night or two, I’ll bet.

But the thought went no further than Hawk’s narrowed eyes. When he spoke, his voice was smooth, without emotion of any kind.

“Six weeks at most,” Hawk said. “That’s all the time I can afford. I have several other land deals coming together.”

Hawk frowned faintly. He had an intricate, interlocking network of stock and land sales that should culminate within six weeks. Then he would either be a great deal richer or he would get to start all over again.

Either way, it would be exciting.

That was what mattered to Hawk. Not the money, but the adrenaline. He had made and lost several fortunes since he quit racing. As in racing, he preferred winning in business to losing or crashing.

But win or lose, the adrenaline flowed. The discovery, the pursuit, the kill. The endless cycle, endlessly exciting, telling Hawk that he was alive.

“Six weeks,” repeated Angel, keeping her voice level with an effort.

“On and off. I’ll be flying in and out.” Hawk gave Angel a dark-eyed glance. “We can hammer out a tentative schedule. You tell me what’s available to see and do, and we’ll figure out the best times for both of us.”

Angel nodded absently.

“No promises,” Hawk added. “I may not like what I see. If I don’t, no sale.”

Angel looked at Derry. Despite the barbiturate’s embrace, he stirred restively and made a small sound. His pain had merely been put at a greater distance, not vanquished.

For an instant Angel’s hand hesitated in its soothing journey as she realized how many times Derry had sat by her bed, watched her restless sleep, and heard her whimper as unconsciousness released the harsh guard she kept on her emotions.

So many times she had awakened to his affectionate smile and encouraging You look better today.

There was really no question about helping Derry. If Hawk needed Angel as a guide for six weeks or six years, she would be there.

Gently, Angel’s hand resumed smoothing back Derry’s springy blond hair.

“Fine,” Angel said quietly, not looking up at Hawk again. “Whatever is necessary.”

It was still dark outside, almost an hour until dawn. Angel worked quietly in the kitchen, putting food into grocery bags, wrapping sandwiches, and turning strips of bacon in the pan.

When she heard the thump of Derry’s crutches in the hallway, she peeled off another handful of bacon and put the strips into the pan to fry.

“You’re up early,” Angel said, turning to smile at Derry. “Did I wake you?”

“No.”

Derry grimaced as he shifted his weight. Normally he was cheerful – maddeningly so – in the morning. His present state told Angel that his ankle was throbbing.

“How did you sleep?” she asked, searching his face.

Derry glowered. Between that and his tousled blond curls, he looked a surly sixteen.

“Lousy,” he muttered. “I feel hung over.”

“You look it, too. Orange juice?”

Yawning, ruffling his hair with one hand, Derry nodded.

“Please,” he said. Then, hopefully, “Coffee?”

“Sit down. I’ll bring it to you.”

While Derry went to the little breakfast nook that had a view of the strait, Angel fixed up a tray with coffee, juice, toast, and homemade jams. The latter were courtesy of Mrs. Carey, a neighbor who made the best jams on Vancouver Island. Two months ago she had tripped over her cat and broken her hip. The cast was off now, but Angel still shopped for her, as well as for two other temporary shut-ins.

“Where’s Hawk?” Derry asked as Angel set the tray on the table.

“Telephone.”

Derry shook his head. “He works too hard. The sun isn’t even up.”

“It is in London. He’s talking to Lord Someone-or-other.”

“Must be the island he’s trying to buy.”

“A whole island?” asked Angel.

“Yeah,” Derry said. “He wants to turn it into a cracking plant for North Sea oil.”

Angel hesitated, then went back to the stove.

“Hawk must be very rich,” she said.

“I guess. When I asked the bank to check him out as a potential buyer for Eagle Head, I got no further than the name Miles Hawkins. Old Man Johnston’s eyes lit up like a Christmas tree.”

“Orange juice,” Angel said.

Obediently Derry drank the juice.

“Hawk has quite a reputation in what Johnston refers to as ‘the international financial community,’ ” Derry added. “A bona-fide high roller.”

Derry paused long enough to take several long swallows of the fragrant coffee. Sighing, he looked hopefully at the coffee pot.

Smiling, Angel picked up the coffee pot and topped off his cup.

“Odd, though,” Derry said after a moment. “Hawk doesn’t act rich.”

Shrugging, Angel returned to the bacon.

“How does someone ‘act rich’?” she asked.

“You know. Throwing money everywhere. Dropping the names of the right resorts, the right people. Private jets and cars faster than the speed of light.”

“Like Clarissa?”

Derry paused, then sighed. “Yeah. She was something else, wasn’t she?”

Angel suppressed a smile.

“I’d tell you what that something was,” Angel offered, “but I’m not supposed to know the word. Thank God you saw through her, Derry. She was gorgeous, sure, but she had the intelligence of a clam.”

“You’re slandering clams,” Derry said dryly.

Smiling openly, Angel set strips of bacon out to drain on paper towels.

“How many eggs?” she asked.

“Five.”

“Hungry, aren’t you?”

“I slept through dinner, remember?”

“Ummm,” Angel said, wielding a chopper over the crisp bacon.

She remembered dinner very well. She and Hawk had spent an hour working on a schedule. She had made up a list of things to do and the approximate times involved in doing them right. Hawk had scanned the list very quickly and set it aside.

Then Hawk had questioned Angel in detail, missing none of the thirty-seven items on the list that he had looked at for less than sixty seconds. His questions had been concise and incisive. At the end of the hour Angel had felt wrung out.

When Hawk had all the information he required, he – without looking at the list again – wrote out a tentative schedule, handed Angel several thousand dollars for expenses, and excused himself.

Hawk had spent the next hour talking to Tokyo’s equivalent of the stock exchange.

The beaten eggs hissed as they slid into the hot omelet pan. Angel swirled the pan deftly, adding ingredients as the omelet formed. Her hand hovered over the mounds of freshly prepared ingredients heaped on the breadboard by the stove.

“Mushrooms?” she asked.

“The works,” said Derry instantly.

The omelet thickened, glistening with melting cheese. Just as Angel folded it in half, a timer went off.

She slid Derry’s omelet onto a warm plate, then pulled a pan of croissants out of the oven and put them into a napkin-lined bun warmer. The marvelous fragrance of fresh croissants and steaming omelet preceded her to the table.

Derry smiled up at her.

“Thanks, Angie,” he said softly. “This beats hell out of peanut butter and toast.”

“Anything beats that.”

“Creamed liverwurst?” Derry asked innocently.

Angel shuddered.

Derry took a bite of the omelet and sighed. “Clarissa was right about one thing,” he said.