Elizabeth Lowell: A Woman Without Lies

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.