A Woman Without Lies

by Elizabeth Lowell

  Not one thing.

  Four weeks of Hawk’s contempt against a lifetime of self-contempt if she refused.

  “It’s all right, Derry,” Angel said calmly. “I’ll take care of it.”

  Derry couldn’t conceal the relief that made him sag slightly against the crutches. Nor could he hide the concern that came when he saw the pallor of Angel’s face. He swung his powerful body across the room until he was close enough to touch her. He put his hand on her forehead.

  “You sure, Angie?” he asked. “You look pale and there’s some kind of flu going around . . . ”

  Again Derry didn’t finish. He wouldn’t ask Angel to do something that benefited only him.

  For a moment Angel closed her eyes and let her forehead rest on Derry’s large palm, drawing strength from him. When she straightened, her eyes were blue-green and calm.

  “I’m sure,” she said simply.

  Hawk sensed the currents of concern and affection flowing between Angel and Derry, and was both intrigued and irritated. He wondered what hold the charming Derry had on Angel that could compel her to shut herself up on a boat for four weeks with a man she hated.

  Abruptly Hawk decided that he was going to have some answers from Angel. He hadn’t misjudged a woman so badly since he was eighteen. He wanted—needed—to know what had gone wrong, how he had been misled. He was no longer enraged, simply very certain that he must have Angel’s truths.

  If Derry was the only way to flush Angel out of hiding, then Derry was what Hawk would use.

  “You haven’t asked if it’s all right with me,” Hawk pointed out, his voice cool.

  Startled, Derry looked away from Angel. “But you said you wouldn’t mind.”

  “Angel and I are going to have a talk. At the end of it, either one of us may change our minds.”

  Then Hawk lifted his eyebrow and pinned Angel with a glance as hard and brilliant as a bird of prey’s.

  “Right, Angel baby?”

  Derry’s eyes widened. It was the first time he had gotten even a hint of the whiplike quality Hawk’s voice could hold. Troubled, Derry looked at Angel.

  She touched Derry’s arm gently, telling him without words that it wasn’t the first time she had heard that note in Hawk’s voice. But unlike Hawk, she couldn’t back out. She loved Derry too much to destroy his dream.

  “Wrong, Hawk,” Angel said distinctly. “Just like you’ve been about everything else.”

  She turned and walked quickly out the door. The sound of tiny silver bells and her words floated back after her.

  “We’ll talk on the beach.”

  The whiplike quality of her voice was the same as Hawk’s.

  16

  As Angel scuffed into the beach walkers she always kept by the back door, she gathered gauzy folds of cloth in one hand, and set off down the trail with a speed that came from years of familiarity. She didn’t notice the narrowness or the gaps where the railing had fallen and not been rebuilt.

  The trail clung precariously to the face of the cliff. The path wasn’t actually dangerous, unless it was wet or very windy. But it wasn’t a place for children, or clumsy people of any age.

  Even if the trail had been flatly dangerous, Angel would have taken it. She desperately wanted to get Hawk to a place where Derry could neither see nor overhear their conversation.

  Derry, like Carlson, was very protective of Angel. It was as though having saved her life, Derry felt directly responsible for any further pain Angel suffered. He knew that it was impossible for him to protect her from life’s bitter surprises, but the impulse was still there, buried beneath layers of rationality.

  Angel blamed herself for Derry’s guilt. Years ago she had accused Derry of selfishly forcing her to live just so that he wouldn’t be alone. A cruel accusation, but it had been a cruel time. Now she regretted her hateful words. Now she, like Derry, had a need to protect.

  She raced down the switchbacks that snaked through forest and rock to the beach below. The day was unusually hot for Vancouver Island. By the time she reached the bottom of the trail she was perspiring lightly.

  The tide was out. When she let go of the hem of her dress, the breeze picked it up and pressed the supple cloth against her legs, outlining their slender length in soft rose. Folds of cloth billowed lightly behind her, creating graceful shadows over the sand.

  Angel had barely taken a breath before Hawk crossed the beach and stood beside her, watching her. It didn’t surprise Angel that Hawk had come down the trail with a speed to equal hers. He had the reflexes of a predator.

  She turned to face Hawk. Her movement and the wind sent folds of cloth licking over him, and brought to his keen ears the tiny cries of silver bells.

  Hunger raced through him, hunger and something more, something that threatened every certainty he had left. And so he did what he had always done when cornered.

  Hawk attacked.

  “What does Derry have on you? You’d as soon kill me as look at me, but you’ll shut yourself up on a boat with me for a month because Derry asks you to. Hell, he didn’t even have to ask, did he?”

  “No. I hope that Derry never will have to ask me for anything that I can give him. And he doesn’t have anything on me, either,” said Angel, her voice flat.

  “Then what’s his hold on you? Money?”

  Angel’s mouth curled at one corner, a cold gesture that couldn’t be called a smile.

  “No,” she said softly.

  “Then what?”

  “Something you wouldn’t understand.”

  Hawk’s hand fastened on Angel’s arm. The softness of cotton and her flesh only infuriated him.

  “What is it, damn you!” he snarled.

  “Love.”

  There was an instant of silence.

  “Love,” repeated Hawk.

  The word was a curse. His voice vibrated with disgust.

  “That’s a woman’s word for sex,” Hawk said flatly, “and you sure as hell weren’t getting that from Derry. Which is the lie, Angel baby—love or that you don’t want sex with Derry?”

  Angel simply stared.

  “What’s Derry’s hold on you?” Hawk demanded. “Talk, damn you! Let me hear all your lies!”

  For the space of a breath, Angel looked at Hawk as though she had never seen him before.

  “Have you ever loved anyone?” Angel asked quietly. “Your mother? Your father? A brother? Sister? Child? Anyone?”

  “Are you saying that Derry is your brother?”

  “Close,” Angel said, meeting Hawk’s cold eyes.

  “How close is close?” “Twenty-four hours.”

  Hawk hesitated. Angel had spoken with such conviction that he felt he should know what her answer meant.

  “I don’t understand,” he said finally, loosening his grip on her arm.

  “I know. There’s a lot about people—and me—that you don’t understand.”

  “Don’t push me, Angel,” Hawk said, anger tightening the already harsh lines of his face, “or I’ll go ask Derry my questions and then tell him some things he really doesn’t want to know.”

  Angel closed her eyes. She knew that Hawk would kill Derry’s dreams as casually as he had killed hers. That must not happen.

  “Derry came within twenty-four hours of being my brother-in-law,” she said, her voice empty.

  Hawk’s eyes narrowed.

  “Grant,” he said. “That was his name, wasn’t it? Grant?”

  “Yes.”

  “What happened?”

  “He died.”

  “When.”

  The word was flat, the demand unavoidable. Angel had known it would come to this. She had prepared herself for it every step of the way down the cliff.

  Maybe if I tell Hawk, he can find enough human compassion in himself not to make my life hell for the next four weeks.

  Maybe there could be a truce.

  The thought gave Angel the strength to take a slow breath, to reach for the colors cascading thro
ugh her mind, to make of those colors a single rose unfolding.

  “Grant—” Angel’s voice thinned into hoarse silence.

  She rarely spoke Grant’s name aloud. The hurt of hearing it surprised her. When she spoke again, her voice was without emotion or music.

  “Grant died four years ago last night, the night before our wedding. His mother died then, too. So did my father and my mother.”

  Hawk went absolutely still. He had no doubt that he was hearing the truth.

  He would rather have heard lies. Lies can be disregarded, discarded, ignored. Truth could not. It hurt too much.

  Like Angel, hurting.

  He could sense the intensity of her emotions breaking over him in waves of rage and helplessness and pain. Yet her voice didn’t show any of it, nor did her face. Only her eyes, haunted by shadows, the color of the sea torn apart by hidden rocks.

  Her words continued calmly, relentlessly. Her eyes were dry. The tiny bells she wore shivered and cried with inhuman beauty, inhuman pain.

  “I would have died, too,” Angel said, “if Derry hadn’t dragged me out of the wreckage as it burned. I was badly injured. He came to me in the hospital, fought for my life harder than I did. And then he took care of me until I could walk again.”

  “Then why the hell didn’t you sleep with him?” snarled Hawk, angered by the deep emotion he sensed beneath Angel’s calm words.

  “That’s not the kind of love we feel for each other.”

  Hawk waited.

  Angel’s eyes focused on Hawk. There was nothing of comfort in them.

  “I don’t know if I can make you understand,” she said simply. “Derry is the only person on earth who shares my memories of growing up, of my parents and Grant and summer picnics on the beach . . . laughter and firelight and the beauty of falling in love for the first time. Derry is the only one who remembers the night Grant and I announced our engagement, the words and the—”

  “Why don’t the two of you build a god-damn shrine?” Hawk asked coldly.

  He didn’t question the unreasonable rage that coiled within him at the thought of Angel loving anyone.

  Even a dead man.

  Fury tore at Angel like steel talons. With an effort that made her tremble, she kept her voice even.

  “You are well named,” she said carefully. “Bird of prey. I was very easy prey, wasn’t I?”

  “Is that why you raced home last night? Were you afraid you’d end up in bed with me again?”

  The harsh expression on Hawk’s face steadied Angel as nothing else could have.

  “No,” Angel said quietly. “I’m not afraid of ending up in bed with you again. I’ve learned the meaning of the old saying about casting pearls before swine.”

  “Is that how you thought of your virginity—a real pearl?” asked Hawk caustically.

  “No. But you made up for it. You were a real swine.”

  There was a moment of savage silence.

  Then Hawk said softly, dangerously, “Why did you give yourself to me, Angel? Because you did. I didn’t take you. Or is that the lie you’re consoling yourself with this morning? Poor little Angel,” he said mockingly, “done in by an experienced Hawk.”

  Suddenly Angel was glad for the tears that she had cried last night. It made it possible not to cry now. Deep inside herself the silent, tearing question changed from Why? to How?

  How did I so badly misjudge this man?

  When the answer came to her, Angel spoke it aloud without thinking, without caring.

  “I thought I loved you,” Angel said. “That was very stupid of me, I confused desire with love—and ended up with neither.”

  Hawk’s pupils dilated, then narrowed to ebony points in brown eyes that were deep and clear. He said nothing, for he was too surprised to speak.

  She had said love with the same mocking emphasis that he habitually used when he spoke the word. And in speaking that way, Angel had told Hawk that he had hurt her as badly as he had once been hurt.

  The thought sank like a hook deep in his gut, twisting with each breath he took.

  Hawk hadn’t even believed it was possible to wound Angel so savagely. To be hurt like that, you must first love. But Hawk hadn’t believed in love since he was eighteen.

  Not for him.

  Not for anyone.

  “No more questions?” Angel asked, her voice even.

  Hawk said nothing. There was nothing for him to say.

  “Good,” Angel said crisply. “Let’s go fishing.”

  The controlled chill of her words rocked Hawk, angering him. His mouth tightened.

  “Cold as the sea, aren’t you?” he asked.

  Angel looked out over the shimmering, cloud-shadowed expanse of water in front of her.

  “The sea isn’t cold,” she said. “It teems with life. I’m as cold as a bird of prey. Death, not life. Do you want to go fishing this afternoon?”

  “I’d like to break your neck.”

  “That would be a pity, ” Angel said, her voice indifferent as she turned to face Hawk once again. “It’s about the only part of me that hasn’t been broken.”

  Hawk’s voice changed as he leaned toward her.

  “Including your heart?” he asked softly.

  “My heart was broken long before I met you.”

  “Angel . . . ”

  Hawk’s voice was a warmth brushing over her temples. Emotions twisted inside her, trying to elude her control.

  “Don’t call me that,” Angel said tightly.

  “Why? Because he called you Angel?”

  “He?”

  Hawk’s nostrils flared. He leaned closer, so close that he could smell the delicate perfume Angel used.

  “The boy you loved,” Hawk said. “Derry’s brother.”

  Angel turned away, hating the treacherous warmth that radiated from Hawk through the filmy caftan.

  “We’ll miss the tide change unless we hurry,” she said.

  “Answer me.”

  Angel turned back so quickly that tiny bells trembled and cried. But her voice was soft, almost too soft for Hawk to hear though he stood only inches from her.

  “Grant called me Angie, darling, sweetheart, honey, love. He called me his own special sunrise, his hidden heart, his—”

  “But you didn’t sleep with him,” interrupted Hawk roughly, not wanting to hear any more.

  “No. It’s the only thing I regret about my love for him.”

  Angel tried to stop, but her voice went on softly, relentlessly. She was unable to halt the words even though they were shattering the peace she had so carefully rebuilt from the fragments of the past.

  “My God, how I regret it!” she said hoarsely. “Especially now!”

  Hawk’s breath came in with a sharp sound. He knew that Angel was remembering her unhappy initiation at his hands.

  But she was still speaking softly, so softly that Hawk had to concentrate to hear every word, feel every hook sinking into him, barbs tearing through a lifetime of scars to the vulnerable flesh beneath.

  “If I had known he was going to die, I would have made love with him.” Angel’s voice shook with intensity. “But I was young. I thought we had time. A lifetime. And Grant—”

  Her voice broke over his name and then reformed, empty again, controlled.

  “Grant wanted the first time to be perfect for me,” Angel said. “Our own home, our own bed, every right in the world to make slow, beautiful love to each other.”

  Hawk closed his eyes for an instant, remembering the moment when he had taken Angel with equal parts of lust and anger. But that moment was in the past, as irretrievable as childhood.

  It was futile to shred himself over what could not be changed. All that could be changed, all that was left, was the future—an angel with torn wings and green eyes that had seen hell, and a hawk that hadn’t known heaven when he had pierced its warm surface with angry black talons.

  Hawk put the past behind him, knowing he couldn’t touch it, chang
e it, heal it.

  He could learn, though.

  That was how living things survived. Learning from mistakes.

  “You haven’t answered my question,” Hawk said, his voice uninflected. “Why do you get angry when I call you Angel?”

  “Everybody calls me Angie. There’s nothing special between us. Why should you call me anything but Angie?”

  “The fact that you gave your virginity to me isn’t special?”

  “It should have been, ” agreed Angel in sardonic tones that echoed his. “But it ended up about as special as a skinned knee.”

  “Keep pushing me. You’ll find the limit,” promised Hawk, meaning every word.

  Angel’s eyes narrowed. She smiled a tiny, cold smile, liking the idea of finding Hawk’s limit.

  Of hurting him.

  “So I find your limit. So what?” Angel asked carelessly. “Never argue with someone like me, Hawk. I’ve got nothing left to lose. It gives me an edge.”

  “What about Derry?” Hawk asked smoothly, watching her.

  Abruptly Angel curbed the cruelty that had snaked out of her own pain. She had forgotten how easy—and how terribly satisfying—it could be to turn agony into cruelty and then watch the rest of the world bleed with each razor cut of her tongue.

  But cruelty only bred more cruelty, maiming the people around her, corroding her soul, until cruelty became a downward spiral of self-destruction that wouldn’t end short of death.

  Angel’s realization that she hadn’t learned her lesson well enough in the past was like getting an open-handed blow across the mouth. She paled until her haunted eyes were the only color in her face.

  I will try very hard not to destroy myself over Hawk. I will die rather than destroy Derry.

  “Angel is the name I called myself after the accident, when I finally decided to live,” she said.

  Hawk listened to the soft, controlled, emotionless words and felt a chill spreading through him.

  “An angel is something alive that once was dead. Like me,” she said. “Alive and then dead and then alive again. Angel.”

  Hawk fought the desire to take Angel in his arms. All that kept his hands at his side was the knowledge that she would turn on him like a cornered animal.