She was ready, had been all along, Hawk knew. Leaving his fingers embedded in her, he toyed with the sensitive, swollen nub a moment longer, then abruptly withdrew his touch and stepped back.
Angela almost fell to her knees at the combined loss of sensation and support. A wildness deep inside her was bursting to get out as she swung around to see Hawk leaning against the marble wall opposite. The gaze that met hers was hot and dark, compelling her without words to go to him.
She hesitated, but not because she was in any way uncertain. Nothing in her life had ever felt so good, so incredibly right. No, she paused because she wanted to remember this forever, this moment, the way Hawk stood proud and strong before her, his chest heaving with deep, uneven breaths, his hard shaft jutting out from its dark thick nest, his hands shaking slightly but enough for her to notice.
It was time. Angela went to the man she loved, the man who was her lover, and put her palms against his chest. The fingers of one hand crept up his shoulder to explore the puckered scar. When she slid her hand around to find the matching wound on his back, it took all her control to keep her expression free of the dismay she felt at what he had suffered. This was a time for pleasure, not pain.
"There's no going back," he said. "I've known almost from the beginning that I'd never let you go, not if we made it this far together."
"I love you," she said simply, and gasped as his heart thudded double time beneath her fingers.
"I've never used those words before." His hands were still shaking as he lifted them to cover hers. "I meant what I said, though. I'll never let you go."
"That's good enough for me." She didn't need the words, not when she could see the love in his eyes. Love, and desire. She focused on the latter. Stepping even closer, she felt the heat surge through her again as the hard, sensitive tips of her breasts brushed the Backs of his hands.
"We could do this in a bed, you know," he said. "There's one just a few feet away." He turned his hands to cup her breasts without dropping his gaze from her eyes.
"Later."
He spread his fingers and squeezed her nipples between them. "It would be easier for you, Angel."
She smiled as she slid one hand downward and closed her fingers around his smooth, hard arousal. "We've got the rest of our lives to do things easy."
"Have it your own way, then," he said, and gave her a tender kiss. He lifted his head and shook it almost ruefully as he smiled down at her. "Ready?"
"Together this time?" she asked softly.
"Together." He gripped her hips and pulled her tight against him. "Take a deep breath, darling. Here we go."
Angela did what he said because it didn't occur to her not to, and that was a good thing. It was a very long time before his mouth slid from hers long enough for her to get another breath. Then Hawk covered her mouth again, and as their tongues dueled and mated they sank to the floor and made sweet, hot love beneath the twin sprays of the shower.
If the hot water ran out, they didn't notice.
FIFTEEN
Breakfast was on the cold side by the time Hawk and Angela got to it, but like the temperature of the shower, they didn't really notice. Sharing the omelettes, bacon, and flaky croissants on a table next to a cozy wood-burning fire, they ate everything in sight, then went to bed for several hours of much-deserved rest.
Peter awakened them sometime around noon with coffee and more food, sharing their second breakfast as they discussed the day's schedule. Like Hawk, Angela wore the thick robe provided by the hotel, the one-size-fits-all nearly overwhelming her, while leaving Hawk's forearms and knees exposed. Keeping her gaze from wandering too often to said forearms and knees, she held a coffee cup in one hand, a piece of toast in the other, and ignored them both as she listened to the men. She didn't like what she was hearing.
"If I might interrupt . . . ?" She smiled and waited politely.
"Since when have you asked permission?" Hawk asked, but he smiled back, so she knew he really didn't mean the unsubtle insult.
She put the toast down and wrapped both hands around the coffee mug. "As I understand it, your plan is to get the video back from where you hid it in your neighbor's apartment, make copies, then leave it up to Blackthorne to make sure they get spread around. Am I right?"
"Yes." Hawk poured more coffee for all three, then added, "If you're worried about anything, don't be. There's no reason for Marchand to imagine I'd hide the video where I lived. All he knows is there's a tape and he might be a player in it."
"Which is enough to make him very determined to stop you," Peter said. "The sooner we get that video, the better."
"The thing I can't figure out," Angela said, "is why you haven't used it before. If it implicated Marchand and Constantine, you could have been in the clear months ago."
"I couldn't use it against Constantine because he had his back turned to the camera throughout." Hawk got up and went to lean against the mantel over the fireplace.
"You were bluffing?" Her heart thudded in her chest as she began to understand the chance he'd taken. "But why?"
"It was all I could come up with in the way of a stall. If I was prepared to let you die, Constantine needed to be convinced I had a good reason for coming to the boat."
Angela had to pause and take several deep breaths before the terror of those hours in Constantdne's company would subside to manageable proportions. That, combined with the horror of knowing men had died in the explosion, had kept her awake long after Hawk had carried her to bed. At his insistence, they'd talked about everything—witnessed or imagined. She'd finally found comfort in his arms when even logic hadn't been able to erase the brutal images from her mind.
It was easier in the cold light of day to remember that drose same men had wanted to kill her and Hawk. Easier, too, when she had something else to think about. Marchand and the problems he posed were ideal for her purpose.
She looked up to find Hawk's gaze on her. "So why didn't you use the video against Marchand?"
"That night when I fled the beach, I'd been wounded and betrayed by a man I trusted. I had no way of knowing how far the rot had spread beyond Marchand, so I just kept running." He studied the back of his right hand and flexed it as though it was giving him pain. "At first I thought I'd only have to keep my head down until I was recovered enough to retrieve the camcorder from the sand dune that collapsed over it. It was two months before I dug it up and saw that the video would be useless against Constantine. I knew then I couldn't let him get away with what he'd done to Jack."
"So you decided to go after him yourself."
"It was the only way." His gaze held a plea for understanding. "If you hadn't come along, I would probably have gone through with it."
Remembering that first night, Angela didn't doubt that for a second. "Constantine doesn't matter anymore, and I refuse to let what might have happened come between us."
"I killed him," Hawk said suddenly. "Constantine didn't die in the explosion. I shot him with the speargun. You need to know that."
"How he died isn't important," she said without hesitation. "Peter told me the explosives were your idea too. Four men died last night because that was the only way you could find to save my life. Those men made their own choices about how they would conduct their lives long before you or I came into the picture. I feel no guilt. Neither should you."
Hawk didn't have a chance to reply because Peter took that opportunity to get the conversation back on track. "Let's concentrate on Marchand, shall we?"
"How can we be sure he won't be waiting at your apartment?" Angela asked.
"We can't," Hawk said, "and that's why I'm not going alone."
"Why can't you just send someone else for it?"
"Because Mrs. Avery would probably call the police if someone she didn't know asked if he could pull up a couple of boards from her living-room floor and take what's under them." Hawk grinned and shook his head. "It's got to be me, Angel."
"Then I've got a suggestion to m
ake." She leaned back in her chair and contemplated Hawk over the rim of her cup. "Why don't you call this Mrs. Avery and make sure the coast is clear before you go barging in?"
Hawk glanced at Peter, and when he looked back at Angela, there was a smudge of chagrin in his expression. "Because," he said, "I never thought of that."
"Simple, but effective," she said, following it with a loud sigh as she got up and went to stand next to Hawk. Sliding her arms around his waist, she smiled at him. "I would feel so much better knowing you're not walking into a trap."
In the mirror over the mantel, she saw Peter nod as the hint of a smile touched his mouth. "The lady's got a point, Hawk. We should have thought of that ourselves."
"All in a day's work," she said, then stepped away from Hawk when a knock sounded at the door. Peter got up to answer it, and she glanced aside to find Hawk watching her. "What?"
"You. You're a natural at this business."
"I'm a planner," she said succinctly. "And unlike some people I know, my plans always work."
"And mine don't?"
"You depend entirely too much on luck. If I left as many loose ends as you do, I wouldn't be able to afford vacations in St. Lucia."
"So who's traveling around Northern California with not much more than the shirt on her back and paying a small fortune for a hotel room on an island thousands of miles away?" He hooked a finger in the belt of her robe and drew her close.
"That's the thing about luck," she said, weaving her hands around his neck. "It can foul up the best-laid plans . . . and leave you believing you've won the lottery."
* * *
The caravan of four-wheel-drive trucks left the resort after lunch, with Angela at the wheel of the one in the middle and Hawk beside her. Peter had been dissuaded from riding with them, and he'd given in with the proviso that they rearrange themselves before reaching San Rafael. Angela agreed, but didn't tell anyone she had no intention of letting Hawk tuck her somewhere safe while he went on to risk his neck retrieving the video. That refinement to the plan, she decided, could come later. In the meantime it felt good to be dressed in their freshly laundered clothes. Not even the fact that she was back to wearing her high-heeled pumps was enough to dampen her optimistic mood.
"How is it you came to leave something so important back in San Rafael anyway?" she asked, reaching down to fiddle with the buttons on the side of the driver's bucket seat. They were pretty much the same configuration as the ones in her Towncar, and she grinned when she pushed one and the lumbar support filled in the curve of her spine. "It seems to me that a videotape would be right at home in that sports bag of yours."
"Keeping it with me wasn't a good idea, not if I wanted to be sure Marchand didn't get his hands on it."
"So what's wrong with a bank? They're much more anonymous than your neighbor's apartment." She frowned without taking her eyes from the road.
"You have to provide identification to rent a safe-deposit box," he said around a yawn. "Even with a half-dozen fake identities, I couldn't be sure Marchand wouldn't eventually track down all of them. Now that he knows there's something to look for, he's probably already checking out the banks in the area."
She chanced a quick glance sideways. "That's how he found you, through a fake ID?"
"I suspect he's had that information for several weeks. There are a limited number of really good forgers, and the kind of pressure Marchand can exert will eventually wear down even the most tight-lipped of them." He thrust his fingers through his hair, then patted her thigh. "Even so, Marchand wouldn't have known where to start looking if Mrs. Avery hadn't spilled the beans. I'd still be planning revenge and you'd be in St. Lucia, working on your tan."
"Mrs. Avery did this to you?" she exclaimed. "But, Hawk—"
"Don't worry, Angel. It wasn't intentional." He reached over to run his fingers through her hair, which she'd worn loose at his request. "You have to know what kind of person she is to understand what happened."
"So tell me."
"She's—" he began, then a strange look crossed his face and he dug into the breast pocket of his jacket. His expression cleared when he pulled out a cassette and pushed it into the tape player in the dash. "This will tell you a lot more than I can," he said enigmatically, holding his finger on the reverse button until the tape was at the beginning.
"This is WRDY radio out of Pine Forest, North Carolina, and you're listening to 'Fiona's Forum' on Austin in the Evening. Tonight's subject is men—"
"What is this?" Angela interrupted.
"Hush and listen."
She did, but not because he told her to. She was intrigued by the deejay's outline of the show's format, and even more so when the woman who called herself Fiona began to talk.
"Don't get too carried away, Austin. I only promise to produce the perfect mate. The end result of any relationship is a matter best left to the people involved."
"You're saying that not even the perfect mate will be a guarantee of happy-ever-after?" the deejay asked.
"A lasting relationship takes more than a mere introduction, " Fiona said. "Much more."
"My name is Mrs.—" It was a new voice, and Angela guessed it was a caller.
"Your neighbor?" she asked, beginning to see where at least a part of this was leading.
"Yes."
Angela listened very carefully indeed as Mrs. Avery— Sara—described her next-door neighbor.
"... it's not that he's gorgeous or anything prissy like that. Bob—that's his name—is more the rugged sort, real tall with wonderful broad shoulders and the kind efface that only a very strong woman would think was attractive."
"Bob?" Angela said. "Why not John, as in Smith? Real subtle, Hawk."
"Hush. I haven't listened to the whole thing yet."
"A woman has to be strong to look at Bob?" Fiona asked.
Angela choked on a laugh, and only just held back another when Sara related now Hawk's smile scared her friend Edna. Angela was thinking Edna needed to get to know Hawk better when Sara started talking about Hawk's—Bob's—injuries. Only then did she begin to see just how much revealing information Mrs. Avery had spread across the radio waves.
Mrs. Avery continued. "Such a shame, too, that scar on the back of his hand, the right one. He says it happened years ago, but I can tell it still hurts, even now when his other injuries have mostly healed."
Hawk responded to Angela's involuntary gasp by patting her shoulder. "That's as far as I've listened. Let's hear it all."
Fiona was speaking. "A scar on—"
"It was why he took up needlepoint—for the exercise therapy, you know, to get his fingers working again. Bob does such beautiful work too. He made me. a new cover for my footstool last month, a roadrunner it was. Such a thoughtful man. I'm quite worried about him, you see."
"Because he's single?" Fiona asked.
"Of course that's why I'm worried. I wouldn't have called you otherwise. Bob is a lovely man, and I've never once seen him with a woman—or anyone eke for that matter."
Fiona asked, "Does Bob talk to you about this?"
"If you mean does he bend my ear about how lonely he is, then you've got him all wrong. A body has to work very hard to get any information out of Bob about anything, and then he'll only say as little as he thinks he can get away with. I'd think you would sense that Bob wouldn't talk about himself like that. Are you sure you're a psychic?"
Despite or because of Hawk's pained expression, Angela started laughing and didn't stop until he covered her mouth and told her to watch the road and listen. He wanted to know what woman this Fiona had in mind for him.
"With any luck," he said darkly, "my ideal woman will at least know when to keep her mouth shut."
"Boring," Angela said, then pressed her lips together in an exaggerated way when he glared at her. She listened as Mrs. Avery enumerated Bob's better qualities, and wasn't surprised by any of them. She could even sympathize with her when Fiona gently accused her of being in love with the allege
d Bob. Her ears then pricked up at Fiona's prediction.
"Bob is going to meet his perfect mate sometime in the next few days."
"Oh, he is, is he?" Angela didn't like the sound of that.
"Shh! I want to know who to look for," Hawk said.
"It's a good thing I know you're teasing," she said, and was annoyed when he shushed her again.
". . . medium height, five five or six, with long thick hair hanging down her back. Red, I think—I'm not sure about that, though. It's hard to tell. She's standing somewhere dark, somewhere without windows."
Angela felt her mouth go dry, and when she glanced at Hawk, he was staring her with a look of disbelief in his eyes.
"The woman Bob is destined to fall in love with is holding a gun."
Angela's attention was so glued to the incredible thing she was listening to, she almost rear-ended the truck ahead. She corrected herself in time and slowed so she wouldn't have to worry about that again.
"You see a gun but you can't be certain if her hair is red?"
"Sometimes it works like that."
"You're sure it's not one of those fancy corkscrews? I've got a friend—"
"This is a setup," Angela said, shooting Hawk a dark look.
"Don't look at me," he said, and turned up the volume.
"I really think it was a gun," Fiona said.
"If she says anything about a hidden videotape, I'm turning this truck around."
"A corkscrew would make more sense," Mrs. Avery said. "Bob sometimes drinks a glass of wine when he sits on the porch in the evening. Is this woman aiming the thing at Bob?"
"I hope not."
"See, that Fiona doesn't know everything," Hawk said.
"I'd hate to think this is her way of telling Bob she's not interested in him," Mrs. Avery said.
"Perhaps Bob respects a woman who has strong opinions."
There was more, but Angela didn't hear it. She was too busy laughing and trying to keep the truck on the road. The cellular phone rang and she could hear Hawk reassuring Peter that no, there was nothing wrong. Angela was just a little distracted, and maybe they should pull over for a minute or so.
Night of the Hawk (LS 767) Page 19
