A Woman Without Lies by Elizabeth Lowell
“Tiger, you have no sense,” she scolded softly.
She rubbed the cat with her chin as she followed Mrs. Carey into the kitchen. The tom watched Angel with wise orange eyes, touched his nose to hers, and flowed out of her arms. Angel didn’t try to keep the cat. Mrs. Carey was sitting down now, no longer in danger of becoming tangled in her cat’s furry little feet.
“Pour for me, would you?” Mrs. Carey asked. “I must have slept on my hands wrong last night. They’re kind of slow waking up this morning.”
Angel looked quickly at Mrs. Carey. “Have you called Dr. McKay?”
The old woman laughed dryly.
“I’m seventy-nine, Angie. I’ve earned a few slow mornings, don’t you think?”
“I’m driving Derry over to see Dr. McKay later this morning,” said Angel. “I’ll pick you up and—”
“Nonsense,” Mrs. Carey interrupted firmly. “Pour the tea, Angie. There’s nothing the doctor can do for me that a cup of tea can’t do better. Sit down, Hawk. You can put whatever you’re carrying on the counter.”
Angie poured tea and passed the plate of shortbread biscuits around.
“About the doctor,” she began firmly. “I think—”
“I remember a time a few years ago,” Mrs. Carey said, interrupting with equal firmness. “Derry came flying over here with his knickers in a twist because he found you asleep on your studio floor. Seems you’d been working too long, or something. Dr. McKay went to the house, thumped and poked and listened, and you never woke up. He told Derry nothing was wrong with you that a lot of sleep wouldn’t cure.”
“Yes, but—”
Mrs. Carey put her teacup down with a firm motion that cut off Angel’s words.
“Well, there’s nothing wrong with me that being young again wouldn’t cure,” Mrs. Carey said. “The day the doctor can turn back time is the day I’ll call him and tell him I feel tired in the morning.”
Angel sighed and gave up.
The phone rang.
“I’ll get it,” Angel said, moving quickly toward the living room.
Mrs. Carey followed much more slowly.
Angel answered the phone, exchanged a few words with the person on the line, and then gave the phone to Mrs. Carey. The instant Angel walked back into the kitchen, she felt the intensity of Hawk’s stare.
“Do you do that often?” he asked, watching her.
“Answer the phone?” Angel asked, sitting down.
“Work yourself into exhaustion.”
Angel shrugged, trying to dismiss the subject.
“No,” she said calmly.
“Just when you’re upset?” Hawk asked, his voice too soft for Mrs. Carey to hear.
Angel sipped her tea.
“How long has it been?” said Hawk.
“Since what?”
“Since you worked until you couldn’t think, couldn’t feel, until your body just shut down and dumped you on the floor.”
For a moment Angel thought of refusing to answer. Then she realized that it didn’t matter. Hawk would just ask Derry.
And then there was the fact she wanted to tell Hawk. There would be a certain almost cruel pleasure in revealing to him just how badly he had misjudged her.
“It was more than three years ago,” Angel said, sipping her tea. “It was the night Carlson finally convinced me that the man I loved was dead and I was alive and there wasn’t one damn thing I could do about it except crawl into the grave and die with him.”
“But you didn’t.”
“Carlson wouldn’t let me.”
Angel’s eyes darkened, remembering Carlson’s cruelty. But it had been cruelty with purpose, cruelty that forced her to accept that she was alive and Grant was not.
Carlson had paid, too, more than she knew at the time. Angel hadn’t forgiven him for a year, hadn’t spoken to him, had refused even to look at him or the letters he sent. She hadn’t known then that Carlson loved her as a man loved a woman.
By the time she understood, it was too late. Carlson was inextricably bound up in her mind with Grant’s life and death. She could no more be Carlson’s lover than she could be Derry’s.
“Carlson loved you,” Hawk said flatly.
“Yes. Even before Grant did. But I never loved him, not that way.”
“Because he’s Indian?”
Angel smiled sadly. “Because he wasn’t Grant.”
“But after Grant was dead?” Hawk persisted.
With a weary gesture, Angel pushed tendrils of hair out of her eyes.
“Carlson still wasn’t Grant,” she said simply. “I couldn’t forgive him for that. I couldn’t forgive Derry. I couldn’t forgive any man.”
Angel saw another question form on Hawk’s lips. Abruptly she knew that whatever she had hoped to do to Hawk, she was being hurt worse by her words than he was. Memories punished her, memories she hadn’t allowed herself to review for years.
“No more, Hawk, please,” Angel said, her voice low, ragged. “Or do you enjoy torturing me with the past?”
Hawk closed his eyes, shutting out the confusion and anger in Angel’s face.
“No,” he said very softly.
“Then why do you do it?”
“Because I have to know about you.” His eyes opened clear and calm, as deep as night. “I have to.”
“Why?” Angel asked, desperation fraying the edges of her control.
“I’ve never known a woman who loved anything but herself.”
Hawk’s quiet words destroyed Angel’s protests. If her pain could teach Hawk something, she wouldn’t fight each question, each answer. She had learned so much from Derry’s pain, and from Carlson’s. She couldn’t refuse another person an equal chance to learn.
In the sudden silence, the sound of Mrs. Carey’s walker squeaking down the hall toward them was very loud.
“That was Karen,” Mrs. Carey said. “She told me that the raspberries on the old homestead are coming on thick this year.”
“Yum,” Angel said, licking her lips.
The old woman smiled.
“I can’t pick them,” Mrs. Carey said, “but I can still make jam.”
“We’ll be glad to pick as many berries as you want,” Hawk said before Angel could speak.
“A hawk in a raspberry patch.” Mrs. Carey laughed with a sound like fallen leaves rustling. “Thank you. That was worth getting up for.”
The corner of Hawk’s mouth lifted slightly. He looked at Angel, then at the kitchen counter where the stained glass panel lay, then back at Angel. She nodded. He stood in a lithe motion and went over to the counter.
“This,” Hawk said as he lifted the quilt-wrapped panel, “is worth living a hundred years for.”
He went to the window that overlooked the breakfast table. Sun poured through, bathing the table in warmth. Shielding the panel from Mrs. Carey’s view, Hawk unwrapped the quilt. Then he stepped aside quickly, holding the panel to the light.
Glass blazed, filling the kitchen with colors.
Mrs. Carey leaned against her walker’s support and looked at the glass transforming her kitchen into a fantasy of dancing colors.
“That is the prettiest thing I have ever seen,” she said slowly. “Just look at those colors. Why, I’d swear that you could eat that jelly.”
Angel smiled widely, enjoying Mrs. Carey’s pleasure.
“I’m glad you like it,” Angel said. “It’s yours.”
The old woman turned and looked at Angel.
“It’s too much, Angie. I can’t take it. Why, you must have spent a lot of time—”
“I’ve eaten your jam all my life, Mrs. Carey,” Angel interrupted gently. “You’ve spent years in the kitchen cooking for other people. Please. I want you to have the panel. I made it just for you.”
Tears sparkled in Mrs. Carey’s eyes. She pulled a lavender-scented handkerchief from the pocket of her house dress and dabbed at her eyes. Then she held her hand out to Angel.
Angel stood and hugg
“Where would you like this hung?” Hawk asked, switching his attention to Mrs. Carey.
“Right there, where I’ll see it every morning. When you’re my age, you need something to look forward to when you get out of bed.”
“You need that at any age,” Hawk said, glancing quickly at Angel.
While Hawk hung the panel so that it would take full advantage of the sunlight, Angel and Mrs. Carey worked on a list of what she would need for the upcoming canning season. By the time they were finished, so was Hawk. He took the list from Angel and skimmed it swiftly.
“Will you want these right away?” Hawk asked.
“Oh, no. Not for a week or more.”
“Good. Angel is going to take me fishing for a few days. Our last trip was . . . delayed.”
Angel wanted to object, but knew she couldn’t. When she had agreed to take up guide duties again, she had known that those duties would probably include the fishing trip.
Two days ago the thought hadn’t frightened her.
But it did now, for now when she looked at Hawk she saw more than his harsh, predatory features. She saw the shadow of a boy who had carried a green ribbon in his pocket until there was nothing left but a few bright threads.
It was an unusually quiet Angel who followed Hawk out to the car. She hadn’t thought to be vulnerable to him again, not like this, feeling his pain as though it was her own.
“I’ll stock the boat while you take Derry to the doctor,” Hawk said, watching Angel’s profile.
She nodded without looking at him.
“Do you have any calls to make before we leave?” Angel asked.
“No. The second part of the deal is launched. There will be one more crunch before it either all comes together or falls into a million pieces.”
The indifference in Hawk’s voice intrigued Angel.
“You sound like you don’t care,” she said.
“One way I’m rich. One way I’m not.” Hawk shrugged. “I’ve made and lost several fortunes since I quit racing cars. Either way, the adrenaline flows. Money is just a way of keeping score.”
Angel thought about Hawk’s words while she drove home. She was still thinking about them while she waited for Derry to be finished at the doctor’s office. Even when she and Hawk walked down the wharf to his boat, she was still turning his words over and over in her mind, like pieces of glass that she couldn’t quite fit into the overall design.
There was a wind blowing out of the north. Hawk’s black hair lifted and rippled thickly. The motion of his hair and the light sliding through it were distinctly uncivilized.
Angel glanced at Hawk’s profile, then quickly away. It was his watch she needed to see, not the untamed gleam of his eyes.
She frowned as she read the face of the watch. North winds usually blew up trouble. She had hoped to fish the tide turn at Indian Head, nearly three-quarters of the way up to Needle Bay, their destination.
But if a good blow was coming up, they would be lucky to make Needle Bay by dark. If the wind came too hard, they would have to shelter somewhere else along they way. Despite the protection of mountains and islands, the Inside Passage was treacherous to small craft in a storm.
Angel took the boat out of the marina as quickly as the law allowed. Without a backward look, she left Campbell River behind, ignoring the boats bobbing on Frenchman’s Pool and the log rafts floating along the shore.
The wind stayed constant, just hard enough to make some whitecaps and set up a distinct chop. She turned up the volume on the radio, listening to fishermen coming down from the north. From what she heard, the wind was no worse up there than it was here. Reassured, she settled in for the long ride.
After a few hours, Hawk gave up his exposed position in one of the boat’s padded stern seats. At first he had stayed out of the cabin deliberately, not wanting to make Angel nervous with his presence. Finally the sustained roar of the engines, the tangled white ribbon of the wake, the mountains rising green and gray from the sea, had all combined to relax him.
The wind and spray, however, were getting to the point that Hawk would be first chilled, then wet, unless he moved into the cabin.
Angel looked up, sensing Hawk’s presence.
“Getting rough out there?”she asked.
“A little.”
Hawk looked through the windshield and over the bow. In a gap between islands, solid ranks of whitecaps marched across the blue-black surface of the sea.
“Not as rough as it’s going to get, from the looks of that,” he said.
“That should be the worst of it,” agreed Angel, measuring the amount of rough water to cross. “We’ll duck into the narrow channel between those two islands and cut over to another route north. It will take longer, but it’s more protected.”
Hawk braced himself along the padded bench seat that ran around three sides of the table that was behind the cockpit. Without talking, he watched Angel handle the powerful boat. The stretch of wind-whipped water surrounded them, shook them playfully, pummeled the sleek white hull, then let the boat slide into the lee of an island where gulls wheeledand cried.
“Look,” said Hawk.
He touched Angel’s arm and pointed to her right, fifty yards away, along the sheer face of a cliff. Gulls were diving from the rocks into a seething ball of herring. Protected from the wind, the sea was green and slick, showing each bubble, each darting silver body.
Angel checked the angle of the sun, measured it against the amount of water yet to travel, and shook her head.
“I’d love to throw a few lines into that,” she said longingly.
“But?” asked Hawk, accurately reading Angel’s decision not to fish.
“This can be a nasty stretch of water when the tide is running full. We have four days to fish. I’d rather not be caught in these currents after dark.”
Only then did Hawk notice the subtle gradations of green in the water, the sinuous drift of debris marking boundaries of competing currents.
“Isn’t this slack tide?” he asked.
“Close.”
Hawk eyed the seething water with real respect. If it was this lively at the slack tide, he could imagine what it was like when the tide was running full—unthinkable masses of water racing between islands, shouldering against rocky channels, heaping into froth and silent, violent whirlpools.
Where Angel and Hawk were now, the Inside Passage had unraveled into a multitude of tiny openings winding among a maze of islands. Into that maze poured the power of the Pacific, a power that was constricted by rocks and narrows, currents and countercurrents.
Some of the islands were large, some were no bigger than boulders fringed with rock reefs. Even with a navigational map, Hawk knew that he would have difficulty picking his way through the obstacle course of rock and sea in full daylight at slack tide.
With darkness and the tide coming on, piloting the boat would be as demanding as racing a car with a broken wrist.
Hawk had done that once, when he was young and hadn’t cared whether he lived or died. It wasn’t an experience that he was eager to repeat.
Angel, however, seemed well in control of the situation. She reminded Hawk of himself during a race, alert and coordinated, hands firm on the wheel without clenching, eyes picking out the safest course. He sat back and enjoyed her skill, pleased with his guide through the unexpected beauties and dangers of the Inside Passage.
The pressure of Hawk’s attention finally became too great to ignore. Angel glanced sideways quickly, wondering what lay behind the enigmatic, very male lines of his face.
“Is something wrong?” she asked.
“No. You’re very good,” said Hawk distinctly. “I enjoy watching such a high level of skill.”
Angel?
“Did Grant teach you?”
Dark lashes closed for an instant, concealing the blue-green color of Angel’s eyes.
Then, clearly, she said, “Yes.”
Angel waited, but no more questions came.
19
Hawk eased out of the triangular bed that filled the bow of the boat. It was absolutely black in the bow except for a lighter patch of darkness where the vent was. Carefully he opened the door to the cockpit cabin, trying to make no noise. His moccasins made no sound as he walked across the runner of indoor-outdoor carpeting.
The cabin beyond the cockpit was empty.
As Hawk had suspected, Angel had chosen to sleep outside, in the stern of the boat. It was as far away from him as she could get without sleeping on the rocks that lined Needle Bay’s shore. The built-in seats and the raised platform covering the engines combined to form an area the size of a double bed. Custom-made pads ensured that the bed was reasonably comfortable.
It was a chilly bed, though. The predawn air had a definite bite. Angel had slid down into her sleeping bag until no more than a pale cloud of hair showed.
Hawk crossed to the stern and touched her hair very gently, taking care not to wake her. Away from her face, her hair was cool, almost cold, yet oddly alive. It gathered light like a pearl, shimmering and shifting with each touch of Hawk’s hand.
He remembered how her hair had looked a few days ago when he had laid her down on the dark quilt in the bow of the boat. The pale fire of her hair and skin had made him want to bury himself in Angel like a warm pool.
She had been so beautiful, and he had been so cruel.
The lines on Hawk’s face deepened as he gently wound a strand of Angel’s hair around his finger. He knew so little about her, and so much.
She had given to him what she had given to no other man. He had taken, unknowing, giving her nothing in return, not even pleasure. Then he had raged at her for destroying his world, for taking his certainties about life and love and women and smashing each one of them.
He had thought Angel was aware of what she had done to him, that she had done it deliberately.
Today Hawk knew that wasn’t true. Angel had no more known the depth of his cynicism than he had known the depth of her innocence.