“More to what?”
“Your hatred of women.”
Hawk pulled up the trap. It was empty. He lowered the trap again.
“I don’t hate all women,” he said finally. “Not anymore.”
“It isn’t easy, is it?”
“What isn’t?”
“Not hating me.”
Stillness went through Hawk, Angel’s truth sinking into him.
She’s right.
Not hating Angel went against every reflex Hawk had acquired during a lifetime of surviving in a harsh world.
Yet it was impossible to hate Angel. She had the aching purity of one of her stained glass creations, all the colors of life distilled into a woman with haunted eyes and a mouth still willing to smile.
“It’s frighteningly easy not to hate you,” Hawk said, watching Angel with eyes that consumed her gently, utterly.
Angel’s breath wedged in her throat as she began to understand.
Frightening.
Yes, it was all of that and then some to have your personal beliefs shattered in a single savage instant.
It had happened to Angel twice. Once with Hawk, when she had learned to distrust her own judgment. And once in the wreck, when she had learned to distrust life itself.
It had been very hard for Angel to crawl out of the wreckage of her world, to learn to walk again in a new world, a world that never could be as secure as the old had been.
Love had given her strength. Derry’s love. Carlson’s love. And finally, painfully, her own memories of Grant had been allowed to return, healing much of the regret and all of the bitterness.
How much worse it must be for Hawk to stand naked and alone amid the shattered pieces of his beliefs,
Angel thought painfully.
Hawk, who has never known love.
The sound of the trap being pulled from the sea’s green embrace startled Angel. She saw the dark, angular shape clinging to the mesh and came quickly to her feet, drawn again into the world she had chosen, the world she loved. She stood on tiptoe and peered over Hawk’s arm.
“It’s keeper size,” she crowed. “Just look at that beauty!”
Hawk’s eyebrow climbed at Angel’s enthusiasm. The black-eyed crab was crouched against the trap, waving its thick, serrated pincers around.
“Looks mean as hell to me,” Hawk said.
“The harder the shell, the sweeter the meat.”
“That’s not the way I remember that particular bit of folk wisdom.”
“New world, new saying,” Angel retorted blithely.
She shook the trap soundly. Then, swiftly, she grabbed the distracted crab and headed back up the beach.
Hawk coiled the yellow rope, hefted the trap, and followed, wondering with each step how something as soft and silky as Angel had survived a world where teeth and claws were the rule.
Then he remembered her deft capture of the wicked-looking crab. The corners of Hawk’s mouth lifted.
Maybe the better question would be how teeth and claws could survive in the presence of an angel.
Hawk waded back from the boat to the shore. Angel waited there, stretched out on her stomach on an old quilt. Her chin was propped on her hands as she watched huge, sleek bumblebees go from blossom to blossom among the scattered wildflowers.
“Feeling sorry for the flowers?” Hawk asked.
“Hmmm?” murmured Angel. “Why should I feel sorry for them?”
“The bee goes from flower to flower to flower, sipping honey and then flying on without a backward look.”
“That’s the bee’s point of view.” Angel’s lips curved upward in a small, secret smile.
Hawk saw the smile as she rolled over gracefully and sat up to take a soda from his hand. Deftly he opened the can and gave it to her.
“What other point of view is there?” Hawk asked, popping open his beer.
“The flower’s.”
“Which is?” prompted Hawk, enjoying the very feminine smile on Angel’s lips.
“The flower gets bee after bee after bee.”
The corners of Hawk’s mouth shifted beneath the midnight mustache. There was a flash of white teeth and then the soft, rough-edged sound of male laughter.
Angel watched, riveted by Hawk’s transformation. The hard planes of his face gentled, making his expression younger, more open, a face both experienced and warm. She had thought him harshly handsome before; when he laughed, he was more beautiful than a pagan god.
Then Hawk turned and smiled directly at Angel. She felt as though she had been handed the sun after years of darkness. Her blue-green eyes drank in every instant of Hawk’s transformation.
“Bee after bee after bee,” he said. He shook his head, still smiling. “Angel, you’re . . . special.”
“So are you. And when you smile,” she added huskily, “you’re incredible.”
Surprise changed Hawk’s face again. Eyes that had lit with laughter changed to a blaze of brown when he saw that Angel, as always, was telling the truth. No matter how intently he searched her eyes, he saw only pleasure. There were no shadows of fear or unease.
“I’ll have to smile more often,” Hawk said quietly.
“Yes,” Angel said, meeting Hawk’s eyes. “That would be . . . special.”
Hawk’s lean brown hand reached slowly toward Angel. His fingertips traced the burnished curve of one eyebrow, the straight line above her nose and the hollow beneath one high, slanted cheekbone. He wanted very much to lower his mouth and taste her very gently, feeling the warmth of her skin beneath his lips.
Instead, Hawk smiled at Angel again and felt her own smile go through him, transforming everything it touched into radiant colors. Slowly, he withdrew his touch before the pleasure glowing in her eyes became shadowed by fear of him again.
“What else do we have to do for our dinner?” Hawk asked.
Although he had turned away and was gathering up the debris of the impromptu picnic, Angel heard the faint huskiness beneath Hawk’s impersonal words. Suddenly she realized that she had been sitting motionless while his fingers memorized her face.
A tremor moved through Angel as she remembered what being intimate with Hawk had been like. Gentle, at first, and then fierce, hurtful.
“F-fish,” Angel said. Then she cleared her throat and tried again. “Fish.”
Hawk looked out beyond the narrow neck of the bay. Wind and whitecaps claimed the Inside Passage.
“Maybe we should settle for crabs and clams,” he said doubtfully.
“In the bay,” Angel added quickly. “For cod. Maybe even a halibut if we’re lucky.”
“Salmon?” Angel sighed. “Doubt it, but anything is possible.”
Even a smile from a hawk.
Working together they bundled up all the equipment. Angel waded into the bay this time. The heat of the day made the water feel merely bracing rather than punishing. When she got to the boat, the water was just up to the curve of her hips.
The boat’s railing was at her eye level, and there was no sea ladder at the stern.
“Now comes the hard part,” Angel said, shifting her grip on the bucket.
Saying nothing, Hawk dumped everything he held onto the deck. Then he grabbed the railing and pulled himself out of the water and into the boat with a single, powerful movement.
Angel stared in disbelief as Hawk leaned over and plucked the bucket out of her hand.
“What hard part?” Hawk asked. “Cleaning the crabs?”
After a moment Angel realized that Hawk wasn’t teasing her. He really didn’t know what she had meant. She threw a glance at the sky, silently asking why life distributed physical gifts so unfairly.
“Getting into the blasted boat,” Angel said, her voice rich with disgust. “At least for some of us mere mortals, it’s the hard part.”
Hawk looked startled for a moment, then understood. His mustache shifted and glimmered with dark lights as he fought not to smile. Keeping his head down and taking his time about it, he braced the bucket so that it wouldn’t be kicked over in a careless moment.
Despite her disgust at her own limitation, Angel smiled.
“Go ahead,” she said. “Smile. I’ll get even.”
Soft, masculine laughter sent ripples of sensation through Angel. Hawk lifted his head and leaned over the rail toward her, revealing the white flash of his smile.
She noticed that both of his eyeteeth were slightly crooked, and there was a scar along the upper curve of his lip. The small imperfections in Hawk’s smile only made it more beautiful to her, like the flaws that made each piece of muff glass unique.
Then the smile vanished, leaving only fierce, clear brown eyes watching her.
“Let me help you,” Hawk said.
“You’re going to loan me your wings, right?” Angel asked wryly.
“Sort of.”
Hawk grasped Angel under her arms and lifted. He pivoted as he lifted, bringing her smoothly aboard without banging her shins against the railing. He saw the wince that she tried to conceal. Very gently, he set her down on the deck.
With a sigh, Angel forced her body to relax despite the pain lancing down her back from the hook wound. She knew that tensing against pain only made it worse. She breathed carefully and moved her shoulder.
“I’m sorry,” Hawk said. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
“You didn’t.”
“You winced.”
“My back’s still a bit sore,” Angel said.
“Let me see.”
For a moment Angel hesitated, remembering the last time Hawk had washed the wounds left by the fishhook. But this time she had on a bathing suit beneath her blouse, and it was full daylight rather than the mysterious intimacy of twilight on the sea.
And this time I know that an angel and a hawk are a bad match in bed.
“All right,” Angel said.
She turned her back on Hawk and unbuttoned everything quickly. When she flexed her shoulders in order to take her arms out of the long-sleeved blouse, she winced again.
“I meant to have Derry check it but—”
The hiss of Hawk’s indrawn breath cut off Angel’s words. Dark eyes looked at the damage to tender flesh. The twin wounds where the hook had gone in were swollen, angry, hot to the touch.
Hawk’s mouth flattened into a grim line. He remembered the instant when Angel had thrown herself at him, protecting his face at the cost of her own flesh.
And then he had repaid her care by making her bleed again, hurting her even more.
“When was the last time you soaked this?” Hawk asked, his words like a whip.
Angel tightened to hear the harshness back in Hawk’s voice.
“I haven’t,” she said carefully, neutrally. “It’s rather hard to reach.”
Hawk swore softly, a single violent word.
“I’ll heat some water,” he said curtly.
Angel started to object, then realized it would do no good. She looked at the sun.
Plenty of time left for cod fishing,
she reassured herself
. A whole afternoon.
Maybe even a nap.
She hadn’t slept very well last night, with every sense alert to Hawk’s presence on the small boat. Not that a bigger boat would have been any better. At times, the knowledge that she and Hawk shared the same world was enough to unnerve Angel.
While Hawk heated the water, Angel spread the picnic quilt over the pad at the stern of the boat, where she had slept the night before. Carefully she stretched out on her stomach.
Though she wore only a bathing suit, she wasn’t cold. The sun was directly overhead, pouring warmth and light into the tiny, sheltered bay. The boat rocked very gently, rising with the subtle movements of the tide.
Random fingers of wind combed the trees, making them shiver and sigh, sounds that blended with the liquid murmur of water.
“Are you awake?” Hawk asked softly.
“Mmmmmm,” Angel said.
She turned her face toward Hawk, too relaxed to worry about making whole words into sentences.
Hawk looked at Angel with a hunger he could barely conceal. Her eyelashes made intriguing, fringed shadows that quivered across her clear skin. Sun had brought a delicate flush to her cheeks, and peace had softened her lips into full, sensual curves. The bathing suit was the exact color of her eyes in the sun, vivid blue-green, shining softly.
She had unclipped her hair and swept it aside. It shimmered white-gold in the sun, a fire burning across the dark quilt. Then there was the smooth curve of her shoulders, the tempting shadow valley of her spine, the contrast of her narrow waist against the surprisingly ripe swell of her hips, the graceful length of her legs emphasized by the French cut of her suit . . .
Every line of Angel’s body was so essentially feminine that Hawk had to look away from her for a moment in order to control the hunger that raged through him.
After a few moments, Hawk sat down next to Angel. He concentrated on wringing out the washcloth in the pan of gently steaming water. The sounds were liquid, sensual, like the sea and the sun and the random caress of the wind.