Derry
smiled up at her.
“Thanks, Angie,” he said softly. “This beats hell out of peanut butter and toast.”
“Anything beats that.”
“Creamed liverwurst?”
Derry
asked innocently.
Angel shuddered.
Derry
took a bite of the omelet and sighed. “Clarissa was right about one thing,” he said.
“Oh?”
“You’re gonna spoil me for any other woman.”
Angel laughed and ruffled
Derry
’s hair affectionately. Then she turned to go back to the stove—and nearly walked right into Hawk.
“Oh!” Angel stepped back, her eyes wide and startled. “Good Lord, but you’re light on your feet!”
Hawk simply looked down at Angel with a cold expression. The planes of his face seemed unusually harsh, his eyes black in the artificial light.
Angel would have backed away even farther but
Derry
’s plaster-encased leg prevented it.
“Didn’t you sleep well?” Angel asked, searching Hawk’s face.
“As well as I ever do.” Hawk’s voice was clipped, as cold as his eyes raking over her.
He turned and picked up a mug from the counter. Then he grabbed the coffee pot and poured a dark stream into the mug. As he took a sip of coffee, he eyed the omelet ingredients heaped colorfully on the counter.
“Sit down,” Angel said quickly to Hawk. “How many eggs do you want in your omelet?”
“Don’t bother.” Hawk gave her a dark glance. “I’d hate like hell to be spoiled for other women.”
Derry
made a choking sound that rapidly escalated into unrestrained laughter.
Angel’s lips flattened in the instant before her normal control asserted itself. She wished she could find Hawk’s caustic comments as entertaining as
Derry
did. Instead, she forever seemed to take them personally.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Angel said, crossing quickly to the stove. “How many eggs?”
“Six.”
Angel looked startled. She glanced covertly at Hawk and realized that he was even bigger than she had remembered. He had to be at least six foot three, lean, hard, and very male.
Somehow the casual clothing Hawk wore now revealed his size more than the civilized three-piece suit he had worn yesterday. The black pullover that fitted his chest so well was patterned after Irish fishermen’s sweaters. Just standing there, he looked unreasonably large, his shoulders wide enough to block out the light.
He seemed taller, too, than yesterday, more . . . primal. Faded jeans fit snugly across his thighs and hinted at the muscular calves beneath. Soft-soled suede moccasins wrapped neatly around his feet.
But it was the power of his body that drew Angel’s eyes, the deceptively slender line of his hips and waist blending into the male wedge of his shoulders.
“Everything zipped?” asked Hawk, too softly for
Derry
to hear.
Angel flushed.
“Everything except your mouth,” she retorted. But she was careful not to let
Derry
overhear.
A corner of Hawk’s mouth turned up.
“You aren’t,” he murmured.
“What?”
“Zipped.”
Angel looked down and discovered that Hawk was right. In her haste to get dressed, she had overlooked the zipper on her jeans. A ribbon of silky tangerine briefs showed through the narrow opening.
The reversal of the usual unzipped roles made Angel’s irritation evaporate into a laugh.
Maybe
Derry
has the right outlook,
she admitted silently
. Hawk’s abrasive, unexpected humor could grow on you.
Still smiling, Angel matter-of-factly zipped up her jeans. Then she turned to the counter and began cracking eggs into a bowl.
Hawk watched while Angel made his omelet with the casual skill that came only from experience. It didn’t surprise him that she was an accomplished cook. Men liked being cooked for, and Angel was obviously a woman who had made a career out of pleasing men.
As Hawk sipped the rich coffee, he wondered how else she had learned to please men. The thought made desire ripple darkly through him. Smoothly, he changed the focus of his thoughts, knowing that his curiosity wouldn’t be satisfied today. Probably not for several days.
Like a doe that enjoyed running the hounds, Hawk suspected that Angel would twist and turn and double back, tantalizing him by staying just beyond reach. Not that he minded. It only made the inevitable end of the chase sweeter, hotter.
Easy prey wasn’t worth the trouble it took to reach out and pick it up.
In silence Hawk ate the tender, succulent omelet. The croissants were flaky, steaming as he pulled them apart, so rich with butter that his fingertips glistened. The jams were unique, tasting of fruit rather than sugar, and as colorful as jewels.
Out over the strait, the first hint of predawn light slowly transformed night into luminous shades of black and gray. Around Hawk there were the small, companionable sounds of silver clicking lightly against plates, the gentle thump of a coffee mug returning to the table-top, the creak of a chair as
Derry
shifted his weight, Angel’s soft footsteps as she joined them at the table.
The peace of the moment seeped past Hawk’s barriers, spreading through him as silently and completely as dawn itself. It had been a long, long time since Hawk had eaten breakfast like this.
Usually he was alone. When he wasn’t, there was a woman trying to talk to him, words and more words pouring out as she tried to fill the emptiness that came the morning after the end of the chase. That kind of desperate chatter left Hawk cold. To be with people who demanded nothing of him was as unusual as it was peaceful.
And then Hawk heard his own thoughts. His lips flattened and he pushed away his empty plate.
Who am I trying to kid?
Hawk asked himself sardonically.
Of course
Derry
and Angel want something from me.
Money.
Angel isn’t showing me
Vancouver Island
out of the goodness of her gold-digging little heart. If I buy Eagle Head, she will be well paid for her trouble.
And even if I don’t, she should be able to make a tidy profit by padding the expenses.
The same is true for Derry
.
Nor did Hawk mind particularly. It was how the game was played, and he had known it since his eighteenth birthday. That was the day he learned that to be an emotionally honest man in a world of lies is to be a fool.
Angel finished her small omelet, stood, and began to clear the table.
Derry
looked out at the strait. Tiny lights bobbed about, marking the sport-fishing boats pouring out of the
Campbell River
marina into the strait.
“Leave the dishes,”
Derry
said. “You’ll miss the tide.”
“We’ve already missed it,” Angel said, sighing.
Hawk heard the wistfulness in Angel voice.
“You actually like fishing?” Hawk asked, surprised.
“No, I’m actually crazy about it.”
“She’s good at it too,”
Derry
said. “Better than I am. She knows just where to go, how deep to fish, what lure to use, which little coves and bays and headlands—”
“Enough,” Angel dryly interrupted. “Hawk obviously isn’t a fisherman.”
“Why do you say that?” asked Hawk.
“You were on the phone when we should have been on the water.”
“That was business.”
“Like I said, not a fisherman,” Angel said succinctly. “Nothing, but nothing, gets in the way of a dawn salmon raid if you’re a fisherman.”
Derry
chuckled.
“Give the man a break,”
Derry
said. “He’s never caught a salmon, so he doesn’t know what he’s missing.”
Angel looked at Hawk, who returned the look with interest. In the odd radiant predawn light, her eyes were dark green, very brilliant against the pale nimbus of her hair.
“Have you ever fished at all?” Angel asked as she bent over to take Hawk’s plate.
Hawk remembered the small reservoir on the farm where he had grown up. Whenever his father could steal a few minutes from the endless demands of a marginal farm, the two of them would go to the reservoir. One of the few times Hawk could ever remember his father laughing was when he had pulled a ten-pound catfish out of the opaque water.
“I’ve fished once or twice,” Hawk said, his voice husky, almost yearning.
The changed quality of Hawk’s voice made Angel’s throat tighten. She saw the poignant shadow of memories cross his face, softening for a moment the harsh lines around his mouth.
Without warning, Angel felt tears burn behind her eyelids. She sensed that Hawk’s memories were like he was, bittersweet and lonely, complex and sometimes cruel. She wanted to ease the bitterness, enhance the sweetness, enrich the complexity with all the colors of emotion.
As for Hawk’s occasional cruelty, it didn’t frighten Angel. For a time after the car wreck she had been unspeakably cruel to those around her. Finally the time of cruelty had passed, leaving her purged.
Angel looked up into the dark eyes that were so close to her. Her fingers curled around a fork that still retained the heat of Hawk’s body.
“You’ll catch a dawn salmon this summer,” she said softly to Hawk. “I promise you.”
Before Hawk could answer, Angel straightened and turned, removing Hawk’s plate and silverware. In silence she stacked dishes into the dishwasher, moving quickly. Even though they had missed the tide, she was eager to be out on the water.
“Ready?” she asked, looking up.
Hawk was watching her, had been watching her since she had promised him a dawn salmon in a voice vibrant with emotion. Without making a sound, he set down his empty mug.
“I’ve been ready since I was eighteen,” Hawk said.
When Hawk heard his own words, his face settled into its normal enigmatic lines, concealing thoughts and emotions behind a mahogany mask. Silently he helped Angel carry everything out to the car. There was quite a lot. Groceries, a pile of fishing gear, jackets, and even a sketchbook Angel had thrown in at the last instant.
Hawk looked up from the gear heaped in his BMW.
“Are we going to
“What a wonderful idea,” Angel said in a wistful voice. “I’ve always wanted to sail the
Inside Passage
.”
Hawk gave her a hooded, assessing look.
“But that’s not on our list this summer,” Angel said.
She started shifting the bags around until she could close the trunk of the car. Hawk started to help, then stopped, riveted by the high, wild whistle of an eagle calling to the dawn.
He looked up into the sky with dark, fierce eyes, searching for the bird.
A black shape plummeted down, wings flared, talons outstretched. The prey was hidden from Hawk’s sight in the tall grass, but the raptor had no such problem. The bird struck and mantled its dying prey with half-spread wings, protecting it from view.
Then the eagle’s uncanny eyes spotted the two people standing so quietly. With a high, angry cry, the eagle took flight, carrying its prey to the treetops.
The sky was flushed with the delicate, transparent colors of true dawn. Across the strait, serrated ranks of mountains loomed like fragments of night, black and yet strangely radiant. Overhead a few tufted clouds burned scarlet, then molten gold.
A feeling of exhilaration speared through Hawk. He lifted his face to the sky, letting sunrise wash over him. He had spent too much time indoors since he had left the farm. He hadn’t known how much he had missed the sky until this moment.
From the thrusting rock summit of Eagle Head came again the untamed cry of a bird of prey.
Angel looked up, saw the fierce pleasure on Hawk’s face, and felt desire shiver through her. The feeling shocked her in the instants before she accepted it.
I shouldn’t be surprised by passion. I chose to live after Grant died in the wreck. Love and desire are a natural part of life.
Just because I haven’t wanted any man for three years doesn’t mean that I would never want a man again.
Even as Angel admitted the intensity of her attraction to Hawk, she knew that she could be hurt badly by him. Hawk was as hard a man as she had ever met. Yet beneath that hardness she sensed a yearning for beauty, for warmth, for . . . love. Without that yearning, she wouldn’t have been attracted to him.
But Angel knew there was no guarantee that she would be the one to touch Hawk’s yearning. There was no guarantee that anyone could touch it, even Hawk himself.