A Woman Without Lies by Elizabeth Lowell Read Free Book Online Page B

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