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

the rapid pulse beating visibly in Angel’s throat, he couldn’t deny the sudden coursing of blood through his veins, the adrenaline and heat as the chase began. None of what he felt showed in his voice or his body.
    Like the prey, the predator was capable of measured retreat, knowing always that retreat was temporary.
    “Have you ever handled anything as powerful as this?” asked Hawk, his voice low, almost intimate.
    Angel kept her eyes on the gauges in front of her.
    “No,” she said.
    The word sounded ragged to her ears. She breathed deeply, evenly, calming the erratic race of her pulse.
    “No,” Angel repeated. “ Derry ’s boat was about half this size and a quarter the power.”
    “Was?”
    “He sold it a few months ago.”
    What Angel didn’t say was that it had been sold without her knowledge. Sold to pay off debts that had piled up in the last year of Derry ’s undergraduate education.
    Angel would have given him the money if she had known he needed it. At least, she would have tried. But Derry was determined not to take any more from her, even though she could think of nothing she would rather spend money on than his future.
    “You didn’t approve,” Hawk said flatly.
    “Of what?”
    “ Derry selling his boat.”
    “It was his to sell.”
    Angel’s voice was calm. She was in control again.
    “But you loved taking it out on the water,” Hawk said.
    Angel looked up, caught by the harsh current of emotion in Hawk’s voice.
    “Yes,” she said.
    “Lucky for you I came along,” Hawk said, straightening. “Otherwise you might have had to sell your pretty little . . . smile . . . to get a ride.”
    “The people who take me out pay for more than a smile,” said Angel, deliberately giving Hawk an opening.
    “I’ll bet.” Hawk’s voice was laced with contempt.
    “You’ll lose.”
    Angel watched his face impassively while the silence stretched.
    “I’m a licensed fishing guide,” she said calmly.
    Other than the rakish tilt of his left eyebrow, Hawk made no reply.
    “As I told you once, Hawk, you don’t know a damn thing about me.”
    “You’d be surprised, honey,” he said.
    His voice was flat but for the slight, sardonic lilt that was as much a part of Hawk as his thick black hair. For an instant Angel wondered what woman had so embittered Hawk that he assumed all women were shallow and unfeeling.
    But speculating about the woman or women in Hawk’s life splintered Angel’s calm into a thousand sharp pieces. She had no control over Hawk, his women, or the conclusions that he drew from his past and then applied to the present, to her.
    All Angel could control was herself, her own reactions and conclusions.
    Deliberately, as she had learned to do in the terrible months following Grant’s death, Angel created again in her mind a vision of the most beautiful thing she had ever seen. . . . 
    A single rose unfolding in the summer dawn. The petals were crimson, luminous, serene. The possibility of beauty that had endured through the cruel winter and uncertain spring was consummated in radiant silence.
    A simple thing.
    A single rose, victorious and serene.
    Calmness spread visibly through Angel as the rose unfolded in her mind. Confidently she put her hands on the boat’s controls, her body and mind united in a sensitive appraisal of the unnamed boat.
    Fascinated by the change that had swept over Angel, Hawk watched her every move with narrowed, measuring eyes. He sensed that she had retreated.
    No, she hasn’t retreated, Hawk realized after a moment. She simply gathered herself into an inner place, a quiet place.
    A place where I can’t touch her.
    Angel slid the throttles up, increasing the revolutions on the twin diesels. She watched the gauges carefully. The engines were beautifully balanced, performing in exact synchronization with each other.
    With a sound of approval, she decreased the revs, shifted the engines into gear, and began to put the boat through its