Free A Woman Without Lies by Elizabeth Lowell

paces under Hawk’s intense, and finally approving, scrutiny. The boat responded eagerly to her touch, the prow curving and recurving through green water, sending chaotic wakes slapping across the shifting surface of the sea.
    Angel flipped on the sonar and watched the changing pattern as the boat roved up and down the strait. Hawk looked curiously at the plate-sized screen that looked like green TV.
    “Ever used a fish finder before?” asked Angel.
    “No.”
    She pointed toward the lower part of the screen, then indicated the depth scale alongside.
    “Right now,” Angel said, “the bottom is about twenty fathoms. There’s nothing between us and the bottom but—wait!”
    Without looking away from the screen, Angel cut back on the throttles and turned the boat, retracing her path slowly.
    “There,” she said, pointing to a bright, shifting series of lines that had appeared at about ten fathoms on the scale. “A school of fish. Herring, probably.”
    “How can you tell?”
    Angel shrugged slightly, a graceful movement that caught Hawk’s eye.
    “Experience,” she said simply. “Herring are erratic yet dense. See how quickly the lines shift?”
    Hawk watched the screen, but much of his attention was on the slender hands that had so quickly learned how to handle the powerboat. Whatever else Angel was, she had the confidence and coordination of a race driver.
    “What do salmon look like on the screen?” asked Hawk in a quiet, deep voice.
    He bent over as though to see the screen more clearly, but it was the woman that filled his senses. His nostrils flared as he smelled the delicate perfume he had come to associate with Angel, a blend of sunshine and wind and hidden flowers.
    “Salmon look less well defined, unless you happen onto a good school.”
    Angel closed her eyes for an instant, sensing the heat radiating from Hawk’s body. Her thoughts scattered. Grimly she recalled them.
    “Salmon are rarely on the bottom,” she said. “If you see a school just above the bottom, you’ve found cod, not salmon.”
    Why did he have to stand so close? Angel asked silently. I can’t take a breath without breathing him in.
    She felt caged by Hawk’s heat, serenity burning away with each breath she took, bringing his male scent deeply into her body.
    “Are you nearsighted?” Angel asked tightly.
    “Nearsighted?” There was surprise in his voice.
    “As in not able to see things unless you’re right on top of them,” Angel explained dryly.
    Hawk glanced sideways. His face was only inches from hers. In the slanting morning light her eyes were as green as matched emeralds.
    “Sorry,” he said. Then, “Am I crowding you?”
    “No more than I’m crowding you,” Angel retorted.
    “Good,” Hawk said huskily, “because I don’t feel a bit crowded.”
    Angel turned the wheel suddenly and gunned the engines. The motion forced Hawk to step back in order to keep his balance. She took the boat closer to the cliffs looming on the east side of the passage.
    Hawk watched the cliffs approach at an alarming speed. He glanced at the sonar. The bottom was thirty-three fathoms and getting deeper every moment. He measured the cliff with narrow eyes.
    One hundred feet at least, he estimated . No. Closer to two hundred.
    Huge evergreens clung to cracks in the cliff’s face, but the trees looked no bigger than weeds against the immense expanse of rock.
    With a sideways glance, Angel measured Hawk’s response to the cliff. To someone unaccustomed to the Inside Passage , it would seem like insanity to approach the shore at such speed because of the danger of running aground.
    But Angel knew the land and the sea.
    “Geologists call this land the drowned coast,” Angel said, automatically pitching her voice to carry above the sound of the engines.
    “As in drowned people?” Hawk suggested sardonically.
    “Nope. During the last ice age the sea level was several hundred feet lower. Then all the ice melted, flooding the land.