Free A Woman Without Lies by Elizabeth Lowell Page A

That cliff ahead of us goes straight down about three hundred feet below the sea. There’s no way to run aground here unless I ram the cliff itself.”
    “Like Norway ,” Hawk said, understanding. He looked at the land with new eyes.
    “That’s what one of my fishing clients said,” Angel agreed. “He was born in Norway . Said that all these fjords made him homesick. It was the first time I’d realized that a fjord is nothing but a valley drowned in salt water.”
    Amused, Hawk glanced sideways at Angel.
    She didn’t notice. She was easing back on the throttles and turning the boat so that they paralleled the cliff face at a distance of about twenty feet. Then she put the engines in neutral and left them idling while she estimated the amount of drift that would be caused by wind and currents.
    The boat moved slowly away from the cliff.
    “How much do you trust these engines?” Angel asked matter-of-factly.
    “To do what?”
    “Start the first time.”
    “I wouldn’t bet my life on it. But then, I don’t bet my life on anything anymore.” Hawk shrugged. “They’ll start ninety-nine times out of a hundred.”
    “Good enough. I wouldn’t mind a little silence.”
    Angel cut the engines, then restarted them. They caught immediately. She turned them off again, giving the boat to the subtle movements of wind and water.
    Silence flowed over Angel like a benediction. Unconsciously she closed her eyes and smiled with pleasure.
    Hawk saw her pleasure and was tempted to run first his fingertip and then his lips over her smile. He did neither. For the first part of the chase he was content to let the prey set the course and the speed.
    That didn’t mean he wouldn’t crowd Angel from time to time, just to watch sensuality deepen the color of her eyes and soften her mouth. But the crowding would be gentle, would seem utterly natural, and would give her no excuse to retreat too far.
    Hawk sensed that Angel was not nearly so aggressive as many of the women he had taken. With those women, the sport had been to twist and dodge away from them, watching their frustration grow at his elusiveness.
    With Angel, the sport would be to let her come to him.
    Either way, the end was the same. Satiation and then dissatisfaction, tears and Hawk flying away, spreading his dark wings until he hung poised in the sky, waiting for the next chase to begin.
    The thought made Hawk’s mouth turn down in a cruel curve that was aimed as much at himself as it was at the women he had brought down and then flown from. He was beginning to tire of it, the chase and the kill; and most of all he was tired of the restlessness that consumed him the morning after. The adrenaline was no longer enough.
    But adrenaline was all there was.
    He had learned that when he was eighteen. He had never accepted it, though. Not completely.
    Hope was why he flew again, searched again, chased again. Hope kept telling him that there was more to life than betrayal and lies and the hollowness that came in the aftermath of adrenaline.
    Hawk had learned to hate hope, but he hadn’t learned how to kill it.
    Yet.

 
8
    “Hawk?”
    Hawk blinked, returning to the present and to the beautiful actress who promised to lead him on a fascinating chase.
    For a time.
    “Yes?” Hawk said.
    “If you’ll move, I’ll start putting the fishing gear together.”
    He stepped back just enough so that Angel could get out of the cockpit seat, but not enough so that she could avoid touching him as she got to her feet. Angel hesitated, then brushed quickly by him, leaving behind her scent and a hint of warmth.
    Hawk absorbed both with a hot thrill of pleasure. But nothing showed on his face. He was as impassive as the cliff rising out of the sea.
    Angel rigged the fishing rods quickly, explaining as she worked. The rods she chosewere eight feet long and as flexible as fly rods. The boat rocked idly, drifting almost imperceptibly toward the shallow end of the tiny bay.
    “I won’t try