A Woman Without Lies (32 page)

An ancient, magnificent climbing rose mantled the ruined stone chimney, all that remained of the farmhouse. From this bush had come the crimson rose that bloomed deep within Angel’s mind, triumphant and serene. She had first seen the Smith homestead and the climbing rose as a child. She had been haunted by the rose ever since.

As though at a distance, Angel heard the car trunk close. Hawk was standing near the rosebush, waiting for her. He had empty pails in one hand, a picnic basket in the other, and a thick quilt over his shoulder.

Angel took a deep breath, letting the future slide away, taking all shadows with it. There was only this instant, Hawk waiting for her, smiling his heartbreaking, beautiful smile.

She walked toward Hawk, wrapped in the sweet chiming of bells. She looked at the picnic basket and smiled at Hawk in return, loving him for thinking of it.

“A picnic,” Angel said softly. “What a wonderful idea.”

“I have ulterior motives,” Hawk said, his voice deep. “As much as I like Derry, I want some time just with you.”

Angel’s smile slipped, then steadied. She understood how Hawk felt. They were alone only when they were on the boat or late at night when the house was all darkness. There hadn’t been enough time for just being together, sharing the silences and small touches that spoke so eloquently of their pleasure in each other.

Not enough time.

How much time is left?
Angel thought.

Not enough.

Deliberately, Angel tilted her face up to the old climbing rose. A single blossom remained, its petals soft and quivering, gathering the rich afternoon light into each luminous crimson curve.

She closed her eyes and wondered if the fragile rose knew that winter was closer with each sunset.

Hawk bent and kissed Angel’s lips gently. He sensed the sorrow in her, knew its cause, and was helpless to ease it.

The thought of how he was hurting Angel tore at Hawk, making him bleed in ways he had never imagined possible. He knew that the longer he spent with her, the greater the hurt would be each time she was brought up against his inability to love her as she should be loved.

Every day Hawk had promised himself that he would leave Angel, set her free, stop hurting her.

And every day he had awakened and seen an angel sheltered in the dark curve of his body. She would look at him, smiling, and he would know that he could not leave her.

Not yet.

He had to taste for a few more hours the miracle of her love.

“Where should we begin?” Hawk asked, lifting his mouth just enough to let Angel answer.

“In the center,” she murmured, rubbing her lips against his. “I know a path through the center of the brambles. That’s where the sweetest berries are. Surrounded by thorns.”

“And mosquitoes?”

“A few,” Angel admitted. “No such thing as a free lunch, remember?”

Hawk smiled. “I remember. That’s why I brought insect repellent. I didn’t want anything but me biting your smooth skin.”

Angel felt a frisson of desire race through her. The more Hawk touched her, the more she wanted to be touched by him. She never tired of his lovemaking, of having him become a part of her.

“It’s in my pocket,” Hawk said. “Would you get it?”

He held out his hands to her, showing that they were fully occupied with buckets and picnic basket and couldn’t be expected to pull a bottle of insect repellent from a tight pocket.

First, Angel tried the back pockets of Hawk’s jeans, which was where she carried repellent when she thought to bring it. Hawk’s back pockets were empty. She tried his front pockets, wiggling her hands into the worn, confining cloth.

“Nothing,” Angel said.

“Keep searching,” Hawk said, the corners of his mouth curling in a secret smile beneath his mustache. “You’ll find it.”

For a few seconds Angel took Hawk at his word and wriggled her fingers around in his pockets. Then she felt the heat and hardness of him swelling beneath his jeans.

“You’re teasing me,” she said, trying to look angry and failing utterly.

“I would have sworn I was the one being teased,” Hawk said, his voice deep and rich with hidden laughter. Then Angel’s hand moved inside his pocket and his breath caught.

“My
shirt
pocket, Angel.”

She smiled with an innocence that was belied by the dancing light of her eyes. Slowly, very slowly, she removed her hands from Hawk’s pockets.

The insect repellent was indeed in the breast pocket of Hawk’s cotton flannel shirt. She applied the pungent lotion to his exposed skin and to her own. Then she put the small squeeze bottle back—in his front jeans pocket.

“The repellent only works against insects,” Hawk pointed out.

“That’s a relief,” Angel said, smiling with an invitation that made his eyes gleam.

Then Angel turned and ran toward the raspberry brambles, making the silver bells at her ankle and wrist shiver with music.

For a moment Hawk stood and watched her graceful flight, aching with a hunger that went much deeper than the temporary urgency of desire. Then he began to run, moving lightly despite his burden.

Angel was soon lost to sight in the twists and turns of the bramble patch, but the sweet silver cries of the bells called to Hawk, telling him that she was close.

He caught up to Angel in a clearing where the raspberries had not yet grown. The air was thick with the delicate perfume of ripening fruit. Leaves shimmered and stirred lazily beneath a caressing wind. Canes laden with fruit arched richly against the cobalt sky, and the serrated green foliage quivered with golden sunlight.

“Derry was right,” Hawk said, turning to Angel. “You know every beautiful place on the island. Or maybe it’s simply that you bring beauty to every place you are.”

“It must be you,” Angel said, her voice husky. “I don’t remember the homestead being like this before.”

She took the buckets from his hand and waited while he spread the quilt and put the picnic basket in the shade. When he came back to her, she silently held out a bucket to him. Then she laced her fingers through Hawk’s as she led him toward the bushes heavy with fruit.

“Berrying is a cross between clamming and crabbing,” Angel said. “Like crabs, raspberry bushes will get you if you’re careless.”

“No free lunch?” suggested Hawk dryly.

“No free lunch,” Angel agreed. “The first rule of berrying is that if the fruit were easy to pick, something would have picked it already.”

Hawk smiled slightly. “Any other rules?”

“Don’t eat more than one berry for every one you put in the bucket. Otherwise you’ll get sick.”

“Learned that the hard way, didn’t you?” Hawk guessed.

“Is there any other way to learn?”

Angel showed Hawk how to choose the best fruit, ripe without being mushy, tart without being green. They picked side by side, sharing a companionable silence.

“Is this one ripe?” Hawk asked finally, holding out a berry to Angel.

“Only one way to be sure.”

Angel opened her mouth expectantly. Smiling, Hawk fed her the berry. She made a clicking sound with her tongue.

“A bit tart,” she said.

Angel looked at a cluster of raspberries hanging from a nearby cane. Picking the most perfect berry, she turned back to Hawk.

“Try this one,” she offered.

Hawk sucked the raspberry from Angel’s fingertips, licking her skin as he did. He closed his eyes and made a sound of pleasure.

“It tastes like you,” he murmured. “Incredible.”

Hawk opened his mouth again in silent request. Angel popped in another berry. He opened his mouth again, and then again, until she laughed and stood on tiptoe, kissing him.

The taste of Hawk and raspberries swept over Angel’s senses. Suddenly she clung to him, kissing him as wildly as he had kissed her on Eagle Head. When the embrace finally ended, they both were breathing raggedly.

“How many more berries does Mrs. Carey need?” asked Hawk, his eyes a clear brown fire.

“Buckets and buckets.”

Hawk swore softly.

“Then we’d better get to it,” he said, reluctantly stepping back from Angel.

They returned to picking, working quickly, watching each other with secret, sidelong glances. They filled their buckets, emptied them into a larger container, and returned to picking.

“You’re eating more than you’re putting in the bucket,” Angel said after a time.

Hawk turned toward her. His mouth was stained with the rich juice of the fruit he had been sneaking like a child.

“But if I get sick,” he said, “I’ll have something better than a hot water bottle to curl up with.”

Smiling, Hawk and Angel both returned to picking. Then Angel found an extraordinary raspberry. Full, richly colored, all but bursting with sweetness, the berry glowed like a jewel in her palm. She set down her bucket and ran to Hawk.

“This is the most perfect raspberry I’ve ever seen,” Angel said, holding it between her thumb and forefinger. “Open up.”

Hawk looked at the transparent red juice staining Angel’s lips rather than at the berry.

“You found it,” he said. “It should be for you.”

“It’s got your name on it.”

The corners of Hawk’s mouth curled up gently. He looked at the bright, unblemished berry.

“I don’t see my name,” he said.

“The light must be wrong for you,” Angel said, letting the raspberry roll down and nestle in her palm. “See? Right there. Your name.”

Hawk looked, but he saw only the love implicit in Angel’s gift. Slowly he bent his head. He licked the berry from her palm, then kissed the spot where the fruit had rested.

The ache Hawk felt slicing through him had nothing to do with desire, and everything to do with the angel who watched him with love in her eyes.

Hawk wanted to ask where Angel’s softness and strength had come from, to delicately touch every secret of her past and future, to know if he could ever love as she did, sweetness and fire and courage in equal measure. Yet even as he opened his mouth, he knew he couldn’t ask that of her.

So Hawk asked the only question he could, and Angel heard the other question beneath it, the one he couldn’t ask.

“Are these wild raspberries?” Hawk asked, looking at the thicket that all but surrounded him.

“No. They’re like a house cat that has gone feral,” Angel said. “Bred and created by man, for man, and then abandoned to live alone. Most things that are treated like that wither and die. Some things survive . . . and in the right season the strongest of the survivors bear a sweet, wild fruit that is the most beautiful thing on earth. Like you, Hawk.”

Hawk let the bucket of raspberries slip from his hand. He picked up Angel in a single, swift movement, and then he held her tightly, saying all that he could, her name a song on his lips until his mouth found hers in a kiss that left both of them shaking.

He carried her to the quilt and undressed her as though it were the first time, his hands exquisitely gentle, his mouth a sweet fire consuming her. When she could bear no more he came to her, filling her mind and her body, loving her in the only way he could.

It was the same later that night, a beauty that destroyed and created Angel, death and rebirth in the arms of the man she loved. She touched Hawk equally, fire and hunger, the promise of her mouth both hot and sweet, innocent and knowing, worshipping his body until he pulled her around him and was burned to his soul by an angel’s ecstatic fire.

Long after Angel fell asleep in his arms, Hawk lay awake, watching the patterns of moonlight and darkness beyond Angel’s windows. Then he slowly eased away from her, holding his breath for fear that she would wake.

If she awakened, Hawk wouldn’t have the strength to leave her. He would stay and stay, drinking from the well of her love, giving nothing in return.

If I stay, I’ll destroy her.

For long, long minutes, Hawk stood beside the bed and watched his angel sleep. He bent down, aching to touch her, but did not. His hand hesitated over the pillow next to her head.

Then Hawk turned and walked soundlessly out of the house, into the night.

Sunlight woke Angel, sunlight spilling in golden magnificence across her pillow. She murmured sleepily and reached for Hawk. Her hand touched emptiness. She sat up quickly, looking around. And then she froze.

Resting on Hawk’s pillow was a small candy cane wrapped with a shiny green ribbon.

Angel put her head in her hands and wept, knowing that Hawk had gone.

Derry looked at Angel’s wan face and determined smile.

“I don’t have to leave for Harvard right away,” he said. “I’ll wait until Hawk wraps up whatever he had to do and comes back.”

“Don’t be silly.”

Angel’s voice was calm, but her eyes too dark in a face that was too pale, her skin almost transparent.

“Are you sure?” Derry asked.

“Yes.”