Hawk’s lips thinned as he remembered the last innocent-looking blond he’d taken for a while, an actress with nothing beneath her soft exterior but emptiness and lies.

The actress was, in short, like every other woman Hawk had known. Like Angel standing so quietly, staring at him.

Angel.

A three-dimensional lie, Hawk thought coldly. But a beautiful one. Damned beautiful.

The worst ones always are.

So I’ll call her Angel, and each time I use the name, it will remind me that she’s anything but angelic.

Angel looked back at the man who was watching her from only a few feet away. She sensed with utter certainty that the man watching her was Hawk.

In the atmosphere of forced bonhomie that pervaded the Stein, Hawk was like a rocky island at sunset, darkness condensed amid color, immovable certainty anchored in an aimlessly shifting sea.

Then the front door opened again, spearing the man with light, and Angel knew why he was called Hawk. It wasn’t the blunt angles of his face or his thick, black hair and upswept eyebrows. It wasn’t his hard, lean body. It wasn’t even his predatory grace as he walked toward her.

It was his eyes, the eyes of a hawk, a crystalline brown that was clear and deep, lonely and wild.

“Hawk,” she said.

“Angel.”

His voice was deep, gritty, as essentially uncivilized as his eyes.

“People call me Angie.”

There was a moment of uncanny stillness while Hawk measured her.

“People call me Mr. Hawkins to my face,” he said. “Even friendly puppies like Derry Ramsey.”

Angel hesitated, wondering at the abrasive description of Derry. She knew that Derry thought Hawk all but walked on water. Abruptly she wanted to know more about the man who had earned Derry’s unqualified hero worship.

“What do people call you to your back?” Angel asked.