She’d had no right to look at him like that, he thought as he wheeled and strode across the room. He’d told her from the beginning, it was nothing more than sex. And damn it, that’s all it had been, just like it had always been in his life.
He whirled again and came knee to edge with the bed. The bed where he and Kendall had spent long, fervent hours trying to slake a need that seemed to grow instead of ease with every encounter, a need that was so far beyond anything he’d ever known; it had shaken his belief in that very concept he’d just been touting to himself. A need that had almost convinced him he was wrong, had always been wrong about need and love and sex.
I learned about need and love and sex and how incredible it can be . . .
Love. He’d been right, he thought with a determined effort at his old cynicism. She’d had to dress it up as love to accept the fact that she’d gone to bed with him. And she was trying to hang the guilt on him. Well, he wasn’t buying. He just wasn’t. He’d come here to accomplish one thing, the one goal that had driven him all his life. She’d been part of that, a tool he’d had to use, like others he’d used before.
But they had known they were being used. Yes, he’d charmed a woman or two for a purpose before; he hadn’t seen any other reason to exert himself. It had been part of the game, a piece of information dropped here, a name there. And he was good at it. He was generous and amusing and made sure they had a good time. But those women had always known who he was, and had a good idea of what he was after.
Kendall hadn’t. Even though he’d warned her, he knew she hadn’t.
“I had no choice, damn it!”
He spun on his heel, unable to stand there any longer, just staring at the bed where it seemed he’d lost himself, lost his certainty of what life was, what it held and withheld, and his assurance that trust was a fool’s game and love worse than that. He spotted the box that sat on the desk, and with a vicious, sweeping motion of his arm he shoved it, sending it flying.
It hit the dresser and spun to one side, falling open on the floor, spilling papers and the envelopes marked with his father’s bold scrawl.
And the book. It skidded across the carpet to stop nearly at his feet. He stood there, staring at it.
I haven’t tried burning it yet, but give me time.
His own words came back to him. Maybe now was the time. He’d hold a match to this pile of dreams, and watch them burn. As all his mother’s dreams had burned. He bent to pick it up, seriously wondering where he might find a match. But the moment he touched the leather of the binding he knew he wouldn’t; that same feeling pumped through him, that feeling of comfort and understanding, as if an old, trusted friend had put an arm around his shoulders.
Something slipped from the pages as he lifted it. One of Aaron’s letters, he supposed, caught between the pages. But he realized even as he was reaching for it that it wasn’t; this wasn’t an envelope but a folded piece of paper, and it was quite different-looking, heavy and yellowed, as if it was as old as the pages of the book itself.
But it hadn’t been there before. He knew it hadn’t. He’d looked at every page of this book before, and there had been no loose paper, nothing folded between the pages.
But the minute he touched it, he knew it belonged with the book. He got the same crazy sensation, only this time multiplied a hundredfold. It was so powerful he caught himself nearly looking around to see if there was some physical manifestation of that gentle, welcoming sensation. Slowly he sat down on the edge of the bed. When he put the book down, the sensation eased slightly, as if it had been the combination that had been so overwhelming. Whatever it was, it radiated from the letter he held—he could see now that’s what it was—much more strongly than it ever had from the book.
It shook him, this vivid reminder. He’d been ignoring the book, had shoved it so far back into the recesses of his mind that he’d been able to forget about it for long stretches. He’d been so consumed with pulling all the strings that would make his plan come together, so wrapped up in dealing with the real world, the world he knew and lived in, that he’d been able to discount for the moment the book and its inexplicability.
But he couldn’t discount the strange feeling of connection that came over him when he touched it. Or the fact that it had led him to the truth about his mother’s death. And that put him back to wrestling with the real dilemma of the book: did he believe in it or not?
He was no more ready to deal with that than he’d ever been. With a wry grimace he unfolded the letter. With any luck it would be something even more confusing, enough to distract him from the book.
The writing looked as old-fashioned as the paper, long, sloping letters, but the few lines were bold and easily readable. But before he could begin to read, the even bolder signature at the bottom caught his eyes. He looked, and his breath caught.
Joshua Hawk.
That it would be this man seemed at first impossible, then inevitable. Of all the Hawks in the book, it had been this man who had called to him more than any other, this man who had made him feel part of something bigger than himself. Not Aaron, for no matter how much more he now understood about the man who had been his father, he could never forgive what loving him had cost his mother, and wanted no connection to him. But Joshua made him feel an unexpected and odd sense of guilt that he planned to put an end to the Hawk legend.
He dragged his gaze back to the top of the page. It didn’t take long to read.
I don’t know who or where or even when you are, or if this will ever reach you, but if I can spare you some of what I went through, I must try. If you are reading this, you are the last Hawk. If you are like me, you are fighting as all the last Hawks have fought. Don’t. The legend is true. The book is real.
Jenna and Kane Hawk are forebears to be proud of. I hope that, whoever you are, you might even find something in me to be proud of, little though there is. Don’t let it end. It does matter. Jenna and Kane and the others deserve to live on in you.
I wish you luck, and Godspeed.
Joshua Hawk
Jason sat staring for a long time, feeling a tightness in his throat he couldn’t explain away. These simple yet formal words got to him in a way nothing in the book ever had, and he couldn’t find it in him to deny it.
Moving slowly, as if the fog he was feeling was physically thick as well as mentally, he reached for the book. As if it knew, and at this point he wasn’t sure he could deny it did, it opened to the page he’d wanted to see. Not his own story, at the end, but Joshua’s, from well over a hundred years ago. He knew it would be the same, it wouldn’t have changed, not this; there was too much of that sense of inevitability to it.
It hadn’t changed. It was still there, in that lovely script, the entry of the name of the child who had assured the continuation of that bloodline, who had guaranteed Jenna Hawk and her warrior would live on in yet another generation.
Joshua’s son.
Jason Hawk.
He shuddered involuntarily, and moved to close the book. If his own story had changed, he didn’t want to read it. He didn’t want to read some crazy tale about how he’d become the first Hawk to blow it, the first one ever to drive away the woman the book said was meant for him. But, unable to stop himself, he found himself looking anyway. Braced, ready to see Kendall’s name and today’s date, the day she had walked away.
The date was there, all right. But Kendall wasn’t. What was there was the ludicrous claim that on this day Jason Hawk made peace with his father.
HE’D ONLY MEANT to pick up his car and bring it back to the hotel. On a whim he didn’t quite understand, he’d taken the bus back the way they had come. It had been a mistake; all he could think about was how he and Kendall had sat there and laughed, and how he’d told her things he’d never told anyone about his life. At the time, he’d told himself it was to win
her sympathy and trust, all part of his effort to charm her, but now he wondered if perhaps there hadn’t been more to it. But he’d been thinking that about a lot of things lately. Since the day he’d looked into Kendall’s grief-stricken gray eyes the day of his father’s funeral.
And now, here he was, on that damned road to the cemetery. And he wasn’t sure why. There would be no peace with Aaron, not for him. And he couldn’t believe that he was being somehow compelled by the book. Or didn’t want to believe it. Perhaps he just wanted to prove the book once and for all a lie.
. . . you are fighting as all the last Hawks have fought. Don’t. The legend is true. The book is real.
He shook his head. The words had rung in his ears as if spoken, in a deep, gravelly voice tinged with a wry, amused recognition. A voice he’d never heard before, even in his imagination. But a voice that matched the image that had once formed in his mind, of Joshua Hawk, blue eyes identical to his own gleaming with commiseration and understanding.
Maybe that was why he was going, he thought. He could never make peace with his father, but Joshua . . .
By the time he reached he big curve, it had begun to rain in earnest. He slowed, shivering as he glanced to one side and saw the crumpled guardrail where Kendall had nearly gone over. Now, here where he could see how vicious the drop was, he knew how perilously close he’d come to losing her that day.
And then he’d thrown her away.
I saw in you what . . . I wanted to see. And I’ll pay for that for the rest of my life.
What had she seen? What had she thought was there in him? He shook his head, trying to stop the fruitless speculation. Just because she’d found something in his father to love didn’t mean—
Love? Was that what he was thinking, even hoping? That he hadn’t just charmed her out of the information he’d needed, but that Kendall had somehow fallen in love with him?
You, Jason told himself firmly as he slowed even more as the pelting rain continued, are going out of your mind. You don’t need the book to drive you crazy, you’re doing it on your own. Even if it was true, what the hell did it mean? Love was a crippling thing; it made you weak, made you do things you would normally never do.
Like Kendall had done. By going to bed with him.
He knew it was true, and not simply because of physical reasons, or the shocked wonder in her response. He knew it because he knew, at last, Kendall, knew that she was exactly what she’d appeared to be from the beginning.
And what does that make you? he thought, fighting a wave of unexpected nausea. Kendall was who she was, playing by her own set of straight, honest rules, not the corrupted, distorted ones he’d used to his advantage so often. The fact that he didn’t run his own business that way did little to salve a conscience that wasn’t used to being pricked. His rationalization that people who played by those rules deserved to go down by those rules wasn’t working well this afternoon, either.
He pulled off the road into the parking lot of the small cemetery, and into an empty space. He wondered yet again why he was here, what he hoped to accomplish. He sat there for a while, staring at the rain, telling himself this was pointless, he had the board meeting of his life to prepare for.
But he was prepared. He was as ready as he’d ever been in his life. He knew that, knew that there was nothing more to do. Nothing more he had to do, except wait for it to all come together, the work of a lifetime.
He yanked open the car door, and was hit with a barrage of raindrops, the kind of heavy, harsh downpour he’d only ever seen here in California. They might not have the rain totals Seattle did, he thought wryly, but they sure got a lot of it at once.
He reached over and grabbed the book off the passenger seat, braced this time for that odd sensation of comfort, of connection. He wasn’t sure why he’d brought it along. Except maybe to leave it here. Now that would be an offering the old man would appreciate, he thought. Maybe he’d just bury the damn thing right beside the old man. Maybe that would get rid of it. He’d been the one to believe in the Hawk legend, after all.
The legend is true. The book is real.
Joshua’s words came to him again. They seemed to be haunting him, as the image of the man had ever since he’d seen it in the book. Between his words and Kendall’s, every one of which seemed etched permanently into his mind, his head seemed to be ringing with remembered phrases that seemed mostly designed to convince him he was either crazy or as heartless as his father had been.
He hadn’t gone ten feet before he was soaked, water running down the back of his neck, the turned-up collar of his jacket—he’d left his coat behind, never having intended on this little expedition—useless against this kind of deluge. He told himself to abandon this ridiculous idea, but he kept walking. He found himself instinctively trying to protect the book under his jacket, and managed a laugh; he could probably throw the thing into the Arctic Ocean and it would be back the next day, dry as a bone and with his attempt at destruction neatly chronicled.
When he reached Aaron’s grave, he knew he’d made a big mistake. The sensation from the book, that unexplainable sense of peace and reassurance, seemed to strengthen. But again, it wasn’t his father he thought of but Joshua, and again he could almost see the man, nodding in encouragement, a small half smile curving his lips. It was as if here, at his father’s grave, his connection to this man who was his ancestor was even stronger. So strong that he wasn’t sure he could fight it. He wasn’t sure he wanted to.
He looked at the book he held. He’d pulled out the letter from Joshua; it was neatly folded in his inside jacket pocket, a spot that was oddly warm against the wet chill of the storm. He wasn’t sure why he wanted to keep it, only that it seemed very important somehow.
His gaze went to the gravestone, cold and dark and running wet with rain. To be angry at his father now was a useless, impotent thing. As, perhaps, it had always been. But if he gave that up, what did he have left?
“Damn you,” he whispered. “Damn you for dying before I had the chance to break you myself.”
With a fierce, arcing motion, he flung the book at the stone. It hit the second “a” in Aaron, then settled atop the first three letters, covering them. Jason stared down at the stone, a chill that went far beyond the storm whipping through him.
---on Hawk.
Three letters. The only difference between a gravestone that read Aaron Hawk and one that read Jason Hawk.
APPROPRIATE WEATHER, Kendall thought. Befitting what she had to do. Not that sunshine would make admitting how badly she’d bungled things—and what a fool she’d been—any easier. She wasn’t sure why she felt compelled to do this, except that she’d always been utterly honest with Aaron, and it seemed that she owed him this now.
She drove carefully in the driving rain, keeping her eyes steadfastly straight ahead as she passed the section of the guardrail she’d nearly gone over. She’d been driving with her eye more on the rearview mirrors than the road, it seemed like, but there was no sign she could see of anyone following her.
She decided to forgo the main entrance, and parked on a side road that would make the walk much shorter. Still, she was drenched from the knees down well before she got to the quiet place on the hill that Aaron had chosen—“So I can keep an eye on things,” he’d said; the spot had a view straight down the valley to Sunridge.
The heaviness of the rain made her think she was seeing things when she saw the huddled shape at the side of Aaron’s grave. But as she got closer, having to step carefully over the slick ground, she knew she wasn’t.
Jason sat cross-legged in the short grass beside the headstone, seemingly heedless of the fact that he was obviously soaked to the skin. He was shivering; Kendall could see the little tremors that swept him every few moments. His arms were wrapped around himself, as if that could warm him.
He didn’
t seem to realize she was there. He was staring downward, but didn’t seem to be focused on anything. His hair was as wet as it had been from the shower this morning, but now clung to his neck and forehead in dripping strands.
“Jason?”
He looked up at her, startled. And in that moment of surprise, before any of his formidable defenses could snap into place, Kendall saw something she’d never thought to see. She saw the living image of the lonely, frightened boy he had once been. The boy who had once stood beside another grave, facing the death of his mother and the fact that he was now more alone than any child should ever have to be.
And in that moment Kendall knew how much of Jason’s toughness stemmed from that time, and from his determination never to be scared again. No matter what it took, no matter what he had to do. She hadn’t been wrong, not about this. It was self-protection that had made him develop the ruthless facade. The question was, had the facade become the man?
Another shiver made his teeth chatter. She saw him clench his jaw, and wondered how many nights sixteen-year-old Jason had spent being this cold, when he hadn’t had the money for the bus or the ferry, or to get to the airport where he could get warm and scrounge through other people’s leavings for food scraps.
As difficult as her life had been, she’d lived through nothing as grim as Jason had. It made what he’d done, what he’d become, even more impressive. Something clawed at her, some mixture of love, compassion, and bitter longing that dug into her with talons as strong and merciless as those of his namesake.
She loved him. Fool that she was, she loved him. She loved that part of him that was Aaron, that part of him that was Hawk, and most of all that part of him that was Jason, the part he never let anyone see, but that he had revealed to her in bits and pieces, as the Hawk story had been revealed in the book. She knew how cold, how harsh he could be, but she also knew he was capable of tenderness, of laughter. And somewhere, deep beneath the shell that protected his heart from the world, she knew there was still that scared, lonely boy, who could love if only he could be sure he wouldn’t be hurt, if he could be sure the one he loved wouldn’t abandon him, as everyone else had. The heart of this Hawk would not be easily won.
Wild Hawk Page 33