Judgement by Fire

by Lydia Grace

  It was barely five p.m., yet the woods had the breathless feel that comes in Ontario’s winter’s end, where daylight and dusk mingle together for an extended twilight. Then, when night could be expected to fall blackly, often starlight or the moonlight reflected back on the snow created a sense of light that was otherworldly and beautiful.

  “The woods are lovely, dark and deep…” Lauren quoted the poet to herself as she walked the familiar paths, breathing in the sharp, cold smell of evergreens and sensing the excited tension held within the pregnant boughs of deciduous trees ready to explode into green at the warming sun’s command.

  Lauren breathed deeply, her tension draining away as the peace of the woods seeped into her soul, making her whole again. That was how she always felt out here, and she was never afraid, even at night. It was so familiar, so welcoming to her, yet full of surprises—like the bobcat she’d seen just weeks ago which she was trying so hard now to capture on canvas as her ready camera had captured him on film.

  But the woods held more surprises that twilight afternoon. She hadn’t gone too far when she came upon a clearing with a glowing campfire, the scent of supper rising from a pan hanging from a crudely constructed tripod over the flames. Lounging casually on a sleeping bag was a warmly layered figure, his attention held by a book on his lap, illuminated in the glow of a hurricane lamp. Heavy layers of sweater and parka aside, she’d recognize that lithe and powerful form anywhere! How dare he—invading her woods as if he had a right to be there! Lauren’s indignation carried her forward while all the while her head was telling her that the camper had as much right to enjoy the forest as she herself, but before she could stop herself, Lauren was drawn into the clearing and the warm light of the campfire.

  Jon looked up as Lauren stepped out from the sheltering trees, and their eyes caught like flame on tinder. She held herself away, cold on the surface, as she stared at him, wondering if her own hostility would be mirrored in his reaction to her. After all, she belatedly reminded herself, he was the wounded party—literally. But his smile was genuine, hard to resist, even in a traitorous son of a…

  “Welcome to my humble abode, please come in,” his rich, deep voice held laughter at his own situation, and at her finding him there, but no embarrassment. It was almost as though he could read her mind, and Lauren flushed. “You’re lucky enough to have arrived in time to enjoy a munificence of smoked baked beans, if you’d like to?”

  There was a question in his tone, and a deep, hidden longing, which came close to melting Lauren’s icy anger. It was as though he had, if not forgotten, at least laid aside the memory of the last few hours, leaving their time together here as pristine as the snowdrifts between the trees.

  But Lauren shrugged and hardened her heart against him. No way could they share a meal and sit and chat like old friends—or new lovers that nasty little voice inside her whispered—with all that lay between them.

  “Gee, sorry, but there’s an irresistible stale raisin teacake at home with my name on it,” Lauren knew she sounded childish, but couldn’t bite back the insult in her tone.

  “You mean you’d rather eat stale teacake than share my bean feast?” he asked, shaking his head in mock incredulity.

  “I’d rather not share anything with you—ever!”

  Liar! Whispered that treacherous little voice deep inside, the one that no amount of logic could subdue. But the flare of something unreadable in his expression showed Lauren that he’d caught the full import of the message she was sending. She would have left then, but he rose lithely from the ground and crossed the space between them with a few long strides, his gaze capturing hers as surely as if his strong arms had pulled her to him. Lauren experienced a shiver of longing, the temptation to melt against him, but still held back.

  “What are you doing here, Rush?” she asked coldly.

  “Why are you so angry with me? If anything, it should surely be the other way round?” he asked, seeming genuinely puzzled.

  “Because you lied to me last night,” she spat back.

  Understanding dawned in his eyes. “I didn’t lie to you, I told you my name,” he protested.

  “No, you told me part of your name. But you didn’t tell me WHO you were,” she insisted.

  “And is who I am so important, or who you are? Can we not put Rush Co. and Art Before Commerce, aside and be Jon and Lauren? Is that so hard?”

  “I’d say it’s impossible when we both stand for such different things,” Lauren replied, her anger diminishing in his presence, as she’d feared it would. Diminishing, to be replaced by a deeper, richer tapestry of feeling from which her head told her to run while her heart was willing to linger…for however long.

  “Come and sit down, at least have a cup of coffee—I make good campfire coffee, even if I say it myself,” Jon held out his hand, a look of honest invitation on his face. “At least let’s call a twenty minute truce for refreshments.”

  Lauren couldn’t help but smile then and she took his proffered hand to steady herself as she walked over to the tumbled mound of sleeping bags with him.

  “You know, it never ceases to amaze me just how warm you can be in the depths of the countryside, snow all around and just a campfire and a pile of nylon-covered down for warmth. Yet sometimes, in the city, I’m cold even with the central heating. It’s like there’s no air, no way to take a deep breath,” Jon said seriously, handing her a tin mug of steaming coffee.

  Lauren looked at him in amazement.

  “That’s exactly how I feel,” she said in wonder. “You know, I worked at Bay and Bloor in the middle of Toronto as a graphic artist for six years, and I don’t believe I ever took a deep breath in all that time. When I was offered the place out here, I think I spent the first few months intoxicated with the oxygen!”

  “But the feeling wore off?”

  “We—I—went through a very difficult time, shortly after moving here.”

  Jon wanted to push, wanted to ask who the “we” she’d referred to were, and if that was a current situation, but somehow the moment didn’t seem right. He didn’t want to spoil the tentative truce between them by prying, and was content just to sit, basking in the warmth of the firelight and in the heat from her body, so close to his. Lauren, her hands wrapped around the comforting warmth of the tin coffee mug, felt the sense of peace she always found in the woods returning, intensified rather than diminished by the presence of this man she was finding hard to consider an enemy, even though he threatened so much that she held dear.

  They sat companionably for a while, each deep in personal thoughts.

  Then Lauren said, “My husband was very ambitious and had already worked his way high up the ladder in the advertising agency we both worked for. He was handling some very high-flown accounts, and wanted me to quit my job and become a sort of hostess-companion to support his career. He hated it that I’d rented the studio here, and came up every weekend, when he wanted me to host dinner parties and smile prettily at his clients and potential clients.” She had never talked about this to anyone except Lucy and Paul, for somewhere in her mind her mother’s voice echoed, telling her that a woman’s place was at home, as she had done when Lauren had tried to confide the problems of her ailing marriage. “My mother told me I should do as he asked that he was doing this for the best of our future together. But he wasn’t, you know—it was really for himself.”

  Personally, Jon agreed that a man, who wanted his wife to give up her own ambitions to support his, especially if she was reluctant to do so, was pretty selfish. But he wanted to tread carefully and not give Lauren the impression he was agreeing with her too easily for his own ends.

  Instead he said in a neutral tone, “Maybe he was trying to ensure that you had the security you need for a stable marriage?”

  Lauren turned on him, fury and hurt in her eyes.

  “Don’t tell me you’re another Neanderthal! Of course it wasn’t for our marriage—it was so that he could get to the top a little fas
ter, could impress those wealthy business clients out of even more advertising commission! Do you know what he told me? Do you know what he said? He told me I was wasting my time dabbling with my finger-paints, that I had no talent and should consider myself lucky to have had a job in the agency, that they only kept me on because of him!”

  Jon winced, feeling the raw pain she obviously still felt at the recollection.

  “So I quit the job with the agency, and told him I was going to spend more time up here to try to really make a career out of my work. He laughed at me; he really laughed as if I was a foolish child. But I’d always loved the creativity of painting rather than the commercial side of design. I wanted to prove to myself that I really did have talent. That I wasn’t just dabbling with finger-paints like some kindergarten kid. Just then, I was offered my first chance to take part in an exhibition, and my work started to sell. Terry said, quit and come home, or it’s all over. He told me I was disloyal—I was disloyal! I almost jacked it all in, then, quit the studio and went back to Toronto to become Mrs. Company Wife. You know what’s funny, though? Right then, quite by accident, I discovered that Mr. Loyal and True was having an affair! Talk about clichés—with his secretary!” Lauren’s laugh was bitter, and Jon reached over to squeeze her hand gently in an instinctive attempt to comfort her. “You know what’s even funnier, though? After all that pain, all that heartache, I’m not sure if I ever even loved the bastard!”

  Minutes ticked by on snow-muffled feet as they both sat, gazing into the flames, each wrapped in thoughts that were theirs alone, and yet joined by something delicate, intangible, but which Lauren felt like a seed unfurling deep underground. A feeling not yet ready to emerge and declare itself, but waiting for the conditions to be right before flourishing. Yet there was no way such a glorious blossom could flourish in the stony ground that was all that could exist between two people with such dissimilar ambitions, Lauren told herself sharply. After all, she’d been that route once before, and found that such a disparate relationship mixed like oil and water—never quite combining into one substance but each always struggling to overpower the other.

  With a sudden act of willpower, Lauren sat up.

  “Time to leave. But now you know why there can’t be a Lauren and Jon, why we can’t be…friends, outside of everything else that’s going on. I can’t risk…liking someone at such odds to what I want from life!”

  “I don’t think we’re so much at odds. And what’s wrong with…liking…someone?”

  She knew he was laughing at her, knew that he knew the word she’d almost used to describe her potential feelings for him. For Lauren knew, as surely as she knew her own name, that she could love Jon Rush. That, alone, was a crazy idea, given that they’d only just met. And it just wouldn’t work out. Ever. But even as she declared this to herself, she caught sight of the curve of his forehead and her heart squeezed. A row of tiny, neat stitches ran from just inside his hairline down across his temple. Tentatively, with infinite gentleness, she reached out to touch the bruised and puckered skin alongside the stitches.

  “This is what I did to you?” she asked, horrified and fascinated. Her movement had brought their faces close together, and she gasped as she looked into Jon’s eyes and read the longing that burned there.

  “’Fraid so,” he said, his deep voice husky with unspoken emotion. “I think for that I deserve at least a small kiss better?”

  Even though his voice teased, Lauren felt her body respond dangerously as heat flooded through her veins from a fire flaring deep in her belly.

  Jon reached his free hand around behind Lauren’s head, pulling her down and closing the gap between their lips in a smooth, experienced movement.

  Lauren gasped as the fire arced between them like high voltage lightening through a grounded conductor. Their kiss lasted just a moment, only a gentle meeting of lips like the brushing of butterfly wings against rose petals, but the wild feelings it aroused surged and roared, threatening to swamp them totally.

  With a soft groan, Jon resisted the temptation to kiss her again, to gorge himself on the sweetness he’d just tasted and let the tidal wave of desire take them where it would. Instead, he contented himself with stroking her soft cheek and planting a swift kiss on her upturned nose. Then he rose to his feet in a flowing, graceful motion, pulling her up beside him.

  “You’re right, at least in that it’s time to go. Shall I walk you back? It’s very dark.”

  For a brief moment, Lauren considered having him accompany her back, if only to prolong this oasis of time together before the real world came crashing back at them. Her heart urged her to keep him with her and her body joined in, clamoring its own chaotic needs with a sly question about whether she’d ask him inside—and whether she’d be able to let him leave or if they’d be drawn into her warm bed together. Looking at him, his hair bright in the starlight, his eyes shadowed and skin still pale from the shock of the wound she herself had inflicted, Lauren almost gave in to the temptation that was swamping her physically and emotionally. But with a mighty effort of will, she stilled all the voices that urged her on, and shook her head.

  “No, thanks, I know these woods like the back of my hand, and I often come out here at night. Besides, you should be resting after that head wound,” she told him firmly, almost choking on the guilt that hit her again for causing him such injury. “Anyway, it’s not far, just a few minutes through the trees over there. You can see the glow from my porch light.”

  “So I’m sleeping in your back yard?” he said with a wicked grin. “Tell you what, so I don’t have to come over and check on you, let me know you’ve got home safely by flashing that light a couple of times before you switch it off, okay?”

  Lauren felt a little flutter of pleasure in her breast at his protectiveness, but she laughed lightly and told him not to worry about her, she could look after herself. And she left him there, knowing he was staring after her and guessing he was experiencing the same kind of longing that she was desperately trying to suppress.

  As she left the glowing circle of the campfire, hidden from Jon’s sight by the thickly pressing trees, feet crunching on the hard snow as the temperatures continued to drop into the night; Lauren felt suddenly that she was being watched. Sure Jon Rush was following her to see her safely home—or had decided to take up the invitation that she had barely managed to withhold—Lauren turned on a wild impulse to greet him. Her heated blood ignoring her head’s warning about truth and consequences, she whirled around, determined to catch him out on his approach, but the path behind her was empty. Yet, still the feeling of being watched persisted.

  Just some deer or a fox out a-hunting, she told herself. All the same, she felt suddenly uneasy and quickened her steps, glad when she reached the shelter of her own back porch. Turning off the porch light as she entered the house, Lauren couldn’t help smiling to herself as she toggled the switch up and down a couple of times.

  There, Jon Rush, she thought, I’m safely home. And the cheerful welcoming space of her studio seemed less lonely, somehow, knowing he was out there.

  *

  So that’s how things stand, is it? Anger tightened the slender frame of the watching man. She’d no time for him and all he could offer her, but she’d plenty of time to throw herself at the rich and powerful Jon Rush. Traitorous bitch, and to think, for a while, he’d thought she was different, capable of valuing a man for who he really was…But then a new idea pushed through his sense of betrayal. If Jon Rush wanted this woman, then she could prove to be the delightful instrument of Rush Co.’s destruction. He could punish them both. The irony of the situation made the watching man smile his charming smile with humor that never quite reached his eyes.

  Chapter 4

  Jon’s protective presence in her ‘backyard’ was the first thing Lauren thought of when she woke from a deep sleep the next morning, stretching luxuriously on the smooth warm cotton sheets in her king-sized loft bed. Briefly, she wondered what it would be l
ike to wake up beside him, their limbs tangled together and the sheets disarrayed by love.

  One word was all it would have taken last night. That little voice was back, tweaking at her conscious mind and playing on emerging needs, which she’d managed to keep submerged for so long. After her ex-husband, Terry, had left—been thrown out, as Lucy loved to recall—Lauren had reveled in the solitude the studio afforded her, and the freedom of being just one, rather than always having to think as a couple—and the lesser part of two, at that.

  So when did solitude and freedom become loneliness and an aching need to be touched, mind and body, by another? When you met Jon Rush, the little voice replied with a confidence so arrogant that Lauren would have torn it from her head if she had been able.

  The dull light through her uncurtained windows told her that it was another cold wintry morning, her conscience adding that it was also another weekday morning and none too early. The knowledge of several different deadlines forced her out of the warm bed and into her chilly bathroom to shower and dress. As she did so she carefully avoided thoughts of anything but the work she needed to do to get back on track for her upcoming show. As she tried to tame her short, wavy hair with the blow drier, the telephone in the kitchen rang. Then she heard the answering machine kick in, followed by silence, and a final sounding click as the caller hung up. With a shiver, Lauren wondered if she’d been mistaken. What if Steve Wallace hadn’t been the only one making calls and refusing to talk to the machine? One heard such dreadful tales of stalkers and malicious acts.

  Then the phone shrilled again, causing her heart to thump wildly until, as the machine answered, Lauren heard Paul’s familiar voice.

  “Lauren, I know you’re in there. Turn this infernal machine off and talk to me!”

  With a grin of relief, Lauren went to pick up the receiver, at the same time chiding herself for having a too-vivid imagination.

  “Lauren, I’m so sorry I didn’t call last night, but it got so late,” Paul told her apologetically, aware that she would have been worried about Lucy. “The doctors say it’s nothing new, just exhaustion. Old Dr. Miller went ballistic when he heard she’d been at the protest rally. He gave her absolute hell.”