Fire in the Wind

by Alexandra Sellers

  "I... I...."

  "Which is it—prudery or jealousy?"

  "It isn't either, and you know it!" Vanessa exploded. "Now will you please get out of my room?"

  For an answer he leaned his shoulders back against the door and looked at her lazily in the half-light. "Lady," he said softly, "you had a date with me tonight, and you did not do me the courtesy of informing me that you had changed your mind, or why. Suppose you give me a reason now?"

  His body, in that casual posture, seemed dangerously lithe, and Vanessa most uncharacteristically lost her head.

  "I said, get out!" she growled, flinging herself at him as though she might be able to push him bodily out of the room. His arms, which had been linked across his chest, unwrapped with a speed that shocked her, and in a moment she was pressed up against his body, his arms securely around her.

  "I want a reason, spitfire," he said, his eyes unreadable as he looked down at her, "and an apology. And—" as an afterthought "—a forfeit." His look seemed suddenly angry as his arms tightened around her. "I think I'll have the forfeit first."

  He bent his head and kissed her, a slow expert kiss in which each teasing motion of his mouth created a need for the next until her lips were stretched wide in passionate acceptance of the tormenting thrust of his tongue. Vanessa was filled with a deep consummate longing in which every grey day of every year she had been deprived of a man's passion was limned against the roaring fire that was ignited in her now. Her desire shocked her and at the same time dulled her reason, so that, like a distant spectator, part of her was thinking, I shouldn't let him kiss me like this. But she made no effort to stop him. If her arms had not been locked by his hold, she would have clung to him.

  Jake lifted one hand to stroke her throat, then his mouth left hers to follow the trail his hand had blazed over neck and throat, down the deep V of her robe to the valley between her breasts.

  Vanessa moaned, lifting her free hand to his dark hair, dropping her head back to expose her throat, pressing him to her. The hot wetness of his mouth caressed the fullness of one breast along the edge of her black robe and then, as his long fingers drew the material back, sought and found the nipple.

  She moved into a region of no conscious thought. There was nothing she would not give him, nothing she did not want from him.

  "Jace," she whispered hoarsely, and the sound of that name on her lips immediately jerked her into cold awareness. The magic was gone. With a gasp she pushed at Jake, struggling to cover her exposed breast with the robe against the pressure of the long fingers that held it.

  Jake held his hand against the swell of her breast and raised his head to look into her horrified eyes. "Don't think about it," he murmured. "Jace or Jake, what difference does it make?"

  She pushed his hand away, stepped back out of his arms. "No," she said flatly.

  He smiled unkindly. "Little hypocrite," he said softly. "Who are you trying to kid—me or yourself?"

  Vanessa straightened and stared at him, feeling her skin stretch over the thin bones of her face. "I wouldn't expect you to understand," she said coldly. "You—"

  "Oh, I understand." His knowing smile glinted at her. "If Jace were alive now, he could enjoy what you so obviously want to offer, not because you'd want him any more than you want me—and you do want me—but because you could pretend that it meant something. And you'd conveniently forget—"

  Vanessa pulled the robe close over her breasts like a schoolgirl and interrupted, "I do not want you."

  Jake Conrad laughed. "No? Who do you want, then?"

  She mustered her dignity. "Would you please lea—"

  "Because you want someone, lady, believe me, you do," he breathed, and reached for her again.

  She was fire and gold under his hands, and he was right. This had never happened to her before, a man charging her skin with electricity like this, so that she moaned helplessly the first moment he touched her, and it must be him she wanted, but how could that be? she was thinking dimly, as his expert hands and insinuating mouth turned her thoughts to clouds. Because he reminded her of Jace?

  His strong arms were tight around her and his lips moved under her ear and down her neck and she was aghast at her response.

  "Stop," she whispered hoarsely, and then loudly, "Stop!"

  He let her go again. "All right," he said in faint contempt. "We'll follow your rules." He looked at his watch. "You expressed a desire for British Columbia salmon. Can you be ready in ten minutes?"

  Vanessa was breathless, lost. She blinked, trying to marshal her thoughts. "I... uh...."

  "Try," said Jake Conrad briefly. "I'll be back at ten-thirty." He smiled crookedly down at her. "If you decide not to get dressed, I'll assume you're expressing a desire for something else." His dark gaze locked with hers for one long moment as he touched her cheek with strong sensitive fingers, and then he was gone.

  * * *

  "Do you want your apology with the hors d'oeuvre or with the entrée?" Jake Conrad set down his drink and smiled crookedly at her, looking just like Jace.

  Startled, she remembered why he had invited her to dinner.

  "Oh, fire when ready," she said lightly.

  He breathed once, then reached out and touched her fingers where they lay on the narrow pine table in the little booth that gave them both privacy and a view. The restaurant he had brought her to was as rough and basic as it was expensive, but the soft lighting and the gentle sounds of a piano encouraged its patrons to take their time. Vanessa looked into Jake's eyes and involuntarily remembered an Automat just off Fifth Avenue and a cold December afternoon when she had had a hole in her glove.

  Jace had looked up from his cardboard cheese sandwich and smiled endearingly at her through his scars. "The coffee's good," he had said. "The coffee's always good in New York, it seems to me."

  "Is it?" she had asked in surprise, liking the sound of it. "You should give that idea to the tourist board." And together they'd visualized posters saying, "We may be broke, but we can always afford the price of a cup of coffee!" or "Promise her anything, but take her for coffee in New York...."

  "I know where I want to take you," Jace had said, sobering. "A restaurant called Skookum Chuck's out on English Bay near the park. It looks out over the water, and you can see the lights of all the ocean-going ships out in the distance....I'll take you there someday."

  That promise would never be fulfilled now. But Vanessa, slipping into the present, looked out past Jake's shoulder to the lights of distant ocean vessels and, interrupting him just as he was beginning to speak, asked hoarsely,

  "What's the name of this restaurant?" knowing before he said it what answer she would hear.

  "Skookum Chuck's," he said briefly, his voice expressionless, his eyes losing their warm approval and narrowing into calculation. He looked as though he were waiting for something, but that must be her imagination.

  "Jace promised to bring me here," she said softly, still in her memories. "Funny that you should pick it—it's the first restaurant I've been to in Vancouver, outside the hotel."

  "I told you I'd make a good stand-in," Jake said, moving aside his drink for the arrival of the avocado-with-crab-meat concoction that was their hors d'oeuvre.

  "Yes, you did," Vanessa agreed mildly, "and unless I'm mistaken, that was what you were going to apologize for."

  "Is that what you thought?" he returned with a half-smile. "But how could I apologize for thinking you beautiful and desirable and wanting you on almost any terms?"

  To her annoyance, Vanessa felt herself blushing. With as calm an air as she could muster she averted her gaze, picked up her dry vodka martini and finished the last of it.

  "Well, what were you going to apologize for, then?"

  "For saying—for telling you it was your fault that... Jace died," Jake said slowly and hesitantly as though he were fighting against a strong emotion. Vanessa set down her glass and looked at him.

  She said bluntly, "Are you apologizing becaus
e you don't think it's true or only because you feel you shouldn't have said it?"

  Jake didn't answer.

  "I see," she said softly. He looked suddenly dark and demon ridden, and she added, "You were very close to your cousin, weren't you?"

  "What?" Jake said, startled, and then, "Oh—yes, I suppose, in a way."

  So that wasn't it, she thought. He wasn't looking at her like that because she had murdered his best friend. She wondered if perhaps a woman had hurt him once, in a similar way, and he was somehow taking it out on her because she had done the same to Jace....

  "You've been hurt by a woman, too," she said softly, thinking aloud, and immediately a shutter went down behind his eyes, and he smiled and shook his head.

  "That is women's romantic fantasy," he said sardonically. "All women get it, sooner or later, and they all, sooner or later, offer to bind the wounds." His eyes were darkly cruel. "If you want to offer to bind my wounds, however, I'll take you up on it. I'm sure I can dredge up a scar or two for you to weep over."

  He spoke lightly, cynically, but he was trying to hurt her. Vanessa looked at him without speaking. We all have our own Keep Off signs, she thought. And this is yours, and you are lying to me. Someone has hurt you—and you want to take it out on me.

  Vanessa lifted her small silver spoon and tasted the avocado's crab-meat filling. It was delicious.

  "Do you really own the hotel, or was that another of Louisa's little flights of fancy tonight?" she asked him, though she knew the answer, and she was rewarded when Jake relaxed.

  "Does Louisa have flights of fancy? Yes, Conrad Corporation owns controlling interest in the hotel."

  "And Designwear, too?" That was the name of the fashion company Gary had told her Jake owned.

  "That, too."

  "Then what do you actually do for a living?" She had never met anyone before with a diversity of interests like this.

  Jake laughed. "I make money."

  "Jace worked for his father's trucking company, didn't he?" she observed. "How did you start?"

  He paused. "After the operation—after Jace's death, I bought out my uncle in the trucking firm. He wasn't very imaginative and he wasn't ambitious. The trucking firm made him a nice little income and he would have been satisfied with that."

  "I suppose after Jace's death there didn't seem much reason to work hard," she said. Jace had been an only child, she knew, and his mother had left him and his father when he was only a child. It had scarred Jace; she had known that, though he had not said much about it.

  "I suppose not," Jake agreed. "After that I bought a trucking firm in Seattle and then a chip-barge outfit in Campbell River.... I was lucky a lot of the time. I've got very diversified interests now."

  "Any gold mines?" she asked with a little laugh. Jace had wanted to own a gold mine one day. She looked up, finishing the last of the avocado with an appreciative flick of her tongue over her lips. He was staring at her, and he was suddenly demon-ridden again.

  "God, you're just like a cat!" He dragged in a ragged breath. "I've never seen a woman eat the way you do."

  His sudden intensity took her aback. "What do you mean?" she faltered.

  He said, "Has no man ever told you that you are completely sensuous? Why do you think I can't keep my hands off you?"

  "Oh... I...." Vanessa blinked.

  "Did you ask if I own any gold mines?" he continued harshly. "I own two, in Northern Ontario—small but promising. Do you want one? I'll give you one if you'll come to bed with me."

  The little spoon clattered against china, and then an electric silence settled between them. Jake Conrad's dark eyes watched her intently, unnerving her. Vanessa lost all power of breath and speech. Finally she shook herself and straightened her shoulders.

  "You look as though you expect me to consider that suggestion seriously," she said with a faint, catty little laugh she was surprised she could produce.

  Jake Conrad inhaled and his eyes lost some of their intensity. But he still watched her. "And won't you?" he queried. "Most women would."

  "Most women would what?" she snapped.

  His lips twitched. "Would consider the proposition seriously," he said slowly, as though he were talking to a child or a half-wit.

  A slow anger burned in Vanessa. She wasn't going to take this. She drew a deep breath.

  "Look," she said, "I know what you want, and I think I know why. But it's nothing to do with me, so kindly keep your personal demons to yourself. If there was a woman once who thought money was more important than you, then I am sorry for you, but it is manifestly not my fault."

  She would have stopped there, but he was looking arrogantly, cynically amused, and unaccountably she wanted to break through his defences, to reach his real emotions, even if only his answering anger.

  "However, having seen the kind of women you seem to choose, I must say I'm not surprised. I've never seen anyone more likely than Louisa Hayward to be the kind of woman to choose money over love."

  She did not break through. Jake Conrad's cynical smile stretched wider, and his voice when he spoke was triumphant, as though they were debating and she had just lost a point. "The kind of woman you are, in fact?" he said.

  "I beg your pardon?" Vanessa's anger burned faster.

  "Larry Standish was from a very wealthy family, wasn't he? Isn't that why you married him? Jace's father's trucking firm couldn't stand up against the Standish millions."

  At that precise moment the quiet waiter appeared at her shoulder with their grilled salmon. Biting back her response was so difficult it was painful. Vanessa clenched her jaw and her hands and breathed deeply as tears started in her eyes. After what seemed an age, the waiter had arranged everything to his satisfaction and disappeared as silently as he had come.

  "How dare you!" she hissed at Jake. "How dare you!" It was all she could say. She wanted to laugh and cry at the same time. Giving up Jace to marry Larry had been the cruellest sacrifice ever asked of her. To be accused now of having had mercenary motives was almost more than she could bear.

  "Isn't it true?" he asked. "It's easy to see you've got more money to spend than the average working girl. That dress you're wearing now has most of the women in the room gnashing their teeth in envy. You didn't get that on your salary, now, did you?"

  "This dress is of my design and my execution!" she said hotly, angry because she was making explanations. "As are all the clothes I wear. And the clothes I wear are not enough justification for the hideous accusation you just made to me! Who the devil do you think you are?"

  "It's not true?" he asked intently, a startled look coming into his eyes. "I... that's what Jace thought."

  "What Jace thought? How do you know what Jace thought?" she demanded.

  "He told me what he thought," Jake said.

  Vanessa stared at him, her eyes wide. "When?" she insisted.

  "In the hospital. Before he went in for his operation," Jake replied. "He told me about La—"

  She interrupted fiercely, "What's going on here? You told me you found out about my letter after he was dead, when you cleared his belongings out of his hospital room!"

  He blinked as though he had lost his bearings for a moment. Then he said hesitantly, "No, I... he didn't show me the letter. He told me you had married someone else. Larry. And he told me why. Later I found the letter."

  Vanessa eyed him for a long moment. She was sure he had said... but she couldn't remember the conversation well. She had been too emotionally shaken. It seemed she was always being shaken emotionally while this man was around. She breathed deeply in an effort to calm herself.

  "I can't believe that's what he thought," she said, all her anger suddenly dispelled. "Oh, God, I can't believe he died thinking that about me!"

  Tears pricked her eyes and she looked down. The sight of the plain oiled pine brought to her mind suddenly the long dining hall at the Standishes, glittering with silver and crystal under a magnificent chandelier.

  She wanted
to clear herself of the accusation of having sold out to that, she wanted to go back in time and tell Jace it wasn't true... but there was no Jace to tell, only Jake. And it wasn't his fault if he believed what his cousin had told him on his deathbed.

  She said, "I never took money from them. I always made my own way. After I married Larry I stayed in college even though they said no matter what happened I'd never have to work again. When Larry got really ill they paid all his hospital and medical fees, but I never took money from them." She looked up at Jake, her eyes unconsciously pleading.

  She thought, let him tell me he lied. Let him tell me Jace never thought that....

  "Is that what he believed, really believed, about me?" she asked.

  His voice was harsh. "Jace probably thought a hundred different things. What difference does it make whether he had the right reason or not? The hard fact was that you jilted him without a word of explanation. What do you care what explanation he dreamed up for himself? What difference does it make to you?"

  "It makes a difference," Vanessa said doggedly. "I didn't tell him the reason because he didn't ask. If he'd—"

  She broke off because Jake was laughing, a mirthless incredulous laugh. "He didn't ask? What room did you give him to ask?" he demanded harshly. "I told you, you were already married by the time—" He broke off. "You're a woman who demands a lot from a man, obviously. You want a man to keep coming at you while you're saying no, is that it? Is that what I should have done tonight? Made love to you in spite of yourself?"

  She gasped under the force of his attack. "No!" she said angrily.

  "No, eh?" He looked unconvinced. "Well, I'm glad to hear it. Because I don't like shrinking violets and I don't much care for rape. When you come to my bed I want you willing—just remember that. The blame for any wasted time will be at your door, not mine."

  Vanessa sat stunned. "You must be out of your mind," she said coldly. "Believe me, I will not be coming to your bed, willingly or otherwise." And in that moment she believed it.