Fire in the Wind

by Alexandra Sellers

  * * *

  "Good morning," Vanessa smiled as she emerged from the bathroom wrapped in a white bathrobe that she had found hanging on the door.

  "Good morning," responded Jake from a deep chair by the windows, looking up from his newspaper, smiling and urbane, as though in the night just past he had not tried to destroy her with passion and been himself destroyed.

  His bathrobe was navy, falling open over the dark hair crinkling on his chest. She knew the scent and feel of that hair intimately, and the memory made her smile and drop her eyes.

  "Shall we order some brunch?" Jake asked, his voice politely friendly, and Vanessa knew he was back in control again. Although last night he had been hers and hers alone, this, now, was the man that Marigold and Louisa and probably many other women had known.

  Vanessa looked at the calm face that said there was nothing between them except a certain physical satisfaction they had given each other, and wondered how any woman could bear to have as a lover a man so cool and unmoved. For she would always feel the need to disturb him on the deepest level, and if she could not have that, nothing less would do....

  "Sounds lovely," she said with a smile, as friendly and well-bred as he.

  Over brunch Jake relaxed and unwound, treating her less and less like just another pretty face he had slept with last night, and more like the woman whose talent and drive he admired and who was running his newest business. Sometimes she caught a look of faint surprise on his face, as though he wasn't used to this kind of conversation over Sunday brunch.

  "My secretary tried to reach you Friday," he said over coffee. "Do you still want to discuss that market report with me?"

  She said, "That market report is a nightmare. If you'd read it first you'd never have offered me this job!"

  "No?" said Jake, raising his eyebrows. "Why?"

  "First of all," she began, "it says that Vancouver is not a good city to be manufacturing clothing in, because there's almost no labour pool here and I'll have to pay above the market rate to steal them away from competitors. To get a good production manager Robert thinks we'll probably even have to go to Montreal or Toronto, where the majority of clothing manufacturing is done in Canada and there's a larger labour pool."

  "Hmm," grunted Jake.

  "The second thing," she continued, taking a sip of her coffee, "and by far the more terrifying, is the fact that my experience in New York—everything I've picked up over the years—is going to be absolutely useless to me here. The difference between the Canadian and American markets is so vast that I'm on the level of a novice. Worse than a novice."

  Jake was watching her with an arrested look in his eyes. "Really?"

  She wondered what kind of reports he'd been reading when he dreamed up this venture.

  "Jake, I have to sell across five thousand miles of Canada to get the same market size I have in a few miles' radius of New York! I can't believe it. Do you know how many small towns there are in five thousand miles?" If she hadn't known much about Canadian geography before, the market report had been a crash course. She had been amazed to discover that there were only three cities in Canada with a population of over a million.

  "And what were you expecting?"

  "I was expecting to be able to restrict my operations to the area around Vancouver for the first few years, the way we did in New York," she said. "But to do that, I'd have to go for a very small, exclusive designer-model business—which is exactly what I don't want to do."

  "Well, then," Jake pointed out reasonably, "you won't be doing that. So you're stuck with selling to the entire country. Other than the need for salespeople in the various regions, what problems does this raise?"

  He made it sound so easy, as though a few minor adjustments would make everything right. But this was going to take more than minor adjustments.

  "That's only the distribution problem, which can obviously be solved the way every other manufacturer in Canada solves it," Vanessa said. "There's also a production problem, and worse, a design problem. From a design point of view, the facts are—" she was ticking things off on her fingers now "—one: women in Canada apparently are more conservative and quality conscious in their tastes than their American counterparts. Even in the larger centres.

  "Two: as far as clothing tastes go, women in the smaller centres—small towns and villages—are much more conservative than big-city women. There are lots of reasons for this, good reasons, too, but the fact remains that if I stole an exclusive Paris design and modified it for mass production and had it out in the stores in a month, no one would want it.

  "Jake, it means that the one thing I dreamed of doing is the one thing I'm not going to be able to do in this country—give middle-income women quality clothing with style and flair for their money."

  "I disagree," said Jake, shaking his head. "Your feeling, as you told it to me a few weeks ago, was that middle-income women aren't being given the product they really want. That's still true, but you're going to have to adjust your ideas about just what it is they want. That's all. And even that's a minor adjustment, if you choose to look at it that way—you can still give quality in line and fit and materials, but you'll have to compromise as far as fashion trends are concerned."

  "Compromise!" exclaimed Vanessa with a vexed laugh. "You don't understand! I'm always going to be working on designs that are at least a year behind the fashion!"

  "On the other hand," Jake pointed out, "weren't some of the designs you fought so hard to have included in TopMarx's fall showing very classical models? And you said they sold well here. It seems to me you might have a natural feeling for the Canadian market."

  "Yes, but—" Vanessa sighed. "It's hard to explain. A lot of the excitement is knowing what's going to happen before it happens—getting a mass-market model of a hot design in the stores almost before it's on the runway. Now that competitive spur will be missing. There'll be competition for a piece of the market, of course, but that's not the kind of thing that keeps me going."

  It was a bad blow. At least Tom had always produced the latest fashions, however cheaply they were made. A good part of the satisfaction of her job had been the constant jumping to keep on top of what was happening.

  "I wanted a quieter life," Vanessa said ruefully, feeling a sudden sense of loss that surprised her. "I didn't expect it to be this quiet."

  "Well, hell," said Jake. "Can't you design two lines? One for the cities and one for the smaller centres?"

  "Can you afford to give me two factories?" she responded dryly. She shook her head. "It wouldn't be practical, Jake. A production line has to be set up....No, I'll just have to be satisfied with including a few of the more exciting designs in the line each season and papering my walls with the rest."

  And in that moment, suddenly, she was resigned. Life was a series of changes, after all. There would be plenty of learning to do here, plenty to make her new life exciting. She had to face what came along, not try to wish it away.

  "Does that mean you've decided to stay?" Jake asked, leaning over to pour another cup of coffee for her.

  She laughed. "I guess I have. I guess I decided to stay yesterday when I signed the lease on the apartment. It must have been the apartment that decided me; it's so beautiful."

  Jake smiled.

  "Anyway," she confided, "there's a lot of satisfaction in being a technician, too. I enjoy making a really good fit. I never seemed to have time for that with Tom."

  He nodded, still saying nothing, and she was briefly angry because she wanted him to be glad that she was staying, as glad as she was to be here.

  She said, "I can't understand why you didn't know all this before you offered me the job."

  Jake's crooked smile flashed. "What makes you think I didn't?"

  "Well, I—but of course! You own Designwear, so you must have known about the labour problems here, at the very least."

  "Designwear functions entirely without my supervision," said Jake.

  "Well, there you a
re!" said Vanessa. "If you'd known the facts you'd never have decided to start this business in Vancouver, and you'd never have hired an American to run it—not against such drawbacks. In fact I can't understand why you want to start this business at all—the economy's so bad. If it weren't for Robert's telling me you always make money I'd be a lot more nervous than I am now."

  "Of course, Robert doesn't know everything about me. What he should have told you is that I usually get what I want. Maybe this time I want to lose money."

  He was smiling; it was a joke. He had told her before he didn't want a tax write-off.

  "Well, you won't get what you want, then." Vanessa laughed. "Because I'm going to make you good money on this."

  "I thought you'd feel like that," said Jake, his eyes glinting with satisfaction.

  To hide her leaping response to his approval Vanessa stood with her coffee cup and moved over to stand in front of the windows. When she looked around again Jake was refilling his cup.

  "I've been meaning to ask you," she said, "whether you own Fraser Valley Helicopter now. Did the reverse takeover go through?"

  "You've got a good memory," Jake observed, standing to move over beside her. "We ran into a hitch with Fraser Valley, but we may give it another try."

  "Oh," she said, struck by a sudden thought. "You wouldn't be interested in buying a building in the meantime, would you?"

  No sooner were the words out of her mouth than she regretted them. This wasn't the time or the place. Vanessa wanted to bite off her impulsive tongue.

  "What building?" Jake asked, his dark eyes already considering.

  What a fool she was. "Oh, it—never mind. I shouldn't have mentioned it. Robert was going to ask you about something...."

  "You ask me," Jake said, in a tone of irresistible command.

  "It—we looked at a building on Friday, a ladies'-wear manufacturer that has gone bankrupt...."

  She told him about it in a neatly business-like tone, making the best she could of a very bad job.

  "I really shouldn't have brought it up," she apologized. "Robert is going to be asking you about it. It just popped into my mind."

  "And why not?" asked Jake urbanely. "It may be indiscreet, but at least it's more original than a diamond bracelet."

  "More original than a diamond bracelet?" she repeated stupidly.

  "That's what I'm most commonly asked for over Sunday brunch," he said with a smile that was like a kick in the stomach.

  "Jake, for God's sake!" she whispered, pleading.

  "A building," he mused. "A three-story brick building near Gastown, about fifty years old. Well, why not? At a cost of a couple of dozen diamond bracelets, of course, but then, as you proved last night, you are far from ordinary yourself."

  "Jake, stop it!" Vanessa said angrily. "You know damned well I didn't... didn't—"

  "No?" he interrupted, in the manner of one sparing the blushes of someone who hadn't blushed for years. "Then why did you, my pretty?"

  She had not been going to tell him; it was a mistake to tell him so soon. But it would be a far worse mistake to let him go on thinking what he was thinking now—or pretending to think. Vanessa could not be certain.

  "I love you, Jake," she said quietly.

  He laughed. He threw back his head and laughed, and it was not a pretty sound. And she knew she was right, that once he had been badly hurt by love. She sat down with a clenched jaw; when he had sobered, he said, "You forget that I've heard that one before."

  "Not from me."

  He looked fleetingly surprised, then his expression became hooded.

  "No," he said in a flat voice. "Not from you." She wondered what ugly memory was tearing at him and wished she had not had to speak. "And such selfless love ought to be rewarded," he suggested. "Of course with love to offer as well as all the rest—" he eyed her warmly up and down "—I do see why you feel you are worth so much more than a paltry diamond bracelet."

  Vanessa stood up abruptly, thrusting her hands into the deep pockets of the robe. "Will you shut up about the building?" she demanded harshly.

  Jake smiled. "But of course, my love. When Robert mentions it to me on Monday, shall I tell him no?"

  She bit her lip and turned to stare out the window again. It was another beautiful sunny day, though she had been told it rained almost constantly in Vancouver.

  Behind her Jake was laughing softly. When she turned his crooked smile was cynical, cruel, and his dark eyes were filled with angry contempt.

  "Poor Larry," he said softly. "I could almost believe Jace got the better deal. Do I take it you do want the building after all?"

  Vanessa held onto emotional calm with an effort. "What I would like is for you to listen to Robert and decide on the merits," she said, "the same way you would have done if I hadn't mentioned this to you today."

  Finally he stopped smiling that cruel damned smile. "Well, I might have decided on the merits," Jake said. "On the other hand, if you hadn't slept with me last night, I might have bought the building to offer you as an inducement. The gold mine didn't work very well, if I remember. Or do you consider that I owe you that, too?"

  This was beyond endurance.

  "What I consider you owe me," Vanessa said furiously, "is an apology. You don't strike me as the sort of man who would have to pay a woman to come to his bed, but no doubt you know yourself better than I do. Nevertheless, you are not going to pay me. If you can't accept that I wanted to make love to you last night, then you will have to assume that I felt sorry for you," she said, and if she had caught sight of herself in a mirror at that moment she would have been appalled by the cruel smile that now curled her lips. She moved across to the bedroom door and stopped, turning to look at him over her shoulder. Her eyes glinted with leashed anger, though her mouth was still smiling. "Call it charity," she said softly, and left him.

  Her clothes were on a chair. Vanessa slipped on her stockings, shoes and underwear with an angry silent speed, and then put on the black silk coat and buttoned it. She threw the torn dress over her arm and picked up the neck ruffle and her evening bag, then caught sight of herself in the mirror. She looked like just what she was: a woman who had not been home after an evening out.

  She felt like hurling the torn dress into his wastepaper basket and letting him run the gauntlet of his staff's curious eyes, but common sense stopped her: she might be able to repair it.

  She wondered fleetingly whether in future the dress would ever be free of the memory of last night. Vanessa doubted it. Even through her fury she could feel a churning inside when she thought of Jake Conrad's hands as he tore the dress off her; his hands and his eyes....

  He was not there when she emerged from the bedroom, the dress flung defiantly over her arm. Nor did she look for him. She walked straight across the room without pausing, and didn't even slam the door as she went out.

  * * *

  On Monday Vanessa found she had been assigned a temporary office in the Concorp building on the floor below the one where Robert's—and Jake's—offices were.

  "Of course, you should really be upstairs in the senior-executive offices, Mrs. Standish," the office manager told her apologetically as she opened the door into Vanessa's temporary home. It was a smallish office, but it had a large window and a desk, and that was all Vanessa needed to begin designing: light and space. The carpet wasn't as thick as in the executive offices upstairs, but to Vanessa, remembering the paper and clothing and fabric-strewn barracks at TopMarx, it was a kind of luxury. Unfortunately it was also as sterile as a hermetically sealed syringe, and Vanessa wondered how anyone could be creative—even about money—in an environment like this.

  "But all those offices are full, and Mr. Dawe said as this was only going to be a temporary arrangement it would be better to give you an office that was available rather than shuffle everyone around into new ones."

  "Of course," said Vanessa, dropping her bag and design portfolio onto a chair and moving into the room. She wondered how the
hierarchy at Concorp worked—by the amount of money Jake was investing in you, perhaps?—and who would have been bumped down the line into a less prestigious office if her stay had been permanent.

  "Oh, yes, and about the secretaries: we work on the pool concept here—the secretaries work out of a pool. It's much more Efficient, of course," said the office manager, a rather handsome woman somewhere between forty and fifty who looked as though she always said efficient with a capital E. "When you need secretarial work done, bring it to me and I'll assign it to whoever is available."

  "I understand," said Vanessa, gazing with interest at the office manager's dress.

  It had suddenly occurred to her that this woman was part of her target group—the kind of woman she would be designing for. Vanessa had never worked in an ordinary business office, had never seen the women she designed for against their working environment, however often she had seen them in restaurants and shops.

  The office manager was wearing a dress in beige linen with three-quarter sleeves, a narrow self belt and a pencil skirt. The neckline was covered with a navy-and-white printed silk scarf that was pinned with a gold brooch.

  It could have been designed any time between 1955 and the present. Vanessa's heart fell. The woman was no dowd. Her hair was short and smartly cut and styled, and her make-up was faultless. She looked well dressed, even elegant. Just very, very conservative.

  "I'm sorry," Vanessa said, smiling, because the woman had paused in what she was saying and was looking just a little indignant. "Was I staring? I was looking at your dress. I haven't designed for Canadian women before, and they tell me it's going to be quite different."

  That interested the other woman. "Really? I would have thought we were very much like the Americans. Not quite such loud dressers, perhaps," she added parenthetically, as though assailed by a sudden memory. "I admire what you're wearing very much," she said with a nod at Vanessa's gypsyish concoction of scarves. "It's what you younger ones are wearing, I suppose. I know my daughter would love it. But, of course, it wouldn't do for the office, would it?"