Fire in the Wind

by Alexandra Sellers

  Vanessa laughed delightedly just as their movement turned her toward the door. Over Sir John A. MacDonald's shoulder she saw Jake and Madame du Barry walking into the room. She let her eyes lock with Jake's and gazed at him till she felt light-headed.

  "Are you by any chance a teacher?" she asked Sir John, when his guiding hand moved her into a turn that removed Jake from her line of vision. Her heart was beating as though she had run a mile.

  "Retired, my dear," he said. "Retired. I taught English and history for some forty-four years."

  "And how do you know Robert and Maria?" she asked.

  He told her that he was Robert's father and that his name was Harold; and they talked until the music stopped. Vanessa looked around to see a rather unwilling Madame du Barry being claimed by Julius Caesar for the next dance, and she thanked Sir John A. MacDonald and excused herself.

  "Dance, Jake?" she asked softly as the music started again, and slipped into his arms. He could not push her away without turning this into a scene, and Madame du Barry, who had been expecting Jake to tell Caesar to push off, was incensed.

  "Well!" she snorted indignantly as Caesar triumphantly bore her away.

  Jake's hands were like steel at her waist. "What the hell do you want, Vanessa?" he grated softly, and she laughed.

  "I want to dance with you, Jake," she said, her body swaying with the soft music. "We've never danced, have we? But we should dance well together, Jake," she said huskily. "They say when people are good together in bed it shows on the dance floor."

  He clenched his jaw and swore, then reached to take her hand in a painfully strong grip. His other arm tightened around her waist as he pulled her against him. The touch of his body went to her head like wine; as he began to move her in dance her head dropped helplessly back.

  Vanessa tried to focus. She must maintain control, she mustn't let Jake get the upper hand. Not tonight.

  "You think we're good together in bed?" Jake asked coldly. She laughed and did not answer. "Hmm?" he prompted, and it seemed as if he asked almost against his will.

  "Would you like it if I said yes?" she asked softly. "Do you want to have been a good lover for me, Jake? I wonder why, when you never want to see me again?"

  He said nothing.

  "Or is it just that you want me to admit that for me it was good so you can have the pleasure of telling me that for you it was nothing, that Madame du Barry over there excites you far more than I ever did?" She smiled seductively at him through her mask. "But I don't believe that, Jake. You couldn't make me believe it. You forget she's around half the time. You don't forget I'm around, do you, Jake? Any more than I can forget you."

  "Shut up," he muttered, and she hoped she wasn't imagining the sound of strain in his voice.

  "That's why you don't want to see me ever again," she continued. "Because when you look at me you remember what effect you have on me, you remember what you can do to me. You know you can make me faint with a word, a touch. You know that sexually you're the man I can't say no to, and you like that too much."

  Jake grunted and she felt his flesh harden against her thigh. His hand holding hers was almost unbearable and his arm around her waist was an iron band. Vanessa smiled against the pain.

  "You like it so much you lose control, don't you, Jake? And you don't like to be out of control, do you? You don't like to want something so badly it makes you shake, makes you wild. I haven't forgotten that this is the dress you ripped off me to make love to me one night." She looked at him. "You haven't forgotten, either, have you?"

  He was staring down at her with the blackest eyes she had ever seen in her life, and she wished suddenly that this could have been simpler, that she could have gone to him and said, "Jake, you love me, but you don't want to admit it to yourself. I love you, too. Please admit it." She could hear his breathing, feel the laboured rise and fall of his chest against her. Her body ached for his. They had stopped moving. In the dimly lit room the other dancers swayed around them.

  "What the hell do you want, Vanessa?" he demanded hoarsely. The music went silent except for one haunting horn that tugged at her reason, invited her away.

  Her hand clung around his neck and she leaned back against the pressure of his arm to look up at him, while their hips remained glued. His eyes were glittering through his mask with an expression that made her hiss her breath in through her teeth. "I want you to kiss me," she whispered. "Kiss me one last time for goodbye."

  She felt the tidal wave in him and knew with a triumphant joy that he could not refuse. His hand pressed against her back, forcing her face up to his, and then Vanessa closed her eyes and felt his mouth find hers blindly, hungrily. He freed her other hand and she wrapped it around his neck and clung to him as his arm encircled her and held her as though he wanted the kiss to destroy them both.

  When he lifted his mouth the blackness was swirling around her and the music had stopped. "Thank you," she whispered drunkenly against his neck, unable to stop clinging to him. She felt his hand on her arm, and with a sudden fear that he was going to force her to let go of him, she released him and stepped back out of his arms. She took a deep breath and smiled.

  She looked him in the eyes. "That story you told me about coming to New York later and dancing with me—was it true, Jake?"

  His hands had reached for her, but now they dropped to his sides. "We didn't dance," he said in a low voice. "I watched you from a distance."

  Oh, God, when would he crack? When would she get through to him? She said, "I couldn't believe I wouldn't have recognized your touch. I feel I'd have known you blindfold. If I had recognized you then, I'd have asked you to take me with you, Jake." A pleading note escaped into her voice. "Would you have wanted me?"

  Just for a moment there was a stillness about him that was frightening. "Yes," he said. "I would have wanted you." He coughed to clear the hoarseness in his voice. She felt as though she were in a battle for her life where there was no scoreboard, no way to tell if she was winning. She tried desperately to read him. "I nearly took you anyway," he said.

  "I can just imagine that," she smiled. Being dragged out to a car by a dark stranger who suddenly turned out to be Jace. "Nine unnecessary years," she said softly as another record started, and she watched Madame du Barry's determined approach behind Jake's shoulder. "And you still can't forgive me. Nine years is nothing, though, compared to forever. Is it, Jake?"

  She knew that he would push her aside now and take Madame du Barry in his arms, and she couldn't bear that. Vanessa stepped away from him then and moved through the dancers to the doorway. When she turned to look for the sight of them dancing together what she saw instead was Madame du Barry alone in the middle of the room, her mouth an oh of angry surprise... and Jake, not a foot away, Jake within reach as Vanessa turned, Jake putting out a hand to grasp her arm. Vanessa bit her lip and caught her breath on a sob.

  "Come with me now," he said softly, his eyes burning into hers, and suddenly it hurt her heart to beat.

  Chapter 19

  They drove in silence for a long time, headlights cutting through the darkness of the long road on the north shore of English Bay, the engine a quiet hum in the night. Finally Jake pulled off the road onto a small promontory above the water and shut off the engine. Vanessa's heart was thumping so that she could hardly breathe. After a moment she wound down her window to let in the sound of the sea and the gulls.

  Jake said quietly, "My mother and father had a lousy marriage from the beginning. A lot of it my mother took out on me. Long before you happened on the scene I'd learned that a woman who said she loved me one day wasn't going to love me the next.

  "She finally left when I was eight years old. I never let another woman get close to me—housekeepers, my father's girl friends; some of them were kind, some of them might have genuinely cared, I guess—I never let them in. Not until you."

  Vanessa looked at him, shadowed in moonlight, and remembered Jace's wonder, long ago, at how deeply it was pos
sible to love. "In all my life," he had said once, clinging to her, "I've never loved a woman the way I love you!" If she had believed that, really believed it....

  "I used to wonder, afterwards, why you? I finally decided it was because I'd been so helpless in that damned hospital, helpless and scared, and it left me vulnerable. It just happened to be you who walked in. I figured that any woman would have had the same effect. That's what I told myself for nine years." He was gazing straight ahead, out over the ocean, his eyes unblinking.

  "In nearly ten years there hasn't been another woman who got to me, and when I saw you at that cocktail party last June I was sure I was cured of everything except a strong taste for giving you your own back.

  "But you're the woman who can always get to me. Only by the time I realized that, it was too late. Too late to ignore you, too late to send you away. I should never have started on revenge. It was an exercise in trying to destroy you before you destroyed me." Still he did not look at her, and Vanessa, torn between joy and pain, felt tears burn her eyes.

  "Jake—" she whispered hoarsely, but he interrupted.

  "Let me finish," he said. "I'm aware that I'm not telling you anything you don't know. When I walked in tonight and saw you in that dress I knew you knew, and I knew what you were going to do. I brought you out here to tell you you can do it, Vanessa. There's no question that you can put me through hell. You were doing it tonight, you're doing it now, just sitting there. You've got me so blind I can't see my hand in front of my face. If you tell me you want me I'll believe you—right up to the moment you tell me you don't. You said, do I like to know that my touch arouses you. My God, I dream about it." He passed his hand over his eyes. "I dream about seeing that look on your face, hearing you call my name...."

  She couldn't speak. She sat in frozen horrified silence, listening to this recital of what he thought she was, unable to protest, unable to open her mouth on a word.

  "Whatever you want me to admit—" his voice hardened "—I admit it." For the first time in the faint light of the stars he looked over at her. "I admit it because I want this to stop. If you want the satisfaction of hearing me admit I still love you, you hear it now. If you want to know that it's all I can do to keep my hands off you, you know it. I'm telling you this so you won't have to come hunting for proof of your conquest, Vanessa. Because after this I want you to keep away from me. If what you want is the pleasure of seeing me constantly wanting you, that you are not going to get. It ends here. Take whatever satisfaction you can from this, because it's all you're going to get."

  A tear burned its way down her face, and then suddenly there was a flood, and she felt them like rain on her hands clenched in her lap. "Oh, Jake," she whispered brokenly.

  He jerked his head to look at her. "Why are you crying?" he asked in surprise, as though in all his life no woman had cried for his pain, as though he did not understand that such a thing was possible. All the pain of a lifetime was in his voice, but he truly did not know why she was crying. Vanessa thought of how she had added to that pain, and understood dimly that if she told him now that she loved him, he would not be able to believe it. He could not bear to believe it.

  "I'm sorry," she said softly. "I'm so sorry, Jake. Please, would you take me home?"

  His jaw tightened and without a word he reached to turn the key. The car roared to life under his hand. They drove again in silence, and then at last she recognized the approach to the bridge over the narrows and knew that she would soon be home.

  "Jake," she said as the metal bridgework flipped past the windows and the darkness of Stanley Park loomed up ahead, "will you come in with me? I've got—I want to tell you something."

  She looked down and saw her green dress with a stab of pain. What a fool she had been, thinking to force him to realize he loved her by reminding him of his sexual need of her. She should have known that a man like Jake could not have deluded himself so long. He knew he loved her, and he knew that she was a source of pain to him. God, what he must have thought of her when he walked into Robert's tonight! How he must despise her, thinking that she wanted to use that powerful all-consuming love to torture him.

  What imp had made her wear this dress tonight, had brought her so far along a road that would be so difficult to retrace?

  He had not answered her request, but when he pulled up in front of her house he shut off the car engine and got out with her, and she sent up a prayer of thanks.

  Upstairs she said, "I'll put on the kettle. Would you like a cup of coffee?" He nodded and moved into the sitting room, taking off his jacket.

  Vanessa went to the kitchen, filled the kettle and then walked through to the bedroom. As quickly as she could she got out of the green dress and slipped into blue jeans and a loose shirt, combed her hair loose and removed her jewellery and make-up.

  Back in the kitchen she made coffee, laid a tray and carried it to the sitting room. Jake was standing at the window, shirt sleeves rolled up, hands in his pockets, staring out at nothing.

  She set down the tray and called his name softly, and he turned. "Come and sit down," she said, nodding at the sofa; but she remained where she was, kneeling on the other side of the coffee table, facing him. When he sat, she poured two cups of coffee.

  "Jake," she said quietly, looking at him. "I love you."

  He smiled a crooked half-smile. "Of course you do," he said, leaning forward to take the cup as casually as if they had just agreed on the likelihood of rain.

  "You... you know?" she faltered. Jake shrugged lightly, as though his knowing or not knowing was of no consequence. Vanessa was bewildered. "Don't you care?" she asked, breathless with a sudden fear.

  Had he lied to her? Had he, after all, lied about loving her?

  "Not much," said Jake, taking a sip of coffee.

  She had expected anger, or disbelief, perhaps, or, if she were lucky, guarded joy. She could not understand this. "Why?" she breathed, feeling tears press up behind her eyes again.

  He said coolly, "Because whether you love me or you don't makes no difference. I can't afford your kind of love, Vanessa."

  "Can't afford it?" she repeated stupidly, and he smiled.

  "Can't afford it emotionally. If I tried to live with the love you're capable of it would kill me."

  She gasped, "What do you mean?" But somehow, inside, she knew what he was going to say. He was going to say that she had lost him.

  He said, as though he were reciting facts at a business meeting, "I mean it would never be enough and I'd always be trying to pretend it was more than it was. Your feelings are shallow, Vanessa. One day you'd find your love had died altogether, and on that day you'd walk out of my life. I don't want to spend my days living in fear of that moment. I'd rather take what's inevitable now and get back in control of my life."

  She thought of her discovery of her own love, how she would lose the world for him. She said, "You don't know about my love. I love you, I always have, I always will. It's nothing shallow."

  "Yes," he said, "I know. I've heard it before."

  "Jake," she said desperately, "there's always a risk to loving and being loved. Trusting anyone is a risk. But if you don't take the risk, we both walk alone forever. And that's like being half-dead, Jake.

  "I've seen the way you deal with your women—with anybody. You don't let anyone touch you. You're afraid to live. I love you, Jake. Don't shut me out forever because I made a terrible mistake once. You love me. We have a chance to make up for everything together. But you have to let me love you. You don't know how much I love you because you've never let me show you, let me tell you. You say it's because you think I won't love you enough, but I don't believe that. It's because you're afraid I do love you enough, that I love you too much.

  "You've learned to live without love, Jake. You know how to do that. That's not what you're afraid of. You're afraid of learning to live with love. You were afraid ten years ago, too. That's why you didn't propose then, that's why you didn't ask me to go with
you then—you were afraid to believe in my love, just as I was afraid to believe in yours."

  She had to stop because he had set down his cup and stood, and she was crying. She jumped up.

  Dispassionately he looked down at her, wiped a tear from her cheek. "You're wrong," he said. "I know exactly how much you love me. If I let myself love you I'm still alone."

  He turned to reach for his jacket and she flung herself at him and clung to him. One chance, she had one last chance.

  "Jake," she begged. "Come to bed with me. Love me one last time for goodbye." She wrapped her arms up around his neck and pressed her mouth, wet with tears, against his.

  His arms wrapped tightly around her and he kissed her with a slowly increasing need, searching and tasting till she was nearly drunk with the mixture of joy and need that flooded her. When he released her lips she was crying more fiercely than ever.

  "Love me," she sobbed in relief. "Please love me."

  He kissed each wet eyelid and set her away from him. She knew then. "No!" she cried wildly, and it was a noise of terrible pain. "You want me, Jake! I know you want to love me!" She reached for him, desperation tearing her reason to ribbons, trying to hold him, to touch him; but he held her away and picked up his jacket.

  "I love you!" she cried again.

  "You'll get over it," said Jake. He walked out to the staircase, and blinded by tears, she followed.

  "It's fear, Jake," she said. "You're not winning now; fear is winning. You're afraid to love." She gulped and her voice dropped to a whisper. "Jake, I love you. Please don't be afraid."

  He was gone. She heard the doors close below, and sank to her knees and held the banister. "Please bring him back," she said, and when she realized she was praying aloud another flood of tears was released. "Make him come back," she sobbed over and over, but in the darkest part of her heart she knew there was no one to hear.