Fire in the Wind (22 page)

* * *

His words seemed prophetic when, late the next afternoon, Vanessa found an apartment. It was on the second floor of a large and ramshackle duplex near English Bay and Stanley Park, and Vanessa loved it on sight. It was light and airy, with large rooms, big ill-fitting windows and uneven, unpainted wooden floors, and it cost more than she'd budgeted for, but to Vanessa it had a marvellous magical feel that was worth nearly anything. She could move in the first of August.

She dressed for the dinner party that night with a sense of exhilaration and well-being. Anyone who said Vancouver was a tight housing market had never hunted for an apartment in New York City!

She put on a dress of her own design, a deep green watered-silk taffeta with a very full skirt, a self-ruffle that swept from the hem on the left to the waist on the right, and a ruched bodice with shoestring straps. Around her neck she snapped a small double ruffle in the same fabric, which made the dress seem less formal and more a kind of luxurious costume.

She swept her russet hair up in a very loose casual style from which tendrils escaped to catch the light, creating a kind of halo around her head.

As she was spraying her cologne gently onto the skirt of the dress so that its scent would be wafted into the air when she moved, the phone rang.

"Did I understand Robert to say you were going to his dinner party tonight?" asked Jake's deep voice.

Her stomach clenched. She had wanted this, all day she had wanted this, she realized, looking at the cologne bottle in her hand. Smiling, she bit her lip.

"Yes, I am. You, too?" she asked in a voice that was remarkably calm considering that she wanted to laugh with excitement.

"Shall I pick you up?" he said by way of answer.

"Yes, please. I'll be ready in two minutes."

"All right," said Jake, putting the phone down.

She spent the two minutes perfecting hair and makeup in a haze of perfume and anticipation. She draped a black silk coat over her shoulders and snatched up her black silk evening bag and, putting out the light, ran downstairs and pulled open the door.

Jake Conrad was standing there with his fist raised to knock, and the unexpected sight of him made her gasp.

He was dressed in black with a white frilled shirt, his hair curled damply from the shower, and he was smiling his crooked quizzical smile.

"You... you startled me!" she said with a little laugh.

"Were you running out on me?"

He must be mad. "I was going outside to wait for you," she said.

"You don't have to wait for me," he said. "I'll come and get you. I'll always come and get you."

There was a look in his eyes that flustered her and she ignored the comment, saying, "How do I look?" in a voice that was not as cool as she meant it to sound.

"Like an angelic choir boy," Jake answered. "A spurious impression on both counts."

"Pardon?"

"You are not angelic and you are not a boy," he said quietly, reaching behind her to close the door. He tucked her hand through his arm and smiled down at her.

What on earth was the matter with her? She was as weak-kneed as if she'd drunk a whole bottle of brandy. How could the same man make her mad enough to kill one day and ready to faint with desire two days later?

Because it
was
desire; she felt it even as he tucked her skirt into the car and closed the door. She had sublimated an awful lot in the past few years since Larry had got really ill, so much so that she'd sometimes thought, of her cool response when men were making passes at her, that she wouldn't have known sexual desire if it came up and bit her on the ankle.

But when Jake sank into the seat beside her she felt an electric tension prickle along her side and through her body, as though she were exposed to some strange power source.

She looked over at him as he reached to turn the starter, and at the same moment Jake looked at her; and it was there in his eyes.

He meant to make love to her. It was a dark, possessive look, and he was not asking any more. He was telling her, and if she didn't break the look now, she was accepting it and all that it meant. When he reached for her tonight, there would be no more decisions to make. She was giving him his answer now.

Her blood hammered in her temples, but no muscle obeyed her frantic summons to move, and the look between them went on while Jake's dark eyes burned into hers, until finally, responding to an inner turmoil that was quite new to her, she felt her own acquiescence in her eyes. She knew that he saw it. Then he smiled a half smile and moved his hand, and the car engine roared into life.

Over the delicious dinner that Robert and Maria, his wife, had prepared, Vanessa tried to make herself believe she had imagined that moment in the car, wanted to forget it had happened. But Jake did not allow her to forget it. Every glance, every caress of his voice, every slightest touch as he sat beside her reminded Vanessa that she had made him a promise, and that he would take what she had promised.

The dinner party was a great success. There were four couples besides Robert and Maria, and all except Vanessa knew each other well. They laughed and talked and sometimes shouted good-naturedly at one another, and they all liked Vanessa. Since she was the fresh face they focused on her, making her talk, finding out all about her; and under the smiling, watchful, possessive eyes of Jake Conrad she kept them entertained for a while with stories of the rag trade and with imitations of Colin delivering some of his scathing criticisms of the fashion sense of certain famous people, from presidents' wives on down.

She surprised herself. She was normally friendly and amusing, but rarely took the centre of the stage so obviously. Her close friends sometimes saw this side of her, but strangers seldom did.

It was as if Jake could make her drunk just by looking at her, but she was on the verge of becoming frantic. Vanessa took a deep breath and while they were all laughing at her last sally she asked Maria a question and quietly passed over the conversational ball.

After that the talk became general, and all too soon it was time to go. Maria led her upstairs to find her coat and sat on the bed chatting as Vanessa tidied her make-up and hair.

"It's been a super party," Vanessa said. "It was kind of Robert to invite me at the last moment, when I must have thrown your plans out." In fact, she had expected to be the odd woman out. It had been a pleasant surprise to find the numbers even.

"No, you didn't," said Maria easily. She was a dark-haired and dark-eyed young woman of twenty-three or -four whose Italian heritage was obvious. "We were going to invite another man to make the numbers even, but then Jake's date got sick, so that made everything easy."

"I see," said Vanessa slowly. "Yes, that made everything very easy, didn't it?" and laughter was bright in her blood.

* * *

"What poor girl did I unwittingly cut out tonight?" she asked Jake in the quiet of the car as they crossed the bridge over the narrows and entered the rich darkness of Stanley Park.

A short laugh escaped him, but he didn't deny that he had cancelled a date in order to be able to take her instead.

"Her name is Marigold," Jake said.

"Did she mind?"

"She screamed blue murder." Jake sounded almost appreciative.

"I wonder she dared," Vanessa said wryly. "Are you going to make it up to her?"

"Never mind Marigold." His voice was low and caressing as he reached for her in the darkness. His long fingers closed on her wrist and he brought her hand up and pressed his mouth hungrily against her palm.

It sent shock waves through her body. Vanessa drew in a breath through parted lips as the wave reached her throat, and the sound electrified the air between them.

His hold on her wrist tightened convulsively and his eyes gleamed at her for a second in the gloom, and a second shock wave went through her at the expression in them.

"Take your hair down," he said in soft command. Vanessa's eyes widened as her hand went involuntarily to her head.

"What?" she breathed.

"Take it down," he repeated the command in a voice that shivered through her blood. "You look too damned elusive. I want to know you're within reach."

His voice was hoarse with need and she was nearly fainting.

"I'm within your reach," she said, and she saw his hands clench on the wheel and waited to hear it break under the pressure of that white-knuckled grip.

Beyond the reach of the car's headlights the world was black, the thick luxuriant black of forest at night. As Vanessa watched out the window, the car emerged from the trees and she saw the lights of the city and stars reflected in the stillness of the lagoon. She rolled down her window and the lush summer air with all its rich scents filled her nostrils.

"Do it," said Jake.

She was trembling, she noted distantly as her hands moved hesitantly to her hair.

She opened her black bag, its touch now a sensual torment under her fingers, and one by one she dropped into it the pins and combs that held her hair. It fell in a weighty cloud around her shoulders and caressed her bare back like velvet.

They were out of the park now, travelling more slowly through the streets toward the hotel. Jake reached out and his hand caressed her hair for a moment. Then his fingers pushed their way through to her scalp and his hand closed almost painfully against her head. He forced her to look at him then, and in the glow of street lights his eyes were dark with need.

"I want you," he said softly, but his face was tight and determined and she saw with a sudden agonizing clarity that he wished he did not.

She smiled, and he clenched his jaw as if her smile were a knife in his stomach.

I love you,
she thought.
That's why I'm out of control. It's why you're out of control, too—because you love me. But you don't know it yet. I wonder how long you'll torture yourself before you accept it.

Chapter 10

Jake closed the door to his suite and leaned against it, staring at her across the room. He seemed dark; everything about him was dark. His keys jangled as he slipped them casually into his pocket, not taking his eyes from her.

"Take off your coat," he said.

The sight of the tortured need in his face set up a clamour in her blood that was almost frightening, and she knew his deliberately casual posture was a lie. Vanessa slid the black coat off her shoulders and dropped it on the couch, then stood waiting, watching.

"Now take off your dress," he commanded softly. She could hear a restraint in his voice like steel hawsers clamping a roaring need, and she knew as though she had heard him confess it aloud that he was afraid of what would happen when he let himself touch her.

Her head dropped back under the intensity of sensuality that stirred in her, and she wanted to see his need unleashed.

"No," she challenged softly, and Jake cursed and moved toward her with a look like death on his face. His hands shook as they found the snaps on the ruffle around her neck and removed it, and then he grasped her by the shoulders and pulled her body into his as he bent his mouth to the hollow of her throat.

The kiss burned her flesh like a brand; the pressure of his hungry body melted her. Vanessa moaned aloud as his arms encircled her. She lifted her arms up around his neck and clung, arching against him, and felt Jake's strong searching fingers find the zipper of her dress.

His mouth moved along her throat and into the hollows of her shoulders, trailing a smoky fire that stopped her breath, while the zipper slowly slid down her back under the pressure of his fingers. The thin straps of her bodice brushed off her shoulders and whispered down over her upper arms. An aching cry escaped her, and she felt the shock of it go through his body like electricity. Her breasts were naked under the dark green taffeta, and his mouth kissed the full swell of them, searching for the still-hidden tips. Vanessa strained against him, wanting him, needing desperately the tormenting caress of his hungry lips.

The zipper caught and stopped with a sudden pull at her waist, and Jake's breath rasped like a wild animal's whose prey is taken away. Through the mists of desire that clouded her mind, Vanessa felt the snap of the control he had been keeping on himself, and her breath hissed between her teeth.