Fire in the Wind (40 page)

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.

* * *

It seemed a long time later that she struggled to her feet and went in to run a bath. Afterwards she didn't bother to dry herself, just wrapped up in her black robe and went into the kitchen to make fresh coffee.

She wouldn't give up. Tomorrow she would find the energy and determination to start again with Jake. But tonight she didn't feel anything but exhausted pain. Tomorrow there would be hope, but tonight she felt only a bleak empty hopelessness.

She took her coffee into the sitting room and sat there, not thinking, not feeling, letting the time go by. At two she heard the beginnings of a cold driving rain against the windows. At three it stopped.

In the silence of the street then, she heard the slam of a car door, then the front door, then her own door downstairs. She heard the sound of a footfall on a step in unbelieving wonder, set down her cold cup and stood.

Jake was in the doorway then, damp and dark, his eyes haunted, his wet hair plastered blackly to his head.

"You were right. I was wrong," he said. "I'll take whatever love you have to give, for as long as you want to give it."

She flew to him across the room.

* * *

Jake leaned over her, his strong hands encircling her head as though he would crush her with love. "I love you," he said in a voice raw with emotion.

He ran his hand through the tangled russet curls spread out on the pillow. "Just looking at your hair like that twists my heart," he whispered, as though every word were a torment, and Vanessa felt the answering twist in her own heart. His lovemaking had been fierce and tender, knowing and loving all at once, and if she lived forever she knew she would never be free of him. He had touched a deep stormy need in her that made her feel like a child with only one light in the universe to guide her.

"I have always loved you," she said. "How could I have done it? How could I do that to us, knowing what we had?"

Jake closed his eyes. "Don't regret it. Don't regret anything. We're here now, that's all that matters."

"You didn't lie to me, did you?" she said, for now he was the Jace she remembered. For the first time in ten years he had made love to her not in anger but in love, and this man she would have recognized blind. "You really did die, in a way, when you got my letter."

"It felt like dying," he said. "I came out of surgery and I felt like someone else. I knew that no one could ever hurt me again."

Vanessa breathed sharply. "And no one has?" she asked, horrified, for if no one had had the power to hurt him no one had had the power to make him happy, either.

"No one did," he agreed.

She said, "You had a far worse ten years than I did."

"I thought I was happy," Jake mused. "I was in control, and I liked that. I told myself I was over you, and if no woman ever made me feel more than a detached desire I was lucky." He laughed self-mockingly. "I told myself that all I wanted to do was make money—and never let myself see that that was only in order to prove something to you. It wasn't till I saw you again that I began to understand I had been driven to make money for the day when I could stand in front of you and say, 'You chose wealth over me, look what a mistake you made.'"

She shook her head helplessly. "I'm sorry."

"My heart nearly kicked me to death when I saw you across the room—in
my
hotel, and all I could think of was taking you to bed in my hotel and reminding you of what you'd given up... and when I saw that you didn't even remember me, I—"

She put her hand to his lips. "But I did remember you, and I still loved you—I just didn't recognize you. You were changed, so cold and cynical. The Jace I remembered was—"

He nodded. "Yes, and suddenly I was no longer sure who would be in control when you found out who I was—and before I knew what I was doing I was killing off Jace Conrad."

"And nearly killing me off in the process," Vanessa reminded him.

"Afterwards I felt like a fool—but I wanted you so badly I'd have... I was stuck with the role I'd given myself. Jake might not have a very good chance with you, but it was better than Jace's chances, once you knew how I'd been lying. I made mistakes—I kept wondering when you would get it."

"Inside, I did," she said. "I dreamed the truth once, but the message never got through. It didn't help that everyone calls you Jake—when did you change your name?"

"As a kid I was called both Jake and Jace—my father usually called me Jake. He'd wanted to name me Jacob, but my mother chose Jason. Most of my friends called me Jace. After the operation I told them not to."

There was too much there to reply to. Vanessa looked at him helplessly, and he smiled at her and kissed her, no longer blaming her for his pain.

"I thought I'd stopped hating you long ago, but suddenly I was acting like a crazy man—I no longer knew whether I wanted you or... revenge. But when you accepted the job, there was no going back. I was out of control."

His face was dark against the pillow, his eyes haunted with memory. "I wanted you to what I'd suffered, but I knew I couldn't break your heart. I thought—" He broke off. "I thought business was your weak spot, that that would hurt you worse than anything."

With a pang Vanessa realized that in a way he still could not believe in her love. "No," she whispered urgently, bending to press a kiss against his throat, his chin, his beautiful mouth. "
You
were my weak spot. You are now. You will be forever."

"The night we first made love I was shocked by the strength of my own need," he said. "I wanted to end the game there, tell you everything. But then how would I have kept you here? If I told you before the company was up and running, before there was anything to keep you here, I was sure you'd run away."

She smiled and shook her head. How to express how impossible that would have been? "So you ran away instead."

He lifted a strand of her hair and kissed it. "You called it charity," he said. "And I knew you were right. I was as close to begging as I've ever been in my life."

Vanessa blinked against the sudden hot prickle of tears. "You never had to beg for me," she said. "I'm the one who's begging—I have been since the first day."

There was silence as Jake stroked the long naked curve of her back, as if to reassure himself that she was really there.

"Yes," he said. "You knew from the first what was important, but I was too pig-headed to listen. I wanted to hurt you the way I'd been hurt. How can I blame you for ten years after the unnecessary hell I've made out of theses past months? After the way I nearly turned ten years into forever?"

Vanessa closed her eyes and stretched out beside him. "Thank God you didn't," she said softly, and it was a prayer.

There was a bird singing in the tree outside her window.

"It's morning already," she said, her head on his chest, where she could hear the strong reassuring thud of his heart and the resonance of his deep voice. "We've been awake all night."

His hand clasped her head. "Your hair is even more beautiful in the morning sun," he said.

She ran a hand over his chest, following the hard curves. "Would you like some breakfast?"

"All right," he agreed. They sat up slowly and looked into each other's eyes, and Jake rubbed his hand over his rough chin.

Vanessa unearthed a baggy old bathrobe that she had inherited years ago from Colin. It had once been chocolate terry cloth but was now so faded and worn that both colour and material were indeterminate.