Fire in the Wind (6 page)

At ten o'clock that night Vanessa lay in bed thinking very unkind thoughts indeed about Louisa Hayward. She had gone to bed early in the hopes of catching up on last night's missed sleep, but so far she hadn't even bothered to put out the bedside lamp; she knew her mind was too busy to let her sleep.

She had been looking forward to dinner with Jake Conrad, damn him. How dare he suddenly decide to take out another woman, just like that? Men! Vanessa sat up and punched her pillow. What did they
see
in all that vapid beauty?

She was hungry, she realized with increasing irritation. Famished, in fact. Suddenly she was no longer counting up Louisa's sins, but Jake Conrad's. She was hungry because she'd deliberately not eaten since lunch in order to be able to do justice to B.C. salmon! He could at least have
told
her! Damn all the pretty, frail blondes in the world, anyway, and all the cruel dark men with Jace's eyes....

She heard the quiet knock on her door with welcome relief. Someone to take her mind off her troubles, that was what she needed, and this could only be Colin, since Tom was entertaining the buyer from Toronto tonight. Vanessa had wanted to point out that the woman was buyer for only a small chain of Toronto-area stores and that he'd be better advised to entertain the buyer from Eaton's or Simpsons, whose chains extended right across the country. But she didn't. If Tom wanted to put pleasure before business that was his affair.

The knock sounded again as she was pulling her bathrobe from the hanger, and she sang out, "Coming!" as she slipped into its black terrycloth folds and tied it around her. Vanessa was naked, or she wouldn't have bothered with a robe. She would have greeted Colin in pyjamas without even thinking about it. In her first year of college she and Colin had shared an apartment platonically, and he was used to seeing her in just about every state of undress.

But a moment later she was very glad of the robe. It wasn't Colin James at her door, but Jake Conrad.

"Hello!" She blinked, her hand going to her loose hair in self-conscious surprise. "What are you doing here?"

He smiled at her. "You're a little late," he said tolerantly, as though that was what he expected from a woman. "I thought I'd just check to make sure you hadn't locked yourself in or something. May I come in?" he asked, doing so. He paused beside her, looking down. Suddenly his eyes narrowed.

The only light in the room was the lamp by the bed, and he seemed to catch sight of the rumpled sheets and take in her lack of make-up and the black robe all at once.

"Are you in
bed?"
he demanded in surprised concern. "What's wrong? Are you sick?"

Just in time she remembered how angry with him she was. "Yes, I am. Sick of you. What happened—Louisa pass out already?"

He had taken the door out of her hands and closed it, and he turned his dark head now and eyed her in mute surprise. After a moment he said slowly, "Let me get this straight. You were going to stand me up tonight because you saw a naked girl clinging to me?"

"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 because 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?"