Judgement By Fire (22 page)

            Walking tentatively
across the room over a rag rug that had never lain there before, Lauren peeked
into the kitchen. A variety of appliances of various ages, none of them her
own, stood at attention on the scrubbed kitchen counters. Someone had covered
the gaping holes in her cupboard doors—holes once filled with glass—with a
pretty cotton fabric. Standing in pride of place was a large, handsome new
coffee maker, a small hand-painted card attached to its gleaming stainless
steel top.

            “To Lauren, from your
friends. Remember
—
home is where the heart is.”
Lauren read the words
aloud and tears started up afresh. “You know, none of this stuff is mine, but I
recognize most of it—seems like everyone in Haverford Castle—and a lot of
people in West River, too, have contributed to rebuilding my home.”

            “You have a lot of
friends here, Lauren. People who love you,” Jon said softly from where he still
leaned against the doorpost. “A few guys from a Rush Co. cleaning crew came out
to help clear everything up and they told me that people were in and out all
morning with odds and ends of stuff, sending you their best wishes, too. The
fridge, I believe, is fully stocked with about a year’s supply of coffee beans
and home-made macaroni and tuna cheese casserole.”

            “Seems my tastes are
well known,” Lauren laughed. Then her gaze turned serious as she met Jon’s look
and realized that he had returned to stand at the door. “Come in Jon, please.
Stay with me?”

            The quiet question
lit dark fires of desire in his eyes and, shutting the door behind him, he
crossed the room in moments to take her in his arms and cover her face with
gentle kisses. Then he drew back then, fixing her eyes with a gaze that poured
out his feelings more surely than a thousand words and which drank in the love
displayed on her face.

            “I think,” he said
quietly, “that you should heat up some of that macaroni and make us some
coffee. I’ll light a fire in that stove to warm the house, and I think I’ll go
out and let that poor kid in the police car know I’m staying and he can maybe
go home and get some sleep himself.”

            “Good Lord, for a
moment I thought you were going to suggest he join us for supper,” Lauren
muttered, but Jon heard and grinned at her.

            “Oh, no, my love—this
is strictly an evening for two.”

Leaving that
promise sizzling on the air between them, he went out into the night.

*
* *

            The meal finished and
the coffee jug drained, they were curled up together in the warmth of a blazing
fire in the stove when the phone rang. Lauren jumped, her startled gaze fastening
on the unfamiliar instrument and terror plain on her face.

“Lauren, what
is it?” Jon demanded, but the insistent ringing interrupted.Seeing Lauren’s
frozen pose, he cursed and strode across the room the grab up the receiver and
snap a terse “Yes!”

            Moments later, he had
returned and pulled Lauren around to face him, his arms holding hers firmly.

            “That was Paul, just
checking that you were home safe. Lauren, what the hell was that reaction all
that about? I know you’ve had a rough time, but why would the
telephone
terrify you?”

            Yet he already knew.
Hadn’t Warren Dillon asked him to find out who’d been calling Lauren, and
hanging up repeatedly without leaving a message on her machine?

            “I…God, Jon, I don’t
know—around about the time your company’s plans were announced and I got
involved in the ABC committee, I started getting these phone calls. The phone
would ring, and if I let the answering machine pick up because I was busy,
there’d be a hang up. No message. I didn’t think anything of it at first, but
then I noticed I’d come home and there’d be maybe four or five of these
hang-ups on the machine. Then the calls started coming at night—you know, I’d
leave the machine on when I went to bed, and wake up in the night to hear the
phone ring, the machine pick up—and silence. It got pretty scary, actually, and
I meant to get Bell Canada to try to trace the calls. They always came up as an
unlisted number on my identi-call screen, but someone told me that some mobile
phone numbers show like that, too.”

            Seeing the alarm
still in her eyes and feeling her trembling still, Jon cursed and pulled her to
him.

“Why didn’t
you tell someone about this?” he demanded, his lips against her hair.

            “At first I thought
it was just a fault in the line. You’d be amazed at the problems which still
come up on a rural line. And it was also a while before I even thought the
calls might all be being made by the same person. You know, I thought maybe
they were from different people. I often get calls regarding paintings, especially
after exhibitions or about commissions, and sometimes people don’t want to
leave a message. It was only when the calls started coming at night that I
began to worry. Before that, it was just annoying.”

            “Lauren, who is Steve
W.?” Jon asked, suddenly remembering the name Warren Dillon had brought up.

            “Who?” Lauren asked,
startled.

            “Steve W. Warren told
me the name was written on your telephone pad.”

            Lauren covered her
face with her hands, looking at Jon over the tips of her fingers with wide
eyes. “That’s what I wanted to do—I wanted to look his number up on the call
list on my telephone. I…you see, I wondered if maybe it was him making those
calls. He told me he hates answering machines and he had gotten pretty stroppy
over mine being on so much.”

            “Where’s his number?
I’ll call and we’ll get this dealt with, right now,” Jon said, standing up and
stretching his long frame.

            “That’s the problem,
you see. I never did transfer it to my telephone book, so I was hoping it was
still on the telephone’s call list…”

            “The telephone was
smashed beyond repair, Lauren. It went in the trash,” Jon told her quietly,
hating the way her face paled with shock. “But don’t worry, with luck the
telephone company will have some sort of records, and we’ll get a number for
this guy from them tomorrow.”

            He sat back down
again, gathering Lauren close with his arm possessively around her shoulder.
“So, who was this guy, anyway?” he asked, trying to keep his voice casual.

            “Oh, his name is
Steve – Steve Wallace. I met him in Toronto at an Ontario Wildlife Exhibition.
I was showing several paintings. He came over on the opening night, expressed
interest in my work, and we got talking. One thing led to another. I think he
bought one of the paintings, and we saw each other quite a few times over the
space of the exhibition,” Lauren replied.

           
 One thing led to
another. That could have so many meanings!
Jon was taken aback by the
lightening slash of angry jealousy that whipped through him. “And?” he asked,
hoping his feelings didn’t show in his voice.

            But he was wrong.
Lauren caught the jealous shadow that flickered through his tone and smiled in
the firelight. “We-ell,” she teased, stretching luxuriously.

            Watching the curves
of her body as she stretched, straining against the soft sweater and
close-fitting jeans, Jon swallowed. “I already know the guy had good taste,” he
said tightly.

            Lauren laughed, a
low, purring sound in the quiet room. “Ah, been talking to Paul, have you? That
guy just never could keep his mouth shut! Actually, I saw Steve several times,
you know, lunch, dinner, walks in the park.”

           
Breakfast?
He
wanted to ask, but didn’t.

            “Then I came back to
West River after the exhibition, and I’d a lot of work to do for my upcoming show
at the Harrison. He started calling here. I told him I was busy and he got
peeved that I couldn’t just drop everything because he felt like having company
at dinner. End of story.” Lauren said, smiling as she saw the tightness around
Jon’s mouth. “Actually,” she couldn’t resist teasing him. “He did look a bit
like you—though not as handsome, of course!”

            “That does it!” Jon
growled, reaching for her.

            Lauren’s last thought
on the subject was that she’d glimpsed again that little wayward idea that had
glimmered in her mind when Chief Ohmer was questioning her. However, the idea
again disappeared beneath the pleasure that shot through her, banishing
conscious thought as Jon’s lips claimed hers and his hands sought her bare
flesh beneath the soft sweater and shirt she wore.

*
* *

He’d been
surprised that they’d gone into her cottage together; he’d been sure the events
of the past few hours would have driven some sort of wedge between them. With a
shudder, he remembered the momentary shock he’d experienced when she’d called
to him outside the mobile information office. He’d thought of stopping, of
greeting her and seeing if she’d changed her mind. But what could he have said
to her?

“Can’t stop
now, darling, I’ve just delivered a bomb?” He laughed aloud at his own joke.

There was
just one more little job to take care of. It was such a stupid slip-up, there
at the gallery, and it had been her fault. She’d made him feel so different, so
free, and so powerful, that he’d temporarily shucked off the shell of his old
self and been completely the new persona. So now, he had to go back and put
that right. With that done, he’d be able to concentrate fully on his final
task.

            But, when he’d
seen Jon come out and speak to the police officer in the car, and the police
car drive away as Jon returned inside, he couldn’t resist leaving the safety of
the dark woods to creep up towards the cottage. Not voyeurism, not at all. He
just wanted to confirm his belief that she wasn’t worth it and that she deserved
the fate he had chosen for her.

            He didn’t have to
get very close. As he skirted around the girth of a big cedar that stood
alongside the dirt laneway, he’d seen Jon, his shirt open to reveal the hard
planes of his chest, stand in front of the lighted window, briefly looking out
into the night before reaching over and pulling the curtains shut.

Seen him clearly
enough to make out the soft spill of pale hair that covered the tanned chest.

            Struggling not to
sob aloud, the man turned and ran, unheeding of the tear of bushes against his
clothes, in a headlong flight back into the darkness of the night and the
trees.

            The mid-morning sun
was casting only a dim glow into the studio through the heavy drapes that
sheltered the windows, and the logs in the woodstove had burned low by the time
Lauren opened her eyes to greet the new day. They’d slept downstairs, wrapped
in each other’s arms beneath a pile of blankets and quilts Jon had retrieved
from upstairs. She hadn’t felt ready to sleep in the bedroom that was hers and
yet was still strange, furnished with other people’s cast-off treasures.

            They’d made love in
the sensuous light cast through the glass doors of the stove where flames had
greedily flickered around logs Jon had brought in while Lauren fixed their
supper. Later, when the room was still lit by the scarlet glow, they’d awakened
in each other’s arms and Jon had pushed back the blankets and pulled her body
over his, kissing aside her protests and telling her he wanted to watch her as
they made love again. So she straddled him, his hands cupping and molding her
breasts, his darkening eyes fanning the flames of her own desire as they drank
in her form, her naked skin glowing satin-like in the firelight.

When he’d
slipped one hand down to caress her moistness where they were joined, Lauren’s
world had shattered into a million crystal pieces as she convulsed around him. 
He’d groaned his delight at watching her pleasure then, as she clung helplessly
to him, he’d gently rolled her onto her back, still hard and joined to her, and
begun to move again. Unbelieving, Lauren felt the passion rising again inside
her, felt the throb of love growing and swelling as she grasped his back,
pulling him down as she arched towards him, wanting to be completely one with
him. She got her wish as they scaled heights neither had ever known before,
hung for a quivering moment at the very pinnacle of pleasure before, clinging
together, they lost themselves in a spiral of passion that seemed to last
forever.

            Lauren stretched
slowly and languorously, yawning as she acknowledged that she should climb out
of the love-tangled mass of blankets and put more wood into the stove. Yet she
was reluctant to leave the warm nest and Jon’s arms. As she wriggled slightly,
he opened one blue eye and muttered that she’d be sorry if she didn’t stop
fidgeting. Unable to stop herself, refusing to believe his threat, she slowly,
teasingly, began to draw little spirals in the pale hair of his chest while her
other hand slid lower under the blankets and across the flat muscles of his
stomach to tease him further.

            “Don’t you know I’m a
dangerous grump in the mornings, especially when I’ve not had a lot of sleep?”
he growled at her, both eyes open now, but Lauren only smiled, for her
wandering fingers had clasped around him and she shuddered with delight as she
recognized the delicious danger he threatened.

            With a low groan, he
squeezed both eyes shut, then opened them again, pinning her with his blue
gaze.

“Woman, you’ll
be the death of me.  I’m not sure I can keep up with you,” he groaned, and then
proved himself wrong by showing himself more than capable of fulfilling both
their expectations.