Fire in the Wind (2 page)

Absence is to love as the wind to fire:

it extinguishes the small,

it inflames the great.

~Comte de Bussy-Rabutin

Prologue

He couldn't have said exactly how he knew her, from such a distance. It wasn't really by the colour of her hair, though he had thought it unique then and he knew it unusual now: in the long intervening years there had been few women in his life with hair that shade, though for a long time he had actively sought them out. Nor was the spark of recognition entirely touched off by that somehow distinctive line of her back, which he had known so briefly in those distant days that suddenly, now, seemed sharper than the memory of yesterday.

It was her attitude of intense interest, he pinpointed it suddenly—the angle of her head, cocked just that way when she was listening to someone; and although he was behind her he knew with an almost disconcerting clarity just how the half-smile and the dark, slightly narrowed gaze would give her face a look of passionate inquiry that could keep a man talking for hours.

The man's own eyes narrowed then, and he smiled a slightly crooked smile, as though the muscles on one side of his face did not respond as easily to the dictates of his nerves as those on the other side. It gave him a faintly cynical look—but then, he was a cynical man.

He was also rather cruel emotionally, or so he had been told. His eyes narrowed even more and the smile became more satirical. Perhaps he
was
cruel. He had been told by women that he took pleasure in the emotional hurt he caused them, but that wasn't true: mostly he had been indifferent to it.

He was not indifferent now, however. He gazed at the gracefully curving back across the room and felt the deep slow thud of anticipation begin in his brain and his stomach.

This heart he was going to enjoy breaking.

Chapter 1

"You surprise me," the man who told her he had arranged the show said with a smile. "Most New Yorkers—especially in the fashion industry—seem to think that Montreal and Toronto are the only cities in Canada."

"Do they?" asked Vanessa. "There was a time when I thought Vancouver was going to be my home. I nearly immigrated here."

Gary Smeaton blinked at her. He was young and seemed almost too self-effacing to have sold Vancouver to the trade organization as a location for the fall show. But then—Vanessa glanced around the moderately crowded room where manufacturers, models, buyers and designers were talking and drinking and introducing themselves—perhaps Canadians were, as a nation, more low-key than she was used to. This introductory cocktail evening was certainly proceeding quietly enough, without any of the hoopla, the wheeling and dealing, the loud voices that she was used to.

"Oh?" His voice called her back. "So you must know the city well. I had the impression this was your first visit." He looked hurt: he had just been telling her about certain attractions in the city that she must not miss. Some of them she had heard of before, a long time ago, from Jace. Funny how memory could be so tricky—let you forget the name of a person you'd met yesterday, but remember names like Grouse Mountain, Stanley Park, Gastown and Galiano Island—places you'd only dreamed of seeing—for nearly ten years.

"It is my first visit," Vanessa said. "It's the first time I've ever been to Canada."

She had got here at last, if not in the way she had imagined, nine and a half years ago. She had come on business, on the strength of her own talents, and the knowledge gave her a quiet satisfaction that was stronger than the bittersweet memory. Vanessa sipped her drink and smiled at Gary's faint bewilderment.

"Haven't you ever fallen in love with a place you've never seen?" she asked.

He laughed. "Really? You fell in love with Vancouver way over there in New York? How did you happen to do that, or is it a long story?"

Her face slowly lost its smile.
It's a short story
.
I fell in love with a man who told me to dream of Vancouver, and I've never been able to stop. And that's all there is.

She had let a silence fall, and Gary was watching her with an air of puzzled interest.

"Yes, it's a long story," she agreed, smiling again. "Tell me what it's like to organize a week-long trade fashion show."

He finished off his drink and looked around absently for a place to set his glass. "I didn't actually organize the show," he said. There was nowhere to set the glass, so he continued to hold it. "I work for Concorp, the company that owns this hotel. Concorp also owns a ladies'-wear manufacturing company, Designwear. My boss, who owns Concorp, never misses a trick. I started working three years ago on bringing this trade show to Vancouver and to this hotel. That's really all I did."

"Your boss sounds like—" Vanessa broke off when Gary coughed significantly and interrupted her with "Hi, Jake. What do you think?" She turned, and the man behind her was so close they were almost touching, so he must have heard what she said. Vanessa's cheeks grew warm, though all she had been going to say was, "Your boss sounds like a pretty smart businessman."

"Looks good, Gary," the man was saying in a deep voice, but when she looked up his dark eyes were on her.

"H-hello," Vanessa said softly, disconcerted to find him staring at her like that, like someone who saw something he wanted and didn't care who knew it. He was a dark man, with thick black hair curling down over his forehead, and skin bronzed with tan. He was tallish—just over six feet, she thought—and of a lean muscularity more like a tennis player or a rodeo rider than a weight lifter.

He exuded power. He did not need the pretty curvaceous blonde clinging to his arm as a symbol of his influence, not this man. Nor, Vanessa was suddenly thinking, as a sign of his sexual power. Or perhaps men didn't pick up on the strong masculine tension in him, a tension that was attracting her and making her wary all at once.

"Hello," Jake returned in a deep rich voice that was sending her more than just a message of greeting.

"Vanessa Standish, meet Jake—"

"And Louisa," Jake said at the same time.

Louisa looked a vapid little beauty, but she was not slow where her own interests lay, and her greenish eyes told Vanessa in no uncertain terms that she knew what effect Jake's nearness was having on Vanessa and that Vanessa could just forget it.

Vanessa wanted to laugh. It had been a long time since a woman had challenged her as openly as this, but she had no desire whatsoever to poach on Louisa's preserves. She wasn't interested in any week-long affair. She tried to communicate this with an open smile, but Louisa's face remained closed and hard and unconvinced.

"We've met, haven't we?" Vanessa asked then, and she was close enough to Jake to sense the odd fact that he tensed when she spoke. "Aren't you modelling with us—TopMarx?"

"Oh! Oh, yes," said Louisa coolly, her eyes running almost insolently over Vanessa's face.

Vanessa was a striking woman. Her rich auburn hair, pale skin, and dark eyes meant she didn't usually get overlooked. People didn't forget her. But Louisa was looking at her as though she couldn't quite remember ever having seen Vanessa before.

The meeting had been brief, and Tom and Martita had done all the talking to the local models they had hired, so perhaps it wasn't surprising if Louisa hadn't recognized her. But as Louisa turned deliberately to Jake then, drawing his attention and Gary's back to herself with a soft comment, the message she was sending Vanessa was much stronger than mere non-recognition.
You are an outsider here,
she was saying.
You are not important enough to remember.

Neither of the two men was excluding her, though, and Vanessa stood her ground. The three-way conversation allowed her to study the man Louisa was being so possessive about.

Jake had a lean, narrow face with thick eyebrows, dark eyes, and a prominent nose. His mouth was wide and well cut, with a slightly crooked smile that would have been charming were it not for the expression in his hooded eyes. He was impatient, and he didn't mind letting it show. There was something he wanted, and he wasn't getting it, and Vanessa tilted her head curiously and watched to see what it was and how Jake would go about getting it.

Suddenly, it seemed to her, because she hadn't been attending to the conversation, Gary was moving off in the direction of the bar with Louisa on his arm. Vanessa looked blankly after them and caught a look of such venomous anger from Louisa that she gasped.

Then, realizing, she went still, turning slowly to gaze up into Jake's dark face.

It was there in his eyes. What he wanted was
her.

A silence fell between them.

"How do you like Vancouver?" he asked her finally, but there was another conversation going on behind his eyes, and Vanessa was abruptly nervous.

"It's very beautiful," she said, though she hadn't seen much of it yet, just a vision of mountains and ocean from the air this afternoon and what she could see out of the taxi window.

"Your first trip?" he asked.

"Yes, how did you know?"

Jake shrugged. "It seemed likely," he replied, lifting his glass to drink.

"Did it?" she asked. "Why?"

She remembered what Gary had said about New Yorkers not being familiar with Vancouver and wondered if that was the reason.

"I think," Jake said, "I'd have known if you'd come before."

She breathed. "My goodness, and they told me Canadians weren't aggressive," she said, fighting the little inward flutter his words had caused. She had never been laid siege to quite like this. "You think we were destined to become acquainted?"

In the act of raising his glass again he paused and looked at her for a long, charged moment. Then, astoundingly, he threw back his head and laughed.

"Yes," he said. "Yes, I do. Let's get acquainted, Vanessa."

He finished off his drink and glanced at the nearly empty one she was holding. He slid an arm around her back and they began to move across the room toward the bar.

"Tell me," he said, "why is a woman like you wasting her time in the modelling game?"

"The
modelling
game?" Vanessa repeated, almost choking on her indignation. "I'm not in the modelling game. I'm a designer, a fashion designer!" She wondered suddenly if this was what had made him think he could make such an obvious play for her. "Do I
look
like a model?"

She was slim and tall, and her russet-coloured hair was a shining asset, but her face was not a model's face. It had too much character to be able to take on the bland self-effacement of a woman whose brain is less important than her beauty and whose beauty is less important than the garment she is wearing.