Fire in the Wind (24 page)

"You've got a good memory," Jake observed, standing to move over beside her. "We ran into a hitch with Fraser Valley, but we may give it another try."

"Oh," she said, struck by a sudden thought. "You wouldn't be interested in buying a building in the meantime, would you?"

No sooner were the words out of her mouth than she regretted them. This wasn't the time or the place. Vanessa wanted to bite off her impulsive tongue.

"What building?" Jake asked, his dark eyes already considering.

What a fool she was. "Oh, it—never mind. I shouldn't have mentioned it. Robert was going to ask you about something...."

"You ask me," Jake said, in a tone of irresistible command.

"It—we looked at a building on Friday, a ladies'-wear manufacturer that has gone bankrupt...."

She told him about it in a neatly business-like tone, making the best she could of a very bad job.

"I really shouldn't have brought it up," she apologized. "Robert is going to be asking you about it. It just popped into my mind."

"And why not?" asked Jake urbanely. "It may be indiscreet, but at least it's more original than a diamond bracelet."

"More original than a diamond bracelet?" she repeated stupidly.

"That's what I'm most commonly asked for over Sunday brunch," he said with a smile that was like a kick in the stomach.

"Jake, for God's sake!" she whispered, pleading.

"A building," he mused. "A three-story brick building near Gastown, about fifty years old. Well, why not? At a cost of a couple of dozen diamond bracelets, of course, but then, as you proved last night, you are far from ordinary yourself."

"Jake, stop it!" Vanessa said angrily. "You know damned well I didn't... didn't—"

"No?" he interrupted, in the manner of one sparing the blushes of someone who hadn't blushed for years. "Then why did you, my pretty?"

She had not been going to tell him; it was a mistake to tell him so soon. But it would be a far worse mistake to let him go on thinking what he was thinking now—or pretending to think. Vanessa could not be certain.

"I love you, Jake," she said quietly.

He laughed. He threw back his head and laughed, and it was not a pretty sound. And she knew she was right, that once he had been badly hurt by love. She sat down with a clenched jaw; when he had sobered, he said, "You forget that I've heard that one before."

"Not from me."

He looked fleetingly surprised, then his expression became hooded.

"No," he said in a flat voice. "Not from you." She wondered what ugly memory was tearing at him and wished she had not had to speak. "And such selfless love ought to be rewarded," he suggested. "Of course with love to offer as well as all the rest—" he eyed her warmly up and down "—I do see why you feel you are worth so much more than a paltry diamond bracelet."

Vanessa stood up abruptly, thrusting her hands into the deep pockets of the robe. "Will you shut up about the building?" she demanded harshly.

Jake smiled. "But of course, my love. When Robert mentions it to me on Monday, shall I tell him no?"

She bit her lip and turned to stare out the window again. It was another beautiful sunny day, though she had been told it rained almost constantly in Vancouver.

Behind her Jake was laughing softly. When she turned his crooked smile was cynical, cruel, and his dark eyes were filled with angry contempt.

"Poor Larry," he said softly. "I could almost believe Jace got the better deal. Do I take it you do want the building after all?"

Vanessa held onto emotional calm with an effort. "What I would like is for you to listen to Robert and decide on the merits," she said, "the same way you would have done if I hadn't mentioned this to you today."

Finally he stopped smiling that cruel damned smile. "Well, I might have decided on the merits," Jake said. "On the other hand, if you hadn't slept with me last night, I might have bought the building to offer you as an inducement. The gold mine didn't work very well, if I remember. Or do you consider that I owe you that, too?"

This was beyond endurance.

"What I consider you owe me," Vanessa said furiously, "is an apology. You don't strike me as the sort of man who would have to pay a woman to come to his bed, but no doubt you know yourself better than I do. Nevertheless, you are
not
going to pay me. If you can't accept that I wanted to make love to you last night, then you will have to assume that I felt sorry for you," she said, and if she had caught sight of herself in a mirror at that moment she would have been appalled by the cruel smile that now curled her lips. She moved across to the bedroom door and stopped, turning to look at him over her shoulder. Her eyes glinted with leashed anger, though her mouth was still smiling. "Call it charity," she said softly, and left him.

Her clothes were on a chair. Vanessa slipped on her stockings, shoes and underwear with an angry silent speed, and then put on the black silk coat and buttoned it. She threw the torn dress over her arm and picked up the neck ruffle and her evening bag, then caught sight of herself in the mirror. She looked like just what she was: a woman who had not been home after an evening out.

She felt like hurling the torn dress into his wastepaper basket and letting him run the gauntlet of his staff's curious eyes, but common sense stopped her: she might be able to repair it.

She wondered fleetingly whether in future the dress would ever be free of the memory of last night. Vanessa doubted it. Even through her fury she could feel a churning inside when she thought of Jake Conrad's hands as he tore the dress off her; his hands and his eyes....

He was not there when she emerged from the bedroom, the dress flung defiantly over her arm. Nor did she look for him. She walked straight across the room without pausing, and didn't even slam the door as she went out.

* * *

On Monday Vanessa found she had been assigned a temporary office in the Concorp building on the floor below the one where Robert's—and Jake's—offices were.

"Of course, you should really be upstairs in the senior-executive offices, Mrs. Standish," the office manager told her apologetically as she opened the door into Vanessa's temporary home. It was a smallish office, but it had a large window and a desk, and that was all Vanessa needed to begin designing: light and space. The carpet wasn't as thick as in the executive offices upstairs, but to Vanessa, remembering the paper and clothing and fabric-strewn barracks at TopMarx, it was a kind of luxury. Unfortunately it was also as sterile as a hermetically sealed syringe, and Vanessa wondered how anyone could be creative—even about money—in an environment like this.

"But all those offices are full, and Mr. Dawe said as this was only going to be a temporary arrangement it would be better to give you an office that was available rather than shuffle everyone around into new ones."

"Of course," said Vanessa, dropping her bag and design portfolio onto a chair and moving into the room. She wondered how the hierarchy at Concorp worked—by the amount of money Jake was investing in you, perhaps?—and who would have been bumped down the line into a less prestigious office if her stay had been permanent.

"Oh, yes, and about the secretaries: we work on the pool concept here—the secretaries work out of a pool. It's much more Efficient, of course," said the office manager, a rather handsome woman somewhere between forty and fifty who looked as though she always said efficient with a capital E. "When you need secretarial work done, bring it to me and I'll assign it to whoever is available."

"I understand," said Vanessa, gazing with interest at the office manager's dress.

It had suddenly occurred to her that this woman was part of her target group—the kind of woman she would be designing for. Vanessa had never worked in an ordinary business office, had never seen the women she designed for against their working environment, however often she had seen them in restaurants and shops.

The office manager was wearing a dress in beige linen with three-quarter sleeves, a narrow self belt and a pencil skirt. The neckline was covered with a navy-and-white printed silk scarf that was pinned with a gold brooch.

It could have been designed any time between 1955 and the present. Vanessa's heart fell. The woman was no dowd. Her hair was short and smartly cut and styled, and her make-up was faultless. She looked well dressed, even elegant. Just very, very conservative.

"I'm sorry," Vanessa said, smiling, because the woman had paused in what she was saying and was looking just a little indignant. "Was I staring? I was looking at your dress. I haven't designed for Canadian women before, and they tell me it's going to be quite different."

That interested the other woman. "Really? I would have thought we were very much like the Americans. Not quite such
loud
dressers, perhaps," she added parenthetically, as though assailed by a sudden memory. "I admire what you're wearing very much," she said with a nod at Vanessa's gypsyish concoction of scarves. "It's what you younger ones are wearing, I suppose. I know my daughter would love it. But, of course, it wouldn't do for the office, would it?"

She recollected herself and grew flustered. "Oh, but I mean—you're a creative person, you're a designer. It's different for you! I know in the advertising department—their offices are on the other side of this floor—there was a terrible fuss with all the art-department people until Mr. Conrad came down and said the artists and copywriters could wear what they liked...."

Vanessa laughed and the woman smiled appreciatively. Although they had been introduced on Thursday, Vanessa was trying in vain to remember her name. If they talked much longer the woman was bound to notice.

"You wouldn't think a pair of blue jeans would cause such a fuss, would you?" she went on. "But there was a lot of talk about creative freedom and the like, and Mr. Conrad said he didn't care what anybody wore to the office. They could come naked for all he cared, he said, as long as they did their work. And the next time something as insignificant as that required his executive decision he'd be looking for someone to fire. Now, of course, blue jeans are the least of it. If that was all we saw we'd be lucky!"

The two women laughed together for a moment. Then the office manager showed her the location of the photocopy room, the staff lunch-room and the ladies'.

"Please call me Vanessa," Vanessa said the next time she was called Mrs. Standish, hoping they hadn't been introduced by their first names.

But the office manager smiled and said, "My first name is Celeste. My mother was a Francophile."

Vanessa blinked. "I'm sorry, a what?" she asked.

"She loved all things French," Celeste explained. "My brother changed Pierre to Peter when he was twelve, but what can you do with Celeste?"

"But it's a lovely name," protested Vanessa.

"Unfortunately it didn't sit too well with Meadows when I was single and it's only a little better now with B—"

"Mrs. Boyd, you're wanted on the telephone," a young woman called, and with a brief apology Celeste Boyd left her.

Vanessa wandered back to her new office and spent the rest of the morning absorbed in designs for a spring line. She had no idea how much time had passed when the phone rang, but was not surprised to see her watch saying nearly one o'clock. She was used to time disappearing when she was working.

"Busy?" asked Robert's voice in her ear.

"Yes, but I can stop," she said.

"No, don't stop," he answered. "I'll be quick: I just wanted you to know that Jake has agreed to have Concorp buy that building and lease us the space."

It was hard not to be delighted by that, in spite of everything. But after a few minutes Vanessa asked casually, because she had to know, "Was it a good business proposition for him, Robert?"

"Oh, well, it was neither here nor there, really, as far as Concorp is concerned." He chuckled. "Jake said he'd do it purely for the sake of your fine eyes."

Chapter 11

Vanessa flung down her felt-marker pen with such violence that the fat black smear it made cut right across the pencilled outline of the model she was sketching. She leaned back in the ridiculous executive leather chair they had given her and cursed Jake Conrad with a peculiarly comforting fluency.

After a few minutes her rage subsided, and Vanessa's eyes narrowed as she began to think constructively. She was not going to let him get away with it. She felt determination clench in her spine. Jake Conrad had slapped her face and she was damned well going to slap his. Metaphorically.