Fire in the Wind (27 page)

"Were you working or playing?" she asked him enviously that afternoon after he had arrived unannounced at Number 24 and thrown her into a barely-concealed tizzy of excitement.

"Doing anything at all in that damned hot desert is work," Jake answered.

"Was the trip a success?" she asked, trying not to smile too much and too foolishly, trying to hide the sparkle he brought to her eyes.

"So-so," said Jake. "How about you, or don't I need to ask? This place is a hive of activity."

"Yes," she agreed. "Things look good."

Jake moved across her office to the racks by the wall. "What are these?" he asked, lifting a hanger to eye level and examining a soft green pleated skirt with interest.

"The spring line," she said, pride beating in her throat with an intensity she hadn't felt since she stood first in her class in grade six.

"Very classical?" he asked with a slow smile over his shoulder that turned her bones to water.

"Very classical," she agreed, suddenly shy of meeting his eyes.

"Very conservative?" he pressed.

"Well—relatively conservative," she said.

"Oh, ho," he said. "Only
relatively?"
He replaced the skirt and picked up the delicate feminine matching jacket, which was ruffled prettily around the neck and ruched at the waist. "Pleased with yourself?"

"More than I would have thought possible," Vanessa replied softly. "Thank you, Jake."

He laughed. "Don't thank me yet." He hung the jacket back on the rack, thrust his hands in the pockets of his beige pants and turned. "Shall I pick you up for dinner tonight?"

She felt her heart stop. "Yes, please," she said simply.

Jake crossed to the door. "Good. Eight o'clock?"

"Yes," she said again. "I'm not in the hotel any more, I'm—"

"I know where you are," Jake said, and then with a wave he was gone.

It was only after the door had closed behind him that Vanessa realized what she had just seen: the sparkle of sunlight she had noticed when Jake waved was the sparkle of six diamonds on the ring he was wearing.

* * *

She dressed as carefully as a bride, and she dressed in white. The silk shirt had a high stiff collar cut low to a buttoned front and full sleeves with tiny cuffs; the matching dirndl skirt had pockets in the side seams. Her small delicate shoes had open toes and sling backs, and her evening bag hung over her shoulder on a thin gold chain.

Her hair curled thick and loose to her shoulders, caught up on one side with a white comb.

She looked younger than she had looked for years; young, pretty and soft, almost as though the long years of marriage to Larry had never happened. She looked nineteen. Except for the hollows under her cheekbones and the womanly fullness of her wide mouth, she looked like the girl who had fallen in love with Jace. It was because she was in love again, she knew, because love sparkled in her eyes.

Jake saw it the moment he stepped into the room, and he didn't like it. She knew by the way his lips tightened when he looked at her.

"It's hard to believe you're still on the market after six weeks," he said softly. "What do you do, beat them off with a broom?"

"I've been too busy for—" she began, then stopped and said, "Anyway, there was no one to beat off."

"Good," he said. "Nothing like blind stupidity for keeping the field clear. Shall we go?"

He took her to Skookum Chuck's, which was only a few minutes away from her apartment, and they walked the distance. The evening was pleasantly cool, with a fat-bellied sun low on the horizon casting a golden glow over the world and sparkling so brilliantly on the water of the bay that it hurt the eyes.

Jake wore sunglasses, and now, with his skin so darkly tanned, for the first time Vanessa saw the fine white line of a scar on his jaw—the scar that caused that crooked smile of his.

They sat at a secluded table for two in a nook by the window and ordered salmon again. The meal was delicious, and they talked over it like old friends. Or new lovers, with a depth of communication that she had been waiting for for a long time. When the coffee arrived she turned from the view of the bay and gazed at him. Then, almost involuntarily she reached out to touch a soft finger along the length of the fine white scar she had seen earlier, but which was invisible again in the soft lighting.

"How did you get that?" she asked quietly.

Jake jerked his head as if her touch burned him, and his dark eyes caught and held hers.

"It's a long story," he said.

"Was it caused by a woman, Jake?" she asked quietly.

"No," he said.

"But there was a woman who scarred you, wasn't there? There is a woman you still hate?"
Please let me be able to help him,
she was praying into the silence,
please let him tell me.

His face looked like brown paper stretched over a skull. She heard the harsh intake of a breath.

"Is there?" he countered.

"Please tell me, Jake," she whispered. "What did she do to you?"

He laughed. "She married another man, what else?" he said harshly.

There it was. The reason for his anguish, for his hatred of her—what she had done to Jace, his woman had done to him.

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

"You do not love me," he replied flatly. She wasn't going to get through to him, she knew it. But she had to keep trying.

"And you love me," she persisted, her heart suddenly beating as though she were risking her life.

He began to laugh. Softly, low, but with a quality that made her cheeks burn.

"I do not love you, Vanessa, my dear," he said. "What is it you want to prove?"

The smell of coffee wafted under her nose and she jerked into startled awareness. A waiter refilled their cups, put the empty wine bottle into the ice bucket standing beside the table and pushed it away.

"Do you recognize the name Gilles Dufour?" Vanessa asked gently.

His hand gripped his cup so tightly all the tendons of his fingers stood out in relief, and inwardly she smiled.

"He's a salesman for Designwear." His voice was absolutely calm. "Why?"

"He
was
the top salesman for Designwear," Vanessa said. "But he's not any more. He dropped them last month and took on our line."

Jake nodded to her over the rim of his cup, then took a sip of coffee. "Congratulations," he said.

"He brought a contract from a chain called Fairway with him," she went on softly, watching him as she spoke. "To supply women's slacks under the store label to the western region. Just the right size contract, too."

"Things are looking well for you, then." He wasn't moved in the least.

"Jake," she said in an urgent undertone. "There are a dozen other things—Robert, Number 24—Jake, why are you doing all that?"

His lean hand was very brown against the white china, but no tension showed in it now. She saw the ring, but now, suddenly, she was afraid to ask him why he wore it.

"Vanessa," he said, in a voice that made her shrink as though to ward off a blow, "if you find it impossible to have sex with a man without convincing yourself that love is involved, please feel free to imagine anything you like about me. And tell me you love me if you must.

"But don't expect me to take part in your imaginings. You are a beautiful, desirable woman, and I don't pass many moments in your company without thinking about making love to you. If you aren't adult enough to handle that fact, dress it up any way you like." His voice grew abruptly hoarse in his throat.

"But come to some kind of terms with it, because I want you, and I intend to make sure that you want me."

* * *

They walked back to her home in silence. The ocean beat against the sandy beach in the darkness, its blackness silvered now with the light of stars.

"Good night, Jake," she said when she had unlocked the front door. For an answer there was only the soft wind in the trees and Jake's strong hand opening the door for her.

She felt like a fool. There was nothing to be frightened of. Vanessa walked through to unlock her own door and led the way upstairs.

Inside her sitting room she flicked on a small lamp and then turned again, "Jake, I... I wish—"

But he was right beside her, and she turned almost into his arms. His breath fanned her temple. "Vanessa," he said softly, caressingly. "Don't be afraid. I'll make you want me."

But she already wanted him, desperately wanted him and loved him, whatever he thought. If he touched her now she knew she could not say no.

She was gazing fixedly at his crooked sensuous mouth, feeling hypnotized. When it moved nearer she remained still, waiting, unable to think or breathe, and when his lips brushed hers they parted involuntarily on a soft indrawn breath of anticipation.

The sound seemed to ignite him. His strong lean arms encircled her almost brutally then, and his mouth closed hungrily on hers. Vanessa sagged against him. Everywhere he touched her, electric currents ran along her skin, shocking her into a need so desperate that reason was blotted out.

"Vanessa," he said in a deep tortured voice. "Vanessa, I need you." His mouth was pressing the hollows of her throat, the thin bones of her shoulders with a feverish intensity; as her head fell back she moaned and her arms reached up to hold him with a need that matched his, flame for flame.

His hands had pushed under her white shirt and his long fingers caressed the hungry skin of her shoulder and her long naked back under the fabric's soft folds. His touch was water in a desert: everywhere it ran her skin came gaspingly, electrifyingly alive, and it was never enough. Each stroke of his fingers against her made her understand her need for more.

When his hand moved upward from the hollow of her stomach, over her ribs and at last enclosed the full firm rise of her breast, she gasped out her breath on a pleading moan that Jake instantly smothered with a kiss. It was as though he wanted to take her cry into his body through his lips rather than his ears, as though the quality of that cry were meat and drink to him.

He slid the soft silk of her shirt from her body then and let it fall to the floor as she stood helpless in front of him, arms at her sides, like a small child being undressed for bed. But the look on her face was not like a child's, and when he pulled out the comb that held her loosely bound hair and its soft weight brushed down along her cheek she swayed against him. Her breasts pressed against the fabric of his shirt as her naked arms wrapped tightly around his waist, and her head dropped involuntarily back to offer her mouth up for his kiss.

He breathed as though she had winded him, and his arms closed convulsively around her, but he did not kiss her. He stood looking down at her for a long moment of tortured stillness, his thighs urgent against her, and then his mouth began the long slow journey toward hers. Time stopped; it was as though a year of her life might pass before his mouth branded her.

She parted her lips for one pleading cry, "Jas... on." His mouth stilled his name on her lips, and as he bent to pick her up in his arms, his mouth still fastened to hers, she sensed a sound deep in him like tortured laughter.

As he carried her through a door into darkness he lifted his mouth. "That's right, my love," he whispered. "Jace."

But it wasn't Jace. It was Jake. And it was Jake she loved, even if he thought she needed the lie he had just given her.

"No,"
she whispered urgently as he set her down on her bed in the soft enclosing night. "I love
you
. I love you, Ja—"

This time his mouth covered hers with a ruthless suddenness that took her breath away. "Stop," he said.

As though afraid of losing her, he kissed her as he undressed, kissed her with sudden thrusts of passion that kept her breathless in the darkness as she listened to his clothes fall.

But he would not have lost her. She needed him, and she might have waited forever in that warm, soft, expectant darkness if he had asked her to.

He did not make her wait. A faint starlight lightened the gloom as the lean muscled shape of Jake Conrad bent over her, and his hands unerringly found her waist and the zipper hidden in the pocket of her skirt.

The touch of his fingers on her smoothly stockinged legs, her silk-clad sex, was like white heat, and when her breath hissed into the night he knew it and smiled. She reached for him, wanting the power to give him the same pleasure. In response to her touch he moved, and the rough warmth of his body covered hers.

There was nothing he did not know about her body. He touched her with an expert's touch, his hands and his mouth calculating each searing caress to push her closer and closer to mindlessness, his own desperate need held at bay with a tight, vibrating control that she wanted to break but could not. She cried out again and again, wanting his body, as Jake watched and touched her, and sometimes his teeth flashed in a smile.

But she could not move him.

"Jake," she whispered urgently, "Jake." His breath caressed her brow and his lips pressed against her temple.

"What is it?" he asked softly.