Judgement By Fire (13 page)

However, he
was sure she was dead, and even if she wasn’t, either the plummeting
temperatures would finish the job quickly, or another car was sure to hit her
as the road became busy again with early morning traffic. It was all in the
hands of God, really.

Stooping,
he picked up her briefcase, pleased to note that the clasps had held instead of
bursting open, scattering God-knew what kind of damning evidence in the street
for anyone to see.

He stowed
the briefcase in the back of his vehicle and drove away, whistling slightly to
himself as he concentrated on his driving in the treacherous new fallen snow.

Wouldn’t
want to have an accident, after all.

After seeing
Lauren, Mary and the ‘twins’ safely inside the house, Jon excused himself,
saying he would make some phone calls while Mary showed Lauren to a room and
gave her an opportunity to freshen up. Then, he promised, they’d have a warm
drink and talk a few things through. Lauren smiled at the way the two Labrador
pups—Jon’s “twins”—bounded after him, puppy ears alert for his every word and
movement.

            “Looks like at least
the pups adore him,” she commented to the housekeeper as she and Mary climbed
the wide, curved staircase.

            “Ah, poor things,
they just live for the times when he’s here, which recently haven’t been
anywhere near often enough, what with all the things that have been going on,”
Mary clicked her teeth in disapproval, but a worried frown creased her
forehead.

            “It’s been really
busy at the company, then?”

            “They’ve had several
emergency situations and I know he’s been worried. But Jon will get it all
sorted out, I’m sure. He’s like his father in that respect—competent and
smart,” Mary replied confidently. She paused before a white-painted door in a
shadowed hallway just beyond the stairs. “Now, my room is just down there,” she
told Lauren, and pointed down another leg of the upper corridor. “And Mr.
Rush’s rooms are at the end of this landing.”

            She opened the bedroom
door and ushered Lauren into a large and cheerful room done in peach and cream
with accents of deep forest green in the bed pillows, lampshades, and seat
covers. Peach satin drapes were drawn over tall windows to shut out the night,
and an electric fire licked realistic looking logs in a white-painted
wrought-iron mantel surround as it warmed the room,

            “It’s a beautiful
room,” Lauren said, wondering if this was Jon’s taste, Mary’s, or that of an
impersonal interior decorator.

            “Yes, Jon inherited
his mother’s gift for color. She’s an artist, you know, and I understand quite
well known down in California.”

            “Jon’s mother is
American?”

            “Yes, she lives in
San Francisco, has done for years. Now, I shouldn’t stand here gossiping,” the
older woman seemed embarrassed at having talked so much about her employer’s
affairs.

With a swift
movement she opened another door and showed Lauren the en suite bathroom, where
toiletries were lined up for the visitor’s use on a shelf over the shell-shaped
vanity sink and a soft, fluffy deep green terry robe hung over a radiator.

            “I hope you’ll be
very comfortable, Ms. Stephens. If there’s anything you need, just ring that
bell there by the bed. Now, if you want to freshen up, I’ll put the kettle on
and make tea for you and Mr. Rush.

“It's past my
own bedtime, I’m afraid. I seem to need my sleep these days, but I’ll leave a
tray of tea things in the study—that’s the first door on your right at the
bottom of the stairs, across the hall. I’m sure Jon won’t be too long on the telephone.”

            Lauren was sorely
tempted to lie down on the inviting softness of the queen-sized bed, just to
take a nap and rest joints and muscles that ached from the long hours she’d
spent cramped in moving vehicles. She recognized, too, a component of emotional
exhaustion. Part of her mind was screaming for sleep to blot out the awful
experiences of the day, while another part kept drifting towards awareness of
the man downstairs and his broad-shouldered, protective warmth.

           
So you’ve finally
decided that he didn’t trash your place, eh?
Exulted the little voice in
her mind, and she was startled to realize that yes, she had come to the
conclusion that whatever had gone on in her home, Jon Rush wasn’t the moving
force behind it. She found she had already dismissed Chief Ohmer’s suggestion
that Jon could have any number of his employees doing dirty work for him, and
she suspected that the chief hadn’t really believed that, either.

           
Just ol’ Chief
Ohmer on a fishing expedition, looking for opportunities,
the little voice
sneakily interjected,
just like the opportunities being in this beautiful
house all night with that very attractive man. Go on, admit it—you are very
attracted to him…

            Yes,
yes, I’m very attracted to him, but his housekeeper’s just down the hall and,
well, anyway—it wouldn’t be right, somehow. I’m not ready, not after today.

Who are you
trying to kid?
Sneered the little voice and Lauren couldn’t help the warm
glow which started low down and spread slowly through her body.

Briefly, she
allowed herself a moment’s fantasy of being in Jon Rush’s arms, of seeing
passion and desire flare in his eyes. Then she rapidly pushed those thoughts
aside, alarmed and intrigued by the force of the growing desire which snaked
through her like flames on a dry forest floor.

            She busied herself
with an attempt at freshening herself up, although it would have to be what her
mother used to call ‘a lick and a promise’ because she had nothing to replace
her somewhat crumpled clothing. She washed her face anyway, and used the
lipstick, compressed powder and mascara from her purse to try to cover up the
pale face and dark circles around the wide eyes which stared back at her in the
mirror.  She hung her blazer in the bathroom where steam from the shower she
had promised herself for later would hopefully cause some of the creases to
drop, then hurried downstairs to join Jon in his study.

            As she crossed the
hall, she heard his deep voice as he spoke on the telephone, and she entered
the room just as he replaced the handset. He stared at her for a moment, his
eyes dark in the glow of the log fire. The glowing embers, along with a small
table lamp, provided the only light in the room. Jon stepped out from behind
the antique desk and for a brief moment Lauren thought---
hoped—
he was
going to embrace her.

The moment
passed and instead he and motioned her towards two chintz-covered wing-backed
chairs before the fireplace. Between the two chairs was a small, oval mahogany
table bearing a tray, teapot, china cups and saucers, and a selection of small
sandwiches.

            “It’s tea, not
coffee, I’m afraid. I know how addicted you are,” Jon broke the silence, a
smile in his voice as he poured her a cup of the hot brown brew. “However, Mary
is of the old school who believes that coffee drunk late at night will make you
all hyperactive and unable to sleep.”

            Lauren, who wasn’t
all sure she’d be able to sleep anyway, knowing this man was just a few feet
away from her bed, smiled and assured him that tea would certainly fit the bill
right now. She found she was surprisingly hungry as well, having missed dinner,
and tucked into the sandwiches happily.

            “Mary is a lovely
person.  You’re lucky to have her,” Lauren commented, attempting to fill the
electric silence between them with mundane chatter. “I wouldn’t know, but my
more affluent friends tell me it’s almost impossible to get someone efficient
to take care of the housekeeping.”

            Jon grinned. “For me
it’s one of life’s necessities. If I had to take care of myself, nothing would
ever get done, and Mary keeps me on the straight and narrow. She’s known me
since I was a teenager—almost a mother figure, really. She used to work for my
father.

“Then when I
came out of the army and bought this place after his death, she agreed to come
here. I think the other alternative was a retirement village, and that’s not
her style at all. So even though she let me know she was really only doing this
as a favor because I couldn’t be trusted to look after myself, I think she was
actually pleased.”

            Lauren laughed. “I suspect
you’re nowhere near as helpless as you make out,” she told him, pleased to see
him smile in reply.  “What was a
handsome debonair company executive
,
son of the Big Cheese, doing in the army?” she went on to ask.

            Jon’s face clouded,
and Lauren regretted her presumption at asking something so personal. She
thought he wouldn’t answer, but he poured them both more tea and leaned back in
his chair, slowly stirring sugar into his own cup.

            “I guess I was the
typical rich, spoiled teenager—at least that’s probably how it would look on
the outside. My father…he was a wonderful man, and I loved him dearly, but he’d
no time for frivolity. He’d worked hard for every dime he had, and his entire
world was Rush Co.

“Don’t get me
wrong, I wasn’t neglected or anything like that. He was one of the kindest men
you could wish to meet, with a strong sense of family pride. When my uncle, my
father’s brother, died, Dad immediately took in his nephew, Stephen, and raised
us like we were brothers.

“My Mom is an artist,
and she used to get impatient with his all work and no play attitudes. She
wanted to travel, to enjoy the wealth Rush Co. brought in, wanted to have
parties and a wild time with her artistic friends. Dad thought that was a load
of nonsense, couldn’t be bothered with what he called the ‘artsy-fartsy crowd’.
Said most of them had no real talent and called them hangers-on.”

            Lauren felt
irritation rise in her chest, defensive about her own position as an artist—
a
talented artist—
and wondered if his father’s view would color Jon’s
attitudes to her world.

            “Finally, they had a
major row when I was about fourteen and Mom left. God, but I missed her so. She’s
one of those vivacious people, so full of life, so ready for adventure, eager
to laugh. They were opposites, really, Dad and her. He insisted work be done
before play; she felt play was at least as important as work.”

            Jon stared into the
fire, his eyes sad, his expression closed, and Lauren felt her heart squeeze
for the boy he’d been.
Fourteen was a nasty age for a boy to have his mother
go away,
she thought.

            “So things between Dad
and I got worse. I think he missed her, too, but couldn’t climb down from his
ethical perch long enough to say so. I think he was probably a bit relieved
when, at sixteen, I packed a rucksack and announced I was going to live with
Mom for a while. That came as something of a shock to me, though—in the time
since she’d left, Mom had developed her own life apart from her family, had
friends that Dad would never have tolerated. She was doing some interesting
work and getting shows and the occasional sale, but she was also living the
artist’s life—drink, drugs, men, parties to all hours.”

            Lauren uncomfortably
remembered Jon’s comments about Lucy’s collapse ‘
…or was she on something
stronger…isn’t that how artists are supposed to get their kicks?’
Now,
instead of anger, she felt that strange sadness for the child he had once been.

            “I did my best to fit
in—tried my hand at sculpting, but wasn’t very good. I was a bit better on the
drinking scene, dabbled briefly in the hallucinogenic drugs, then I got into a
bit of trouble—a couple of us stole a car and did some joy riding. Mom promptly
sloughed me off back to Dad, who gave me the ‘you need some discipline’
lecture. What he really meant was he wanted me to get through college and start
showing up every day at Rush Co. to learn the ropes while picking up some work
ethic.

 But I was
still in rebellion and I did the one thing that I knew would drive him mad—I
enlisted in the U.S. Army. I’ll never forget his face when I told him I’d
signed my life away for five years. It took him over a year before he would
speak to me again. Finally, my platoon was sent to Iraq. The night before I
left, Dad and I had a few drinks and talked all night. The next morning, we
shook hands, friends who finally understood each other—and by the time I came
home after the hell of Desert Storm, he was dead.”

            There wasn’t really
anything Lauren could say; no words of condolence that she could think of
seemed anywhere near adequate for the sorrow in Jon’s eyes. Silently, she stood
and crossed the tiny gap between their chairs, leaning down to put her arms
around him comfortingly.

After a
moment, he reached up for her, pulling her down onto his lap, and gently kissed
the top of her head.

            They sat for a time
in the soporific heat of the fire and each other’s nearness, and then Jon
stirred. “Much as I hate to leave you, I have to go out for a while.”

            Lauren glanced at the
brass mantle clock, where the hands were climbing towards midnight.  “At this
time and in this weather?” she asked anxiously.

            “I have to meet with
someone, just briefly. Why don’t you go on up to bed, try to get some rest?
We’ll talk again in the morning.”

Impulsively,
before she left the comforting haven of his lap, Lauren bent her head towards
his, her hand against the back of his neck to pull his mouth down on hers. The
kiss was electric, just as she knew it would be, yet sleepy, too, and trusting.
Then he deepened the contact, his lips hard and yearning against hers, and
Lauren moaned softly as she strained towards the sweet taste of his mouth. Fire
arched through her veins as Jon’s tongue sought, and was granted, entrance to
the warm shelter of her mouth, and Lauren was drowning in a tide of feelings so
profound she never wanted to surface. Until Jon tore his mouth away, his
breathing a little ragged as he groaned and ran a hand through the thick mane
of blond hair.