Judgement By Fire (7 page)

“I’d say it’s
impossible when we both stand for such different things,” Lauren replied, her
anger diminishing in his presence as she’d feared it would. Diminishing, to be
replaced by a deeper, richer tapestry of feeling from which her head told her
to run while her heart was willing to linger…for however long.

“Come and sit
down, at least have a cup of coffee—I make good campfire coffee, even if I say
it myself.” Jon held out his hand, a look of honest invitation on his face.
“Let’s call a twenty minute truce for refreshments.”

Lauren
couldn’t help but smile then and she took his proffered hand to steady herself
as she walked over to the tumbled mound of sleeping bags with him.

“You know, it
never ceases to amaze me just how warm you can be in the depths of the
countryside, snow all around and just a campfire and a pile of nylon-covered
down for warmth. Yet sometimes, in the city, I’m cold even with the central
heating. It’s like there’s no air, no way to take a deep breath,” Jon said
seriously, handing her a tin mug of steaming coffee.

Lauren looked
at him in amazement.

“That’s
exactly how I feel,” she said in wonder. “You know, I worked at Bay and Bloor
in the middle of Toronto as a graphic artist for six years, and I don’t believe
I ever took a deep breath in all that time. When I was offered the place out
here, I think I spent the first few months intoxicated with the oxygen!”

“But the
feeling wore off?”

“We—I—went
through a very difficult time, shortly after moving here.”

Jon wanted to
push, wanted to ask who the “we” she’d referred to was, and if that was a
current situation, but somehow the moment didn’t seem right. He didn’t want to
spoil the tentative truce between them by prying, and was content just to sit,
basking in the warmth of the fire and her company.

 Lauren, her
hands wrapped around the comforting warmth of the tin coffee mug, felt the
sense of peace she always found in the woods returning, intensified rather than
diminished by the presence of this man she was finding hard to consider an
enemy, even though he threatened so much that she held dear.

They sat
companionably for a while, each deep in personal thoughts.

Without
knowing why she wanted to tell him, Lauren said: “My husband was very ambitious
and had already worked his way high up the ladder in the advertising agency we
both worked for. He was handling some very high-flown accounts, and wanted me
to quit my job and become a sort of hostess-companion to support his career. He
hated it that I’d rented the studio here, and came up every weekend, when he
wanted me to host dinner parties and smile prettily at his clients and
potential clients.”

She had never
talked about this to anyone except Lucy and Paul, for somewhere in her mind her
mother’s voice echoed, telling her that a woman’s place was at home, as she had
done when Lauren had tried to confide the problems of her ailing marriage. “My
mother told me I should do as he asked, that he was doing this for our future
together. But he wasn’t, you know—it was really for himself.”

Personally,
Jon agreed that any man who wanted his wife to give up her own ambitions to
support his, especially if she was reluctant to do so, was pretty selfish. But
he wanted to tread carefully and not give Lauren the impression he was agreeing
with her too easily just for his own ends.

Instead, he
said in a neutral tone, “Maybe he was trying to ensure that you had the
security you need for a stable marriage?”

Lauren turned
on him, fury and hurt in her eyes.

“Don’t tell me
you’re another Neanderthal! Of course it wasn’t for our marriage—it was so that
he could get to the top a little faster, could impress those wealthy business
clients out of even more advertising commission! Do you know what he told me?
Do you know what he said? He told me I was wasting my time dabbling with my
finger-paints, that I had no talent and should consider myself lucky to have
had a job in the agency, that they only kept me on because of him!”

Jon winced at
the raw pain in her voice.

“So I quit the
job with the agency and told him I was going to spend more time up here to try
to really make a career out of my work. He laughed at me; he really laughed as
if I was a foolish child.

“I’d always
loved the creativity of painting rather than the commercial side of design. I
wanted to prove to myself that I really did have talent. That I wasn’t just
dabbling with finger-paints like some kindergarten kid.

“Just then, I
was offered my first chance to take part in an exhibition and my work started
to sell. Terry said, quit and come home, or it’s all over. He told me I was
disloyal—
I
was disloyal! I almost jacked it all in, then, quit the
studio and went back to Toronto to become Mrs. Company Wife. 

“You know
what’s funny, though? Right then, quite by accident, I discovered that Mr.
Loyal and True was having an affair! Talk about clichés—with his secretary!”
Her laugh was bitter, and Jon reached over to squeeze her hand gently in an
instinctive attempt to comfort her. “You know what’s even funnier, though?
After all that pain, all that heartache, I’m not sure if I ever even loved the
bastard!”

Minutes ticked
by on snow-muffled feet as they both sat, gazing into the flames, each wrapped
in thoughts that were theirs alone, and yet joined by something delicate,
intangible, but which Lauren felt like a seed unfurling deep underground. A
feeling not yet ready to emerge and declare itself, but waiting for the right
conditions before flourishing.

She pushed the
feeling aside. There was little chance that such a glorious blossom could
flourish in the stony ground that existed between two people with such
dissimilar ambitions. She’d been down that route once before, and found that
such a disparate relationship mixed like oil and water—never quite combining into
one substance but each always struggling to overpower the other.

“Time to
leave. But now you know why there can’t be a Lauren and Jon, why we can’t
be…friends, outside of everything else that’s going on. I can’t risk…liking
someone at such odds against what I want from life!”

“I don’t think
we’re so much at odds. And what’s wrong with…liking…someone?”

She knew he
was laughing at her; knew that he’d guessed the word she’d almost used to
describe her feelings for him. As surely as she knew her own name, she knew she
could fall in love with Jon Rush.

That, alone,
was a crazy idea, given that they’d only just met. And it just wouldn’t work
out. Ever.

But even as
she declared this to herself, she caught sight of the curve of his forehead and
her heart squeezed.  A row of tiny, neat stitches ran from just inside his
hairline down across his temple. Tentatively, with infinite gentleness, she
reached out to touch the bruised and puckered skin alongside the stitches.

“This is what
I did to you?” she asked rhetorically, horrified and fascinated. Her movement
had brought their faces close together and she gasped as she looked into Jon’s
eyes and read the longing that burned there.

“’Fraid so,”
he said, his voice husky with emotion. “I think for that I deserve at least a
small kiss better?” 

Even though
his voice teased, she felt her body respond dangerously as heat flooded through
her veins from a fire flaring deep in her belly.

Jon reached
his free hand around behind Lauren’s head, pulling her down and closing the gap
between their lips in a smooth, experienced movement.

Fire arced
between them like high voltage lightening through a grounded conductor. Their
kiss lasted only a moment, a gentle meeting of lips like the brushing of
butterfly wings against rose petals, but the wild feelings it aroused surged
and roared, threatening to swamp them totally.

With a soft
groan, Jon resisted the temptation to kiss her again, to gorge himself on the
sweetness he’d just tasted and let the tidal wave of desire take them where it
would. Instead, he contented himself with stroking her soft cheek and planting
a swift kiss on her upturned nose. Then he rose to his feet in a flowing,
graceful motion, pulling her up beside him. 

“You’re right,
at least in that it’s time to go. Shall I walk you back? It’s very dark.”

Lauren
considered having him accompany her back, if only to prolong this oasis of time
together before the waves of the real world came crashing back on them. Her
heart urged her to keep him with her and her body joined in, clamoring its own
chaotic needs with a sly question about whether she’d ask him inside—and
whether she’d be able to let him leave or if they’d be drawn into her warm bed
together.

Looking at
him, his hair bright in the starlight, his eyes shadowed and skin still pale
from the shock of the wound she had inflicted, Lauren almost gave in to the
temptation that was swamping her physically and emotionally. It took a mighty
effort to still all the voices that urged her on, and shook her head.

“No, thanks, I
know these woods like the back of my hand and I often come out here at night.
Besides, you should be resting after that head wound,” she told him firmly,
almost choking on the guilt that hit her again for causing him such injury.
“Anyway, it’s not far, just a few minutes through the trees over there. You can
see the glow from my porch light.”

“So I’m
sleeping in your back yard?” he said with a wicked grin. “Tell you what, so I
don’t have to come over and check on you, let me know you’ve got home safely by
flashing that light a couple of times before you switch it off, okay?”

She felt a
little flutter of pleasure in her breast at his protectiveness. She laughed
lightly and told him not to worry about her, she could look after herself. And
she left him there, knowing he was staring after her and guessing he was
experiencing the same kind of longing that she was desperately trying to
suppress.

As she left
the glowing circle of the campfire, hidden from Jon’s sight by the thickly
pressing trees, feet crunching on the hard snow as the temperatures continued
to drop into the night; Lauren felt suddenly that she was being watched.

Sure Jon Rush
was following her to see her safely home—or had decided to take up the
invitation that she had barely managed to withhold—she turned on a wild impulse
to greet him. Her heated blood ignoring her head’s warning about truth and
consequences. She whirled around, but the path behind her was empty. Yet still
the feeling of being watched persisted.

Just some
deer or a fox out a-hunting,
she told herself. All the same, the uneasy
feeling caused her to quicken her steps, glad when she reached the shelter of
her own back porch. Turning off the porch light as she entered the house,
Lauren couldn’t help smiling to herself as she toggled the switch up and down a
couple of times.

There, Jon
Rush
,
she thought,
I’m safely home.
And the cheerful
welcoming space of her studio seemed less lonely somehow, knowing he was out
there.

* *
*

So that’s
how things stand, is it?
Anger tightened the slender frame of the
watching man. She’d no time for him and all he could offer her, but she’d
plenty of time to throw herself at the rich and powerful Jon Rush. Traitorous
bitch! To think, for a while, he’d thought she was different, capable of
valuing a man for who he really was…

Then a new
idea pushed through his sense of betrayal. If Jon Rush wanted this woman, then
she could prove to be the delightful instrument of Rush Co.’s destruction. He
could punish them both. The irony of the situation made the watching man smile
his charming smile – a smile that never quite reached his eyes.

            Jon’s protective
presence in her ‘backyard’ was the first thing Lauren thought of when she woke
from a deep sleep the next morning, stretching luxuriously on the smooth warm
cotton sheets in her king-sized loft bed. Briefly, she wondered what it would
be like to wake up beside him, their limbs tangled together and the sheets
disarrayed by love.

One word
was all it would have taken last night.
That little voice was back,
tweaking at her conscious mind and playing on emerging needs which she’d
managed to keep submerged for so long.

After her
ex-husband, Terry, had left—been ‘thrown out’, as Lucy loved to recall—Lauren
had reveled in the solitude the studio afforded her, and the freedom of being
just one, rather than always having to think as a couple—and the lesser part of
two, at that.

 
So when
did solitude and freedom become loneliness and an aching need to be touched,
mind and body, by another?
When you met Jon Rush,
the little voice
replied with a confidence so arrogant that Lauren would have torn it from her
head if she had been able.

            The dull light sifting
through her uncurtained windows told her that it was another cold wintry
morning, her conscience adding that it was also another weekday morning and
none too early. Guilty knowledge of several different deadlines forced her out
of the warm bed and into her chilly bathroom to shower and dress. As she did so
she carefully avoided thoughts of anything but the work she needed to do to get
back on track for her upcoming show.

The telephone
in the kitchen rang as she tried to tame her short, wavy hair with the blow
drier. She heard the answering machine kick in, followed by silence, and a
final sounding click as the caller hung up. With a shiver, Lauren wondered if
she’d been mistaken. What if Steve Wallace hadn’t been the only one making
calls and refusing to talk to the machine? One heard such dreadful tales of
stalkers and malicious acts.