Fire in the Wind Read online

  Jake shrugged lightly. "Fine," he said. "Nobody wins them all. Let's eat the salmon before it gets cold." He changed the subject then with admirable ease. His voice was cool, detached, as though she were no more to him than a casual conquest he could easily do without. But his eyes held another expression, one she could not read—and she knew that somehow, somewhere, Jake Conrad was lying to her.

  * * *

  He drove her through Stanley Park before taking her back to the hotel, and the magic stillness of the tall Douglas firs enveloped them in the quietly purring car till she could hardly believe she was in a city.

  "It's beautiful," she whispered, and Jake pulled the car over and stopped.

  "Would you like to walk for a few minutes?" he asked. "There's a very pretty pond just over there."

  "At one in the morning?" she asked. "Is it safe?"

  He laughed. "This is Vancouver, Vanessa. The population is barely one million. No one's going to jump us. Come on." He climbed out of the car and walked around toward her door, but she got out by herself and joined him. She breathed deeply in the night air, revelling in the stillness, the peace that surrounded them.

  Brrrh, brrrh.

  Vanessa jumped and reached instinctively for Jake's strong arm. "What was that?" she whispered hoarsely.

  He laughed down at her. "Relax," he said. "It was a frog over on Lost Lagoon. Where we are heading." Suddenly there was a chorus of frog noises so loud it made her laugh. She took Jake's arm, feeling perfectly easy. After he had forgotten his demons tonight, he had been a fascinating companion.

  "What a serenade!" she exclaimed. "I'm glad I'm not a lady frog expected to fall for that racket!"

  "If you were a lady frog," he said softly, "You'd be swooning and falling off your lily pad right now."

  "The croaking is that good?" she asked, smiling.

  "I'm no expert on the quality of the croaking," Jake replied. "But there's no reason to think you'd be less responsive as a lady frog than you are as a woman."

  Her stomach fluttered at the tone in his voice. The night was too softly cool, the stars too bright, the setting too romantic. She wanted to ask him why he was so sure she was responsive, but that way lay danger. She searched her brain for a safe subject.

  "Lost Lagoon," he said, as the path emerged from thick trees at the edge of a small lake, still and perfect in the night. Vanessa sighed in delight.

  "There's a paved path around the circumference," Jake said. "It would take about twenty minutes to walk it. How are your shoes?"

  "Not up to it, I'm afraid," Vanessa said regretfully, lifting a delicately strapped foot for his view. She would have liked the walk. "It's very beautiful, Jake. I wish...." She stopped.

  "It's much more prosaic by daylight," Jake said. "But perhaps you'd like to come back on the weekend when the trade show's finished? It's quite a famous bird sanctuary."

  Vanessa bit her lip. She would have liked that, too. "I'm flying home first thing Saturday morning," she said.

  His arm tightened for a moment around her waist. "Well, then, let's walk a little now. Who knows when you'll get another chance to see it?" Any regret in his voice was impersonal, so she must have mistaken that momentary tightening of his fingers.

  They were passed by a pair of midnight joggers, sex indeterminate in the darkness, and this evidence of the park's safety bemused her.

  "Canada's a very safe country, isn't it?" she asked. "Jace always said so."

  "No country is as peaceful or as safe from vandals as it was ten years ago," he said quietly. "But we fare pretty well."

  "Is it because of your gun-control laws?"

  "Partly, I suppose," he replied. "A lot of the reason is historical. We didn't have the lawless opening of the West that you had south of the border. In Canada the settlers moved west accompanied by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police—in those days they were called the Northwest Mounted Police. They were pretty impressive in maintaining law and order. We mostly didn't massacre the tribes or fight wars with them. We made treaties instead. That doesn't mean they weren't ripped off," he said parenthetically. "Just that it was done in a peaceful lawful manner."

  "And you think that makes a difference today?" she asked in surprise. "The way the West was settled?"

  "Canadians had different heroes," Jake said. "In the States you were glorifying the Fastest Gun in the West, the rugged individual who didn't knuckle under to anything or anyone, including the law. Canadians, on the other hand, had heroes like Sergeant Preston of the Yukon, who kept drunken prospectors in line, whose great deed was the victory of law and order over lawlessness."

  Vanessa found herself charmed by this insight. "Was Sergeant Preston of the Yukon your hero?" she asked.

  "I had the best collection of Sergeant Preston comic books in three blocks," he said. "Instead of practising my quick draw I used to practise saying, 'Well, King, looks like this case is... closed', in what I thought was a suitably heroic voice."

  She gurgled into laughter. "Did Sergeant Preston say that very much?"

  "He said it in the last panel of every story. King, of course, was his very intelligent husky, who could be counted on to bite the bad guys at just the right moment."

  Vanessa stopped and leaned against the slender trunk of a tree, and gazed out over the lagoon to the lights of the tall buildings in the distance. The guardedness with which she walked through every moment of her life in the much larger, much faster-paced, much more exciting city of her birth slipped a little. She felt rather than saw the presence of the mountains that surrounded the city. Vancouver seemed to have a different sort of excitement, one that was threaded through with peace.

  "If I'd come to Jace back then, I'd know this city very well, wouldn't I?" she remarked quietly.

  "I guess you would," Jake agreed.

  "Canada's like an island in the storm of the world," she said.

  "Is it?"

  "Look at the Middle East, look at Africa, look at Britain, look at us," she said. "You're always reading horrible things in the papers, but never about Canada."

  "Give us time." In the starlight she saw one eyebrow raised over his crooked smile.

  "You're cynical," she protested. "But I'm telling you Canada's different." She raised her arms. "Thank you, Sergeant Preston. I'm standing in the middle of—what is this, Stanley Park? I'm standing in the middle of a huge park in the middle of a large industrial city wearing a dress and a pair of shoes that wouldn't let me outrun a snail and I don't have to worry about someone grabbing me and—"

  Jake interrupted her, placing his hands on her waist and pulling her against him. "Don't you?" he asked, and kissed her.

  She was wearing her hair loose, and he threaded his hand into its waves and cradled her head in his lean palm.

  In the darkness he was more like Jace than ever, and that was dangerous. But her defences were down, and she wrapped her naked arms up around his neck and opened her mouth to his seeking lips. They were firm and sure, knowing what they wanted. She could trust herself to this man's mouth, to his strong embrace....

  He was holding her away from him, breathing deeply. "Let's get back," he said.

  Vanessa felt drugged; she had wanted the kiss to go on. "Why?" she whispered.

  "Because safe as Stanley Park may be, I am not going to make love to you on the edge of Lost Lagoon." Vanessa caught her breath at this evidence of her power over him. "Come on," Jake said, giving her arm a little jerk to get her moving.

  They walked back to the car in silence while Vanessa came to her senses and wondered how the mood and her own feelings could have changed so drastically in the space of a minute. She looked at Jake's profile as he started the engine and realized with a sickening thump that somehow she had no armour against him. A lot of men had kissed her or tried to kiss her in the years since Larry had become really ill, and particularly in the year since he had died. She had never had the least difficulty in controlling whatever feelings their kisses had aroused in her, in keeping
them at arm's length.

  Jake was different. He was too much like Jace, and her memories of Jace were suddenly too sweet and too close for her to control the feelings Jake raised in her.

  The car slid to a halt in the drive of the hotel and a uniformed man opened the door to her.

  "Park it for the night, Jerry." She heard Jake's voice behind her and turned to see another man sliding in behind the wheel of the elegant car. Her eyes caught Jake's over the top and she stared at him as the car slid away from between them.

  "I'm not spending the night with you," she said in an undertone as they crossed into the lobby.

  He looked at her. "Why not?" he asked, just a little as though she were out of her mind.

  The question flummoxed her. "Because... because you're too much like Jace and I don't want to make love to a ghost," she stammered unhappily.

  "I told you it didn't bother me," he said, shepherding her across the lobby and through a door into the same private lounge she had been taken to on Monday night.

  "Well, it bothers me!" she protested, pulling out of his guiding arm as the door closed behind them. "So what are we doing here?"

  "I'm offering you a nightcap," he said placidly. "The hotel bar is closed."

  He crossed to a cabinet and pulled it open to reveal a shelf of bottles and a fridge. "What'll you have?"

  "Perrier and lime, please," she requested primly, half-expecting him to protest, to try to persuade her to have something more potent, but he merely pulled open the fridge.

  "It will have to be Montclair," he said, examining the interior while he massaged a dark green lime between fingers and thumb. "No Perrier in here."

  Vanessa laughed. "Don't tell me you have an interest in Montclair, too!"

  "No," he replied absently. "What I suppose I have is a patriotic-minded staff. Montclair is a Canadian mineral water."

  He handed her a full glass and settled in the chair opposite hers as though they would be there for some time. But Vanessa finished her drink quickly, hardly hearing the idle conversation he began. Uncomfortably she set down her glass.

  "I should go. I've got a full day tomorrow."

  "Tomorrow?" He looked up. "Tomorrow is lingerie in the morning, knitwear and blouses in the afternoon and then cocktail dresses. Do you mean to say you've got designs in all of them?"

  In fact, she didn't design in any of those areas. "No," she said sheepishly, feeling a fool, "but I promised Colin to sit with him for the sweater...." She broke off in confusion as he leaned over and took her hand.

  "What are you running from, Vanessa?" he asked.

  She stopped breathing. "I'm not running."

  He was holding her left hand, and he fingered the broad gold band of her wedding ring. "Aren't you?" he asked. "Why are you still wearing Larry's ring?"

  "Because Larry... I'm a widow," she protested. "Not divorced."

  "Larry had nine good years of your life, and from what I hear, the last few at least weren't very happy. You aren't keeping men off for Larry's sake any more. It's for some other reason, Vanessa."

  Jace. It was Jace. Without knowing it she had somehow been remaining loyal not to Larry's memory but to Jace. And now Jace was dead, and she should stop wearing a wedding ring like a talisman to ward off evil.

  Vanessa gazed down at the gold band, wondering what would be resting on her finger if she had refused to marry Larry and had married Jace instead....

  "Someday I'm going to bring you here and buy you a diamond so big you'll need a crane to lift your hand," Jace had promised one cold, crisp day as they stood in front of Cartier's. He had taken her inside, insisting that she pick the ring she would want when he was rich enough to buy her anything at all. Over Vanessa's protests that she didn't care about precious stones he had brashly made her look at everything in sight. The staff, who knew to a nicety the difference between those who could and those who could not buy, didn't speak to them.

  When they gained the street again he smiled at her. "They ignored us today," he said with a laugh. "They didn't recognize the multimillionaire Jason Conrad behind all these scars." Then he sobered. "Next time, they won't ignore me. Next time I take you in there, they'll say, 'Good day, Mr. Conrad. How are you today?' And I'll be able to buy you anything in the place. I'll do that on our tenth anniversary, Vanessa."

  The ring blurred before her eyes. The nearly ten years since had been very different than she had envisioned in that moment, and Jace had been dead for nearly all that time....

  Jake's voice above her bent head said, "Remembering Cartier's?" and she snapped her gaze up in amazement.

  "How on earth do you know about Cartier's?" she demanded, a chill creeping down her spine.

  "Haven't you guessed yet?" he asked dryly. "I know because Jace told me. Jace told me everything there was to know about you before he died. He told me so much I fell in love with you myself."

  Chapter 4

  "In love with me!"

  Jake laughed.

  "Don't panic, I got over it. But Jace was very persuasive. And you are very beautiful."

  "You—but you hadn't seen me," she protested.

  Jake paused. "Jace showed me your picture."

  "Jace never had a picture of me!" she began. "At least—" She broke off. Nine and a half years was a long time. Had he had her picture?

  Jake's eyes narrowed. "Well, he showed me one," he said positively. "It was a Polaroid shot, I think—the kind they charge tourists five dollars for on Fifth Avenue."

  It sounded like the sort of thing they'd have done—get their picture taken like yokels. Funny she couldn't remember it. She thought she'd remembered everything about Jace, that wonderful week with Jace.

  "Do you still have it?" she asked. "I'd like to see it, if I could."

  Jake blinked. "Oh—I... I probably threw it out when I came to my senses."

  "But you saved the letter," Vanessa pointed out. Then she caught her breath. If he'd seen her picture, Jake would have recognized her on Monday night at the cocktail party? Or at the very least when she mentioned Jace that must have sparked his memory. Why hadn't he told her that he knew who she was?

  "I might have kept it, now that I think of it," Jake said. "If I get time I'll have a look for it." And suddenly he was saying good-night and ushering her out the door so expertly that she couldn't ask him any of the questions that were whirling around in her brain. Had he loved her, she wondered—or had he only hated her for what she'd done to Jace?

  * * *

  Vanessa was down early for breakfast. Her body was still on New York time: she woke just before seven with a guilty start, feeling it must be nearly ten. Once awake, her mind began to pick over the thoughts and worries that had lain dormant all night, and she knew there wasn't any point trying to get back to sleep.

  She showered and dressed, looking out the windows over the bustling city, the water and the mountains beyond. Vancouver, she had learned, was built on a large peninsula created by an inlet of the Strait of Georgia to the north and a river to the south. The main downtown area, where Jake's hotel was, was situated on a smaller peninsula that jutted out from the large one into the inlet. The tip of this small peninsula was given over entirely to the thickly forested Stanley Park she had visited last night. The park was thus almost surrounded by water, meeting the city only at one narrow edge. Vancouver itself was also nearly surrounded by water—the Fraser River to the south, the Strait of Georgia and the Pacific Ocean on the west, Burrard Inlet to the north—and had nowhere to go but up: up in skyscrapers and up the side of the mountains.

  Looking north now across Burrard Inlet, Vanessa could see how the city, like a raging forest fire, had jumped the strip of water and had climbed as high as was possible up the low mountains on the other side. She wondered what it would be like to live on the mountain and have a view over the Pacific and the distant skyscrapers of the city centre.

  She breathed deeply. Jace had been right. Vancouver was the most beautiful city she had ever seen, w
ith its own pace and its own enveloping peace. People were relaxed, casual and often unbusinesslike. She thought of Louisa Hayward last night and her resistance to the New York type of pressure to do everything absolutely right, absolutely on time, and remembered her own violent irritation when the girl hadn't apologized for her unprofessionalism. Who was right? There was a slower pace here that was just beginning to get to her.

  Who would she be now, if Jace had lived and she had come here to marry him? Perhaps she would have finished her education at a Canadian university—there were two good universities in Vancouver, she had heard. Perhaps she would have attended one. And she might have gone into a job in fashion design here, casually, without trying to claw her way to the top or carve out a career for herself. She might have had a baby and brought her to work every day, the way a lot of Canadian women seemed to do.

  There had been a pretty little baby in one of the dressing rooms each day of the show so far. His mother was either a model or a designer; Vanessa hadn't worked it out. He had played in a corner quite happily, and once she had seen him wandering from chair to chair as the models made up before the show, watching them with concentrated fascination.

  Vanessa, standing at the window looking down on the city, had a sudden painful vision of a young child with Jace's eyes—the child she should have borne. She felt tears prickle behind her eyes, and then the thought flicked into her mind: Jake has Jace's eyes.

  It was a dimly-formed, irrelevant thought. She pushed it away almost before she had grasped it, and instead deliberately made herself laugh by imagining Tom's face if he should walk into the design office one day and find her changing her baby's diaper on a design-strewn table top....

  Tom was up early, too. She saw him as soon as she walked into the restaurant, breakfasting with the buyer from Toronto. He caught her eye as she paused by the door, and she crossed to the table for two.

  "Good morning." If Tom had been writing out a companion-wanted ad he would have described himself as a "young forty." He dressed five years younger than that and was in fact five years older, and the heartbreak of his life hadn't been his wife's leaving him six years ago, but his receding hairline.