Season of Storm

by Alexandra Sellers

  "Your funeral, Daddy," Smith had shrugged.

  But it wasn't a funeral at all. Smith looked around the room where Cimarron, smashing in red velvet with holly in her hair, was holding court for several of her father's vintage business friends; and to Lew, holding his own in a political discussion; and Mel, fascinating several wives with talk of the music industry. Several other of her friends were there, too, including, of course, Valerie and Rolly, but the gathering did not include the wild profane young men of Horse. They were playing a Christmas concert in Toronto, a fact for which Shulamith had been grateful, however much her father might think she underestimated his friends.

  "I'm glad you could come," Smith said now.

  It was the first time she had ever met Jake and Vanessa Conrad, though of course she had watched Jake on television. Vanessa was another redhead, although her hair was a deep russet shade quite unlike Shulamith's mane of foxfire. She was tall and elegant, with smooth hair and an enormous emerald-and-diamond ring.

  And on the waistband of her long black silk dress— the most elegant thing Smith had seen in years—there was a small, curved U-shape picked out in rhinestones.

  Smith bent closer. Diamonds.

  "A horseshoe!" she exclaimed. "A diamond horseshoe! I bought a dress awhile ago with a horseshoe on the cuff. In gold thread. Where did you get yours?"

  "I designed it," smiled Vanessa Conrad. "The dress you bought must be one of mine—the horseshoe is my trademark."

  "Your trademark?" Smith opened her eyes wide. "You have your own company then?"

  "Number Twenty-four Fashions," Vanessa told her with a smile. "I went into evening wear for the first time with the summer line. I hope you like the dress?"

  "Oh, I do," Smith eyes softened as she smiled at the other woman. "I wore it at my wedding."

  Maybe it was stupid to bring it up, but everybody knew she had had a runaway marriage, and there was lots of speculation about why she and her husband were living apart. She hadn't discussed it, even with Valerie. It felt good to talk about her wedding like this, as though it had been a normal occurrence, like other women's weddings.

  "Well, I'm honoured!" said Vanessa Conrad sincerely. "Darling?" She mouthed the word across the room, and Jake Conrad detached himself from the group around her father and came over.

  It was obvious that this marriage was working. Although Jake and Vanessa had been separated much of the time at this party, Smith had seen them connect across the room time and time again with a smile or a glance. Their obvious love for each other brought a lump to her throat.

  "Jake, Mrs. Winterhawk wore one of my designs at her wedding. Isn't that something?"

  The name ripped through her like a bullet. "Oh, please!" she smiled and recovered. "Call me Shulamith—or Smith, everybody does. Anyway, I—I kept my own name. I don't use Winterhawk."

  "I'm sorry, Shulamith," Vanessa smiled. "I didn't...but tell me which dress it was!"

  She was desperately grateful to be given something to do. "It was a very pale cream colour—a jacket and dress, full sleeves, bias cut..." She put her hands up to indicate the neckline.

  "I know the one." Vanessa came to her rescue again. "You remember that one, don't you, Jake? The summer line. You really liked it when I showed you the prototype."

  Jake grinned helplessly at her. It was obvious he did not remember. "Have a heart!" he said. "If it was a summer prototype I must have seen it almost a year ago."

  "Philistine!" murmured his wife in a loving tone. She turned back to Smith. "You're certainly not wearing one of my off-the-rack numbers tonight. That is really beautiful."

  Smith in fact looked stunning. In the cloth-of-gold tunic she wore, with her hair rolled into a wide chignon at the back of her neck, she was beautiful and almost as smoothly elegant as Vanessa Conrad.

  One of those small silences fell over the room just then, a universal momentary pause, into which the single shocking profanity uttered in a smoky feminine voice dropped with perfect timing.

  Every eye was involuntarily drawn toward the diverting picture of Cimarron King, who, totally oblivious, was discoursing good-humouredly on the trials of life on the road.

  The pause held for a tiny moment, and then everyone stepped delicately back into their own conversations.

  Across the room Smith met her father's eye and twinkled her "I told you so" at him. Her father was not in the least discomposed. He grinned back and deliberately winked at her.

  But Smith was not looking at him any longer. She was looking past his head, to the large dark figure that had just entered the room behind him and stood surveying the crowd. It was a moment before his eyes found her, but when he did Johnny Winterhawk smiled at her as though his presence in her father's home was the most natural thing in the world.

  The people who a minute ago had been blasé enough to ignore Cimarron King's irrepressible profanities weren't up to this one. There wasn't a soul in the room who wasn't agog to know the true story of what was going on between Smith and Johnny, and no one even pretended to look the other way as Johnny Winterhawk made his way across the room to Shulamith St. John in a silence that, except for the Christmas music playing in the background, was total.

  Johnny ignored the stares and the silence and bent and kissed his wife lightly. "Hello, darling," he said. "Sorry I didn't get back in time."

  What was that supposed to mean? Involuntarily Smith returned his kiss and played along because she had to: it was beyond her to make a scene here. "Johnny, you know Jake...."

  "Of course." The two men shook hands, obviously pleased with one another. They had appeared on a discussion panel together and taken on all comers. "But I don't know if you've met Vanessa."

  She performed the introduction as calmly as she could and then relapsed into silence as Johnny and Jake and Vanessa chatted together. A waiter stopped with a tray of drinks, and Johnny took one, and a moment later someone squeezed her hand and said brightly, "Aren't you going to introduce me?" and there was Valerie smiling fascinatedly up at Johnny Winterhawk.

  In the end she had to introduce him to most of the people in the room. Almost everyone recognized his face, of course, and they knew all about him and were thrilled to meet him—the fascinating representative of an alien life-style.

  It was the sort of thing that must be happening to him a lot lately, and during a lull in conversation she asked with a smile, "How does it feel to be lionized by the enemy?"

  "These people aren't the enemy," he grinned back, totally at ease in this house. "They're potential clients."

  A hoot of delighted laughter escaped her, and around the room meaningful glances were exchanged, several of the wives deciding there and then that it wouldn't be the first time the rumour mills had been completely mistaken.

  One couple in the room were old clients of Johnny's and met him again with delight.

  "Do you know," bellowed the man with rough good humour, "that that danged floorboard still creaks?"

  Everyone except Smith laughed, and the man's wife smiled kindly at her.

  "Hasn't he told you?" she asked. "There's a floorboard that creaks in every house he's built. You can't get rid of it, no matter what. It's sort of a trademark nowadays, isn't it Mr. Winterhawk?"

  "Is that what that is!" Smith grinned up at Johnny, then told the couple, "There's a creak in front of his study door. I thought it was a Distant Early Warning System."

  The man winked at Johnny. "I'm sure you're your own Distant Early Warning, isn't she, John?"

  He looked down at her the way a loving husband of a few months would. "That's right," he said, with a grin.

  It was an evening in hell. After a while the smile became fixed on Smith's face, till the muscles ached, and she was sure it looked more like a grimace. They were constantly surrounded by guests. There was no chance to speak to him alone, to ask why he was here or demand that he leave.

  Nor could she leave herself. She couldn't bear to be in the limelight again, the subject of commen
t and curiosity. So she stayed till nearly everyone had gone home and the caterers were clearing up. Her father sat by the dying fire with Rolly and Valerie and Matt Hurtubise and his wife, old friends who might not leave for another hour.

  Drooping with exhaustion, Smith made her farewells, and Johnny Winterhawk did the same. Then he helped her into her wrap, and they went out together into an unseasonably mild night.

  "The charade ends here," Smith said, as her shoes crunched on the drive, and he followed her to her car. She bent to unlock the door and then stood to face Johnny. "What the hell possessed you to come here tonight?" she demanded.

  "Your father invited me," he returned quietly.

  "He's got his nerve! Men! And you just came? You didn't think to check with me?"

  "I thought the invitation came, indirectly, from you."

  "Well, it—"

  "It didn't. Yes, I could see that, but would you have been happier if I'd turned and walked out again and left you alone with all those curious people?'' he asked.

  "Oh, Lord!" she exclaimed weakly. "Can you just imagine?"

  "Graphically."

  "Why on earth did my father invite you?" she asked, climbing into her car lest he should imagine she was making excuses to keep him near her, talking. "I mean, what excuse did he give you?"

  Johnny slipped his hands into the trouser pockets of his black dinner suit, and the wings of his hair fell forward as he looked down at her in the little sports car. His face was carved in shadow. She had never seen a man look handsomer in formal wear.

  "Your father is my client," he said at last. "I'm building him a house. Didn't he tell you?"

  ***

  "Are you out of your mind?" Smith shrieked. "What do you think you're doing?"

  Her father gazed at her placidly. "What do you think gives you the right to object?"

  "He's my husband!" she shouted. "And it's my life, and will you please keep—"

  "That's interesting," said her father. "Not so long ago you told me that he wasn't your husband at all."

  "Daddy," she said grimly, "what the hell do you want with another house?"

  He shook his head. "Not another—I'm selling this one."

  "You know perfectly well what I mean!"

  St. John ignored that. "He's pretty steep, your husband," he said. "I should have taken your advice a few years ago and got a Winterhawk house before it was such an expensive proposition."

  "You should keep out of my business, you mean. He's probably charging you twice his going rate," she said with relish.

  He looked at her. "I don't think so."

  "Have you signed a contract yet?" she asked. "Or whatever it is you do with architects?"

  "Not yet." Her father leaned back and scratched his beard. She had arrived early this morning, and her father was still in pyjamas and robe and unshaven. In sixteen years she hadn't seen him unshaven. Before that, in Paris, she was reminded suddenly, she used to like sitting on the tub talking to him as she watched him shave. "He's hardly had time to see the site."

  "All right." Smith picked up her jacket and stood. "You'd better talk to Hugh again, Daddy. Because Johnny is not going to design a house or anything else for you!"

  Her father laughed. "He may even design the new Concord head office," he told her amiably.

  Thirty-six

  "Why not?" Johnny Winterhawk sprawled at his ease across two kitchen chairs, his back against the window and the raging northern storm that howled outside the house. He sank his teeth into the white flesh of the apple in his hand and grinned at her.

  Shulamith was dripping wet. Her hair had been in a ponytail, but the wind had whipped the elastic away, and now it hung in sodden tendrils all down her back and in her face. Her jeans and jacket and shoes were soaked through, but she didn't care. "Because I say so!" she stormed.

  She had set off across the choppy strait in an open speedboat, and when the storm blew up it was fierce.

  And after half an hour in the cold driving rain it was almost an insult to come in and find Johnny so warm and lazy in his kitchen. She didn't even wait to greet him. She simply shouted that he was not to build a house for her father.

  Johnny chewed for a moment. "Where's the problem?" he asked. "You don't have to live in it, do you?" His voice sounded casual, but there was that familiar bleakness around his eyes, as though something she said had reminded him of some old hurt.

  She glared at him. "I don't—" She broke off, shivering violently, and her teeth began to chatter. Watching her, Johnny shook his head.

  "You look like a drowned hen," he observed. "Shouldn't you take off those clothes and get into the bathtub?"

  "I'm not cold!" It wasn't a lie. Inside she was burning up. "And I want to have this out r—"

  He slung his bare feet off the chair, stood and walked to the stove, and Smith fell silent. He turned the oven on full blast behind her, then reached to draw her closer to its warmth. And to him. Smith clenched her jaw and shivered as Johnny's hands touched the neck of her jacket. "Will you stop that and listen to me?" she demanded, pushing away his hands. But he merely brought them back again, and this time she let him unzip her soaked clammy bomber jacket and slide it off her shoulders.

  "Thank you," she said. "Now—"

  Underneath she was wearing a navy cardigan and a blue shirt, and without a pause Johnny's hands moved to the buttons of her sweater.

  "You're soaked through," he said. "Why didn't you put on a mac?"

  "I forgot to bring one," Smith muttered. The oven was fast; its warmth was already reaching her. "I was in a hurry."

  He chuckled in his throat. "In a hurry to see me? Oh, Peaceable Woman, I'm honoured!"

  It had been a long time since she had heard that endearment on his lips. Her breathing checked and then resumed. Johnny slid the wet cardigan from her shoulders and dropped it, too, on the floor. His hands moved to the top button of her shirt, just above her breasts. He looked into her eyes as he undid it.

  "Johnny," she whispered, half longingly, half afraid. His hands slid down between her breasts and found another button, but his eyes never left her face.

  Her breathing shifted. She opened her mouth, and her breath came audibly through her parted lips, and then the flame was there between them, and they were caught in its heady heat. She could not move; she could only gaze into his eyes and wait for him to undress her and pray with all her being that he would love her then.

  He pulled the blue shirt from the waistband of her jeans and dropped it on the floor, and then his dark warm hands found the catch of her lacy bra between her breasts and opened it.

  Johnny closed his eyes and dragged in a shaking breath, and the warmth of his hands cupped her breasts and the heat of his mouth was a caress, and she had waited so long for this. A long sob of need came from her throat, and Johnny looked into her eyes and smiled as though he were on the rack.

  "You, too," she whispered in discovery, although she should have known.

  He smiled and brushed her cheek with his fingers. "Every day," he said quietly. "Every hour. Every minute."

  It had been like that for her, too, though she had tried her best to conquer it. She realized with a dim foreboding that after today she would have to start all over again with a broken heart. She wondered where she would get the strength to bear it again.

  He slipped her bra off her shoulders and let it fall to the floor, and then, as though this were some kind of torture test, he let go of her and bent to pull off her soaking shoes and socks. Over his head she gazed out at the increasing fury of the storm that smashed in angry gusts against the trees and clawed vainly at the house. The icy rain drove against the broad expanse of glass in bursts of a frenzy that was almost frightening, as though she were out there in the storm, as though she were in danger from it.

  The cold clammy denim of her jeans slid down her thighs then, and she was naked. Her hair was cold on her scalp and her back, and droplets of icy water dripped from it. In spite of the warmth fro
m the stove, she shivered. Johnny took a small towel from a drawer and massaged her head dry, then took another and wrapped her head in it.

  It was slow torture, the waiting.

  Johnny's warmth enveloped her at last, and he lifted her up in his arms and bent to kiss her.

  Neither of them spoke. There was no need for speech. This had been inevitable from the moment Smith walked in the door. Johnny turned to carry her to his room, knowing that she had no protest to make.

  ***

  She lay against his chest and gave herself up to the feeling of rightness. For a long moment she listened to the rain. She would have to pay for this, she knew, but not now. She would pay tomorrow.

  Johnny stroked a tendril of hair from her forehead, and she lifted her head to smile at him. Their lovemaking had been burningly tender, a gentle giving and taking that made her lose herself, made her deaf to the voice that warned her not to give too much. She had given him everything, except the words. She had not said "I love you", but he must have felt her love, he must have heard it in her loving cries.

  ''Why don't you want me to build a house for your father?" he asked softly. Her heart contracted.

  ''Do I have to spell it out?" she wailed. "Don't you know?" He shook his head, and for the first time since she had known him his eyes were afraid of what she could do to him.

  ''Johnny," she said helplessly. "Can't you understand? You'd be there all the time, you'd be a business associate, at his parties. He'd talk about you...and the house—Johnny, I'd never be able to visit him without remembering."

  It would kill her. She could live without Johnny if she could create her own little world around her, a world in which no one said his name. How could she survive a life where her father lived in a house Johnny's hands had shaped?

  "It would kill me," she whispered. In the silence she could feel his heart beating.

  "You told me you once wanted a house of my design," he said, and there was a sound of pain in his throat that she did not understand. "When your father approached me I thought it was...I thought you were behind it."