Fire in the Wind

by Alexandra Sellers

  She smiled. "Yes, I'm listening, Lou, but please don't try to tell me not to invest in my own company when the chance comes along."

  "There, you see? You've made up your mind already! Now, Vanessa—" His voice was too reasoned and calm, and it grated on her own bubbling delight.

  She said, marvelling, "Lou, how do you live without ever letting excitement get to you? You're sitting there now trying to calculate and plan and predict something new and exciting out of existence!" She bubbled into irrepressible laughter, laying her hand on his arm. "Isn't there a law somewhere against killing anticipation with common sense?"

  Lou looked at her, shaking his head a little in wonder. "You amaze me," he said slowly. "You never cease to amaze me. You're twenty-nine years old and you're off to a new country, a new life, and the kind of business challenge that is more of a risk these days than it's ever been. Aren't you afraid at all?"

  Vanessa laughed again. "Lou, what is there to be afraid of? If I fail at this I'll get another dream. I'm not going to die. Anyway, I'm not going to fail. I'm going to succeed. I'm not insanely ambitious, you know. I don't want to be Yves St. Laurent or Coco Chanel. I want to make a small comfortable name for myself in a small comfortable pond. I'll be happy if middle-income women in ordinary shops learn to look for my tag on a garment and feel they can trust it."

  Lou smiled reluctantly, still watching her intently. "I wonder," he said quietly, "if I had gone after you and married you when I wanted to, would you have changed me, or would I have changed you?"

  Vanessa's eyes became hooded and dropped to her plate. Oh, Lou, grow up, she thought in irritated exasperation.

  They had no dessert; Lou's health and fitness regime was very strict. Over coffee, which Lou drank decaffeinated, he handed her back the contract. He seemed to be looking at her with a new respect, and Vanessa wondered with idle amusement whether that was because of her intrepidity or because Jake Conrad had put a quarter-of-a-million-dollar price tag on her head. She suddenly wanted to describe this scene to Jake Conrad. He would understand, he would laugh with her, she knew that.

  "If you ever need any legal advice," Lou was saying as they stood to go, "give me a call and I'll find someone out there for you. Don't just go to some fresh-faced, hole-in-the-wall kid. Remember that you'll be taking on a corporation that can pay for the best talent around."

  I'll be taking on Jake Conrad, Vanessa thought, and discovered that the thought gave her pleasure.

  * * *

  She arrived in Vancouver on Canada Day, and she learned with a little shock that the country was barely fifteen years past its hundredth birthday. The colonies north of the forty-ninth parallel hadn't achieved self-determination until the time of the American Civil War—nearly a hundred years after their sisters to the south. Vanessa wondered what had caused this enormous division in loyalties in the colonies, allowing one half of the continent to remain so loyal to the mother country that, although independent, it was still in the British Commonwealth, and the other half to sever all ties.

  Oddly, on such a day, every flag she saw on the way to the city was at half-mast. After the car had passed the fourth one, Vanessa leaned forward and said to the chauffeur, whom Jake had sent to meet her, "Why are all the flags at half-mast?"

  "Terry died on Sunday, ma'am," he said. "They're flying like that all over the country."

  The only Terry Vanessa had ever heard of was the actress Ellen Terry, and she doubted very much if Ellen Terry had died on Sunday. Feeling more than usually awkward about her ignorance of this country, she said softly, "I'm sorry, I don't recognize the name. Who was Mr. Terry?"

  "Not Mr. Terry," said the chauffeur. "That's his first name. Terry Fox, his name is, but I guess everybody in the country called him Terry. Sometimes the newspapers call him Mr. Fox."

  Vanessa wrinkled her brow, beginning to imagine that she had heard the name somewhere. An ex-prime minister, perhaps?

  "He was a young kid who got cancer in his leg—they had to amputate at mid-thigh. He was just an ordinary kid, about twenty, you know; they say there wasn't anything special about him. But he didn't like the idea that he was supposed to give up on life, that cancer was supposed to take the stuffing out of him. And he said he was going to run right across Canada—5,000 miles—on his artificial leg to raise money for cancer research. He trained for months out here; he was a Port Coquitlam boy, that's not far from Vancouver—and then he flew to the east coast and dipped that artificial leg of his into the Atlantic Ocean and set off running."

  "Goodness," she breathed.

  "At first no one gave him a blind bit of notice. No one gave a damn. Here was this kid on an artificial leg running across the country at a rate of twenty-six miles each and every day, and he was lucky to make page ten."

  "Twenty-six miles a day?" repeated Vanessa. "But that's—that's the distance of the Boston marathon, isn't it?"

  "You bet," said the driver. His voice had an odd quality that was a mixture of pride, anger, sorrow and something else she could not pinpoint but which might have been a kind of exaltation. "You bet. He ran a marathon every damn day for weeks without anybody caring. Even the Canadian Cancer Society wasn't too keen on what he was doing, by all reports. And he was doing it for them—his goal was a million dollars.

  "Well, he got in around Toronto there, and all of a sudden the country started to sit up and take notice. And the next thing any of us knew, we had us a real live Canadian hero who was making us feel as though we had something after all. He was big news, he was everybody's brother or son, he was the gutsiest person this country has seen for a long, long time. Here we all were, whining about Quebec separatism and the domestic price of oil and the economy and feeling as though we were hardly a country at all. And this young kid with no special gifts was out there fighting cancer in a way nobody in history ever fought it.

  "Maybe it doesn't make sense to an outsider, I don't know. But I'm telling you that the whole nation fell in love with that boy, and because of that, we felt united for once.

  "And then, just as the country was building up to a real frenzy of hero worship, we turned on our TV sets one day to see Terry on a stretcher, swallowing hard and telling the country that the cancer had reappeared in his lungs. He'd run just halfway across the country."

  "Oh, how awful!" whispered Vanessa.

  "Yeah. Well, that was last September, and we've been waiting and watching and hoping... the whole country. People wrote songs and poems about him, and school kids wrote essays on 'Heroism' and 'Terry Fox' and every other title you can think of, I guess—but mostly we felt angry that cancer was going to beat Terry Fox after all. It just didn't seem fair.

  "Well, as I said, that was last September, and since then Terry's Marathon of Hope has raised nearly twenty-five million dollars for cancer—over a dollar for every man, woman and child in Canada. In your country that'd be the equivalent of about two hundred and fifty million dollars."

  "An enormous achievement," agreed Vanessa.

  "Well, he died on Sunday, though he must have had more people praying for him than anyone else in the world this decade. Twenty-two years old. And just about everybody in the country feels as though he's lost his nearest and dearest." He paused, and coughed a little. "I guess it doesn't sound much in the telling; it seems strange even to me that so many people could love a stranger like that, and I guess you think it's kind of odd...."

  "It's a very moving story," Vanessa replied.

  "Well, better you know what it's about," said the driver, regaining a matter-of-fact tone in his voice, "or you'll be wondering what's wrong with us—he's in the papers and on TV so much I guess World War III might displace him, but not much else. The funeral's tomorrow. You won't hear anything except the story of Terry till it's over. Here we are now."

  The car pulled up in front of Jake Conrad's hotel, and Vanessa looked out at its beautiful glass entrance with a feeling of something like homecoming.

  Was Jake somewhere behind those walls,
waiting for her? Was he going to welcome her to her new country, her new home?

  Her new country. Vanessa was not yet a landed immigrant in Canada, but knowing the trouble that foreigners experienced immigrating to the States, she marvelled at how quickly and easily Canada had accepted her. Three weeks had not been enough time for her to go through the regular immigration channels, but a request for rush handling from Conrad Corporation to the Canadian immigration authorities in New York had resulted in her being granted a six-month temporary employment authorization. Now, at her leisure during that time, she would be able to drop down to Seattle or another American city and apply at the embassy there to re-enter Canada as a landed immigrant.

  Vanessa felt as though she had taken a giant step, and as she stood in the bright warm sunshine and looked around, she badly wanted a friendly familiar face to come and say, "Welcome."

  "So you came," said a deep voice behind her, with a hint of antagonism that startled her. "I wondered if you would."

  She whirled. Of course, the only face that was really familiar to her in Vancouver was Jake Conrad's, so it must have been his she wanted to see. If at this moment he didn't seem entirely friendly and wasn't saying the words she'd imagined, still, her heart beating with a sudden surge of happy surprise, Vanessa told herself, it'll do.

  She smiled up at him. "But I told you I was coming," she protested mildly. "Just yesterday."

  He shrugged. "You don't exactly have a history of keeping your word."

  Vanessa sucked in a hurt breath. He was referring to her promise to visit his cousin at Easter all those years ago, and that was unfair. She felt as though a cloud had passed across the sun.

  "Look," she said. "Let's get something straight between us." She glanced around, but the chauffeur was on his way into the building with her bags; they were alone. "I made a mistake ten years ago, and I spent ten years paying for it. But Jace—"

  A harshly intent look came into his eyes. "Ten years paying?" he repeated hoarsely. "Damn you, you keep saying things like that. What the devil do you mean?"

  Coolly she ignored the interruption. "But Jace made some mistakes, too, and so, I guess, did fate. And I don't—"

  "What mistakes did Jace make?"

  Vanessa took a breath. "He should never have left me behind," she said. "He should have taken me with him then, when he came home at Christmas. I would have come—I was waiting for him to ask. Later, it was easy to believe he hadn't loved me as much as he'd said, that it was just a wild kind of dream."

  "That's pretty harsh," said Jake, his voice tight with strain. "He was still banged up from the accident; he might have been disfigured for life, for all he knew."

  "Well, so what?" asked Vanessa rudely, the pain of not being asked ten years ago suddenly swamping her again. "He couldn't have thought that would matter to me."

  "I—"

  She raised a protesting hand to cut him off. "Jake, it's ancient history. And it has, forgive me, nothing whatever to do with you. And I just don't want to be constantly reminded of Jace like this. Can't you understand? I loved him. I've carried him around in my heart for ten years, but he's dead! He's dead, and I want to forget him!" To her surprise her voice broke and hot tears suddenly pricked her eyes. Just as Jake reached for her, she turned away to hide her eyes; his arm fell to his side.

  "Vanessa, listen, I—"

  "Your room's ready for you, Mrs. Standish. They've got your key at the desk." The chauffeur had come back through the doors and with a brief nod to both of them was moving toward the car.

  "Thank you," Vanessa said, so faintly that he could not have heard it. With an effort she raised her voice and called more firmly, "Thank you."

  As the car pulled away a pair of taxis pulled up, and Vanessa and Jake were suddenly engulfed in a small chattering crowd. As the tourists moved into the hotel lobby, Vanessa and Jake followed silently in their wake.

  "Did you have lunch on the plane?" Jake asked after she had checked in, and when she looked at him there was no sign of any emotion aroused by the conversation they had had outside.

  "Yes," she said. It was a lie; she had been too tense with expectation to eat. But she didn't want to have to eat lunch with Jake Conrad. She wanted to get away from him.

  "Good," he responded. "Why don't you go to your room to freshen up a bit and meet me in my suite in about half an hour?"

  Oh, damn. Her imp prompted her to say something like, "Isn't this a holiday in Canada? And aren't I a new Canadian?" but common sense prevailed. He was her financial backer now, not Jace's cousin, and it couldn't hurt to impress him with her eagerness to get started on this new enterprise. That was no lie; she was eager. She just didn't want any more of Jake Conrad's disturbing company at the moment.

  And when, half an hour later, she dutifully presented herself at the door of his suite, she got a strong impression that Jake didn't really want to see her, either. He answered the door with his shirt sleeves rolled up, his hair ruffled and a sheaf of papers in his hand. He had forgotten her existence, and the sight of her now was unwelcome: Vanessa knew that as though she had been told.

  If she said, "Why don't we leave this till tomorrow?" she was quite sure he would agree, but perversely, Vanessa suddenly wanted to be in his company, to make him notice her.

  She said instead, "You look busy. What are you working on this time?" and moved past him into the room as he automatically stepped to one side.

  There were papers everywhere; he must be one of the untidiest businessmen she had ever met. On the sofa there was room for only one person to sit; on both sides of this clear space was paperwork, and paper was littered along the length of the coffee table in front of it. A glass of whiskey sat atop a pile of what might be company reports. Vanessa eyed the room in amusement.

  "Ever been married, Jake?" she asked lightly.

  "No," he answered briefly, moving over to his drinks cabinet. "Drink?"

  "Sherry, please," she said. "Your secretary must be a brave woman."

  "Must she?" He spoke coolly, almost rudely; for some reason he was nettled by her—by her mere presence or by her attitude, she couldn't tell. But she knew she wanted to continue to nettle him.

  "I'll bet you're the sort of man who demands that someone find a file that turns out to have been sitting on his own desk the whole time." Smiling, she lifted some papers out of the armchair that sat at right angles to the sofa, placed them on the floor and sank into it.

  Jake Conrad was in no mood for her lightly mocking humour. With cool, hooded eyes he handed her a glass of sherry, then slid his hands into his pockets and stood looking down at her. "Whatever the virtues and qualities of my employees, they have at least one thing in common," he said. "They do not engage in character assassination to my face."

  Vanessa blinked. That was pretty strong. She couldn't tell whether he was joking or not, but instinctively she felt that he was really trying to cow her. She had no intention of being cowed her first day—at any time, in fact—and the sooner Jake Conrad learned that, the better.

  "But then, I'm not, strictly speaking, one of your employees, am I?" she pointed out reasonably. "My contract is with Conrad Corporation—to start and operate a business... without taking orders from anyone."

  Her heart was beating in frightened thuds, as it always did when she was faced with this kind of challenge. The last time it had beaten like this was when she had said to Tom Marx, "I quit."

  She looked up at Jake now and remembered how he had engineered that unnecessary bridge-burning confrontation, and suddenly she was afraid. Perhaps, after all, the contract wasn't as sound as she'd thought. Since she'd given Lou very little time to judge, it was possible there was some loophole he had missed. Perhaps Jake Conrad could fire her with impunity, for something as ridiculous as insubordination....

  "Which reminds me," she added before he could speak, "my lawyer says I should have a look at the debenture agreement under which the corporation is putting up the capital."

  The
tension went out of Jake's body as he turned to move around the coffee table to his seat on the sofa among the papers, and Vanessa thought that he must have been joking when he challenged her on character assassination. She found herself relaxing by degrees.

  "You'd better speak to Howard about that," Jake said carelessly, throwing the sheaf of papers he'd been carrying down beside him. "He's handling all the minor legal details."

  A smile played involuntarily over her lips as all the tense wariness left her body. Of course there were no loopholes. He wouldn't be reacting like this if there were. But the fear of the unknown was bound to manifest itself in odd ways, and everything about her future was unknown right now.

  "Are we going to drink to the success of Modish Operandi?" she asked, raising her glass.

  Jake picked up his glass and leaned back against the sofa. "Is that the name of the new line?" he asked with interest.

  "It's one of the finalists," she admitted. "I haven't made up my mind yet."

  "Mmm-hmm," said Jake. "You've been working already, I see. What else have you been doing?"

  "Well, not too much. I asked Robert to commission a market research report for me from a local company and to look around for a production manager, because I'm going to need a good one."

  Jake was watching her, a slight smile playing on his sensual, strongly drawn mouth. But his eyes were narrowed consideringly. "Very good," he said. "And what else?"

  "Mostly I've been designing a spring line. I was afraid I'd be so wrapped up in business details from the moment I got here that my creativity would go out the window."

  Jake's look now was one of glinting admiration. "Now, how did you find time to start designing a spring line?" he demanded. "You only had—"

  "Well, really, it was more a question of getting some ideas down on paper before I lost them," Vanessa explained.

  "On Tom Marx's time?"

  "Oh, no. No, I left TopMarx the day I resigned. The day you phoned. So I had two free weeks to get organized."