* * *
It seemed a long time later that she struggled to her feet and went in to run a bath. Afterwards she didn't bother to dry herself, just wrapped up in her black robe and went into the kitchen to make fresh coffee.
She wouldn't give up. Tomorrow she would find the energy and determination to start again with Jake. But tonight she didn't feel anything but exhausted pain. Tomorrow there would be hope, but tonight she felt only a bleak empty hopelessness.
She took her coffee into the sitting room and sat there, not thinking, not feeling, letting the time go by. At two she heard the beginnings of a cold driving rain against the windows. At three it stopped.
In the silence of the street then, she heard the slam of a car door, then the front door, then her own door downstairs. She heard the sound of a footfall on a step in unbelieving wonder, set down her cold cup and stood.
Jake was in the doorway then, damp and dark, his eyes haunted, his wet hair plastered blackly to his head.
"You were right. I was wrong," he said. "I'll take whatever love you have to give, for as long as you want to give it."
She flew to him across the room.
* * *
Jake leaned over her, his strong hands encircling her head as though he would crush her with love. "I love you," he said in a voice raw with emotion.
He ran his hand through the tangled russet curls spread out on the pillow. "Just looking at your hair like that twists my heart," he whispered, as though every word were a torment, and Vanessa felt the answering twist in her own heart. His lovemaking had been fierce and tender, knowing and loving all at once, and if she lived forever she knew she would never be free of him. He had touched a deep stormy need in her that made her feel like a child with only one light in the universe to guide her.
"I have always loved you," she said. "How could I have done it? How could I do that to us, knowing what we had?"
Jake closed his eyes. "Don't regret it. Don't regret anything. We're here now, that's all that matters."
"You didn't lie to me, did you?" she said, for now he was the Jace she remembered. For the first time in ten years he had made love to her not in anger but in love, and this man she would have recognized blind. "You really did die, in a way, when you got my letter."
"It felt like dying," he said. "I came out of surgery and I felt like someone else. I knew that no one could ever hurt me again."
Vanessa breathed sharply. "And no one has?" she asked, horrified, for if no one had had the power to hurt him no one had had the power to make him happy, either.
"No one did," he agreed.
She said, "You had a far worse ten years than I did."
"I thought I was happy," Jake mused. "I was in control, and I liked that. I told myself I was over you, and if no woman ever made me feel more than a detached desire I was lucky." He laughed self-mockingly. "I told myself that all I wanted to do was make money—and never let myself see that that was only in order to prove something to you. It wasn't till I saw you again that I began to understand I had been driven to make money for the day when I could stand in front of you and say, 'You chose wealth over me, look what a mistake you made.'"
She shook her head helplessly. "I'm sorry."
"My heart nearly kicked me to death when I saw you across the room—in my hotel, and all I could think of was taking you to bed in my hotel and reminding you of what you'd given up... and when I saw that you didn't even remember me, I—"
She put her hand to his lips. "But I did remember you, and I still loved you—I just didn't recognize you. You were changed, so cold and cynical. The Jace I remembered was—"
He nodded. "Yes, and suddenly I was no longer sure who would be in control when you found out who I was—and before I knew what I was doing I was killing off Jace Conrad."
"And nearly killing me off in the process," Vanessa reminded him.
"Afterwards I felt like a fool—but I wanted you so badly I'd have... I was stuck with the role I'd given myself. Jake might not have a very good chance with you, but it was better than Jace's chances, once you knew how I'd been lying. I made mistakes—I kept wondering when you would get it."
"Inside, I did," she said. "I dreamed the truth once, but the message never got through. It didn't help that everyone calls you Jake—when did you change your name?"
"As a kid I was called both Jake and Jace—my father usually called me Jake. He'd wanted to name me Jacob, but my mother chose Jason. Most of my friends called me Jace. After the operation I told them not to."
There was too much there to reply to. Vanessa looked at him helplessly, and he smiled at her and kissed her, no longer blaming her for his pain.
"I thought I'd stopped hating you long ago, but suddenly I was acting like a crazy man—I no longer knew whether I wanted you or... revenge. But when you accepted the job, there was no going back. I was out of control."
His face was dark against the pillow, his eyes haunted with memory. "I wanted you to what I'd suffered, but I knew I couldn't break your heart. I thought—" He broke off. "I thought business was your weak spot, that that would hurt you worse than anything."
With a pang Vanessa realized that in a way he still could not believe in her love. "No," she whispered urgently, bending to press a kiss against his throat, his chin, his beautiful mouth. "You were my weak spot. You are now. You will be forever."
"The night we first made love I was shocked by the strength of my own need," he said. "I wanted to end the game there, tell you everything. But then how would I have kept you here? If I told you before the company was up and running, before there was anything to keep you here, I was sure you'd run away."
She smiled and shook her head. How to express how impossible that would have been? "So you ran away instead."
He lifted a strand of her hair and kissed it. "You called it charity," he said. "And I knew you were right. I was as close to begging as I've ever been in my life."
Vanessa blinked against the sudden hot prickle of tears. "You never had to beg for me," she said. "I'm the one who's begging—I have been since the first day."
There was silence as Jake stroked the long naked curve of her back, as if to reassure himself that she was really there.
"Yes," he said. "You knew from the first what was important, but I was too pig-headed to listen. I wanted to hurt you the way I'd been hurt. How can I blame you for ten years after the unnecessary hell I've made out of theses past months? After the way I nearly turned ten years into forever?"
Vanessa closed her eyes and stretched out beside him. "Thank God you didn't," she said softly, and it was a prayer.
There was a bird singing in the tree outside her window.
"It's morning already," she said, her head on his chest, where she could hear the strong reassuring thud of his heart and the resonance of his deep voice. "We've been awake all night."
His hand clasped her head. "Your hair is even more beautiful in the morning sun," he said.
She ran a hand over his chest, following the hard curves. "Would you like some breakfast?"
"All right," he agreed. They sat up slowly and looked into each other's eyes, and Jake rubbed his hand over his rough chin.
Vanessa unearthed a baggy old bathrobe that she had inherited years ago from Colin. It had once been chocolate terry cloth but was now so faded and worn that both colour and material were indeterminate.
"Is this the best you can do for your men?" Jake teased. He was tying the worn belt as they moved to the kitchen, and she sent him a flicker from her eyes.
"Nobody's ever objected," she said, and he caught her by the shoulders and kissed her.
"Witch," he said.
Vanessa filled the kettle and plugged it in. "Did you know that Americans in general don't use electric kettles?" she asked. "Do you think that's a market worth tapping?"
Jake sat at the kitchen table, reaching for a peach from the bowl of fruit in the centre. He raised an eyebrow. "Is that so?" he asked. He bit into the flesh of
the peach. The juice sprayed his mouth as he looked at her, and her stomach turned over, because she knew he was thinking of how his mouth had tasted her in the night. "I like your business head. If you ever decide to give up design you can come and work with me at Concorp."
She smiled, pouring boiling water over the coffee in two white mugs. The scent of it filled the air, and she wanted to laugh in her delight at the morning. "I'm not giving up Number 24," she said, shaking her head. "I promised to make you a profit, and I'm going to."
Jake finished off the peach and spooned sugar into his coffee. "Not much doubt of that," he said. He smiled and leaned back into his chair, and he was as relaxed here in her home as she had always imagined him. Already, she could see, this was more comfortable to him than the penthouse suite.
"You know," he said, as though her thought had communicated to him, "the lease on the apartment downstairs is up for renewal next year." He looked around appreciatively. "Would you like to renovate the place, turn it back into a single-family home?"
"And live here?" Vanessa breathed. "I'd love it, Jake. I want to make a home for you that's really home....I could do it, here."
He looked at her for a long silent moment, taking it in.
"Yes," he said. "Yes."
"When I told you why I married Larry," she asked later, over breakfast, "did that change anything for you?"
"I was angry enough to kill," Jake answered. "I don't know why. Angry at everybody—the Standishes, Larry, you, myself.... "
"I waited for you all that weekend," she remembered with a pang. "I was so sure you would come back, but—That's when I started to realize the danger I was in. I knew I had to protect myself—from whatever was in that file. And then I discovered how much you really hated me."
Jake leaned across the table to lift her chin and kissed her lightly. "No."
"You wouldn't have sent me to prison, would you?" she whispered.
"There never was any question that I could. Nothing that you were doing was illegal, and I never even thought of it. But the idea seemed to scare you more than the threat of bad publicity."
She closed her eyes. "It did that."
"It did more than that—it killed your love." he said. "It wasn't till I'd finally succeeded in what I set out to do that I realized it wasn't what I wanted. I didn't want you hating me, I wanted you to love me." He lifted a lock of her hair and bent to kiss it where it lay across his palm.
"I wanted you to want my touch the way you had before... I had to make you say my lovemaking wasn't repulsive to you. Afterwards, lying there, I finally accepted that I loved you, that I'd never stopped loving you—when it was too late."
Vanessa sucked in her breath. "Was that when?"
"That's when," he said, his eyes going dark. "I was lying there absorbing the truth about my feelings, and then suddenly you were up collecting all those papers you'd torn up. And I thought, that's fair, I'm learning I love her just when I've finally turned whatever love she had for me into hate."
"No," was all she could say, thinking of how she had screamed at him, while he had been coming to the understanding she had been waiting for. "Not hate," she whispered softly. "I never hated you."
He laced his fingers through her hair again. "Yes, you did," he said calmly.
Tears spangled her lashes. How much more easily he could accept hate than love. "But you came back," she reminded him. "After all that, you came back."
"I wanted to tell you I was giving up, that I wasn't going to use any of the control I had over you and Number 24. I wanted to tell you I loved you—but you... it was already too late. And I heard myself threatening you with arrest to make you listen—and that's when I knew how hopeless it was. I was so obsessed with you I couldn't act rationally. I hadn't from day one. I'd lost you again, this time by my own hand."
A tear fell on his hand and he jerked in surprise. "Are you crying?" he asked, a note of pain in his voice. "Oh, my God, my darling, don't cry." He stood then and pulled her in to his warm broad chest. "I'm sorry I hurt you, don't cry...."
She said, "I'm not crying for me, Jake, I'm crying for you."
His chest heaved in a shaken laugh that might have been almost a sob. "For me? My darling, why are you crying for me?" as though he could never need anyone's tears.
"Because you've been so hurt," she said gently, her arms going around him, her face burying itself in his neck, and for an unguarded moment he went still. "But I'll make it all right," she promised in a shaky voice. "I love you. I'll never hurt you again. I'll love you forever."
His arms enclosed her in warmth. "No," he said. "I'll love you forever. You'll love me for as long or as short a time as you can, my love. It doesn't matter. Don't shed any tears for me, Vanessa. I'm happier than I know what to do with if I only have this for a month."
Vanessa drew a shaky breath, understanding for the first time the nature of the decision he had come to out there in the cold rain. She pushed back against his arms and looked her love up into his eyes.
"You have me forever," she said tenderly. "I'll spend my life proving that, but you may as well begin believing it now. I love you, and I'll love you forever, and I'll still be loving you when you're telling me to stop."
Jake's hold on her tightened and he lifted a gentle hand to her chin. His slow crooked smile spread over his face, the look in his eyes making her heart beat faster.
"I'll never tell you to stop loving me," he said, and bent to give her the promise with his lips.
Epilogue
It was snowing in New York, a softly whirling snow that disappeared as soon as it touched the pavement. Vanessa snuggled down into the warmth of the wild mink coat that Jake had insisted on because it matched her hair. She was clinging to his arm, laughing up into his face, as he stopped and reached to open a famous door.
"Is this where we're going?" she asked, her voice climbing in surprise. "Cartier's?"
"This is where we're going," said Jake. And suddenly she remembered that ten-year-old promise, and she laughed delightedly up into his face.
"Hello," she smiled winningly at the impeccably dressed man who approached them.
"Good afternoon, madame. Good afternoon, Mr. Conrad. May I wish you a Merry Christmas?" he said. "Is there something we can show you?"
They wished him a Merry Christmas, and Jake said, "We're looking for something very special to mark ten years."
Expressing his congratulations, the man led them to a counter where a salesman was carefully adjusting a display of glittering jewellery.
"Ten years," repeated the salesman when he had been informed of their errand. "Not all marriages last so long these days, do they? You must feel very fortunate."
Jake was smiling down into her eyes. "Very fortunate," he said.
The man laid a tray on the counter in front of them, an array of the most beautiful rings she had ever seen.
"They're all too beautiful!" Vanessa said. "You choose, Jake!"
"Take off your gloves, darling." He lifted a ring on which a rich dark emerald was clustered with fiery diamonds.
Her left hand already sparkled with the diamond and warm gold of her six-week-old engagement and wedding rings. Jake caught her hand in his as she pulled off her glove, and dropped a kiss on her fingers. "These were for the first ten years," he reminded her softly, then picked up her right hand and slipped the emerald ring down over her knuckle. "This one is for forever."
"Forever," she echoed, smiling up into the dark eyes that held no trace of remembered pain; and she knew that he believed it as she did, and happiness exploded in her heart and sang through her blood in a deafening triumphant chorus.
Forever.
The End
Page forward for an excerpt from
SEASON OF STORM
Excerpt from
Season of Storm
by
Alexandra Sellers
Prologue
The Watcher was still, watching. A perfect, vital stillness held him, as tho
ugh a statue pulsed with life. His skin was the colour of golden new-cut trees—cedar or hemlock; and his high-bridged nose and wide prominent cheekbones gave his face a cast that men of other races would call noble. His eyes, like his hair, were black, and no emotion troubled their gaze as he watch what he watched.
The Watcher stood on a low promontory of rocks above an ocean, and what he watched was in the water, below and beyond him: a woman, struggling against the sea. She was naked, and her long wet hair was the colour of foxes, or of fire.
Something flickered behind the Watcher's eyes: regret that the woman would die. Never had he seen hair of that colour; and her skin was pale. He would be sorry to kill the woman.
It was evident that the waves would not kill her. The woman struggled valiantly to keep her head above the water, and although she was exhausted, the tide was with her.
The gods, too, were with her: in all this rocky coast she was being carried towards the flat sandy stretch of shore below th epromontory on which the Watcher stood. She would not be broken against rocks.
When the water was a little less than waist deep the woman found her feet and stood up out of the water. Her long hair fell dirpping down her back and over one full breast; water droplets clung to her chilled skin.
She was exhausted but triumphant, and the Watcher felt a distant admiration for her, as he might for one of the Seimmers evading his trap, or the bear his arrow. He wondered fleetingly if she were one of the Swimmers, taking human form. In that case perhaps he ought not to kill her....
The woman, nearly out of the water, paused for a moment, lifted her face to the heat of the sun and gasped deeply for air. Now that her goal was so close exhaustion gripped her more surely.
She moved forward again through the breaking waves, the water alternately pushing and pulling at her strong thighs. For all her exhaustion the motion of her naked hips was smooth, the glistening sway of her sily-wet breasts hypnotic.
She was beautiful. When she stepped onto sand above the water's reach her triumph was overcome by fatigue, and she dropped to the sand and lay gratefully drinking in the heat of the sun with her body. Her long hair was splayed out beneath her, and her body heaved as she gasped for breath.
Fire in the Wind Page 28