Summer Storm

by Letitia Healy

  Summer Storm

  By

  Letitia Healy

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  "I've Never Seen So Many Stars!"

  Simon laughed. "I promised you a view."

  The lights of the city glowed along the horizon. Jane watched that glow and the thought of how far she had come from her old life in the city overwhelmed her, and she shivered. Simon immediately put his arm around her shoulders. She stiffened automatically, but he pulled her closer.

  "Come now, Jane, don't be like that. I didn't bring you out here to catch your death of cold."

  Simon was holding her so tightly that the whole length of her body was pressed against his. The scent of his after shave lotion was intoxicating. Jane was trembling now, but not from the cold…

  LETITIA HEALY was born in Toronto, Canada, and now makes her home in nearby Don Mills. Her love of her homeland and her sensitivity is clearly evident as she weaves a story that will thoroughly delight her Silhouette audience.

  Dear Reader,

  Silhouette Romances is an exciting new publishing series, dedicated to bringing you the very best in contemporary romantic fiction from the very finest writers. Our stories and our heroines will give you all you want from romantic fiction.

  Also, you play an important part in our future plans for Silhouette Romances. We welcome any suggestions or comments on our books, which should be sent to the address below.

  So enjoy this book and all the wonderful romances from Silhouette. They're for you!

  Silhouette Books

  Editorial Office

  47 Bedford Square

  LONDON

  WC1B 3DP

  Grateful acknowledgment is made to

  Dodd, Mead & Co.

  for permission to reprint excerpts of

  'The Call'

  from

  The Collected Poems of Ruppert Brooks,

  copyright © 1915

  Copyright © 1980 by Silhouette Books

  First printing 1980

  ISBN 0-340-26445-4

  Chapter One

  It was one of those perfect, warm May days that make the residents of Southern Ontario forget the interminable harshness of winter, turn their faces to the sun and welcome the season of renewal. But Jane Sullivan's mind was not on the weather. There was little traffic so she looked from time to time at the greening farm fields and the tenderly budding trees stretching to the horizon on either side of the highway, but her glance was absent and the seasonal beauty made little impression. Too much had happened to her too quickly; too much grief, too much change, too many revelations.

  Her beloved father's death had not been unexpected. She had nursed him devotedly and lovingly during the long days of his final illness, refusing, despite his pleadings, to place him in a hospital for the chronically ill, knowing that he wished only to save her from the heartbreak of watching him die, and knowing also how much her constant presence eased his going.

  But even when grief is anticipated, the final blow can be overwhelming. Especially in this case, because she and her father had been so close, because as he had often said with a gentle, touching sorrow, "All we have is each other."

  Jane's memory of her mother was hazy. She could never be sure if the tall, slim, beautiful woman, whose features she conjured up when she tried to remember her, was really her mother or whether she was only recalling a picture she had seen in one of the fairy-tale stories that she had loved so much as a child.

  Jane was only six years old when her mother died, or so she had been told. Again her memory was hazy, but there was an impression, vague and fuzzy, of an aunt, her father's sister, a stern but kindly woman trying to explain to her that her mother had gone to heaven, something about God loving her so much that he had taken her away. This had completely confused Jane, because she had always been told about the goodness of God and if this were true, she could not understand how he could have been so selfish as to take away her mother, whom she knew with the instinctive wisdom of children, she needed so much.

  Her only memory of her father was of a distraught, silent stranger who looked at her without seeing her and who spoke to no one. He never completely recovered from the loss of his wife. Eventually he came out of his dazed grief, but her loss had robbed him of some mysterious, fundamental strength, and during the following seventeen years he turned more and more to Jane for his emotional needs. It had never occurred to either of them that he was doing her a disservice, that instead of sharing the life of her contemporaries, she shared his love for the characters that lived in his beloved books.

  "Do you know why you were named Jane?" he had asked her on her fourteenth birthday when he had presented her with a beautifully bound set of the works of Jane Austen. "You were named after one of my favorite authors, and I hope you will learn to love her as I have."

  Jane was touched, and the remark helped a little to assuage the hurt she had felt just a few weeks before when she had overheard two of her classmates referring to her as "plain Jane." But even at fourteen Jane had had a straightforward honesty with herself, and as she surveyed herself in the mirror on that long ago night of her fourteenth birthday, she had to admit that her tall, coltish figure, her grave, thin face dominated by huge, blue-grey eyes, unruly dark gold hair, bore more resemblance to a "plain Jane" than to the romantic Jane Austen. The "plain Jane" image was something that Jane had never been able to shake. Even when, at the age of sixteen, a minor miracle had occurred and like a butterfly emerging from a chrysalis her slim body had developed voluptuous curves. The delicate bone-structure of her face provided a suitable frame for her remarkable eyes, when with a little practice she had learned to tame the thick, gold hair into a smooth pageboy style, she still considered herself a "plain Jane." Perhaps because a mirror was not enough; she needed the mirror of someone else's approval before she could accept herself for what she was—a beautiful young woman.

  It would never have occurred to her father to remark upon her beauty. If Jane had known the truth at that time perhaps she would have realized that he had come to distrust beauty, and so chose to ignore hers. Perhaps he did notice it and it filled him with fear, fear that she too would be wanted by another and would leave him.

  Jane had left the main highway now and was maneuvering her small car up and down the hilly road and around the tight curves of a remarkably beautiful part of the country. The white criss-cross fences surrounding the sumptuous properties on either side of the road told her that she was in wealthy thoroughbred horse-breeding country. The twists and turns of the road required concentration and she struggled to keep her mind on her driving, trying to shut out that last terrible night of her father's life. His death would have been hard enough to bear, but the last halting words he spoke, just before he lapsed into a coma, were something she was sure she would never be able to come to terms with.

  "Your mother did not die," he had gasped. "She ran away with another professor, a young boy really. His wife committed suicide." Those were his last words to her.

  Jane shivered as she did every time she remembered them. There was no other information. Was her mother still alive? But what difference did it make, she would hardly go searching for her. Her mother's desertion through death had been difficult enough for a six-year-old to comprehend, but the fact that her mother had thought so little of her, that she had gone off and left her,
was almost more than Jane could bear.

  She slowed down as she reached the outskirts of a small town and tried to concentrate on the instructions she had received to find her destination. Too much had happened too soon she wasn't used to a life filled with constant change and upset; her father's career, a professor of English Literature at York University, their small, comfortable bungalow in Mississauga, a suburb of Toronto, her own studies at the university, her post-graduate work and then her years of helping her father with the book he would never finish. This had been an ordered, planned life. Nothing in it had prepared her for this nightmare of death and desertion.

  When a friend of her father's, another English professor, had approached her shortly after the funeral and told her about an interesting job offer, she had agreed to apply for it almost automatically. She knew instinctively that she must get away and start some kind of new life.

  When she was given the name of the man for whom she would work it hadn't registered immediately. When it came to reading, books on the best-seller list were not her cup of tea. But when her father's friend had mentioned that this was the Simon Wade, whose last three books had been made into successful movies, she was taken aback. Doing research for her father's scholarly work was a strange recommendation for the kind of work that would be required of her should she work for Simon Wade. But then there was the other part of the job—cataloging the extensive library that he owned—she would love that part of it. A library, whether public or private, was her favorite habitat.

  The car was climbing the hill leading out of town now and Jane forced herself to concentrate on the directions she had received on the telephone. The voice that had delivered them was deep with an unusual resonance that caught her attention at once, and she had a fleeting thought that it had sounded more like an actor's voice than a writer's.

  "Turn left on Sideroad 50," the voice had said, "then follow that road for one and a half miles. Then, if you look to your right, you will catch sight of a windmill and behind it a house on top of a ridge. The road to the house is steep and winding, so be careful. Now, have you got that?" Jane had been surprised at the severity of tone in the last sentence and had been tempted to answer that she was not an idiot and could follow simple directions, but answered meekly enough that yes, she understood perfectly.

  Now, as she made the turn on to Sideroad 50 she carefully checked her mileage and, despite her concentration on the distance covered, she found herself looking around with pleasure. Surely she thought, this must be the ideal place to live. On either side of the road, gently curving hills, almost like the sensuous curves of a woman's body, were adorned here and there with small copses of trees, tiny evergreens, towering evergreens, maples and birches, the latter just beginning to unfold their tender buds. Fences of every description snaked up and down the hills and in many instances were the only indication that human habitation existed in this Eden. Occasionally she glimpsed a house snuggled dependently against the crest of a hill, each one completely different from its distant neighbour. There were farmhouses that looked ancient; modern, artistically designed homes that blended unobtrusively into their surroundings and even an exquisite little log cabin.

  With regret, Jane brought her attention back to the business of driving and realized she had travelled the prescribed one and a half miles. Glancing to the right, as she had been instructed, she realized that as far as she could see there was no sign of a windmill. She slowed the car to a crawl and continued along for almost half a mile, still without glimpsing her goal. Just ahead there was a turn-off which she decided to take. Perhaps it was necessary to climb a little before she would see the landmark. She drove slowly, climbing steadily, passing more beautiful homes, but after two miles had to admit that she was on the wrong road. She was becoming a little nervous now remembering the tone of voice in which her directions had been delivered and she was already fifteen minutes late for her appointment. She decided that she must have come too far and when she was again on Sideroad 50, she headed back towards the highway, literally crawling now, desperately searching the top of each hill for some sign of a windmill. She was soon at the end of the sideroad, almost back at the highway. A modern bungalow stood just back from the road and Jane decided, like it or not, she would have to admit defeat and use the telephone number that Simon Wade had given her. The couple in the house were cordial and understanding, but that didn't help her feelings when she reached Simon Wade. He acted, she thought, almost as if he had expected her to get lost, and his peremptory, "Stay where you are and I'll come and fetch you," made her feel like a stupid child.

  She hadn't long to wait before a silver-grey Jaguar roared down the road towards her and came to a smooth stop just ahead of where she stood beside her car. She wasn't quite ready for the figure that emerged. She didn't know why she had thought that Simon Wade would be older than he was. Perhaps the sophistication of the one movie she had seen that was based on a book he'd written had prepared her for an aging roué, but the aging process had hardly touched him. He was perhaps thirty-five, and she estimated well over six feet tall, because although she was five feet, seven inches, fairly tall for a girl, he seemed literally to loom over her as he stood looking down at her. His black, black hair, cut rather short for the current styles, ruffled in the spring breeze, and his steely blue eyes, made even bluer by a deep tan, seemed to bore into her very soul. He was slim, very slim, even spare, and his choice of clothes emphasized this. He wore a black turtleneck sweater with tight-fitting jeans and were it not for the broad, powerful shoulders and muscles of his upper arms, obvious under the tight sweater, and the sardonic twist of his finely chiselled mouth, one could have described him as ascetic.

  Jane was completely intimidated by this alien creature standing over her and studying her so intently. Her experience with men until now had included very young, very immature university students, an occasional studious post-graduate student and her father's aging colleagues.

  She was acutely conscious, under his scrutiny, that she was overdressed for the country. She had wanted to make a good impression, to impress her new employer, if that was what he turned out to be, of her efficiency and studiousness. She realized now that her choice of pleated skirt, tailored blouse and blazer and her carefully restrained hair, worn in a prim French knot made her look more at home in a university lecture room than in the casual ease of the Culloden Hills.

  "So, you got lost after all?" the deep, resonant voice was saying. "What happened, were my instructions not explicit enough?"

  Jane cringed from the tone, but managed to answer without allowing her voice to tremble.

  "I can't imagine what happened. I followed the directions explicitly, but I couldn't see a house with a windmill in front anywhere."

  "Well, get in your car and follow me," and he added with a hint of sarcasm, "closely, but not too closely, please."

  She barely had time to start her car before the Jaguar roared off down the road in a cloud of dust. She choked back tears. Since her father's death, tears had always been near the surface, and the coldness of this strange, menacing man was more than enough to bring them out. She angrily brushed them away with one hand, at the same time desperately trying to steer the car around the turns and twists of the narrow dirt road. The silver Jaguar roared on, like a beckoning hand, ahead of her. It passed the road where she had turned off and then she realized, with a quick glance at her mileage indicator, that they were going far beyond the one and a half miles that he had told her. When he finally slowed, after covering a little over three miles, cold anger quickly dried her tears. He was the one who had made the mistake. He was the one who had been careless in giving the directions and she had been made to feel like a little fool when none of it had been her fault.

  "What an arrogant, stupid man he is," she muttered to herself as she turned the small car into the twisting, turning road that served as a driveway to the house on the ridge. At that moment she glanced up and gasped. There at the top of the ridge w
as the windmill, black, stark and incongruous against the deep blue spring sky, and behind it the most beautiful house she had ever seen.

  Chapter Two

  Simon Wade had gone to give his housekeeper instructions about lunch and for the first time since she met him, Jane relaxed a little and gave herself up to the appreciation of her surroundings. Her first glimpse of the house, which had taken her breath away, had made her feel as if she had wandered into a fairy tale. The blending of the modern and the medieval defied any architectural labelling. It was built of rough, textured stone on a long, narrow ridge, the focal point being a round tower at the front of the house, three stories high with a sliding glass door at the front and huge windows placed strategically at frequent intervals all around to let in the optimum of light and a view of the whole countryside.

  The living room, where she now waited, was circular and comprised the first floor of the tower. The walls were white stucco. A gold and brown tweed rug covered the floor. The furniture seemed comfortable and functional; wing chairs on either side of the corner fieldstone fireplace, with a rough-hewn coffee table between. Two high-back loveseats, back to back, one facing the fireplace, one facing the sliding glass door, with a table between, held low, ceramic lamps. Around the walls, between the numerous windows were comfortable, reclining chairs, each supplied with handy tables and lamps. The thought that entered her mind as she surveyed the room was, Someone has gone to a lot of trouble to supply the greatest amount of comfort possible in this room.

  Before entering the house she had noticed that several of the windows on the second and third floors had balconies. Jane guessed these were bedrooms and anyone inhabiting them must feel like God looking down on the universe. From what she'd seen of Simon Wade she could only conclude that this was the effect he was striving for when he built the house.