Fire in the Wind Read Online Free PDF Page A

couldn't break.
    "You're sorry, are you?" she asked, raising one eyebrow and, except for the tingling sensation his nearness had caused in her neck and breast and arm, feeling much more like herself and in control than she had last night.
    "Yes," he said. "Of course I am."
    "So apologize now," she returned. "I don't need food to make me susceptible to apology for ugly behaviour."
    Other people in the row were having trouble getting out past her, and he took her arm over the chair backs and led her to the aisle.
    "Ah," he said, "but I need good food to drown out the flavour of the crow I'm going to be eating." He smiled his slightly crooked smile at her, and his eyes for a brief moment held the warm intensity of Jace's gaze. "Humour me," he said quietly. "I want to see you."
    She found that she simply could not say no. However much her reason told her to stay away from a man who so obviously had an axe to grind with her, her emotions did not want to obey. Talking to Jake was a bittersweet reminder of Jace that she could not leave alone. She looked him in the eye, tasting the sensation of logic losing the battle to emotion.
    "I've heard that British Columbia salmon is a taste not to be missed," she smiled with a sudden exhilarating feeling of devil-may-care.
    He gave her an admiring smile for the manner of her capitulation. "Nine-thirty?" he asked.
    This evening's showing of day dresses was scheduled to end at eight-thirty, but it would be later than that before she could get away to her room to change. He had judged it nicely. Vanessa nodded, and in answer to an imperative wave from a friend across the room she moved away, uncomfortably aware that she didn't want to.
    Colin James was a designer with whom she had studied at school; now he designed medium-priced sweaters for a New York firm. They had remained friendly over the years, following the changes in each other's careers, talking shop over innumerable coffees in the little greasy spoon that was midway between their two places of work.
    "Super stuff, darling!" Colin said now, kissing her cheek. "I especially liked the last two numbers. Tell me how you squeezed them by the Philistine."
    They always called their current employer the Philistine because, to a greater or lesser extent, the age-old conflict between business and art was always present between manufacturer and designer. Colin's eye was excellent. He had unerringly picked the designs she had had to wage a battle royal with Tom to get included in the fall line. Vanessa smiled delightedly.
    "They'll be the better sellers, won't they?" she said. "But it was a battle. I only half convinced him to go for fall colours. Tom's convinced that if they buy blue in New York they'll buy blue everywhere."
    It was a fact of fashion that generally Canadian women preferred the soft warm beiges, reds and browns of fall to the colder blues their sisters south of the border liked to wear, but Tom, attempting to break into the Canadian market for the first time with this trade show, didn't like change, and he didn't like to be told. Only the two outfits that he did not like were being offered in the full range of those autumn colours, and Tom confidently expected that those designs would be ignored by the major Canadian buyers. Vanessa was aware that Tom had finally given way to her ideas only because in some odd way he wanted her to fail.
    "You're going to fall flat on your face, Vanessa," he had said at last, capitulating. "Flat on your face." And the tone in his voice had told her Tom would like the taste of that.
    "Good for you," said Colin, who had given her this pointer on the Canadian market. Colin's firm had been marketing in Canada for some time. "Am I going to see you tomorrow afternoon?"
    "For the sweater show?" she asked, and at his nod, "I'll be there. Are you coming tonight?"
    In the push of the crowd they moved closer to the bar, and, deep in their shop-talk, obtained coffee. When they had moved away to a more open space