Fire in the Wind Read Online Free PDF

by a wall, Colin interrupted himself suddenly to say, "Who's the eagle-eyed admirer, darling?"
    "What?" Vanessa asked stupidly.
    "The moody corsair over there who can't take his eyes off you," said Colin, who had a knack for labelling people. "The one you were talking to earlier."
    "Can't take his eyes off me!" she repeated in amazement. "Who...?" She turned her head in the direction Colin was looking and caught Jake Conrad's gaze head-on, getting the full emotional content of it in one stunning blast before he disguised it. Vanessa sucked in her breath in audible dismay—because the look was one of brooding fiery anger, an anger whose heat she could almost feel.
    Jake Conrad didn't look like a man who intended to apologize to her for anything at all.
    * * *
    The evening showing of day dresses was little short of disaster for TopMarx. The order of the showing of the dresses got mixed up; several of Louisa's accessories were almost garishly wrong; and the model also mistakenly came out in Vanessa's best design, which was a size too big for her. She looked like a frump. To Vanessa it all looked very bad indeed, and Colin, who was a perfectionist in matters of dress and style and who sat beside her for the show, did not help. In a steady stream of asides he unerringly picked out every mismatched accessory, every single thing that went wrong. When the tiny Louisa came out in the too-large wool shirtwaist that was the pride of Vanessa's heart he groaned and shut his eyes.
    "Navy shoes and a russet tent," he muttered. "A bit girl scoutish, isn't it, darling?"
    The thing was that Colin took what he called sartorial solecisms personally, so that even walking down Fifth Avenue with him could be an exercise in torment. He was an avid clothes watcher and he would tear a passing pedestrian to pieces in a few choice phrases, always in a scathing undertone that only Vanessa could hear. But this was the first time she had been personally subjected to his systematic biting sarcasm. The fact that he was attacking not her designs but the presentation really only made it worse. When her company's parade mercifully concluded, Vanessa, with Colin in tow, stormed out to the dressing rooms and through the door marked TopMarx.
    The first thing she saw was the reflection in the large lighted mirror that ran above the make-up table all along one wall. The mirror showed her Louisa's white naked back, crossed at the bottom by a very tiny, very frilly thong and held at the curving waist by the bronzed hands of the man to whom she was passionately clinging. The second thing she saw, turning her eyes from the mirror to the actual figures in the centre of the room, was that the bronzed hands and the dark hair above Louisa's fairness belonged to Jake Conrad.
    For a reason Vanessa couldn't define, it was the ultimate outrage. Her anger threatened to swamp her. In a voice of chipped ice she said to Jake Conrad, who was just lifting his eyes to hers, "Do you think you could make love to my models on their time, please?"
    Louisa, who had been oblivious to everything except Jake's embrace, gasped and whirled, covering her breasts with her arms. All at once Vanessa realized that most of the mistakes in tonight's show had involved Louisa. She felt an almost overwhelming urge to slap the pretty, vapid face.
    "You could at least knock," Louisa protested sullenly, at which Vanessa looked at her so witheringly the model's gaze dropped, and she turned mutely to reach for the bright turquoise robe that was draped half on a chair, half on the floor behind her.
    Vanessa held the door wide, aware that Jake Conrad was looking at her through hooded calculating eyes, a crooked half-smile on his wide lips.
    "Would you get out please?" she demanded.
    Before he could respond, Louisa said in her high voice, slipping on the robe, "It's his hotel, you know!" Her tone was childishly triumphant, as though this was a telling blow in a close battle. Vanessa gazed at her, her anger