Fire in the Wind (20 page)

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."

He cocked an eyebrow at this, in a way that indicated he was prepared to be amused. "I can imagine."

She didn't smile at him; the scene with Tom had not been pleasant, though it might be amusing now in its retelling to someone as willing to be cynical as Jake. Tom had been angry and hurt and outraged and had adopted a tone almost identical to the one he'd used when she had refused to go to bed with him. Vanessa hadn't realized that until later, when, it was true, she had suddenly found it amusing.

He'd begun with, "But what'll I
do,
Vanessa?" But within a very few minutes that plea had degenerated into a surly variation on the theme, "You're not nearly as good as you think, kid, and believe me, I'm not the one who's going to regret this."

Without really meaning to, she was telling Jake about it—for the reason, she realized when it happened, that she liked his eyes when they twinkled with amusement. He was never more like Jace than when his eyes were laughing.

"Good God," he said when she had finished, "is that the way men react when a beautiful woman turns them down?"

"It's the way they react when any woman turns them down," Vanessa answered, because she wasn't beautiful. "Why, how do
you
react?"

Jake hesitated perceptibly, and Vanessa burst into laughter. "What's the matter?" she demanded, unable this time to repress the imp. "Haven't you ever been turned down?"

She could almost believe it. Jake, although lean of build, had the sort of powerful virility that women would find it difficult to walk away from.

He said dryly, "Every male in this culture learns rejection practically in the cradle. If I seemed at a loss it was because you should know better than I how I react—you turned me down yourself not so long ago."

Suddenly she felt on dangerous ground. This was a stupid provocative topic to get involved in with someone like Jake Conrad. And this time she couldn't blame him—it was she, not he, who had made the conversation personal. Did he never get rejected, indeed! That was waving a red flag.

"Well, but—" she stammered.

"In fact, far from being instantly welcome in any woman's bed, if I recall correctly," Jake pressed on, "even the addition of a gold mine couldn't make me an attractive proposition."

Before she could stop herself, Vanessa was saying, "On the other hand, maybe it was the addition of the gold mine that made the proposition unattractive."

"Think so?" said Jake, with an arrested light in his eyes. "Do I take it that Larry Standish put you off love for money?"

She felt as if she'd been stabbed. There was a sharp hard pain somewhere inside and Vanessa realized that Jake Conrad could hurt her more than anyone she knew. It was particularly painful because a moment ago they had been joking; a moment ago she had as good as told him that if he hadn't insulted her with the gold mine she would have become his lover.

"That's unforgivable," Vanessa said in a low voice, and dropped her head. "That's not fair."

"'All's fair in love and war,'" Jake quoted softly, watching the afternoon sun create a halo of the fine hairs that escaped from her loosely piled russet hair. It glowed like dark fire.

Vanessa breathed deeply and raised her head to look straight into his eyes. "And which is this?" she asked bluntly.

Jake raised an inquiring eyebrow.

"'All's fair', you said, 'in love and war'," Vanessa said in measured tones. "And it behoves me to know just exactly which this is—love or war."

Jake raised his glass to his lips, his eyes never leaving hers, and took a sip of whiskey.

"My dear Vanessa," he said slowly, and a half-smile was on his lips but not in his dark eyes. "My dear Vanessa, if only I knew the answer to that one."

Chapter 9

"The big thing," Robert said, "is that you're going to have to make an enormous adjustment. The Canadian market is very, very different from what you're used to."

It was Thursday morning, and Vanessa was already at work with Robert in his office at Conrad Corporation. The wiser course might have been to spend her first few days looking for an apartment, but common sense stood no chance against the excited enthusiasm that churned in her stomach. She would not believe in this adventure until she had embarked on it.

"I know it's going to be smaller," Vanessa said, who had been doing some homework. "I know the population of Canada is only a tenth of the States'."

"It's also very spread out," Robert said. He reached to pick up a thickish wad of typewritten pages that were bound with a spiral of black plastic and a red cardboard cover. "We've asked Berringer and Hare to do the marketing report you asked me to get, and while that won't be ready for another week or two, it turns out they did a similar report for an American company two years ago. That company abandoned plans to move into the Canadian market, and Ben Hare let me have a copy of the report so we'd have something to look at while we're waiting. I've read it." Robert dropped his eyes to the report on his desk and absently rifled the pages. "I think you should." He looked up again, his eyes ever so slightly veiled. Vanessa felt the faintest tinge of alarm.

"What does it say?" she asked.

"It's pretty discouraging. On the other hand, it was written up for the economic climate of two years ago."

"Has the economic climate in Canada improved from two years ago?" Vanessa asked, her excitement subdued by the tone of Robert's voice.

"No..." said Robert, drawing out the vowel thoughtfully, and Vanessa smiled a half-smile. Of course it hadn't. There could hardly be a country in the world whose economic climate had improved during the past two years. A little breath of panic touched her. Had she been a fool to make such a profound change in her life with so little investigation? Was this project doomed to failure before she'd even begun?

"On the other hand, Vanessa," Robert was saying, "Jake hasn't backed many losers since I've known him. Jake likes to make money. And his decisions often run directly counter to prevailing opinion. So while you're reading this—" he passed the bound report across the desk to her "—remember that he picked you because he thinks you've got the talent and drive to make a success."

"Right," she returned quietly, knowing that, however much he tried to hide it, Robert had grave doubts.

"Right," repeated Robert, picking up a pen to make a small tick on a paper in front of him. "Now, next on the agenda: I've located a company in the fashion trade in Vancouver that's gone insolvent. Their factory is vacant and available, and best of all it seems to be equipped for the kind of operation you're going to want to set up. I suggest we go out there and have a look at it tomorrow. It could save you a lot of money—and time—to buy the place as it stands if it's suitable."

"All right," Vanessa nodded.

"I've set up an appointment with the trustee's representative at ten in the morning. That suit you?"

It suited her, and Robert made a notation on the agenda.

"Oh, yes, then there's the question of me," he said, raising his head. "Jake has asked me if I'd be willing to be seconded to you for the first six months while the thing gets started. I'm quite willing to do that if you, uh, if you want me to."