Fire in the Wind by Alexandra Sellers

serious."
    "What?"
    "You heard me, Vanessa."
    "Colin, what would you want with two designers? You need an administrator. And what are you going to finance this with?"
    "Darling, I have a wealthy friend," he said calmly. "I put a proposition to him and he thought it looked good. He knows I'm wasted on what I'm doing. That's why I had no time to argue over the Philistine's pronouncements. I've been planning this."
    "What are you planning? Fabrics?" she hazarded. Colin's first love was fabric design.
    "You got it," he said. "All kinds of fabric, from painted leather to crinkled cotton. In some instances I shall merely sell the design to the trade, but for some I will have the cloth made up. This is where you would come in. While I am designing the fabric, you might design items that are going to be made from the fabric. You know we would work extremely well together. What do you say?"
    Vanessa was flabbergasted. "Well, but... good God, Colin!" she stammered. "I'd need notice of that. I mean, what would I be—a partner, an employee? I couldn't contribute any backing—"
    "What about the Standishes?" Colin asked. "They'd back you fast enough."
    There was no arguing that. Colin knew probably better than anyone how often the Standish family had tried to press money on her. "If it was a question of a loan, Vanessa, I thought you might feel differently about it. A business loan, to be paid back."
    She bit her lip. "I'd have to think it over, Colin," she said, shaking her head.
    They spent the afternoon and early evening discussing it. Colin was more enthused than she had seen him since college days, and by the time she left him to dress for dinner with Tom and the important buyer, Vanessa was almost as excited as he was.
    She dressed in the simple black dress she had worn on Monday night, and noticed as she made up that her face had picked up some colour from her morning on the Skookum Sail.
    Jake had asked her out for dinner tonight, giving her an uneasy suspicion that he had decided to rush her. It had been almost with relief that she had explained about the business dinner with Tom.
    "It won't run late, then, will it?" Jake had asked. "Call me when you come in, and come for a nightcap."
    She had found herself weakly agreeing that if it wasn't too late she would call him, but she knew she'd be a fool if she did so.
    And yet—she stood back from the mirror and looked at herself. The black dress, with its shoestring straps and fitted bodice curving low over her breasts and leaving her shoulders and arms bare, was perhaps the sexiest item in her wardrobe, and it wasn't what she had planned to wear tonight. And her hair was dressed in a way she rarely wore it, held back at the sides with combs, but cascading down her back in a cluster of curls.
    She was dressing for Jake, she realized with dismay. Damn him, damn him! Here she was telling herself that she wouldn't call him when she got in, and at the same time unconsciously dressing in a way she knew would entice him. What a fool she was! She would have no one to blame but herself if she got hurt. Jake was not pretending to be in love with her now. He had told her what he wanted from her on day one.
    And somehow she knew that, for some reason known only to himself, Jake Conrad was determined to get it.
    The dinner was not a great success. That the important chain-store buyer was well used to being entertained by manufacturers trying to curry favour was evident, as was the fact that she didn't appreciate being in a party consisting of three women and one man. For Tom, who was more smitten than Vanessa had ever seen him, unless this was some elaborate act, had brought Margaret along, too. And he was paying altogether too much attention to her.
    When the conversation veered to politics in the desperate way that conversations in danger of flagging often do, Vanessa nearly despaired. The Canadians she had met always seemed to be much more knowledgeable about American politics than she was