Authors: Alexandra Sellers
Jake's gaze narrowed as, still watching her, he took a sip of whiskey. In a flash, as he looked at her, his demons were back with frightening intensity. "You know what I want," he said hoarsely. "I want you willing—I want you demanding."
You want me begging.
She heard the words in her own head with crystal clarity. A chill settled on her heart then, a chill of fear.
And you're the man I'd beg for,
she was thinking
.
But if you want me begging, is it for any other reason than to give your demons the chance to refuse what I ask?
She set down her glass and stood up, and it took all her strength not to run to him, to ask for his mouth on her lips.
If I went to you now
, she thought,
if you saw me begging, it might tear down your defences, I might reach you the way I want to. And I might not. If I didn't—if I didn't, if you stayed cold and distant, the way you are right now—
she looked at his chiselled sensuous mouth and imagined it pressed against her breast with an anguished need that tore at her determination—
you would break me. And I'm afraid that's what you want.
Vanessa caught her breath on a little sob, unable to disentangle from their locked gaze.
Don't make me ask,
she willed him silently, thinking of his hands on her flesh, the thrust of his tongue.
Come to me, Jake, meet me more than halfway....
In the moment before his hands clenched on the chair arm she dropped her eyes and turned. "Good night," said a cool voice that could only be her own. She walked to the door then, afraid to look back, afraid of his cold compelling anger which had so nearly won.
But the cold anger was gone from Jake's face. In the moment when she dropped her eyes he stood, and now he stared after her, his face filled with a blazing need. Unseeing and afraid of the power her need would give him over her, Vanessa almost ran to the door.
* * *
The next morning she met Howie Spiegel in Jake's suite as arranged, but Jake did not stay after she arrived. Howie put any fears she had had to rest. Young, bright and honest, he was simply not the sort to be capable of dishonesty on a personal scale. Vanessa could imagine that Fraser Valley Helicopter ought to go over any contracts he drew up very carefully, but this morning Jake had briefed him on the sort of arrangement he and Robert had discussed with her, and Howie seemed intent on making her future with the new company as secure as possible.
"You aren't expected to
lose
money the first two years," he cautioned. "What this clause will give you is the ability to pare your prices to the bone in order to establish yourself in the market. Do you follow?" She nodded. "You will, in addition, have access to another amount for advertising in that first year, which cost will be underwritten by Conrad Corporation directly. This means, in effect, that you will be incurring a loss. It just won't go on the books as such."
"Oh!" Vanessa made a surprised face. Robert certainly hadn't mentioned this; nor had Jake.
"It will give you some extra leeway, Vanessa, so you should be able to come on the market with quite a little bang. What's your trademark going to be?"
Vanessa began to laugh. Never in her life had events moved so fast around her. What was her
trademark
? Yesterday when she'd got up she'd had about as much idea of starting her own company as she had of flying to the moon! And now—
"I haven't given that much thought yet," she confessed dryly. "This whole thing has been very sudden."
"Really?" Howie Spiegel raised a curious eyebrow. "That doesn't sound like Jake."
"It doesn't?" faltered Vanessa. "But... What do you mean?"
"Just that Jake's usually pretty thorough." Howie shrugged it off. "But it's not my business."
Of course, there wasn't anything to say that Jake hadn't been thinking of this for a long time, she thought uneasily. And when the right person had come along....
"Now, you'll have profit sharing of fifty percent, once Concorp has made its designated return on investment," Howie was saying. "From the third year you're entitled to take back shares in the company to the value of your share of the profits. We'll establish a share value that's mutually agreeable."
He was making notes on a yellow legal pad on which he had already scrawled a great many indecipherable notes while Jake had been briefing him. He referred to them now. "Now," he said, "Jake usually has a three-to-five-year restraint of trade clause as standard in his management contracts. He says he wants five with you because he expects your work to be very individualistic."
That would mean she couldn't set up in competition with her own company. "That's okay," she said. "I'm going to be buying into this company. I don't intend to quit."
She didn't have one complaint about the terms they discussed; there was nothing she had to argue for, nowhere she had to compromise. It was so ideal it was almost frightening. She was being given complete control; all the decisions would be hers. It was just as Jake said: all she had to do was earn a profit.
She discovered that the venture was being financed not by Jake personally but by Conrad Corporation, which was taking a debenture to secure its investment, whatever that meant.
"That looks like it," Howard Spiegel said finally, bringing his briefcase up onto the small table between them and throwing the yellow pad of his notes inside. They were in the lounge of Jake's suite. She had not been in the suite before in the daytime, but today rain and low-lying clouds obscured the view of the city and the ocean.
As they stood to leave, the door opened and Jake walked in. Vanessa somehow hadn't expected to see him again before she left, and she smiled at him, feeling a little bubble of pleasure in spite of herself.
"Hi!" she said happily.
Jake took in the smile through narrowed eyes for one disconcerting second and then smiled back.
"Hi," he returned. "How did you get on?"
"Very well," said Howie Spiegel.
At the same time Vanessa said, "I have to let Howie tell you about it. I've got a plane to catch."
"Don't rush off," Jake said in a slow caressing voice as he reached out a hand to detain her. "I'll take you to the airport."
Vanessa stopped as though his voice were her hypnotic control. "All right, thank you," she replied softly. Jake was looking inquiringly at Howie, but he did not take his hand from her arm.
"Tie everything up?" he asked.
"It's a pretty tight contract," Howie replied. "Concorp's taking a debenture, of course, which will entail a separate agreement, but I think Vanessa's own contract is quite satisfactory."
"Oh, yes," interjected Vanessa with a smile.
"There's a problem, of course, any time you try to guarantee employment. We eventually settled on a monetary penalty clause in the case of dismissal without just cause."
"Mmm-hmm," said Jake, eyeing him. "What kind of penalty?"
Howie hesitated. "A quarter mil," he said, flicking a glance at Vanessa. "And the only—"
"A quarter million?" Jake repeated with an incredulous laugh. "For God's sake, Howie, did you tell her I was made of gold?" He flicked a glance at Vanessa, the light of angry laughter in his eyes.
The lawyer breathed deeply. "Well, Jake, you promised not to fire her for any reason other than not turning a profit." He cleared his throat. "The only feasible protection was a penalty. We've defined 'just cause' as being limited to financial mismanagement. And the penalty has to be sizeable enough to dissuade you, or there's no point. Anyway," he said with a slightly questioning smile, "there's no question of its ever being paid, is there?"
It was a statement, not a question. "In the six years I've been with Concorp I've never known you to dismiss anyone who was turning a profit."
"No, there's no question of its ever being paid," Jake agreed flatly. "All right, thanks, Howie. Send me the contract Monday or Tuesday so I can sign it and get it to Vanessa in New York by Friday, will you?"
Howie hesitated. "Jake, you know I'm working flat out on the Fraser Helicopter bid?"
"Damn," Jake responded without emphasis. "Well, never mind, Howie. Just get this out of the way as fast as you can. The Fraser bid will just have to suffer."
The lawyer's face gazed impassively at Jake. "Yeah. Yeah, sure," he said in a voice devoid of emotion.
"Thanks for giving me your time this morning," Jake said. "I won't keep you any longer now. I'm sure you want to get back home."
"Okay," said Howie. "Bye, Vanessa, I'll be seeing you. I wish you the best of luck and I'm sure you'll succeed. Not many people get a squawk of protest out of Jake their first time out." He looked back at Jake. "She's pretty tough," he said with a grin, and a moment later he was gone.
There was a short silence as the door closed after him. Then Vanessa said, "It's late. I have to get to the airport."
"On Saturday morning it'll only take fifteen minutes," Jake said. "Are you packed and ready to go?"
Vanessa nodded.
"There's plenty of time, then," he said. "Sit down and have a coffee while I make a phone call."
Ten minutes later they were driving through heavy rainfall to the airport.
"This rain seems to be getting worse," Vanessa observed. "Or does it just seem that way because we're out in a car?"
Jake didn't seem to hear. He was watching the road, his eyebrows coming together in a frown of concentration as he drove. She lapsed into silence.
"How did you and Howie settle on the figure of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars?" Jake asked suddenly.
A car roared past them, sending up a wave of water that sprayed the windshield and thrummed loudly on the metal body of the car. Vanessa felt as though she were enclosed in a little world with Jake, a warm, safe world.
When she spoke her voice was soft. "I'm not quite sure how we arrived at it. Howie explained to me that a penalty would be more practical than a simple guarantee, and I said that the penalty would have to be a real deterrent, and I think I asked what amount of money would really deter you."
And that had been the moment when she truly realized that she was in the "big time," though she did not tell Jake so. When Howie had answered her question with a casual, "Oh, anything upwards of a two-fifty, I guess," she had stared at him in speechless incredulity, but Howie hadn't seemed to notice. And somehow they had settled on the figure of, as Howie put it, "a quarter mil."
"Mmm-hmm," murmured Jake. "Well, Howie knows his business. That will certainly deter me." He laughed shortly.
"But it can't matter," Vanessa pointed out mildly. "He said you never fire anyone who's making a profit, and I intend to make a profit, Jake. And if I don't, you can fire me with impunity."
"Mmm-hmm," Jake responded again, "and just supposing a quarter of a million dollars in ready cash is more attractive to you than slugging it out in the hard world of business?"
She looked over at him, noticing as she did so that the rain had increased: the world was very grey indeed.
"My flight's going to be delayed, I'll bet," she observed. "This is halfway to a monsoon. Does it rain like this all the time?"
"It rains one hell of a lot," he said tersely. "Didn't Jace tell you?" His quick glance caught hers. "You didn't answer the question."
"Because I don't know what you mean."
"Suppose you deliberately foul up in the first year—when I can't fire you for not making a profit? Suppose I've got a choice of kissing a million dollars goodbye or firing you and cutting my losses with a mere quarter million?"
"We defined 'just cause' as financial mismanagement, Jake, not failure to make a profit. So under those circumstances you could fire me."
"So I could," he agreed softly. "You're pretty bright, aren't you, Vanessa?"
"Didn't Jace tell you?" she countered in response to an uncontrollable impulse.
"You've improved with time," he said.
"I want to know something," Vanessa stated suddenly, as a host of tiny suspicions suddenly formed a picture inside her head. She turned on the seat to face him. "There are just too many contradictions in your story, Jake. Sometimes you talk to me as though you've met me before, seen me before. You know so much about me. And it just doesn't make sense that you got all that just from talking to Jace, no matter how delirious he was."
Jake's eyebrow went up, and his face looked suddenly stark and drawn in the grey light. "No?" he asked.
"No," she said. Her mental vision was quite clear now. "So what I want to know is—after Jace died, did you by any chance come looking for me? Did you come to New York and watch me or even meet me, something like that? You've told me that you loved me, and you've told me that you blamed and hated me for Jace's death. And either of those...." She paused.
"And either of those would be sufficient motive to go looking for you, is that what you want to say?" Jake finished for her in a hard voice.
She dropped her eyes in silent agreement. For a long moment the only sounds in the car were the low roar of rain on metal and the steady
swish-click
of the windshield wipers. Then Jake took an audible deep breath.
"After... Jace died I—about six months afterwards I had to go to New York on business again. I did look you up, Vanessa. I followed you around a bit. I even danced with you once."