Judgement By Fire (31 page)

Yet the thought
of another man sharing the passionate gift that Lauren had bestowed upon him
caused his stomach to tighten and his heart to pound with possessive jealousy.
It was all he could do to stop himself rushing downstairs, pulling her into his
arms, and claiming her for his own.

He couldn’t do
that. Mustn’t do that. He had to let her go. He loved her too much and he knew
that he’d wreck her life as he’d destroyed the lives of the others who had
loved him, needed him. He was, after all, his father’s son.

Yet his eyes
were bleak as he watched her get into the car and speed away.

*
* *

If Lauren had
glanced back as she left, she would have seen Jon standing in the upstairs
window watching her go. She didn’t, because her heart knew he was there and she
knew also that he was in pain as he stood there.

He did nothing to
stop her leaving, and that meant that she could do nothing either.

She needed time
to think, to sort out what had gone wrong. Then, perhaps, she could try to put
it right. Jon had made it very clear how he felt and she was too hurt and too
proud, at this moment, to go after him.

She had taken
too great a battering over the past few days and her pride was a tattered rag,
but it was all she had left and she couldn’t lose it, which meant they were at
stalemate.

The weeks that
followed passed in a womb-like calm for Lauren, sheltered under Lucy’s
broody-hen wing from anyone who would have ruffled the designer calm that lay
over the Haverford Castle in general and the Howard cottage in particular.

Not that any
great fuss was made. Lucy continued to closet herself in the separate studio as
she toyed with ideas for her next book, while Paul followed his own interests.
The three of them came together over supper and spent the rest of the evening
watching television or a movie with a bottle of good wine and occasionally a
take-out pizza. The temporary calm was broken only on one occasion when Lauren
had insisted, to Paul and Lucy’s horror, that she wanted to go to Stephen’s
funeral service.

“Just the
graveside service, I wouldn’t go to the church,” Lauren said firmly.

In the end,
rather than have her go alone, all three of them had joined the long line of
expensive cars that turned into the broad driveway of Mount Pleasant Cemetery
in Toronto. In a perverse way, Lauren had always been fond of the vast, open
cemetery, partly because her own father rested there and partly because its
vast vistas and the strange, gaunt shapes which unfolded in the marching lines
of monuments were pleasing to her artist’s eye.

Today though,
with spring well underway and bright sunshine spilling down on the dark-coated
assembly, she found herself wishing as fervently to be far away as she had
wished earlier to be there.

As far as she
could tell, the whole entourage was from Rush Co., with other business
associates and a handful of media people hovering discreetly at a distance. The
only real mourner stood beside the grave, his blond head bowed and his tall
figure looking isolated and lonely despite the group gathered around him.
Lauren’s heart cried out, ready to burst with his pain, yet she found herself
frozen to the spot some hundred feet away, where she stood with Paul and Lucy.

Jon, I love you,
she
screamed silently within herself.

But he doesn’t
want you,
replied
the voice in her mind, and she bowed her head to hide the tears. Lucy placed
her hand on Lauren’s arm and whispered to her that it was time for them to
leave if they wanted to avoid getting caught up in the crowd as the mourners
left.

Lauren nodded,
but as she raised her head for one last look, she caught Jon’s gaze fixed on
her over the heads of the crowd and the intensity in his deep blue eyes took
her breath away. It was all she could do to stop herself stumbling unheeding
through the crowd to throw herself in his arms, but the next moment he had
looked away, making it plain he wasn’t going to acknowledge her.

You imagined
that look. You wanted to see it there, and you did. But he didn’t even look as
if he recognized you. He’s forgotten already.

Numbly, she
pushed through the mourners towards the Howards’ car, her tears earning her
startled looks from those who were there only because of business connections
with Rush Co. or curiosity over the strange death of a member of one of the
city’s richest families.

“Not too many
tears being shed there today, eh?” Paul grunted as they drove slowly through
the cemetery and onto Mount Pleasant Road.

“No,” his wife,
sitting beside him in the front seat, agreed, “I’d say the only mourning being
done was by Jon and he must have some pretty mixed feelings.”

Then, catching
sight of Lauren’s pale face in the rear-view mirror, Lucy changed the subject
entirely, chirruping on with a brightness she didn’t feel about a whole new
story idea she’d conceived for her line of children’s books.

*
* *

So Lauren
returned to Haverford Castle. She could have gone home to stay with her mother,
but she knew that the gulf of understanding between them was wider now than it
had ever been. Lauren didn’t think she could face the constant unspoken
reproach that she wasn’t the daughter her mother had hoped for, that there was
no little house in the suburbs, no wealthy and ambitious husband, no clutch of
grandchildren.

And there never
will be, now,
Lauren’s
little voice whispered, and her heart contracted as she remembered the night
driving home with Jon, when she’d been swept away by profound emotion as she’d
imagined holding his child in her arms.

One by one, or
in small groups, the other artists at Haverford Castle called by to visit
Lauren, offering her support and sympathy, and practical offers of help in the
use of studio space, replacement clothing and furniture, and other incidentals.
Lauren was both touched and astounded at the number of local people outside the
rarefied stratosphere of the artists’ colony who also dropped by to wish her
well.

After one such
visit, Lauren was standing in the doorway, tears in her eyes, watching the
demolition workers tearing down the last remains of the little studio cottage
she’d loved so much, when the mailman arrived and handed her a bunch of
letters. Most of them were for Paul and Lucy, but two, with Toronto postmarks,
were for herself.

Opening the
first, she found a check, along with a letter on a notepaper of a firm of very well-known
corporate lawyers. The amount noted on the check was enough to take her breath
away. In concise, emotionless legal tones, the letter informed her that Rush
Co., as the new legal owners of the Haverford Castle property, felt it
incumbent on them to offer Miss Lauren Stephens a sum of money to replace goods
belonging to her that were damaged or destroyed in the recent unfortunate fire
at the said property.

“Good God,”
Lauren burst out, spontaneously adding a number of well-chosen swear words.

Her outburst
brought both Lucy and Paul out onto the front porch to see what was wrong. Dumbly,
she handed them first the letter and then the check.

Paul gave a low
whistle at the amount, and added that, in his opinion, this was damage control.

“They don’t
really have to pay you anything, but they’re covering themselves in case you
decide to try your luck with a court case,” Paul, in lawyer mode, told her.

In contrast to
Lauren’s stunned anger, Lucy gave out a wild whoop of joy. “Lookee, kid, we’re
going to have the best shopping trip you’ve ever seen! Go get yourself in gear,
and we’ll show them city slickers how country folk can shop till they drop!”

Lauren stared at
her in shock. “But I can’t accept this—this is
conscience money!”

Lucy’s mouth
dropped open. “Can’t accept it? Conscience money? I should damn well think it
is. Listen here, my girl. You’ve lost everything you owned, not once, but
twice
thanks to Rush Co.’s shenanigans. To say nothing of all sorts of emotional
grief and nearly being killed into the bargain. Now, you’ve got to start your
life all over again, so there’s enough cash here to allow you to start in
style. They owe you at least this much.”

“They don’t owe
me anything,” Lauren said, her voice little more than a whisper. “This is Jon’s
doing, and I won’t have his pity!”

*
* *

A few days
later, Lauren ventured out to take a closer look at the rubble-dotted hole in
the ground that was all that remained of her cottage and was startled to find
that a construction team was on the site. Two men in hard hats, deep in
conversation, were studying a set of blue prints but they broke off as Lauren
approached.

“We’re putting
in a new facility, dependent on planning permission, as part of the plans Rush
Co. have for developing the site here,” the men told Lauren, exchanging glances
as she pressed for more details. “Sorry, lady, we’re supposed to keep quiet
about the exact type of facility, at least for the moment. But you’ll all see,
soon enough.”

Furious, Lauren
spun on her heel, marching over to the tree shaded spot where Jon’s vintage
truck still stood. How could Rush Co. try to sneak in and take advantage of the
recent tragedy to make a start on their fancy health spa? Did they think they
could turn it into a
fait accompli
before anyone at Haverford Castle
could guess what they were up to?

For a few
moments, Lauren felt alive again as a righteous fury coursed through her veins.
Then, touching Jon’s truck, the anger dissipated in a flood of memories. Terrible
snapshots of those last days jumbled through her head and threatened to swamp
her tenuous calm.

She shoved them
aside and instead allowed memories of the nights she and Jon had spent, first
at his home and then in her now-destroyed cottage, to rush in. Her pulses went
into overdrive as she remembered the feel of his strong, hard body on hers, the
thrill of seeing desire for her darken his blue eyes until they were almost
black, the heights they’d brought each other to in the shared need that had
felt so much like love…

Lauren slammed a
bandaged fist against the truck door, welcoming the pain the action brought as
it dispelled the longings that had flooded through her.

“Why, now,
that’s no way to treat such a lovely old vehicle,” a voice behind her
complained, and Lauren’s nerves jumped as she turned around.

Tom Perry, the
young police officer who had stood guard at her door for long hours before that
fateful evening, reached out to gently pat her arm. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean
to startle you, which was pretty stupid of me, considering all you’ve been
through,” the young man said awkwardly, shuffling his feet.

“That’s okay,
Tom. I am a bit jumpy and I didn’t hear you come up,” Lauren assured him. “My,
I’d hardly have recognized you out of uniform. Is it your day off?”

“Yep, Miss, it
is. The chief’s feeling a bit more mellow now that everything’s been sorted out
here, and so he’s loosened his death grip on the duty roster!”

Lauren smiled.
“So, you like this old truck?”

“Lord, yes, she
is a real beauty. Mind if I take a look under the hood?”

Lauren waved her
hand, indicating he should go ahead. From all the ooh’s, aah’s and grunts which
followed, she gathered he liked what he saw. When he came up for air,
exclaiming about the quality of workmanship, she laughed and said, “I guess
it’s a man thing—engines and whatever.”

“Believe me,
Miss Stephens, no one with an eye for beauty could fail to appreciate this
truck—and it’s been so well restored! A real labor of love for whoever did the
work, let me tell you!”

Lauren drew in a
sudden breath as Jon’s face filled her mind. A labor of love indeed. She
wondered at the hours he must have spent, locked away in his garage at the
farm, transforming what Warren Dillon had described as a sad old wreck into
this thing of beauty. Her throat ached at the thought of his competent hands
busy on the engine, the bodywork, his fine mind turning over problems of horsepower
and tuning, spare parts and authenticity.

Then, filled
with a sudden inspiration, she asked, “How’d you like to drive this truck?”

Tom’s boyish
face filled with amazement. “Me? Drive this vehicle? Ma’am, I’d be your slave
for life!”

“No, Tom, that’s
okay, just the next few hours would do. It really should be returned to its
owner and I’m still a bit too sore for driving,” Lauren explained, holding her
still bandaged palms out in front of her.

The young man’s
face clouded in an instant. “God, yes, I can imagine. You were pretty lucky to
get out of there. Mind you,” he added with a mischievous grin, “it was pretty
darned lucky this beauty wasn’t hurt in the fire, too!”

Lauren muttered
a nasty phrase at him, causing him to grin even more, then told him to climb
into the driver’s seat. “I’ll be right back,” she promised, rushing into the
house to find Lucy.