Read Online Fire in the Wind by Alexandra Sellers - Free Book Online
Authors: Alexandra Sellers
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breakfast. Her body was still on New York time: she woke just before seven with a guilty start, feeling it must be nearly ten. Once awake, her mind began to pick over the thoughts and worries that had lain dormant all night, and she knew there wasn't any point trying to get back to sleep.
She showered and dressed, looking out the windows over the bustling city, the water and the mountains beyond. Vancouver, she had learned, was built on a large peninsula created by an inlet of the Strait of Georgia to the north and a river to the south. The main downtown area, where Jake's hotel was, was situated on a smaller peninsula that jutted out from the large one into the inlet. The tip of this small peninsula was given over entirely to the thickly forested Stanley Park she had visited last night. The park was thus almost surrounded by water, meeting the city only at one narrow edge. Vancouver itself was also nearly surrounded by water—the Fraser River to the south, the Strait of Georgia and the Pacific Ocean on the west, Burrard Inlet to the north—and had nowhere to go but up: up in skyscrapers and up the side of the mountains.
Looking north now across Burrard Inlet, Vanessa could see how the city, like a raging forest fire, had jumped the strip of water and had climbed as high as was possible up the low mountains on the other side. She wondered what it would be like to live on the mountain and have a view over the Pacific and the distant skyscrapers of the city centre.
She breathed deeply. Jace had been right. Vancouver was the most beautiful city she had ever seen, with its own pace and its own enveloping peace. People were relaxed, casual and often unbusinesslike. She thought of Louisa Hayward last night and her resistance to the New York type of pressure to do everything absolutely right, absolutely on time, and remembered her own violent irritation when the girl hadn't apologized for her unprofessionalism. Who was right? There was a slower pace here that was just beginning to get to her.
Who would she be now, if Jace had lived and she had come here to marry him? Perhaps she would have finished her education at a Canadian university—there were two good universities in Vancouver, she had heard. Perhaps she would have attended one. And she might have gone into a job in fashion design here, casually, without trying to claw her way to the top or carve out a career for herself. She might have had a baby and brought her to work every day, the way a lot of Canadian women seemed to do.
There had been a pretty little baby in one of the dressing rooms each day of the show so far. His mother was either a model or a designer; Vanessa hadn't worked it out. He had played in a corner quite happily, and once she had seen him wandering from chair to chair as the models made up before the show, watching them with concentrated fascination.
Vanessa, standing at the window looking down on the city, had a sudden painful vision of a young child with Jace's eyes—the child she should have borne. She felt tears prickle behind her eyes, and then the thought flicked into her mind: Jake has Jace's eyes.
It was a dimly-formed, irrelevant thought. She pushed it away almost before she had grasped it, and instead deliberately made herself laugh by imagining Tom's face if he should walk into the design office one day and find her changing her baby's diaper on a design-strewn table top....
Tom was up early, too. She saw him as soon as she walked into the restaurant, breakfasting with the buyer from Toronto. He caught her eye as she paused by the door, and she crossed to the table for two.
"Good morning." If Tom had been writing out a companion-wanted ad he would have described himself as a "young forty." He dressed five years younger than that and was in fact five years older, and the heartbreak of his life hadn't been his wife's leaving him six years ago, but his receding hairline.
He was dressed casually this morning, his shirt-front open over
She showered and dressed, looking out the windows over the bustling city, the water and the mountains beyond. Vancouver, she had learned, was built on a large peninsula created by an inlet of the Strait of Georgia to the north and a river to the south. The main downtown area, where Jake's hotel was, was situated on a smaller peninsula that jutted out from the large one into the inlet. The tip of this small peninsula was given over entirely to the thickly forested Stanley Park she had visited last night. The park was thus almost surrounded by water, meeting the city only at one narrow edge. Vancouver itself was also nearly surrounded by water—the Fraser River to the south, the Strait of Georgia and the Pacific Ocean on the west, Burrard Inlet to the north—and had nowhere to go but up: up in skyscrapers and up the side of the mountains.
Looking north now across Burrard Inlet, Vanessa could see how the city, like a raging forest fire, had jumped the strip of water and had climbed as high as was possible up the low mountains on the other side. She wondered what it would be like to live on the mountain and have a view over the Pacific and the distant skyscrapers of the city centre.
She breathed deeply. Jace had been right. Vancouver was the most beautiful city she had ever seen, with its own pace and its own enveloping peace. People were relaxed, casual and often unbusinesslike. She thought of Louisa Hayward last night and her resistance to the New York type of pressure to do everything absolutely right, absolutely on time, and remembered her own violent irritation when the girl hadn't apologized for her unprofessionalism. Who was right? There was a slower pace here that was just beginning to get to her.
Who would she be now, if Jace had lived and she had come here to marry him? Perhaps she would have finished her education at a Canadian university—there were two good universities in Vancouver, she had heard. Perhaps she would have attended one. And she might have gone into a job in fashion design here, casually, without trying to claw her way to the top or carve out a career for herself. She might have had a baby and brought her to work every day, the way a lot of Canadian women seemed to do.
There had been a pretty little baby in one of the dressing rooms each day of the show so far. His mother was either a model or a designer; Vanessa hadn't worked it out. He had played in a corner quite happily, and once she had seen him wandering from chair to chair as the models made up before the show, watching them with concentrated fascination.
Vanessa, standing at the window looking down on the city, had a sudden painful vision of a young child with Jace's eyes—the child she should have borne. She felt tears prickle behind her eyes, and then the thought flicked into her mind: Jake has Jace's eyes.
It was a dimly-formed, irrelevant thought. She pushed it away almost before she had grasped it, and instead deliberately made herself laugh by imagining Tom's face if he should walk into the design office one day and find her changing her baby's diaper on a design-strewn table top....
Tom was up early, too. She saw him as soon as she walked into the restaurant, breakfasting with the buyer from Toronto. He caught her eye as she paused by the door, and she crossed to the table for two.
"Good morning." If Tom had been writing out a companion-wanted ad he would have described himself as a "young forty." He dressed five years younger than that and was in fact five years older, and the heartbreak of his life hadn't been his wife's leaving him six years ago, but his receding hairline.
He was dressed casually this morning, his shirt-front open over
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