Read Online Vortex by Larry Bond - Free Book Online Page A

father, widowed at an early age, had found it impossible to instill more “womanly” interests.
    So, instead of marrying as her father wished, she’d stayed in school and earned a journalism degree. And four years of -life on the University of
    Witwatersrand’s freethinking campus had pulled her even further away from her father’s hard-core pro-apartheid views. Politics became something else for them to fight about.
    Degree in hand, she’d gone looking for a job. But once outside the sheltered confines of the academic world, she’d learned the hard way that most South African employers still felt women should work only at home or in the typing pool.
    Unable to find a newspaper that would hire her and unwilling to admit defeat to her father, she’d been forced to sign on with one of Cape
    Town’s English-speaking law firms-as a secretary. The job paid her rent and gave her a chance to practice her English, and she hated every minute of it.
    Emily saw Ian’s face fall and reached out, gently stroking his hand.
    “You mustn’t mind my moods, Ian. I warned you about them, didn’t P They are my curse.”
    She smiled again.
    “There! You see! I am happy again. As I always am when you are near.”
    Ian fought to hide a smile of his own. Somehow Emily could get away with romantic cliche ds that would have made any other woman he’d ever known burst out laughing.
    “I thought for sure that you would not come today when I heard the news of the PI-esident’s press conference. How could you stand to leave such an exciting story as this?” Emily’s eyes were alight with excitement. She tended to look at his career with an odd mix of idealistic innocence and muted envy.
    “Easily. I wouldn’t dream of abandoning lunch with a beautiful, intoxicating woman like yourself.”
    She slapped his hand lightly.
    “What nonsense! You are such a liar.
    “Really, Ian, don’t you think the news is wonderful? Haymans and the others may finally be coming to their senses. Surely even the verkramptes can see the need for reform?” Emily used the Afrikaans word meaning “reactionaries.”
    Ian shrugged.
    “Maybe. I’ll believe the millennium’s arrived when I see people like that guy Vorster or those AWB fanatics shedding real tears over Steve Biko’s grave. Until then it’s all just PR ”
    Emily nodded somberly.
    “I suppose you are right. Words must be backed by deeds to become real.” She shook her
    head impatiently.
    “And meanwhile what are we doing? Sitting here wasting a beautiful day with all this talk of politicians. Surely that is foolishness!”
    Ian smiled at her, turned, and signaled for the check.
    Emily’s tiny, two-room flat occupied half the top floor of a whitewashed brick building just around the corner. In the year she’d lived there, she’d already made the flat distinctively her own. Bright wildflowers in scattered vases matched framed prints showing the rolling, open grasslands near her ancestral home in the northern Transvaal. An inexpensive personal computer occupied one corner of a handcrafted teak desk made for her great-grandfather more than a century before.
    Ian sat restlessly on a small sofa, waiting as Emily rummaged through her closets looking for a coat to wear. He checked his watch and wondered again if this trip up the cableway was such a good idea. He was due back in the studio by four, and time was running out fast.
    He resisted the temptation to get up and pace. Sam Knowles was going to be plenty pissed off if he missed his self-appointed deadline…. “Could you come here for a moment? I want your opinion on how I look in this.” Emily’s clear, happy voice broke in on his thoughts.
    Ian swallowed a mild curse and rose awkwardly to his feet. God, they were already running late. Was she going to Put on a fashion show before going out in public?
    He walked to the open bedroom doorway and stopped dead.
    Emily hadn’t been putting a coat on-she’d been taking clothes off. She