Judgement By Fire Read online

  Opening the newspapers, she was shocked to see that not only did all the newspapers feature the misleading photographs prominently; they all also carried quotes from West River police Chief Mike Ohmer and the Rush Co. President and Chief Executive Officer, Jon Rush.

  Ohmer’s comments were like the man, straight and to the point. He had told the press that his investigations had led him to believe the incident was caused simply by a misunderstanding, and no charges were to be laid.

  “It is an unfortunate aspect of such occasions when emotions run high that events go beyond the control of the organizers. However,” he was quoted as saying, “I can assure both the people of West River and the executives of Rush. Co. that no such incident will occur in the future.”

  Lauren couldn’t repress a rueful smile as she’d remembered Mike Ohmer’s disgust that such a thing should happen in his territory, and the grilling he’d subjected the whole gathering to. Except, of course, the Rush Co. executives, she added peevishly to herself.

  Moving on to Jon Rush’s comments made her throat and chest go tight and little angry hammers begin to pound behind her eyes. How dare he!

  “As you would know if you were present at the event, I wasn’t really in a position to know everything that went on.” Jon was quoted as saying, sounding like the soul of reasonableness. “However, it was a very unfortunate incident and I am quite sure that Ms. Stephens is both embarrassed and regretful that she should be carried away in such a manner. Certainly, at this juncture, I do not foresee pressing charges against the young lady.”

  Then, obviously to the reporter’s delight, and here Lauren saw red again as she noted the newspaper’s phrase “…with a smile, the handsome debonair company boss, son of the founder, Jonathon Rush, Senior, intimated that it wasn’t every day a lovely lady had attempted to get his attention by hitting him over the head…”

  Grrr… Lauren thought, her teeth actually grinding against each other in anger. Smug, insufferable animal…chauvinist pig! Tossing the crumpled up newspapers over her shoulder to land in a heap in the back seat of the car, Lauren slammed her fist against the steering wheel, yanked on the ignition key and jerked the automatic transmission lever as she stabbed her foot down on the accelerator.

  The little car shot forward with a squeal of tires, causing heads to turn as she zoomed from the parking lot. Lauren didn’t notice. She was much too preoccupied with the pleasurable consideration of the comeuppance she was about to deliver to a certain handsome, debonair company president of her acquaintance.

  * * *

  Meanwhile, in the cottage on the grounds of Haverford Castle, the telephone in Lauren’s kitchen shrilled, the answering machine clicked on, and the receiver at the other end cut off with an angry click.

  A short time later, a big, expensive sedan drove slowly past the laneway where Lauren’s cottage stood, and the absence of any vehicle or other signs of life, combined with the unattended telephone, told the car’s driver all he needed to know.

  Chapter Five

  The woman sitting at the reception desk on the executive floor was a beauty. Tall, slim, sleek, all polished nails and designer business suit. Cool with a cooler manner, able to stare down and demolish the rowdiest intruder into the hallowed halls of power in Rush Co.. Definitely executive receptionist material.

  But no match for the wildlife artist from West River - with the emphasis on the wild.

  Long ago, from her own days of working around Bay Street, Lauren knew that if you wanted to get in some place where you really had no right to be, the first step was to look as though you belonged there. So, grasping the briefcase she’d rescued from the trunk of her car where it had lain forgotten for the last few weeks, Lauren strode determinedly through the lobby of Rush Co.

  Seeing a security guard at the main reception desk, she engaged a passing young executive-type in conversation. Looking incredibly serious and officious as she sashayed past the guard and into the elevator with her new friend, she discussed the merits of Toronto’s lunchtime rush with the demeanor of one discussing major company business. It looked as though she belonged right there with the Rush Co. crowd.

  Her bemused companion, apparently from the engineering department, left her on the 18th floor to go into some office with thickly carpeted floors, and Lauren continued up to the top floor executive suite. The pleasant smile she’d used for the young man from engineering was gone, replaced by a grim look of savage anticipation. Look out, Rush, here comes retribution!

  Then she came to butting heads with the Receptionist from Hell. The woman eyed Lauren up and down with disdain, telling her, “I’m sorry, Miss…er…Stevenson, Mr. Rush is in a meeting and likely to be tied up all day.”

  “It’s Stephens,” Lauren gritted, thinking briefly of the pleasure she’d have tying Jon Rush up…and dropping him out of the 24th floor window.

  “Well, Ms. Stephens, I’m sorry,” the lovely blonde said, not sounding sorry in the least. “But Mr. Rush and the department heads don’t normally see people without an appointment. I mean, you can’t really just drop in on them…perhaps someone else could help you?”

  Meaning some minion in the lower orders could deal with whatever problems someone coming in off the street might have, some nobody like Lauren.

  The four-hour drive to Toronto had done nothing to diminish Lauren’s anger. In fact, fighting the traffic coming off the Gardiner Expressway and through the choked city streets and then finding parking space at an exorbitant hourly rate had, if anything, increased the rage that was bottled inside her. Rage that just might explode on this woman’s beautifully groomed head if she didn’t tell Lauren immediately where the handsome top dog of Rush Co. was lurking.

  Debonair, my rear end…muttered Lauren’s little voice, for once on her side.

  “Just tell Mister Rush that Lauren Stephens needs to see him on a matter of urgency,” Lauren told the receptionist, attempting to maintain a tone of sweet reasonableness when she really wanted to grab the woman’s designer lapels and shriek at her.

  Then she knew she’d won. The woman’s eyes momentarily fluttered over to a wall that was partially glass, one of the new style see-through meeting rooms currently in vogue in all the top offices. Lauren caught a glimpse of the top of a blond head and then there was no stopping her.

  In a few strides, she was across the thickly carpeted expanse and swinging open the paneled mahogany door. A dozen pairs of eyes swiveled to stare at her in surprise, but she was aware only of the man who stood at the head of the polished oval table, his long fingers splayed on a pile of typewritten sheets in front of him.

  “I’m sorry to interrupt,” she said, looking straight at Jon and imitating the receptionist’s not-sorry-in-the-slightest tone. “But I really need to see you, right now.”

  “I’m in the middle of a meeting. Could you leave a number at the reception desk where you can be reached?” The richness in his voice was now laced with firmness. Top executive firmness.

  “Now!” The word exploded into the room and its impact was complete silence. Jon Rush gave no sign of his feelings except for an angry whiteness around his compressed lips, but the look he directed at her was palpable in its disapproval.

  Lauren suddenly became aware of the expressions on the faces of the other people in the room, seated around the table. Their looks varied from disdain, to outrage at the intrusion, to the white-haired older man at Jon’s elbow who was positively smirking at the exchange between his boss and the pretty intruder.

  Jon swiped back the stray lock of blond hair from his brow, his fingers raking back over his scalp as he shrugged.

  Looking calmly at the rest of the people in the room, he told them, “Please excuse us. This won’t take long. Perhaps Jim could just outline those figures again to be sure we’re all clear on this,” and then strode from the room.

  Passing Lauren, he gripped her elbow tightly, although to a passer-by it would have looked like a polite act, and guided her past the astonishe
d receptionist into a large corner office. Once they were inside, he closed the door quietly and pleasantly on the receptionist’s apologetic attempts at explanation, but the look he turned on Lauren was anything but pleasant.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he demanded, letting go her arm and crossing the room to lean one expensively clad hip against the huge mahogany desk.

  Lauren noted inconsequentially that the desk was every bit as cluttered as her own work surfaces tended to be, then almost threw the offending tabloid newspapers at Rush.

  “I think I’d like to ask you the same question,” she ground out at him, her fury undiminished even in the face of his obvious irritation at her intrusion into his world.

  Jon looked at her appraisingly for a moment, and then took the newspapers she was thrusting at him. He began to read with a puzzled frown, but soon a look of real amusement appeared on his face, and when he got to the final paragraph, the one about the handsome debonair company executive and the lovely lady that had so inflamed Lauren, he actually laughed out loud.

  “What exactly do you think is so funny?” she snarled at him, snatching the papers back and slamming them down on his desk, forcing him to look at her. In doing so, she inadvertently brought herself close to him, so close she thought she could feel the tantalizing heat from his hard, muscular body and that now-familiar electrical charge of awareness surged through her at his proximity.

  Swallowing from a suddenly dry mouth, she took two steps backwards in the hopes that distance would return her sense of equilibrium. A quick glance showed that Jon, too, looked slightly dazed, and she knew he had felt the same momentary shock of feeling. She almost laughed as, looking uncomfortable, he slid from his perch at the desk and moved to sit behind the protective cover of the big expanse of wood.

  Her sudden feeling of triumphant power was short lived however. Going onto the attack, Jon said roughly, “I don’t have a clue what kind of game you’re playing. I knew you were after publicity, wanting to make the company look bad and gain public sympathy. Well, you got plenty of publicity; too bad it wasn’t really the kind you were looking for, but thems the breaks. And if you and your drunken little friend don’t like it, then don’t play games where you can get burned.”

  Lauren gasped at the anger and cruelty in his words. The ruthless streak it revealed dissolved any feeling of pleasure that had briefly flared within her at seeing that he, too, reacted to their physical nearness.

  “Lucy is not a drunk,” she whispered, disgusted to find that she was struggling to fight back tears.

  “Well, she sure as hell put on a good show of it, falling over like that.” His eyes narrowed contemptuously, “Or is she on something a little stronger, something illegal? Isn’t that how artists are supposed to get their kicks?”

  Lauren felt as if he’d punched her, the contemptuous words hard and hurtful as they echoed in her mind. Was this the man she had thought so sensitive, so kind, as they’d sat talking together in the snow-brightened twilight of the woods?

  With great effort, she pulled herself together, straightening her spine.

  “Lucy suffers from a serious heart condition, and has just had surgery. That didn’t stop her from touring schools and wearing herself out working for the literacy program by introducing children to the pleasures of reading.”

  “You can sit here in your big, plush offices, Mister Rush, and gloat over the fact that a very sick woman is now in hospital under doctor’s orders because of the stress you’ve caused in putting her under threat of having to leave the home she loves. Is it really worth the pain you’re causing, just so that you can make a few more million for yourself and your shareholders? But I doubt there’s much point in appealing to your decency, you obviously don’t have any.”

  Lauren turned her back on him, marching to the door on legs that threatened to give way. Jon sprang from his seat and covered the distance between them in a few long strides, reaching the door ahead of her. Placing his hand on her arm, he was horrified to feel her trembling under his touch, trembling from the hurt he’d caused her.

  “Take your hand off me or I’ll scream so loud your own security staff will be here asking questions.” Lauren forced herself to look at him, saw the regret in his eyes, but steeled herself to shield her own tumultuous feelings from him. No way would she let him know how he’d hurt her. She’d make sure he never got a second chance.

  It seemed to take an eternity to cross the deep-piled carpet of Rush’s executive reception area, aware of the hostile gaze of the receptionist boring into her back, and then down the long plummet of the elevator to the ground floor foyer. Once outside, Lauren took a deep breath of city air, and released the tense set of her spine, something she hadn’t dared do until she was way away from Jon Rush, otherwise she knew she’d have broken down in tears.

  She wouldn’t give him that pleasure.

  No, she corrected herself. That was unfair. It was obvious from his expression as she’d stormed from his office that he knew he’d gone too far and was sorry. But that high-handed, contemptuous behavior was something she’d experienced before, her ex-husband was full of that kind of thing.

  And Lauren never, ever wanted to experience being close enough to a man to be hurt like that, ever again. She remembered the ego wounding, soul undermining, creativity destroying pain of her earlier relationship, and that little voice inside her head warned her that a similar experience with Jon Rush would wipe her right out.

  Because you could really, really care for this guy, the voice whispered.

  But I really cared for Terry, she replied to herself.

  Like, right! But with Rush, it’s a grown-up feeling…

  “Oh, shut up and leave me alone!” Lauren told the voice in her head, not realizing she spoke aloud until several pedestrians in her area gave her strange looks and a wide berth, not wanting to get involved with any street crazies.

  This woman was well dressed and looked normal, but you could never really tell, their eyes said as they exchanged glances with each other.

  Lauren’s first impulse was to run to the safe haven of her car, maybe howl with pain and frustration for a few minutes, and then head home. But she knew that, when it seemed like the world was about to end, the best thing to do was to keep right on going. She saw the familiar sign of a fast food restaurant further down the street, and her stomach hinted with a growl that a hot coffee sounded really good. Hot pancakes with maple syrup and sausage, too, her stomach added, reminding her that she’d not eaten since that cereal bar and coffee in the woods early that morning.

  Which thought brought her back to Jon Rush and his Jekyll-and-Hyde act.

  The afternoon temperatures were starting to drop, and even though spring was more advanced here in the city than in rural West River, Lauren still found herself shivering in her sweater and blazer. The restaurant was crowded, but clean and bright. Lauren thought it was one of life’s mysteries how the staff of such places could remain so cheerful, on their feet all day and dealing with some pretty awkward customers. The rewards weren’t so great, either.

  Nonetheless, the teenage girl behind the counter took Lauren’s order with a smile, asked if she wanted anything else and, when she realized the stacks behind her were empty of Meal #3’s, assured her that she would bring the pancakes over to Lauren as soon as they were ready.

  Staring at her own reflection in the glass window, and at the outside street it framed rapidly fading into the blurred shapes of late winter dusk, Lauren asked herself what she should do now. She was surprised how hurt she’d been by the publicity, by the bald public suggestion that she had been guilty of wrongdoing.

  Soon, feeling better with the simple meal inside her, she thought of Jane Rollands. Jane was an old high school friend of Lauren’s who’d gone on to law school and later into general practice in the city. Terry and Jane hadn’t really hit it off and so they’d seen less and less of each other socially and they’d seen little of one another after Laure
n had moved to West River. Jane’s common sense approach, and her legal expertise, was exactly what she needed now.

  Gathering up her things, Lauren used the pay telephone in the entrance of the fast-food restaurant to find her friend’s telephone number, got a welcoming reception, and arranged to go to Jane’s off-College Street office.

  The lawyer was busy with a client when Lauren arrived, but the receptionist—this time a kindly looking lady in her sixties wearing a home-knitted sweater and a tweed skirt—welcomed Lauren with the offer of a hot coffee and urged her to sit down and wait.

  “The boss won’t be long,” the woman assured Lauren as she returned to her word processor.

  A short time later, she was seated opposite her friend in one of the two leather-covered wing chairs in a window alcove of Jane’s office, overlooking the busy street below. To the side of them, a large, meticulously tidy desk stood, files in various colors stacked neatly to one side of a leather-cornered blotter, while rows of leather bound legal tomes frowned down intimidatingly from shelves around the room. Much less intimidating was their owner, Jane Rollands, who at 29 was the picture of a slightly plump housewife - a deceptive look that hid a razor sharp mind and genuine love for the law.

  “It’s coincidence that you should be here, Lauren, ‘cos I was actually going to give you a call, after I saw those pictures in the papers.” Jane, in the middle of offering Lauren a plate of cookies to go with the second cup of coffee, caught her friend’s eye and switched vocal direction. “Ah, so that’s why you’re here—the pictures!”

  “I thought if anyone could advise me, you could,” Lauren confessed. “I can’t believe how bad I feel, knowing that everyone I meet has probably seen pictures which make me look like some war-like harridan beating up on helpless company executives.”

  Jane grinned. “Two points. You missed out the handsome debonair company executive, and I’ve never personally thought of Jon Rush as helpless.”