Gift of Fire

picked up her favorite leather bomber jacket and opened the back door of the cafe. The February night was bitterly cold. There were patches of ice on the path that led from the cafe to the two cabins nestled in the trees a short distance away. She picked her way carefully toward the cozy little cottage she’d been sharing with Jonas since shortly after his arrival last fall.
    It was going to be a long, cold winter.
    A heavy silence descended on the two men left sitting at the table in the empty restaurant. Jonas listened to the door close behind Verity and wondered how long that hollow sound would haunt him. Then he reached for the nearly empty bottle of vodka.
    “She’ll be here when you get back,” Emerson said. “Verity’s not going anywhere. She’ll be right here waiting for you.”
    “Christ. I didn’t think she’d take it this hard,” Jonas muttered. “I expected a few fireworks at first, but I thought she’d simmer down eventually and be reasonable. Dammit, you’d think we were leaving for a year instead of a few days.”
    Emerson eyed his companion thoughtfully. “If you want out, just say the word. I should be able to handle this on my own.”
    “Don’t be an ass. It would be pretty stupid for you to go up against three men alone when you’ve got backup help available. You know damn well it isn’t going to be a simple matter of handing over the ransom the way you told Verity. They’ll kill Lehigh if they can get away with it. Much simpler and neater for them that way.”
    “Yeah. I’m sure Lehigh considered that when he chose me to pick up the cash and deliver it.”
    “At least he managed to convince the kidnappers that you were the only guy on the planet who could be trusted to handle the exchange.”
    “Old Sam is one smart bastard. And he’s right, if he asked anyone else to handle this, he’d probably be playing pinochle with the kidnappers until doomsday waiting for the payoff. I regret to say it, but most of his so-called friends, once they got their hands on the goodies, would forget all about the bonds of friendship.”
    “Pays to have one or two close friends in this world,” Jonas observed.
    “True. Speaking of which, I appreciate your offer to tag along, Jonas. But I don’t want to be the cause of you and my daughter splitting up.”
    “Verity and I are not going to split up over a little thing like this,” Jonas assured him quickly, his voice hard. “She’ll come around. She’s just mad because she’s used to getting her own way. That’s your fault, you know. You’re the one who brought her up to be a world-class brat.”
    Emerson sighed. “I don’t know, Jonas. I’ve never seen her quite the way she was tonight. At the end there, it was like she just sort of gave up. Not like Verity to give up on anything. I raised her to fight for what she wants.”
    A cold fist gripped Jonas’s insides. The thought of Verity giving up on their relationship hit him with stunning force. He hadn’t considered that possibility. He was accustomed to the way she surrendered completely in bed, the way she fussed about his career, or lack thereof, the way she lectured him to reform his casual attitude toward work. He had been reveling in her attention for the past few months, he realized, taking for granted that she was in love with him.
    Worse, he had complacently assumed that the psychic bond they shared was inviolate and unbreakable. It underlay everything else in their relationship, and it would always be there between them.
    Jonas forced himself to relax. That bond was his high card. Verity couldn’t deny it. It bound them together, a more certain glue than love, or sex, or business.
She couldn
’
t deny it.
    But he had learned over the past few months that Verity had the strength and determination to do just about anything she set out to do.
    Jonas knew that if she planned to write him off as a lost cause, he was in big trouble.
    He finished his vodka. The glass made a sharp sound as he set it down on the table. He rose to his feet. “I’d better go back to the cabin and pack.”
    “You do that,” Emerson said, his bushy brows arching. “I’ll lock up the cafe. Don’t forget to set the alarm. We’ve got to be out of here by five o’clock to catch that flight for Mexico City. It’s a ninety-minute drive to the San Francisco airport.”
    “I’ll see you at five.” Jonas didn’t look back as he strode out of the cafe. Getting up on time was not his main