Tender Deception (11 page)

Smoky gave her his absentminded smile and disappeared into the back. Brant switched off his power saw and grinned. “That was a quick change.”

Vickie shrugged. “Simple costume, simple makeup. How’s it going?” Vickie asked.

“Fine.” Brant inclined his head toward Mark, who hadn’t noticed his mother. “As you can see.” He tugged lightly on one of her pigtails. “Go on, get out of here and have a good show. I promise to take him home soon. Oh, I’ll probably stop by my place for a few things. And borrow your shower.” He grimaced. “A day of rehearsal and now a fine spray of sawdust. I’m feeling rather rank!”

“Sure,” Vickie agreed, covered with a sudden feeling of warmth. It was the same strange warmth she had felt when they were doing the dishes together—a sense of pleasant domesticity she didn’t really want to recognize. But as silly as it was, she liked the idea of Brant in her shower. “I’ll be home as soon as I can,” she said quickly, turning away from him, embarrassed by her thoughts.

“No hurry,” he replied cheerfully.

Vickie started down the hall, and then impetuously turned back. Any reservations she had had about leaving Mark with Brant had been problems of her own mind. Brant, looking curiously more macho in his casual clothes than he ever had in a movie, was discussing the fly system for Othello with Smoky while still keeping a covert eye on Mark. With that golden lock of hair over an intense blue eye and the breadth of his shoulders emphasized as he crammed his hands into his pockets, his simple presence was hypnotizing, even from a distance. Damn! she told herself disgustedly. She really needed distance! And it was getting harder and harder to keep it.

The show that night went especially well and Vickie was besieged by well-wishers after the curtain call, causing her to run very late. But there was nothing to be done. Monte’s, although a popular attraction for tourists, survived because the locals supported it, and every member of the troop knew how very important it was to personally accept praise and congratulations from the audience.

Finally out of costume, Vickie hastily warned Monte that she might need a ride, then ran out to check on her car. Amazingly, it started. She ran back in to inform Monte that she didn’t need transportation after all, only to be waylaid as her director decided to tease her.

“Getting chummy with Brant, huh?” Monte demanded with a feigned solemnity. “For a girl who wouldn’t have a drink with him a few nights ago, you seem to be on very good terms.”

“You asked to me to be decent,” Vickie snapped, tired and wanting only to take her confused emotions home and smother them with sleep.

“Don’t go getting temperamental on me!” Monte gasped with mock horror, pretending to be hurt.

“Oh, Lord!” Vickie muttered in disgust, flicking her hair over a shoulder as she strode away. “What I have to put up with to keep a decent job!”

With Monte’s laughter ringing behind her, she hurried from the theater to drive home quickly in the sparse late-night traffic. Her house was strangely quiet as she slipped her key into the door.

Walking in, she discovered why. Brant was sound asleep, curled comfortably on the divan, oblivious to his ankles and bare feet, which protruded many inches over the surface. For a moment she stood still and watched him, unable to resist the temptation to study him now in his vulnerable state. The tiny lines around his eyes were faint in repose, the bush of golden hair endearingly disheveled. There was no touch of the quick, dark anger she knew him capable of. He held his slightly parted lips in a half smile, as if his dreams were good ones. Gingerly placing a hand on his shoulder, Vickie could feel his peaceful, even breathing, and the hard muscles that held no tension at rest.

Gnawing afresh on the nail she had started to chew earlier, she stepped away from the divan. It was almost two
A.M.
It would be a crime to awaken him. In any case, what harm would it be to allow him to finish his night’s rest on her divan? She hesitated only a moment longer, then secured a blanket and an extra pillow from her room. Half tenderly and half nervously, she wedged the pillow beneath his head and draped the blanket over his long sprawled-out form. He didn’t stir.

With a confused sigh Vickie adjusted the thermostat on the air conditioner, checked on Mark, and turned out the lights. She stopped once more to glance idly at Brant, and to wonder with a wistful curiosity if she did mean anything to him…anything at all. Foolish. He was a shining star who loved women and left them. She was an absolute idiot if she ever imagined any more. But very luckily, a very tired idiot. She fell asleep herself almost as soon as her head hit her pillow.

“M
OMMY! MOMMY!”

Vickie lifted one protesting eyelid as Mark crawled onto her bed, patting her arm insistently. His little face was ecstatic.

“Brant!” he told her with his excellent pronunciation of the name. “Brant on the couch.”

“Yes, I know,” Vickie smiled, talking to him as a little adult in the manner she always did. “He was sleeping when I came in, so I left him. Shhhh!”

Mark repeated her motion of putting a finger to her lips.

Still in a state of euphoric half awareness, Vickie glanced longingly back to her cool sheets and plumped pillow. But she didn’t want to be caught sleeping when Brant awoke, “Play very quietly,” she warned her son, switching off the alarm button which was due to ring any minute, “and Mommy will shower and dress and make breakfast. Then we’ll wake Brant, okay?”

Mark nodded happily with his dazzling smile and toddled off to his own room. Grabbing her rehearsal clothing, Vickie flew quickly into the bathroom, determined not be caught as vulnerable as she had caught Brant the night before. She emerged quickly, but fully dressed, her regular makeup a little more precise than usual.

Totally aware that she was trying to impress Brant, whose motionless form still stretched beneath the blanket—only the tips of his toes and the top of his rumpled head visible—Vickie decided to make a breakfast with all the works, although during the week she and Mark usually settled for toast and cereal. Impressing him, she decided, was not such a terrible desire. She wanted him to leave, thinking her a cool, sophisticated, and competently independent woman.

He finally awoke as the scent of sizzling bacon wafted through the house. Ambling into the kitchen, his hair in fluffy disarray and his eyes still blurred with sleep, he caused Vickie’s heart to pound painfully within her chest. He gave her a rueful smile and her breath caught in her throat; her entire body seemed to constrict. Time and wisdom had changed nothing. She loved his rugged, towering frame every bit as much as she had three years ago.

But now, more than then, her feelings and emotions were futile. If there was anything remotely serious in Brant’s intentions, there never could be to hers. Out of necessity she had spun a web of deceit between them. A web that must stay at all costs as a wall. A life without Brant breezing through was going to be agony again; it was going to mean sleepless nights and tormented dreams. But a life with Brant knowing about Mark was unthinkable.

“Good morning,” she said in a voice unintentionally curt.

“Good morning,” he drawled in return, a brow ever so slightly raised in mockery at her tone. He rubbed the back of his neck with both hands. “And yes, thank you, I slept very well.”

Vickie hid a flush by giving her undivided attention to the bacon.

“I must say though,” Brant continued, helping himself to cup of coffee from the bubbling coffeepot, “that I’m surprised you didn’t wake me. It doesn’t appear that you’re particularly thrilled by my company, and”—he mischievously twitched her fall of hair from her face—“what will the neighbors say?”

“Quit it!” Vickie slapped his hand aside and drained the bacon. “The neighbors won’t say anything. I doubt if they’ll notice your car, because it’s going to drive away with you in it as soon as you’ve eaten.” Transferring the bacon to a plate and grabbing another heaped with fluffy cheese omelettes, Vickie backed out the swinging doors, staring at him. “Grab the toast, please, will you?”

“With pleasure.” Brant obediently took the plate and followed Vickie. He refused to acknowledge her withdrawal as they ate, complimenting her profusely and bantering with Mark. When they had finished the meal, he collected his things without argument, apparently willing to leave as directed with no further conversation.

Caught between pain and relief at his easy acquiescence, Vickie was startled when he purposely set his belongings on the chair by the door and took her crudely by the shoulders in a hold that allowed for no escape.

“You know I meant what I said at lunch the other day,” he said, his voice as rough and grating as the fingers that held her firmly. “I intend to hound you mercilessly. I am going to have you again, but I’ll try to be patient. I want you coming to me, with both of us entirely lucid. There will be no delusions about a rape a second time.”

Vickie had met his heated blue gaze with her own eyes steady and she willed them not to lower. She couldn’t let him detect the weakness in her.

“Brant,” she objected, “I apologized for what I said. But you don’t understand. I’m just not interested in an involvement, especially with you.”

“Why?” he demanded harshly.

“Because”—she fumbled slightly—“I just don’t want you—”

“The hell you don’t!” he grated in a low roar. “I kissed you yesterday just to prove that point to myself. And I do believe I proved it.”

“Brant—”

Whatever she had been about to say was swiftly torn from her lips. He did not simply kiss her this time; he plundered her mouth with his. He assailed her entire form with his lips and hands, taking complete command of her weakening body. His hands traveled beneath her blouse to tantalize the firm skin of her midriff, then dexterously to unclasp her bra, claiming her breasts under the lace covering with gentle but demanding thoroughness. His fingers massaged the tautening mounds of flesh, drawing patterns that were alternately rough and tender, rubbing his thumbs over her nipples in slightly painful grazes that brought them instantly to full peaks.

Vickie whimpered a protest but, again, he had been so fast. Her arms fell to his, first to attempt to move them, but then to lock there, unwittingly fascinated by the strength and heat beneath them. Despite the jeans they both wore, she could feel his red hot desire burning against her as his hips relentlessly drove into hers. She couldn’t move from his arms; she couldn’t talk with his mouth sensuously moving over hers, drawing her tongue into the duel she longed to deny but couldn’t. It was breathless, whirling, mindless minutes later when she realized she could have spoken, that her lips had been released when he moved his down across her cheek, enticingly circling her ear with moist stabs of his tongue, moving downward again to attack the soft and sensitive flesh of her throat with a demand that was no longer forceful but completely beguiling.

The buttons of her shirt had somehow come undone. His tongue now swept over the areas previously charted by his fingers, nuzzling aside the fabric of her bra with comfortable ease. Primitive excitement whipped through Vickie; it suddenly seemed senseless either to think or talk. The fingers that had pushed at his arms were digging into them, whimpers of protest became whimpers of pleasure. Her hands left his arms to wind around his back, and she was shamelessly pressing herself against him in return, savoring the feel of his overpowering shoulders, breathing in his scent erratically.

Brant’s assault stopped abruptly, but where she would have wormed away in acute embarrassment, he held her tightly.

“Why do you lie to me, Vickie?” he whispered, his breath still stimulating as it swept the moistness of her ear. “It’s all here, sweetheart. I know that you want me. I believe that you care for me. Why are you afraid?”

He set her an inch away from himself to straighten her clothing, and Vickie wrenched from his grasp. “Would you please just go!” she cried angrily. God! How could she be so easy?

His fists constricted into powerful white knots that matched the tension of his grim lips and severely tightened features. “Yes, Victoria, I am going. But you can damn well count on the fact that I’ll be back. I’m not letting you ruin this for both of us. I don’t know what goes on in that secretive little mind of yours, but I promise I will get to the bottom of it. You are afraid of me. I let you off with that cool nonchalance three years ago, but I guarantee I won’t again. You became mine on that night when you gave me, I repeat, gave me, the virginity you still persist in denying. This time, my love, you’re going to stay mine.”

“No!” Vickie flared, fumbling with her buttons in her haste to restore herself to order. She couldn’t seem to make her fingers work correctly, or drag her eyes from his flaming stare. “I will not be your Sarasota conquest!”

“Is that what it is?” he retorted cruelly. “I think not. If this was just meaningless, as you keep claiming, I don’t think you’d give a damn. But as I said, I will have you, and I will get to the bottom of it all.”

The door slammed so hard with his departure that the small glass window in it rattled precariously. Shaking stridently as she heard his footsteps click away, Vickie sank to the couch, thinking wildly, going entirely blank, thinking again desperately, her eyes fixed straight ahead, her legs limp.

“Mommy?” Mark’s voice calling from his room broke through her numbness.

“Coming,” Vickie called, rising absently. “We have to get going, Mark,” she continued mechanically.

And then she was angry again. Damn that Brant Wicker for walking back into a life she had carefully glued together from shattered pieces into something workable. Who did he think he was to come back and make demands?

Her anger stayed with her, a sustaining force, as she dropped Mark off at school and drove to the theater.

She arrived a few minutes late to find rehearsal well under way. Sliding into a rear seat beside Terry, who was sullenly sewing a piece of antique lace to a velveteen sleeve, she gave her a surprised, questioning glance.

Terry lifted her shoulders and then dropped them. “Monte’s in one of his moods,” she explained in an indifferent whisper. “Who knows? Maybe his cat bit him this morning. He started the minute we began rehearsing. Anyway, I don’t suggest you miss any cues.” Pushing her own script, which lay on the table before her toward Vickie, Terry warned her, “They’re a third of the way through act two. I’d get up there.”