Tender Deception (13 page)

“My, my,” Connie murmured, her huge brown eyes wide and full of alarm. “What on earth did you do to him?”

“Nothing,” Vickie replied shortly, stunned, but determined to show no reaction to Brant’s high-handedness. Inside she was seething with fury and indignation, but with three pairs of eyes staring at her with curiosity, she had to pretend total indifference. Picking up her sponge, she calmly began to apply base to her cheeks. Eventually the other women lowered their eyes. Only Terry stared straight ahead at her own mirror, a secret smile curved into her lips.

“How dare you barge into the dressing room and speak to me like that?” Vickie demanded after she had sought Brant out and found him in the scene shop laboriously pounding nails. “Just who do you think you are?”

The hammer paused in mid-air and Brant swiveled slowly toward her, his eyes still burning darkly. For a terrified instant he reminded Vickie of a lord from the Renaissance—an all-powerful master who might easily bludgeon an erring female. But then the hammer fell innocently to his side. His voice was his weapon, lashing out with the strength of a whip.

“Who do I think I am?” he thundered in a rasp. “Nothing much. A fellow human being, currently a fellow member of this ensemble.” Dropping the hammer with a clanging thud to the cold cement floor, he strode angrily to a rough-hewn workbench to pick up a pile of several newspapers. Stamping furiously back to Vickie, he thrust them into her hands. “These are what I want to talk to you about.”

Vickie still had no conception of what he could be ranting about. “Those are newspapers,” she drawled sarcastically, stating the obvious and infuriating him further.

“Read the circled articles,” Brant commanded.

Brant had maintained his grip on the papers even as he had thrust them into Vickie’s unwilling hands. Now she looked at him heatedly and jerked them from his grasp, her gray eyes as stormy and as cold as his blue ones. Finally allowing her vision to take in the newspapers, Vickie saw immediately that the publications were major ones from across the country. And the circled articles were about Brant, told to the reporters by a nameless but well-known “leading lady of the Central Florida troupe.”

Vickie’s heart sank slowly as she briefly scanned the articles. They were damaging, to say the least. Still, she was certain that Brant’s anger didn’t stem from the temperamental portrayal given of him, but from the fact that his private life—one he had always kept from the media—had been ripped wide open. Every personal piece of information imaginable had been given, down to his present address. And to make matters worse, it was even hinted that a romantic entanglement “destined to end at the altar” was going on between the star and the leading lady who had been so helpful to the papers.

Vickie was horrified as she met Brant’s accusing stare, and equally filled with wrath.

“I don’t care what this looks like!” she sputtered in a vengeful hiss. “I didn’t give this interview!”

“I didn’t accuse you yet.”

“No?” Vickie countered. “Then why am I standing here?”

“I’m asking you,” Brant said more calmly. “If you didn’t give the interview, it was certainly intended to look as if you did. You do have all this information.”

“All right, I do!” Vickie fumed as she tried to remain steadfastly cool and in control. “But I didn’t have anything to do with this. And I’m not going to stand here giving you excuses. Look for your culprit elsewhere.” Belying her words, she remained planted before him, hands defiantly on her hips, gray eyes blazing into indigo for a sign that he believed her.

But signs were sometimes impossible to read from Brant. He stood as still as she, white-knuckled fists clenched in his pockets. With the angle of his arms emphasizing broad shoulders that trimmed to slender hips encased in jeans that hugged and visibly displayed the muscles in his legs beneath the fabric, he again reminded her of some fearsome warlord of another century. A Viking, a savage chieftain. Othello the Moor, about to commit murder over an imagined wrong.

“You don’t have to give me excuses,” he said grimly. “I was merely asking. If you say you know nothing about it, I believe you.”

Stunned by his words, Vickie stood still in disbelief. “You have one hell of a way of just asking!”

“I’m annoyed.”

“Annoyed?”

“Okay. I’m rather irate. I can’t imagine anyone doing something like this to me.”

“Terrific. So you turn to me.”

“I’m sorry. I also intend to turn elsewhere. Got any ideas?”

Vickie hardened her jaw as she clenched her teeth. She had an idea—a damned good one. But she didn’t intend to voice it, certainly not when she didn’t trust his look. He said that he believed her, but did he really?

“Brant, these are newspaper articles. Anyone can talk. There are at least twenty people around here who could have come up with any of this.”

The stark anger left his eyes for a moment of puzzlement. “But why would anyone want to hurt me?” he mused.

“I don’t think anyone did intend to hurt you,” Vickie said quietly.

“What are you talking about? I’ll be besieged at home if I don’t move now! Whoever did this even gave out my parents’ address in Tampa! They are not young people. They don’t need the harassment they’re going to get—”

“The pain of notoriety!” Vickie interrupted dryly. “You’re a star. Surely you’ve been maligned before.”

“Not by supposed friends.”

“Oh, it was a friend, all right,” Vickie muttered beneath her breath.

“What?” Brant demanded sharply.

“Nothing. Nothing I can’t handle myself,” she murmured. “Excuse me, that is if the third degree is over. I do have a show tonight.” Majestically spinning on him, she sailed out of the shop and down the hall to the wings, not sure whom she’d rather give a sound slap to first—Brant, for believing her capable of being so petty, or Terry, who she was convinced had given the interview and purposely set it up to appear that Vickie had.

Vickie reached the wing just in the nick of time to hear Jim bellow his “places” command. And as the show proceeded, she decided that acting was a wonderful thing. Her head was in a turmoil as vicious as any raging storm, but her lines came out ringing sincerity. Only in the wings during the act breaks was she unusually subdued, wondering what to do.

If she really wanted to get rid of Brant, this was her chance. But she knew damn well that Terry, determined to get Brant, had given the interview. She couldn’t sit by and have Brant, who had professed to believe her, harbor suspicions in the back of his mind. Pride, she told herself, goeth before the fall…In any event she wasn’t letting Terry get away with it and sit idly by.

As she broodingly mused, Terry sauntered over to her. “Anything wrong?” she asked solicitously. “Macho-man get your dander up?”

“No, Terry,” Vickie drawled calmly, watching the pretty brunette. “But you might say that I am a little irritated.”

“Oh? I did hear that you and Brant were shacking up. If you’ve had a little lovers’ quarrel, perhaps I can help,” Terry offered.

“Brant and I are not shacking up,” Vickie explained, the terminology bothering her more than Terry’s attitude. “And I’m not irritated with Brant. Quite frankly, Terry, I’m irritated with you.”

“Me!” The brunette feigned a pained innocence.

“Come on, Terry,” Vickie retorted. “I’m not one of your drooling dates. Haven’t you read the papers? Your interviews were well received.”

For an instant Terry’s sultry eyes flashed something like a fearful defiance. Then they clouded. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. We all give interviews all of the time.”

“Oh, but these are especially good,” Vickie told her caustically.

“Perhaps someone twisted what I said—”

“Places!” Tim’s command broke off further conversation.

Whispering quickly as she moved to her assigned space, Vickie warned Terry, “Perhaps you’d better tell Brant that your words were twisted…”

Terry did tell Brant with an acting ability Vickie had as yet to see on a stage. She watched only a few minutes of the little scenario. Terry caught Brant offstage right after the curtain fell at the end of
Godspell
. There had never been such an abject display of feminine remorse. And Terry came off as the maligned one, her innocent words misused and abused. As she spoke to Brant, her long, lacquered fingernails resting lightly on his shoulder with her emphatic sincerity, Vickie turned away. She was in the clear herself, but she didn’t want to see Brant’s understanding forgiveness of Terry. It wasn’t fair. She had taken the brunt of his temper. Terry had merely to wind herself around him and—men! Surely Brant couldn’t be that idiotic! So much for his being “a little bit in love” with her.

Suddenly Vickie was tired. The tension she had been living with was draining her. Rushing into the dressing room, she scrubbed her face and changed, in a hurry to leave, not interested in another encounter with either Brant or Terry.

But if she had hoped to avoid Brant, she was sadly disappointed. As she hastened to the parking lot, she found him waiting for her, leaning against her Volvo.

“What now?” she flashed angrily. “Did someone break your board? Put nails in your tires? Throw salt in your coffee?”

“None of the above!” he laughed, languidly straightening himself. “I want to apologize.”

“Terrific, you’ve apologized,” she said coolly, inserting her key into the lock. “Now, if you’ll excuse me…”

“It won’t start.” He moved around the car to grin into her window.

“What?” she demanded, annoyed, punching the key into the ignition.

“I said it won’t start, but if you don’t want to take my word for it, try it!” He continued to grin at her, leaning confidently on the frame. Vickie gave him a nasty glare and turned the key. Nothing. Spewing forth a barrage of venomous words, she pushed his elbow away from the car, opened the door, and sprang from the vehicle to further emphasize her wrath. “And you had the nerve to accuse me of that interview! Brant Wicker, you are a—”

“Hell of a nice guy, really,” he finished, halting her vengeful fury by slipping one arm securely around her back and using the other to bring his hand to her mouth and clamp it shut, laughing until her futile struggles ceased. Without releasing his hold, he calmly informed her, “There’s nothing really wrong with your car. A loose wire. I found it when I fixed it for you the other night. Come to think of it, you never did say thanks, but that’s all right, don’t mention it. I loosened the same wire. I was afraid you’d try to run off instead of listening to me. What’s that?” he asked as she made a muffled comment into his hand. “Sounds like ‘let me go.’ Not yet. I want to make sure you’ve calmed down a bit! Oh, brother! Here comes Harry Blackwell. Let’s not have him see us arguing.” His hand slipped from her mouth, but even as she gulped for air, his mouth replaced it, searing into hers hungrily, passionately. One hand now held her to him securely around her lower back, the other reinforced his conquering command by pinning her to him by her nape. Stiffening, she strained against him, unable to fight, unable even to lift an arm. Suddenly she didn’t want to. The scent of his light, musky cologne mingled in her nostrils with an aura that was all him, all masculine, all seductive. The pounding of his heart was as clear to her ears as her own, as his lips possessed her and his tongue parted her quivering mouth—searching, probing, demanding. Sensing her surrender, he eased his deathlike grip and his hands began to wander, caressing the small of her back, teasing her ribs, moving along the smooth, alabaster skin of her neck, down to her collarbone, down briefly to cradle the curves of her breasts before they locked again behind her back to allow his lips to follow the same course.

Sanity finally sprang to her mind. “Brant, let me go!” Her attempt at reproachful scorn came out more like pathetic subjugation, but he released her immediately and she almost fell to the concrete in weak surprise. “Sure,” he said with a devilish chuckle, “you sound much calmer now, and Harry is halfway down the street.”

“I am anything but calm! I am furious. Irate. Inflamed—” Her voice was growing louder with each expletive. Grabbing her wrist, Brant’s fingers completely encircling it, he marched the few spaces to his own car, dragging her behind him. Her knees were still too rubbery to resist; she couldn’t find the air to vocalize a protest. He opened the driver’s door and propelled her in, following so closely that she was forced to move or be crushed by his steel-hard frame. He slammed the door, inserted the key into the ignition, and pulled out onto the highway, all before she could utter a word. Incredulous, strangling with indignation, she finally garbled a harsh, “What on earth do you think you’re doing?”

He shrugged pleasantly. “I’m trying to talk to you.”

“Talk! You weren’t talking! You attacked me!”

“I did not!” He gave her a grimace of feigned shock. “Well, maybe for just a minute. But all’s fair in love and war, as they say. So I’m glad I made the attack. I won the skirmish.”

“You didn’t win a thing,” she protested angrily.

“Yes, I did,” he replied with firm simplicity, pulling his eyes from the road to glance her way for a second. What she saw in them in that split-second sent alternating flows of chilling ice water and boiling lava through her veins. His eyes weren’t brilliant with laughter or dark with rough-cut anger. They were clear, crystal-clear with pointed determination and something else she couldn’t quite discern, a shade far more dangerous than any she was familiar with already. Taking a deep breath, she decided to change her tactics. “Brant, I have to get home,” she said softly.

“I’m taking you home.”

“My car…”

“I’ll pick you up in the morning.”

So much for her new tactics. “Damn you, Brant Wicker! You’ve been playing too many roles! You can’t drive me around against my will. We are not living in Shakespearean days! You have no power over me; you can’t control me!”

“Obviously I can!” Brant chuckled dryly. “But don’t worry, I don’t intend to often! You’ll shortly be controlling yourself—my way.”

“You have gone stark raving mad!” Vickie charged him, inching as far as she could from his compelling warmth to keep her words aloof. She leaned against the door as she eyed him skeptically and added, “But don’t worry. I’m sure you’ll find a production of
One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest
somewhere, and fit right in.”