Especially, Justine noticed almost immediately, on Wyatt Burns himself. She, herself, might as well not have existed. Possum’s eyes drank in Wyatt’s handsome features, her body moved to excite him, her arms moved as if to embrace him. Even from across the room, one couldn’t ignore the fire of Possum’s deliberate provocativeness.
Nor did he. If anything, Justine decided, his dark eyes flashed encouragement and when the dance was over his hands led the applause with generous enthusiasm.
It was only then that he turned to address Justine with obvious suspicion in his eyes.
‘You didn’t enjoy it?’
‘Oh, I did,’ she assured him. ‘It’s just that ...’
‘... that it was a little too flamboyant for your taste? I’m not surprised.’
‘That wasn’t it at all,’ she retorted. ‘I was just ... well ... surprised, that’s all.’
Wyatt stared at her for a long moment, eyes seeming to bore straight through her. Then, suddenly, his eyes widened in understanding and he laughed harshly.
‘I think I know what you mean, now,’ he said, and abruptly reached out to snare a passing waiter and mutter something at him that Justine didn’t catch.
But Wyatt said nothing further to Justine. He merely reached out to refill their wine glasses, his attention quite obviously elsewhere. Only a minute or two elapsed before Justine realised just where, as a swift, slender figure sped across the crowded restaurant towards them.
‘Wyatt! Wow! Wasn’t that a crowd-pleaser?’ Possum cried delightedly as she scooted over to throw her arms around Wyatt’s neck.
‘It was terrific, Poss,’ he replied, making no effort at all to disengage her. ‘Almost as good as your act this afternoon, I’d imagine. Which one was it this time?’
To Justine’s surprise then, the slender girl winked quite deliberately at her, then transformed before her very eyes.
It was magic! Even in the provocative dancer’s gear, Possimi instantly became the gauche, shy creature of the kitchen, flighty, skittish, and about fifteen years of age.
Justine could only gape, but Wyatt slapped the girl across the rump in a gesture both familiar and threatening. ‘You little witch!’ he grinned. ‘It’s no wonder poor Justine has been watching you as if she couldn’t believe her own eyes! I should tell Sebastian to take his belt to you, my girl, not that I reckon it’d do much good.’
Possum, the real Possum, if there was such a person, merely laughed delightedly before switching roles yet again, this time to a harem-girl slave who protested her innocence and pleaded against being beaten. Even Justine had. to laugh as Wyatt patiently endured her protestations and then sent the alluring slave off to receive her punishment.
‘I’m an ogre, aren’t I?’ he chuckled when Possum had slipped away through the crowd. ‘And I really am sorry, Justine — about this afternoon, I mean. I never thought that little devil would start playing her games with you on first meeting.’
‘Don’t apologise,’ Justine replied. ‘What I’d like to know is what she was doing washing dishes in the first place. The girl’s a wonderful actress; I’ve never seen such versatility.’
‘You haven’t seen Sebastian at his best, either,’ he replied. ‘The whole family’s that way, although it’s a toss-up between Possum and Sebastian for top honours.’
‘That doesn’t answer my question,’ she prompted, only to receive a broad smile in reply.
‘Not now,’ he countered, eyes roving past her to the edge of the stage. ‘You’re about to see yet another face of our Possum.’
Justine turned to look too, and was by this stage only mildly surprised to see the slender figure ease on to the platform with a guitar in her hands. Seating herself on a high stool. Possum waited until the crowd had quieted of its own volition, then lifted the instrument and began to play and sing what could only have been a love song.
Her voice was light, yet seemed somehow to fill the room, and not a chair shifted, not a voice spoke to break the spell. Even without understanding the words, Justine could feel the haunting mood of the music, and she closed her eyes and let it drift right through her.
A touch on her hand roused her, and she opened her eyes in surprise to find her hand enclosed within Wyatt’s, but when she looked over at him, he too was apparently lost in the melody, eyes closed and his muscular body relaxed in his chair.
Justine thought first to remove her hand, then changed her mind abruptly and instead simply closed her own eyes, letting the music take her again. Only now she couldn’t let herself drift with it entirely; she was anchored by Wyatt’s fingers, all too aware of the warmth of him, the feel of his hand on hers.
She was never sure where the song ended. The music seemed to continue, on and on and on. Then suddenly it wasn’t there any more, and her eyes flicked open to find Wyatt’s dark eyes soft upon her, studying her face with a gentle expression that disappeared like smoke when her eyes opened.
His voice still held softness, however, though he had to raise it to counter the thunderous applause around them. ‘Do you understand Greek?’ he asked, then nodded with some mysterious satisfaction when she shook her head.
‘Just as well,’ he muttered.
‘Why? It was a lovely song and the message in it was surely obvious enough.’ True, she thought, even though Possum had been singing it directly to Wyatt, while he, in turn, had held Justine’s hand throughout most of it. No logic, there.
‘I wouldn’t have thought you’d have noticed,’ he said with a hint of a grin. ‘You had your eyes closed practically throughout.’
‘I certainly don’t sec what’s wrong with that,’ she replied, wondering suddenly why he still held her fingers trapped in his own. She looked down, then, and his eyes followed hers, his fingers releasing her as her mind willed them to.
‘If you’re ready, perhaps we’d better be going now,’ he said. ‘Tomorrow will likely be a long, hard grind for you, so you’ll need your beauty sleep.’
Justine couldn’t argue, and by the time he’d called for the account and haphazardly signed it, she was ready.
Wyatt drove quickly on the way home, but with great skill and care. He said little, however, until they had left the inner city’s crowded streets and were on the main highway south.
‘I hope you won’t think too badly of Possum,’ he said then, bringing the comment up from nowhere. ‘It was damned thoughtless of her to have you on this afternoon, and I really do apologise for that, but Possum is ... unique.’
‘She certainly is that,’ Justine agreed. ‘But I still don’t understand what she’s doing working as a kitchen hand when she has so many other talents. And you never told me when I asked before, so I suppose you won’t now, cither.’
‘It’s simple, really,’ he replied, ignoring her jibe entirely. ‘Sebastian won’t let her. Except in the restaurant, but of course he’s very close to being the owner by now, so that sort of keeps it in the family. But to have her on the stage — either acting or singing — no way! I’ve tried to convince him otherwise, but so far I haven’t had much luck.’
‘But why won’t he let her? I mean, it’s such a waste.’
Wyatt shrugged. ‘Pure simple chauvinism, to a large degree. Plus the fact, of course, that he’d be much less able to control her if she were on her own, and believe me. Possum is damned hard to control just as she is. To be honest, I can understand his feelings, even agree to some extent, but not totally.’
Justine chuckled. ‘Does that mean you’re not quite the total chauvinist you appear to be?’ she asked provocatively. ‘I’d never have believed it.’
His reply was a short bark of laughter followed by a distinctly wolfish grin. ‘I’ll just bet you wouldn’t,’ he growled, ‘but I’d advise you here and now, dear Justine, not to go making snap judgments. And while you’re about it just a gentle warning not to go out of your way to ... provoke me. I have the feeling there’ll be quite enough of that without you specifically working at it.’
‘I don’t know what you mean,’ Justine replied haughtily.
‘Of course you don’t,’ he retorted, voice fairly alive with sarcasm. ‘But ignore that for the moment; let’s go back to this chauvinism discussion. It’s very much a two-edged sword, you know. For instance, when you get married, would you expect to give up your career?’
‘I hadn’t ever really thought about it,’ Justine countered; a blatant lie, but how was he to know?
Wyatt shrugged. ‘So think about it now,’ he charged. ‘It’s a fair drive home; you’ve plenty of time.’
‘But it isn’t something that particularly affects me,’ she hedged, only to have him snort with derision.
‘Oh, come now, I don’t know why you persist in being obtuse. Of course it affects you. You could meet the right man ... tomorrow, if you haven’t already. What then? Would you accept him insisting that you stay home and be a proper little housewife, abandoning all that training you worked so hard to get?’
‘But it just isn’t that simple,’ she countered. ‘I mean, what if he were a farmer, or ... whatever?’
Wyatt’s laugh was deliberately insinuating. ‘How many farmers do you expect to meet hiding in my kitchens?’ he challenged. ‘No, let’s be a bit more realistic. What if he were ... a restaurateur, for instance? Like me?’
Justine shivered, visibly, and then prayed he hadn’t noticed. How could this man have such an effect on her, she wondered, and in less than a single day?
‘I don’t think that’s at all realistic,’ she replied cautiously. ‘You’re no more looking for a wife than 1 am for a husband.’
‘I warned you about making snap judgments,’
Wyatt said, turning to fix her with his brooding eyes. ‘For all you know I’ve already got one lined up. In fact,’ and he flashed his teeth in another wolfish grin, ‘maybe I’ve already got one, full stop.’
‘Then that only makes the conversation even more ridiculous,’ Justine retorted, heaving a minuscule sigh of relief. Maybe now he’d drop this decidedly uncomfortable discussion. Maybe.
They drove nearly a mile in silence before he replied, and the reply was the farthest thing from anything she might have expected.
‘You’re damned well not going to ask, are you?’ he demanded.
‘Ask what?’ And she wasn’t, this time, being deliberately obtuse.
‘Whether I’ve already got a wife, of course. You were wondering about it; I could tell by the look in your eye.’
Too close for comfort, that. ‘I was doing no such thing,’ she lied. ‘It’s perfectly obvious you haven’t got a wife — and if you have she’s more to be pitied than censured.’
‘Pitied? That’d be the day. And you haven’t answered the question.’
‘I did so. Besides which, I really couldn’t care less one way or the other,’ Justine replied.
‘Okay.’ His reply was calm, but he followed it with a direct switch in tactics. ‘Assuming I don’t have a wife, and that I was going to marry you, would you expect to keep on working or not?’
‘Well, of course I would,’ she cried, patience almost at an end. ‘What would you expect me to do, stay at home all day and play in my hall of mirrors while you wandered around molesting the hired help?’
Wyatt blithely ignored the anger in her voice, along with her demanded question. ‘And what about once the little ones started coming?’ he asked. ‘I suppose you’d want to be parking them in the vegetable bins so you could keep an eye on them between courses?’
She laughed. The visual images that comment created made it impossible not to laugh. ‘Only until they were old enough to help with the washing up,’ she giggled.
‘I hope your cooking is better than your sense of humour,’ Wyatt snapped. ‘God! With you and Possum both in the kitchen the place’ll be a madhouse!’
‘Well, if you want to change your mind about the whole thing, now’s the time,’ Justine snapped back, unaccountably prickly and sensitive to the slightest nuances in his voice. ‘After all, we’ve each given the other a meal, so that ought to make us square.’
‘I don’t think you should eat Greek food any more,’ he replied without raising his voice. ‘It plays hell with your disposition.’
‘You don’t know anything about my disposition,’ Justine replied, her temper visibly frayed.
‘And I’m not likely to, since you refuse to give me a straight answer to the simplest of questions,’ he countered. ‘What’s the matter ... you afraid that if we got to know each other you might like me, or something?’
‘I don’t dislike you now,’ she protested. ‘Only this damnable habit you have of asking irrelevant questions about equally irrelevant subjects.’
‘Marriage is not an irrelevant subject,’ he replied, for the first time actually raising his voice to meet hers.
‘Weil, it certainly is between you and me!’ Justine yelled back. ‘If you want to talk about marriage why don’t you go and find somebody who’s interested in marriage, like ... oh ... Possum!’
‘Aha! Now the penny drops.’ Wyatt’s every word dripped insinuation. ‘A little of the old green-eyed monster, eh? Turn around here and let’s see the colour of your eyes, dear Justine.’
‘I will not! And how dare you suggest that I’m jealous? That’s the most conceited thing I’ve ever heard!’ Justine raged, and then shut up because she would have been incoherent with sheer frustration had she continued.
His reply came in a deliberately smarmy voice. ‘Methinks the lady doth protest too much.’
Lips clamped shut, Justine turned away to stare out the side window. To hell with him, she thought. Let him talk to himself.
But Wyatt simply ignored her tantrum and continued talking as if he was sure she was listening. ‘Actually, I’d have no objection to you working if we were married,’ he told her. ‘But only until the children started coming. Two of them, I think, provided we could manage one of each. Of course I know that aspect of things is purely up to me, and if I didn’t get it right I suppose we could stretch it to four kiddies. Or is that too many, do you think?’
He didn’t wait for an answer, obviously not expecting one. ‘No, four wouldn’t be too many. Especially if we could manage two sets of twins. Are there any twins in your family, Justine? Yes? No? Maybe? My, what delightful children they’d be if they inherited your quiet disposition. Not a word out of them during those long winter evenings ... I can just see you, a little bundle of joy on each arm ...’
‘Damn you! Stop it! Just stop it!’ she shouted, turning from the window to glare at him with eyes that definitely blazed green, she knew, although from anger, not jealousy.
‘That’s better,’ he replied with infuriating calmness. ‘I never could stand a complacent woman.’
‘If you weren’t driving this car I’d give you complacent where it would do you the most good,’ Justine threatened, her voice a whisper of sneering rage.
‘No sooner said than done,’ Wyatt replied, abruptly wheeling the heavy automobile off into an all-too-convenient lay-by.
Justine shrank back against her side of the car, eyes wary as she readied herself to repel his next move. But Wyatt only leaned back against his own door, arms folded arrogantly across his chest.
The two of them sat, unmoving but locked by their eyes, for what seemed like hours to Justine but was more realistically only a matter of minutes. Characteristically, it was Wyatt who finally broke the stalemate.
‘Hummph!’ he muttered half under his breath, and without another word, reached forward to place the heavy car into gear once more, steering carefully back out on to the highway without so much as another glance at his befuddled passenger.
Nor did he have much to say during the short remainder of the trip back to his restaurant. He enquired once if Justine was getting cool, and once if she minded him smoking as he drove. Nothing else.
It was, she decided, distinctly puzzling. What had he expected from her — a screaming, hair-pulling physical assault? Tears? A t
antrum? She simply didn’t know.
Where she had been in quite an angry rage, her mood now shifted entirely. She felt, somehow, that she had failed him in some intangible way. And it worried her. What worried her even more, however, was that she should care one way or another what Wyatt thought about her reaction to him. It was maddening that this arrogant, sarcastic man should be so easily able to manipulate her emotions within a single day of meeting him.
A radio control mechanism opened the garage doors at the restaurant when they arrived, so it was within the moonlit shadows of the garage interior that Wyatt strolled round the car to help Justine disembark.
His very touch, she found, was quite sufficient to send her pulse racing, create an unexpected and heady lightness of breath, an almost teenage clumsiness. Silently he led the way to a narrow courtyard and a rear door leading into the building, only freeing her arm when he was required to use his key to admit them both.
Still in silence, he took her arm again, leading her unerringly through darkened corridors and finally up a set of stairs. At the top, he flipped on a light switch and then carried on to the door of her apartment, where he stood in haughty alertness until she had handed him the door key and let him open the door for her. He stepped in ahead of her, eyes scanning the mirrored room, then as quickly retreated, offering only an abrupt ‘Goodnight’ as he turned away down the hallway.
Justine stood where he had left her, a living statue whose trembling lower lip was mirrored a dozen times from the walls around her. She was hurt, an obvious enough reaction to the rudeness of his leave-taking. But more, she was simply confused by it all.
It wasn’t until anger began to override her tenderness of ego that she finally moved, flinging her handbag down with a snarl and then flinging her evening cape just as viciously after it.
‘Damn! Damn, damn, damn ... damn!’ she cried softly. ‘What a dirty, stinking way to end a beautiful evening. Oh, Wyatt Burns, I hate you! Arrogant, self-centred, conceited, rotten bastard! If I ever cook anything for you again it’ll be laced with arsenic. Pure, unadulterated rat poison — just exactly what you deserve!’
Dinner at Wyatt's Page 5
