“No kidding,” she muttered, then busied herself dabbing the foul-smelling liquid onto his abraded knuckles. Whether it stung or not, she couldn’t tell. Bevan obviously wasn’t about to reveal himself by letting her know. He seemed oblivious to any pain he might be feeling, and when she looked up, it was to find him observing her with a slight grin and an expression of wry amusement in his pale gray eyes.
“Right! And if you’re done with your tortures, Ms. Bryan, then I suggest we both go and get some sleep. I know you’ve had a bit, but I’m fairly whacked.”
Earlier in the evening, they’d been within an inch of going to bed together, but now he made no such suggestion, didn’t even seem aware of it. Not that she really cared, since it wasn’t going to happen, no matter what. But still ...
You’re a slut, Judith Theresa. At least wait until you’re asked. Angry-making thoughts from a neglected conscience.
“Aren’t you going to clean your rifle first?” Judith asked, the words popping out without her even thinking. “Isn’t that one of the rules? Weapons have to be kept spotless at all times?”
“My dear Judith Theresa, whatever are you on about?”
And there was something in his voice, some slight, off-key tone that made Judith’s hackles rise in suspicion. And sure enough – this time, when she met his eyes, they projected such a total expression of appealing innocence she nearly laughed out loud. She pondered only an instant, then threw caution to the winds and let fly!
“I was on about the poacher you went storming out of here to confront, but then you didn’t have to shoot him, did you? You just beat him up instead.”
Her tone was scathing, deliberately so, but her anger was directed at Bevan for reasons that had nothing to do with guns or poachers or fistfights, and she had the uncomfortable feeling he knew it.
“I’d ask whose side you’re on, but of course I know you journalistic types are always scrupulously neutral,” he replied, and there was a hard edge to his voice, the sarcasm of the last few words undisguised. “But just in case you’re overwhelmed with sympathy for this poor poacher, let me assure he’s not out there poaching the king’s deer like some modern-day Robin Hood because he’s got a mob of starving kids and nothing to feed them on. This bloke’s got a mob of kids all right, but they’re far from starving and probably wouldn’t eat good venison if they were offered it.
“This charming fellow is home at night so seldom I don’t how he made the kids, because he is forever out shooting stags for their heads, my dear journalist. He leaves the meat to rot or feed the Tasmanian devils and native cats. He just walks away, the same as he just walks away if he happens to shoot a doe by mistake, or after he’s cut one of my fences to get on or off the property. He does all this not because he’s hungry, but because he likes to kill things and he likes to flout authority ... any authority. And he’ll go to court in the morning, where the magistrate will slap him on the wrist and tell him he’s a naughty boy and let him go so he can poach another deer. But not until he buys some new tires for his ute!”
There was a savage satisfaction in the last remark, but it was tinged with sadness too, the bitterness Judith had all too often heard from people hamstrung by a legal system that seemed to favor offenders’ rights over those of the victims.
She wasn’t about to argue. No matter what she said, it would be wrong. But still ... the question leapt to her lips before she could turn off her mind.
“You shot out his tires?”
Bevan laughed, a huge, bellowing, gargantuan laugh of what appeared to be genuine pleasure.
“You really have a thing about guns, don’t you? No, my dear, bloodthirsty Ms. Bryan, I most emphatically did not shoot out his tires. I did not fire a shot, neither in anger nor with malice aforethought, nor even as a warning.”
Then he grinned, and it was a wicked grin, a grin seething with smug satisfaction. “I will admit, however, that while he was busy hacking the head off the stag he shot – a trophy now being held in evidence against him, along with the carcass he’d intended to abandon – somebody appears to have stuck a knife into all four of his tires and the spare, to boot. It wasn’t me of course. I didn’t even get there until it was all over.”
Liar! That much was obvious. Judith thought it but didn’t say it.
“And I suppose there wasn’t a fistfight, either?” she asked with deliberate innocence. “You injured your hands by hitting a tree in frustration?”
“I injured them protecting myself. No more than that.” His voice was calm, but his eyes danced with delighted, unrepentant laughter. “The rotter had the effrontery to accuse me of slicing his tires, he did. Even took a poke at me, right there in front of police witnesses.” And again that mischievous grin, followed by an overly broad shrug of innocence. “So I defended myself. Can’t fault a man for that, surely?”
“Surely not,” she said, pushing the words out as if they tasted bad, which they did. “And now if you’ll excuse me, it’s been rather a long night and I’d like to get some sleep.”
“That’s one of your better ideas,” he said. “Want me to come along and tuck you in and kiss you goodnight, or good morning, as it is now? Although,” he added, and she couldn’t tell if his grin was rueful or playful, or both, “I’ve probably had about all the excitement I can handle for one night.”
His eyes laughed, their smoky depths gleaming.
Judith ignored the temptation, although she didn’t attempt to deny its attraction – to herself. To him, however, she denied it emphatically. Liar, liar, pants on fire.
“Please don’t be ridiculous,” she said and turned on her heel and walked away, her back ramrod straight, her entire attitude one, she hoped, of rejection. But the sound of Bevan’s delighted laughter followed her up the stairs and echoed in her appointed bedroom long after he’d called a cheerful good night from the hall outside her room.
13
It was that same laughter she heard first upon awakening, though in her mildly befuddled state she took a few moments to realize he was downstairs talking on the telephone.
More than likely talking to Roberta Jardine, she thought as she made her way to the shower. The few words she could distinguish sounded very much like “poacher” and “tires.” When she eventually made her way down to the kitchen, it was to find Bevan finishing the conversation and a cup of fresh-perked coffee awaiting her.
But Bevan’s good mood – if indeed it had been that – seemed to have evaporated, fled down the telephone lines. He greeted her politely enough, but there was a chill in the air that was almost tangible.
And so it stayed throughout the day, a day spent unpacking, sorting, and repacking all the paraphernalia that related to the months of work ahead. Tents, sleeping bags, all manner of cooking and camping gear had arrived, but it was swamped by the huge amount of specialized equipment for the search itself.
Judith on her own wouldn’t have recognized most of it. She had no idea how it should actually work. But Bevan clearly understood and lost no time in enlisting her aid to sort and list the highly specialized motion detectors, the solar collectors that would power them, the cameras, the portable hides, and the complicated lists of instruction for everything.
“I’m told this Jan Smythe woman is a miracle worker with this stuff,” Bevan said in one of his few comments beyond what was absolutely necessary. Judith had already given up any attempt to converse. She now felt herself in a holding pattern, a nonverbal, nonresponsive condition, and since she couldn’t understand his icy attitude, she’d decided to accept it.
When they stopped for lunch, it was quickly made sandwiches and coffee, which Bevan carried away with him, muttering something about having “my own work, while there’s time.” He was back in half an hour but offered no explanations.
The tension just seemed to grow and grow. By tea time, they were like two stray dogs, circling and eyeing each other with suspicion, ready to snarl and growl at the first hint of excuse. Bevan had asked Judith i
f she’d mind preparing the meal, then left with an open brief, saying he’d be back in “a couple of hours” that turned out to be three and a half, during which she tried four times to phone Vanessa, who seemed to have camped on the phone at her end.
By which time her carefully prepared roast chicken was overcooked, dry as an outback evening, and – at least to her – totally unappetizing. Bevan ate like a starving man and even apologized for being late.
“My fault,” he said. “I’m used to living by my own time, never even thought about the time until it was well and truly too late.”
After the otherwise silent meal, she was banished to the library while he tended to the dishes and was interrupted only when he peered in to say, “I’m off for a bit of a prowl around. Don’t wait up or get worried. I don’t know how long I’ll be.”
Judith didn’t wait up, but when midnight arrived and there was no sign of him returning, she did begin to worry despite telling herself not to be silly. But when she finally roused after a fitful night’s attempt to sleep, somehow knowing he still hadn’t come in, she began to worry in earnest. And to get angry.
Part of her was tempted to just peek into his room to be sure he hadn’t sneaked in while she slept. But a wiser, stronger, more stubborn instinct told her to stay as far away from Bevan’s bedroom as possible. That inner advice came as she stood outside his bedroom door, curiosity sprouting antennae like some demented pincushion. The pealing of the telephone saved her, and she fled down the stairs to answer it, one ear cocked behind her in a half certainty he’d have caught it on an extension before she could manage the stairs.
He didn’t, but his answering machine did, and Judith opted for the easy way out, listening through some neighbor’s message that it wasn’t important and he’d call back later. She did the same when the phone rang again half an hour later, and again a few minutes after that. But the fourth call brought her to a frantic fumbling to turn off the machine so she could reply to her cousin’s husband, whose agitated voice had begun to leave a message for Judith.
“Vanessa’s just gone into labor,” Charles explained when she finally managed to force the machine to let her speak to him in person. “She’s at Calvary Hospital, everything’s going according to schedule, and you’ve plenty of time to get here, so don’t rush it. Drive carefully and remember which side of the road you’re supposed to be on.”
“I’m on my way,” Judith replied, and it wasn’t until she’d hung up the phone that she realized the crazy predicament she was placed in by Bevan’s absence. His unfamiliar answering machine had probably been given terminal hiccups by her attempt to reply to Charles, and she felt uncomfortable leaving without seeing Bevan.
Now she was forced to check his room. She could hardly leave without a word if he did happen to be asleep. But he wasn’t, nor was he there, and somehow she wasn’t surprised.
“Well, Mr. Keene, I’ll just have to leave you a note,” she muttered, trying to ignore the visions that plagued her conscience. Bevan Keene lying somewhere on the property with a broken leg or a sprained ankle or – and this was the worst – wounded by a poacher’s bullet.
When she’d checked all the various sheds and the carport where she remembered seeing his vehicle, now gone, it was easier to imagine him stuck in the mud somewhere, until that thought was replaced by one in which his truck had tipped over and he was pinned inside.
“Damn you!” she cried, having packed her bags and gotten her own small rental car mobile and ready for the trip south to Hobart. She sat there in the driveway, pondering her options and liking none of them. Of course, he’d known she would be returning to Hobart for Vanessa’s birthing, and of course he’d told her – hadn’t he? – not to wait up and not to worry. So why was she worrying? And why wasn’t he back?
“The note will have to do,” she mumbled as she steered the rental car westward toward the Midlands Highway and her route south to Hobart. But still she kept an eye out for Bevan’s truck, even speculating that if she encountered anyone who seemed an obvious neighbor, she could at least pass on the message that he was apparently missing and that she had been forced to return to Hobart without seeing him.
It seemed a good enough idea until she saw not a neighbor, but Bevan himself. Then it fell apart in a screaming heap of emotional turmoil she only just conquered in time.
Rounding a curve in the road, she suddenly found herself approaching a gateway, and in the gateway were two vehicles standing side by side and nose to rump like two friendly old horses. But friendlier yet, it seemed, were the figures who disengaged from an embrace as Judith’s rental scooted into view.
Bevan and, of course, Roberta Jardine. Judith had no choice but to pull up. Both of them were standing there looking at her, and it was clear enough that both she and her car had been recognized. She gulped quickly, fighting for composure as she coasted to a halt on the verge. So this was how Bevan prowled, she thought, and fought back the bitter taste of spiteful anger that threatened to gag her.
“I’m glad I caught you,” she managed to say, avoiding the hypocritical “Good Morning” with which she might have begun. As she raced to inform Bevan of the circumstances and her need to hurry, she could feel herself getting more and more tense, more and more agitated. Her nerves were taut as a bowstring. She could hear it in her own voice and could only hope Bevan didn’t pick up on it as well.
He and Roberta listened to her spiel, but Bevan didn’t even have the decency to look embarrassed. The bastard! Instead, they both sent along good wishes to Vanessa – Judith hadn’t even known Roberta and Vanessa were acquainted – and then Bevan suggested he’d keep in touch by telephone if he didn’t get into Hobart himself during the postnatal confinement.
“And thanks for your help up here,” he ended up by saying. “It’s given us a good start on things, so when the rest of this mob shows up, it’ll be all ready for a shakedown expedition. But don’t worry about that just now. Don’t even think about it. You just get yourself back to Hobart and keep our Vanessa under some semblance of control. You’ll have to, because Charles bloody well can’t.”
He grinned after he said that, and there was something, some not-quite-comprehensible expression in his eyes and voice. It was almost as if he were going to lean in through the car window and kiss her goodbye. Judith, totally unsure if she’d have reacted by spitting in his eye or accepting the kiss just to see the expression on Roberta’s face as she did so, did neither. She merely drove off, angry and confused.
Her anger and confusion intensified during the long drive to Hobart, and no quantity of redneck music could salve it. She found herself, at one point, shaking so badly she had to pull over and stop because she was becoming a danger on the highway.
The whole thing was quite ridiculous from the get-go, she decided. She had no claim on Bevan Keene, didn’t want to have. And yet, as she drove, the thought of him spending the night with Roberta Jardine after telling Judith he was going on what she assumed was a venture to inspect his fences or patrol for poachers – well, it simply made her wild.
Prowling, all right. Like a tomcat. You give the word a whole new meaning. Not that I’m surprised, I know what a tomcat looks like. They have them in America, too. But I should have seen it.
I should have seen it.
How often had she said the exact same words after being so thoroughly used and betrayed by Derek? Who would soon be arriving in Tasmania with every intention of doing it all over again.
And of course she ought to have recognized Bevan’s game. Roberta had gotten it right the first time. He was only using her to ensure some advantage for his faction in this ridiculous project. No matter how it turned out, the conservationists would be trying to make the result appear to their advantage, and Bevan was doing nothing different. Except he was obviously intent on using Judith to aid him.
Just like Derek!
She found it all spinning repetitively through her thoughts as she drove. Only occasionally was it countered by
thoughts of simple confusion. How could anyone so blatantly leave a houseguest to her own devices so he could go off tomcatting?
Especially when said houseguest would have been more than willing to let you play tomcat right there at home. AND you knew it, too, you bastard!
No matter how she looked at that question, no matter how objective she tried to be, no matter how much she allowed her hurt feelings to provide the answer, it still didn’t make sense.
“It’s just plain bad manners and rudeness,” she said in a savage voice, knowing even as she did so that it was for exactly that reason she found it hard to believe, despite all the evidence he’d done exactly that. He had wanted her, had gone so far as to virtually seduce her right there in his own kitchen. And then he’d abandoned the pursuit, just like that.
But why? Why, after what he’d clearly shown her of his true character, did she find it impossible to believe he was that type of person? He had done nothing to convince her that he was inherently a gentleman, that he wouldn’t display such bad manners. And yet ... somehow he had convinced her.
Or else she’d convinced herself, which was even more worrying.
“You are a fool, Judith Theresa. A fool to have come to Tasmania, a worse fool for taking this damned job, and a worse fool yet for letting Bevan Keene get under your skin,” she told herself, repeating the words like a mantra, a litany. Until she believed it – almost.
The problem was that, as the kilometers passed, her mental picture of Bevan was not one of him snuggling with Roberta Jardine. It was far more complicated than that, a picture clouded by anger and admittedly hurt feelings, but also one clouded by the tactile memory of his fingers at her wrist, of his lips meeting hers, not Roberta’s, and the sooty, smoky color of those incredible gray eyes.
It would be all too easy, this morning’s revelation notwithstanding, to imagine herself emotionally involved with Bevan, even though all her common sense dictated otherwise. And easier yet to imagine yourself physically involved with him, no sense lying about it.
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