She caught the change in his expression, could feel the sadness even as he bent his head and shook it in a gesture that was part apology, part self-condemnation.
“You’re right, Judith Teresa,” he said, this time meeting her eyes frankly, without any guile or amusement. “You’re right and you were right earlier. I should have listened to you and I’m sorry. Truly I am.”
Reaching into his shirt pocket, he withdrew what looked like a folded-up bit of plastic about the size of a fifty-cent piece, with a piece of string hanging from it. He thrust it in his mouth, then turned and looked across the rivulet for an instant. A piercing whistle stabbed through the drizzle and mist, a unique sound that rose to a crescendo, then dropped into a series of trilling chirps before rising yet again.
The sound of Bevan’s New Zealand sheep-dog whistle could as easily have come from some exotic rainforest bird, but the result was even more astonishing. After a minute that seemed like an hour of echoing silence, out of the underbrush across the rivulet poked the head of their tiger, its entire attention clearly focused on the magical sounds from the whistle.
“Come on, Fred,” said Bevan with a weary shake of his head. “The jig’s up, little mate.”
The dog ... and suddenly it was most clearly, most emphatically, a dog, albeit an ugly one ... how could they ever have thought it to be a real tiger? – seemed to smile before plunging its striped body into the rivulet and galumphing towards Bevan. It loped with a lolling tongue and a semaphore waggling of its tiger-like tail.
Bevan bestowed a pat on the animal’s head as it reached him, then turned to face the astonished crew of tiger hunters. “Here’s your Tassie tiger,” he said. “Or at least Derek’s version. Bloody oath, mate,” he added, turning to stare at the wild-eyed conservation leader who now jerked uncontrollably. “Did you honestly believe we’d be that stupid?”
Then Bevan stepped quickly to help Ted support Derek as the conservationist uttered a mighty shriek and collapsed in a dead faint.
31
“I still have trouble believing you knew all along and managed to keep it so secret.” Judith murmured the words from within the safe cocoon of Bevan’s arms. Her eyes were closed against the sunlight glowing through the tent roof above them, but she couldn’t shut down her mind. “You’re even more cunning and devious than Derek at his best.”
“If I was, we wouldn’t be here, like this, now,” he replied. “And I have to say that you repeat yourself an awful lot for somebody who’s supposed to be a professional wordsmith. You must have said those very same words at least a dozen times since I got back. And I’m trying to get some much-needed sleep, in case you hadn’t noticed.”
It was sleep they both needed, having spent most of the night on a mercy dash to get Derek back to civilization and into the much-needed care of mental health professionals. Derek had gone into a frightening, trancelike state after the arrival of Fred and the evidence of Derek’s attempted scam had been made clear for everyone to see.
Ted and Reg had also made the journey and were now presumably asleep. Somewhere. Ted had been cornered immediately on their return and informed by Jan and Roberta that Bevan’s tent – which he’d been sharing – was now “otherwise engaged.” And that Jan and Roberta had already moved Ted’s gear out. And that Judith’s gear, from the girls’ tent, was now stacked neatly alongside Bevan’s own.
“If everything’s now going to be open and above board with this expedition,” Jan had told an astonished and somewhat embarrassed Judith, “then you two might as well be, too. It isn’t as if you were really fooling anyone anyway.”
So here they were, snuggled into conjoined sleeping bags, with the tacit approval of their companions, and Bevan wanted to talk about sleeping when Judith’s mind was fragmented with a million questions that demanded answers, even if he’d already provided them countless times during the journey back from the north coast. Because even with his answers, the whole, entire situation was unimaginable.
“I still don’t see how Derek thought he could get away with it,” Judith said, reaching out to run her fingers across Bevan’s stomach, flicking them above and below the waistline to be sure of maintaining his attention. And his erection.
“He was crazy, that’s all,” was the reply. “Totally, completely, right round the twist, although he hid it rather well. But there was no real sense in it from the start. Stop that.” Bevan wriggled beneath her touch, unable to ignore the effects. “Our little mate Derek wasn’t the full quid, and maybe he never has been. But he’d been looking for a real boomer of a conservation issue that would give him a chance to shine, and one day, when he’s out organizing some protest, what should he find but a fair-dinkum tiger ring-in. Without the stripes, of course, but stripes are easy.
“So Derek fronts up to the owner of this wondrous beast, and starts sounding him out about conservation issues, doing a real snow-job on this kid, or so Derek thinks. But what he didn’t know, and this is where coincidence defies all logic, is that the kid with the dog is young James McShane, formerly of Tasmania, and by further coincidence, the baby brother of my beauteous and favorite motor mechanic.”
“She of the monster truck,” Judith interjected. “Yes, I’d like to meet her, one day.”
“I’ll bet you would. Anyway, young James, who’s all of nineteen and smart as a whip, and who’s been up there working as a jackaroo during university vacation, is about as antigreenie as ... as ...”
“As you and Ted and Roberta,” Judith concluded for him.
“Yes, that,” he said unashamedly. “Judith, darling, I wish you’d move your hand. I’m trying to concentrate here.”
Which she did, although Judith doubted that her hand’s new location would improve Bevan’s thinking. Nor did she care much. She was enjoying herself immensely.
“Anyway, young James let Derek convince him to bring the dog to Tassie for this ‘joke’ Derek wanted to play. I suspect an all-expenses trip home had something to do with it, but the boy swears he was only doing his duty to the state, as he saw it. You heard him say that, I believe.”
She had. Right after Derek’s collapse, a tall, rawboned, tow-headed youth had splashed across the rivulet, eyes ablaze with laughter at his delight in tricking the trickster. In fairness to young James McShane, the pleasure had turned to concern when he saw Derek’s condition, but he remained unrepentant about his role – and Fred’s – in the whole tiger deception game.
“Only first, James phoned and told his sister, and she told you, and you arranged a double cross.” Judith wriggled against Bevan’s warmth, reached down to stroke the muscles of his thigh. She was getting bored with the tale now, and other temptations beckoned. She reached higher.
Bevan groaned, the effectiveness of her ploy rigid within her fingers.
“Tell me again why you didn’t blow the whistle on him right at the start,” she whispered. “You could have. You knew what was going on even before you accepted Jeremiah’s offer to become involved.”
Bevan groaned again, this time with a combination of frustration and feigned annoyance. “You know damned well why,” he said. “Because I wanted to lead him all the way down the garden path first, and make him suffer, like he made you suffer with that nonsense up in Queensland. And, okay, I was maybe a teensy bit jealous of him having known you first.”
“He didn’t know me first,” Judith said with a sigh. “He didn’t, for instance, know this.” And she guided Bevan’s free hand to her breast. “Or this.” And she guided it lower, wriggling against the sheer delight his touch created, thrilling to the sensations his fingers immediately provoked.
“And I didn’t know just how far round the twist he really was,” Bevan said, his voice soft in her ear, his fingers equally soft against the center of her femininity, which pulsed at his touch, flooding her loins with pleasure. Bevan rolled over, pinning her with his body, all thoughts of sleep clearly gone now, as her fingers guided him within.
32
It was much, much later when they resumed their conversation.
“And you’re sure everybody will agree to just let this die?” Judith said. “I mean, there’s no good purpose in creating a public scandal over Derek’s illness and ... well ... everything.” This, too, was a question she had asked before, and although she knew Bevan’s view, she was less sure than he about what the rest of the party would say.
“Nobody would believe it anyway,” Bevan said. “You hardly believe it, and you were there ... here. Besides, what’s to be gained by making a meal of it? We mightn’t like old Derek, but none of us would ever have wished him the problems he’s got now, much less those that would be caused by blasting this all over the media.”
Judith felt much the same. There was a story there, but it was too bizarre, and would cause too much hurt to too many people to make it worth the telling.
“Ignoring the story doesn’t say much for my journalistic integrity,” she said. “I know people who’d literally kill for a story like this, regardless of who got hurt.”
“But you’re not one of them, which is one of the reasons I love you. There are more important things in life than destroying somebody for a news story. Even a twit like our poor little mate Derek. Besides, we’ve still got the story you signed on for.”
“So you say. But how? Derek is the one who convinced Jeremiah it was worthwhile in the first place. Without him, well ...” Then she reflected for a moment. “But of course! Jeremiah doesn’t even know yet, does he? And I suppose I get the fun job of explaining to him how he’s been conned. You’ll end up looking for your tiger without me if he decides to take it out on the messenger.”
“No chance. I’d just flatly refuse to go without my wife, or fiancée, or whatever you’ll agree to,” Bevan said, then laughed at the reaction that provoked. “Hear me, Judith Theresa. I am not going bush alone with that Smythe woman, and that’s for sure. She’s too tough for me.”
“But you’d have Roberta to protect you.” Judith couldn’t help that little jibe, now that she knew Bevan’s exquisite neighbor was only, in Bevan’s own words, “a wonderful friend and a better neighbor.”
“But there was never anything between Roberta and me, like you’ve obviously been imagining. Never. So believe it.” He sealed the statement with a kiss, then added, “Besides, despite the fact that Roberta could face a mob of wild cattle without batting an eye, she told me right from the start she’s not fussed about what she calls ‘stressful interpersonal relationships.’ You mightn’t get her within a bull’s roar of another trip involving greenies or vegetarians or anybody else she couldn’t totally dominate. She only came along to check you out. You do realize that, don’t you?”
Now Bevan’s grin was thoroughly wicked.
“She was afraid you wouldn’t be a decent cook, not being a proper Tasmanian farm girl and all, and I might have to fend for myself, or starve, or—”
“But how could she know that I ... we ... ? She hadn’t even met me!”
“Because I told her, you goose. I knew, right from the first taste of your cousin’s burnt offerings. You did too, only you weren’t game to admit it, in case your journalistic integrity might be compromised or something.”
Judith tried not to blush at the truth of his comment, and swiftly changed the subject.
“I still think you let Derek go on far, far too long,” she said.
“I wouldn’t have had to if he hadn’t been so bloody incompetent. I mean, think about it, Judith Teresa. He had a cell phone to communicate with James, but it only worked on very rare occasions and not well even then. His walkie-talkie wasn’t much better and his map reading ... well, let’s just ignore his map-reading skills. Young James said it took him three days on the road to get close enough to know where to start trying to find us. And do you know how far he and that damned dog had to travel, bush-bashing all the way, to actually get to us? He’d have gotten here faster if he’d walked back around by road, and that’s about thirty miles.”
Bevan rolled over and stared thoughtfully at the patterns of sunlight on the tent roof. “He’s a damned fine splendid bushman, that boy. A credit to his upbringing. But he told me he could hardly believe his luck when he finally did locate us, and if Derek hadn’t peeked out at just the right moment, young James was afraid he’d be spending another night in the bush before Fred would get his chance to ...” Bevan paused, then quickly leaned over to try and repair the damage with a kiss. But it was too late.
Judith reared up out of the sleeping bag as if she’d been stung. “But ... then ... that means ...” She was incoherent as the time line scurried through her brain, as the logic of it all became apparent. “So the first time, that very first sighting, that was ...”
She gulped, had to fight for breath as she suppressed the urge to throttle Bevan right there on the spot. Except that she couldn’t believe what he was implying. And she couldn’t not believe it, either.
So she merely said, “That first sighting wasn’t Fred?”
Bevan didn’t reply, didn’t even move. And wouldn’t meet her eyes.
“Tell me!” she insisted.
“That I love you? I’d have thought that was obvious enough, Judith Theresa, but okay – I LOVE YOU. The question is, do you love me as much, or more, or am I just a holiday fling, or ... ?”
“TELL ME!”
“I just did. Your turn now.” Bevan punctuated his words with slow, gentle caresses along her naked, far-too-sensitive thighs.
Judith melted, lost focus, closed her eyes so as to better savor the idyll. But eventually, his clever, delightful fingers pried the words from her.
“I love you too, and you know it, you sly devil. And yes, since you asked so nicely, I’ll probably even marry you. But only if you tell me – what, exactly, did we see?” Her mind still sought the answer, but her body was – once again – betraying her.
Judith succumbed to Bevan’s caresses, shifting to ease his access to her supersensitive areas, then reveling in the touch of his lovemaking. It was a while before she could even think what the question had really been all about.
“Was it really a tiger? Tell me the truth, dammit! You know, Bevan, you have to know.”
“We saw what we wanted to see,” said the man she’d fallen in love with. “What we had to see.” And he laughed before he pulled her into his arms and stilled her protests with kisses and promises of dreams past and dreams yet to come.
~~~
About the Author
Victoria Gordon is the pseudonym under which Canadian/Australian author Gordon Aalborg has written more than twenty contemporary romances, including Finding Bess (Five Star Publishing, 2004).
As himself, he is the author of the western romance The Horse Tamer’s Challenge (Five Star Publishing, 2009) and the Tasmanian-oriented Five Star suspense thrillers The Specialist (2004) and Dining with Devils (2009) as well as the feral cat survival epic Cat Tracks.
Born in Canada, Aalborg spent half his life in Australia, mostly in Tasmania, and now lives on Vancouver Island, in Canada, with his wife, the mystery and romance author Denise Dietz.
More on www.gordonaalborg.com and www.victoriagordonromance.com
THE BOOKS
As Victoria Gordon
Wolf in Tiger’s Stripes (Five Star/Gale/Cengage: 2010)
Finding Bess (Five Star/Gale/Cengage: 2004)
Beguiled and Bedazzled
An Irresistible Flirtation
A Magical Affair
Gift-Wrapped
A Taxing Affair
Love Thy Neighbour
Arafura Pirate
Forest Fever
Cyclone Season
Age of Consent
Bushranger's Mountain
Battle of Wills
Dinner At Wyatt's
Blind Man's Buff
Stag At Bay
Dream House
Always The Boss
The Everywhere Man
Wolf At The Door
The Su
gar Dragon
as Gordon Aalborg
Cat Tracks [Delphi Books: 2002]
The Specialist [Five Star Mysteries: 2004]
Dining with Devils [Five Star Mysteries: 2009]
The Horse Tamer’s Challenge [Five Star Expressions: 2009]
Wolf in Tiger's Stripes Page 22
