Tender Deception

by Heather Graham

  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.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  “MOMMY! 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.”

  “Thanks,” Vickie murmured. She opened her own script to the right page, quickly tore through her bag for a pencil, and hurried for the stage, giving Terry a grateful nod. Terry had been right. Monte was indeed in a deplorable mood, lashing out at the slightest mistake. Vickie bit her lips and swallowed the words she wanted to shout back at him, noticing resentfully that Brant seemed to be the only one spared his temper.

  But then, she doubted if anyone, even the most influential Hollywood or New York director, would shout at Brant Wicker. He just wasn’t the type person one dared to shout at—unless one happened to be a prizefighting gorilla.

  Still, Monte was usually pleasant and professional. For him to be acting this way, something had to be wrong. Vickie thought idly that she would question him later; she wasn’t about to make a scene in front of the others. Besides, Brant made another entrance as Othello, and Monte started to mellow. By the time Brant and Vickie exited together, neither Monte’s burst of irascibility nor the intensity of temper in which Brant had left Vickie’s house seemed to have ever existed.

  She pulled out of Brant’s hold the second their footsteps took them into the wings, but he made no attempt to stop her. Instead, she could hear his chuckle following her as she slithered offstage away from him. He stayed behind, and she wished fervently that she could walk back and rail at him, informing him that her hasty retreat had not been because of him, and her supposed fear of him, but because she wanted to talk to Monte. That, of course, wouldn’t be entirely true. She did want to quiz Monte in private and tell him his behavior had been atrocious. But more than that, she did want to get away from Brant.

  “What was that all about?” Vickie demanded of Monte as soon as the scene ended and a five-minute break was called.

  Monte tossed his pencil on the table and leaned back in his chair. “Nothing,” he told her disgustedly. “Absolutely nothing, do you believe that?” He stood and stretched. “No reason, no excuse, except that I’m tired.” Looking at her with a puzzled smile, he continued. “I’m sorry, Vickie. Excuse me, now I have to go say I’m sorry to everyone else!”

  Bobby sank into the chair Monte had occupied a second after he had left. Vickie glanced at him questioningly, since it was obvious he had sought her out.

  “So, love,” he asked, “have a nice night?”

  Vickie’s brows angled into arches. “I don’t know,” she replied dryly. “You seem to be in on something I’m not. Did I have a nice night?”

  “Sweet and innocent to the end!” Bobby proclaimed, chuckling. “I am inquiring with all concern for your welfare. You and our gallant leading man, it appears, have become the ‘in’ thing. How brokenhearted I was! I drove by your house this morning to make sure you had a ride in, since Monte told me you were having car trouble. And what do I find? My virgin princess, my pedestal queen, involved in a normal, mortal relationship. Spending the night with Brant Wicker!”

  “Oh, Lord!” Vickie snapped. “I did not spend the night with Brant!”

  “Oh? He just happened to stop by at seven A.M.?”

  “Of course not!”

  “Then he did spend the night at your place?”

  Vickie sighed. The question, from Bobby, was motivated by genuine concern. She and Bobby had long ago formed a strong bond of friendship, and they usually discussed just about anything—mostly Bobby’s love problems. The tables were merely turned now.

  “Yes. No. I mean, yes, Brant did sleep at my house. But, no, we’re not sleeping together. He watched Mark last night, and when I came in, he was sleeping. So I left him alone.” Her simple explanation—an easy one to Bobby—would possibly involve other repercussions. “Don’t say anything to anyone else please, huh, Bob, I’m not up to the teasing.”

  Bobby sighed flatly and patted her hand. “Sorry, kid, you’re already in for the teasing. I didn’t say anything. I consider any of my information about your life classified information. But Connie happened to drive by to check on you, too, and you might as well have printed the story on the front page of the newspaper. I’m sure she’s told half the cast, if not half the city already.”

  “Damn!” Vickie moaned, bitterly remembering her thought that allowing Brant to sleep on her sofa could cause no harm. “Damn!”

  Bobby was right. If not actually giving her a ribald comment, every member of the cast at least sent knowing, furtive glances her way. Brant, she noticed, was oblivious to it all. Of course, he would be, she thought angrily. No one would think of throwing taunts in his direction.

  She cornered Brant in the wing while they blocked the third scene for the day. “I’d appreciate it,” she told him sternly, “if you would help me dispel the rumors floating around.”

  “What rumors?” he asked, puzzled.

  An annoying blush rose to her cheeks. “Your car was seen by a certain party with a news-spread larger than that of the National Enquirer.”

  “Ahhh,” he murmured. “So you’re being ribbed about sleeping with me.”

  “Precisely!” Vickie grated.

  “Pity it’s only a rumor at the moment,” Brant mused.

  “Brant!”

  “Don’t fret,” he advised. “It won’t be long.”

  “You really are a cocky bastard!” Vickie hissed, ready to explode.

  “No, Vickie, I’m sorry. But don’t you think you’re overreacting a bit? What the hell should you care what anyone is saying? Lord, Vickie, you’re of legal age. What you do or don’t do is your own business. If you don’t like a certain rumor, ignore it!”

  With her irritation put into a new context, Vickie realized that she was falling right into the hands of those who wished to torment her. Deflated, Vickie glanced around the dim wing to see that her tone had broug
ht curious eyes to them. Riveting her attention back to Brant, she saw the depths of amusement her discomfiture was causing him in the wicked blue gleam of his eyes. Lowering her whisper to a barely discernible sound, she muttered, “This isn’t funny.”

  “Sorry.” He cupped a hand to his ear and leaned toward her. “I missed what you said.”

  “Damn you!”

  “What’s that? I’m a lamb?”

  “Cute.”

  “Sorry,” he repeated, “but don’t expect me to get upset. I do find it all amusing, and so would you if you allowed yourself a sense of humor.”

  “Listen, Mr. Hotshot Movie Star,” Vickie denounced him, “rumors are funny in Hollywood. Maybe in New York, maybe even in Tampa or Jacksonville. This is Sarasota. I have a son—”

  “Oh, hell, Vickie. This is twentieth-century Sarasota. Besides, your son is going to have a new father before he knows what a rumor is. I said I intend to have you, and I meant all the way. I’m going to marry you too.”

  She didn’t have a chance to say or do anything except gasp. In a single string of dialogue, he went on to excuse himself and move to the edge of the stage where she watched his metamorphosis into Othello.

  He was insane. No, he was joking.

  But he was, indeed, a superb actor. As Vickie joined him onstage at her cue, he quickly had her immersed in the magic illusion of acting with the special fervor he seemed to draw from them all. It was easy to be Desdemona, easy to give him the unshakable love the role demanded, easy to fear him. Brant, minus costume, makeup, and set, could hypnotize all his fellow players.

  Vickie felt almost bereft when she walked offstage. Forcing her drained body down the side apron steps, she unobtrusively took a seat near Monte. Quietly, so as not to disturb the director’s concentration, she poured herself a cup of coffee from the gold restaurant carafe upon the table. Sipping the hot brew, she felt its warmth revitalize her. Brant was sapping her of strength, onstage and off. Usually so self-assured, she was at a complete loss on how to handle him. For now, she was going to have to ignore him.