Cry Wolf

by Amanda Carpenter

  But Johnny wasn’t, as he turned to her and said urgently, “Nikki, everyone is concerned about you. Mother and Karle want to know when you’re going to come home. I want to know. I miss the sister who was my one playmate through all the world, and I want a chance to get better acquainted with the beautiful young woman you’ve grown into. Haven’t you had enough of living abroad yet?”

  She’d heard the same speech, in different ways from various members of the family, ever since she had graduated from university three years ago, and hardly paid attention to it. Instead she focused on the one point that brought her so much pain and whispered, “How could Harper do this to me? If he wanted me to leave, why didn’t he just say so?”

  Johnny’s expression flickered. For long moments her brother was silent. Everything was silent. There was no wind on that sunny day, no sounds of traffic so far back from the road, just the occasional call of a bird; she used to think it was so peaceful.

  Then her brother said very quietly, “Nikki, I can’t lie to you. Harper deserves better than that. When he stopped by in New York, he introduced himself as the man who had fallen in love with you and intended to ask you to marry him. It was quite a shock. Coming to England was my idea. We had no idea that you were thinking of setting down roots here. Even though he knew I would try to take you back to the States, he still allowed me to travel back with him. I respect him very much; I don’t think I would have had that kind of strength.”

  Nikki’s head came up. Incredulity, a terrible hope, and a kind of fury shone in her eyes, and, even though she was only a slight, small woman, suddenly the airy studio seemed barely capable of containing her. “He said that?” she whispered.

  Johnny’s hazel eyes widened in awe at the change in her, then darkened with the beginnings of regret. But still he tried, moving quickly to place his hands on her shoulders. “Listen to me, Nikki! Please come back home, even if only for a while. Give yourself a chance to get reacquainted with everyone—if you settle here, the distance between us will become permanent—”

  It was like trying to cage a wildfire, like reaching for the moon. Nikki leaned forward, grabbed Johnny’s shirt and cried, “Did he say all that?”

  Her brother closed his eyes and whispered, “Yes.”

  She vibrated like a musical instrument, audible lambency, vitally transformed, but for him she tried the impossible and managed to restrain the roaring, swelling flood. “I will show you the woman I have grown into,” said Nikki, stepping back in a light, fluid dance that took her to a corner where a large covered canvas sat on an easel, and with one sweep of her arm she unveiled the unfinished picture beneath it.

  Johnny moved to look, and stopped, and stared.

  The flood was ungovernable and it swept her away; she whirled and cried melodiously, “I have to go talk to him! Oh, Johnny—Johnny, I love you, but going back to the States isn’t going home! I’m sorry!”

  Her brother didn’t answer. He didn’t need to. Looking at the picture, he already knew he had lost.

  Nikki flew down the stairs with lightning speed. “I don’t understand,” Charles had said. She sprinted across the lawn, hurtled through the back door into the kitchen. Anne looked around from the sink and opened her mouth to say something, but Nikki ran past and never saw her. “You brought that man here to take Nikki away?” Charles had said, and with all her heart and soul she cried, No, no!

  She stumbled to the rear lounge, but it was empty, and she flew from room to room in a frantic whirlwind, searching for him. He wasn’t anywhere.

  “But she was already going to leave!”

  The terrible look in his eyes.

  She was gasping in her exertion and distress as she ran up the stairs, down the hall. What if he had left, where would he have gone, what would he do? Could she get him to listen to her?

  She threw open his bedroom door. It crashed resoundingly against the wall, and across the room Harper sat doubled over on the edge of his bed. He lifted his head from his hands. Only for an instant did she get a glimpse of that unguarded, lonely expression, the face of a man desolate and grieving, the utter bleakness of a conqueror defeated.

  Then it was gone as if it had never happened, replaced by sardonicism, remoteness, impregnable ice. He said almost casually, “So when do you leave?”

  “Damn you!” she panted, furious and aching and so in love with him that she could have died from it. She strode violently into the room and stopped distracted in the middle of it, holding her hands stiff and clenched at her side. “Will it always be this way between us?”

  She had never seen Harper’s dark eyes so hard and repellent. He said cuttingly, “Spare me your wild accusations. I was under the impression that there was no more ‘us’.”

  “Spare you?” she cried, nearly incoherent with the need to break through to him. “I will not! You can never be satisfied! You always have to push me away! Why on earth would I want to spare you?”

  Harper surged to his feet, his body in eruptive, athletic motion that had the deadly speed of a striking snake.

  She knew fear then, for the ice was gone and so at last was all restraint. He said savagely, “If you’ve come here for some kind of blood-letting, by God I’ll throw you out of my house!”

  “Do it!” she shrieked in uncontrollable rage as she lifted her fists to her forehead. “That won’t stop me loving you! You’ll have to cut out my heart!”

  The whiplash of that resounded in the room. Harper shuddered, an oak tree brought under the woodman’s axe. In Nikki’s head ran the awful image of him laying his hands on her, only to push her violently away, out the door, out of his life, and she couldn’t survive it. Overwhelmed, she turned to flee blindly, only to miss the open doorway and run into the post.

  In groaning, wrenching torment, Harper cried, “Why are you leaving me?”

  She leaned her face against the wood, her mouth bowing open in a sob. “I was going to leave before you sent me away!”

  “Send you away?” She sensed him coming up behind her, and shrank away in a gasping flinch. Then his hands were running unsteadily over her back, her shoulders, her neck and hair. “Shh, oh, shh, darling,” he whispered. “No. No. How could you think I could send you away? I don’t even know if I can let you go.”

  But, no matter how he tried to gentle her, the storm was unleashed and she shook and sobbed as if she would never stop. “But I heard you talking to Helena on Sunday, and she said—she said—that I was unsuitable, that I—”

  “Dear God.” He turned her, and gathered her close, and bound her against his chest with arms tighter than steel, cradling her head into the hollow of his neck, bowing his whole body around her.

  “Nikki, Nikki, if that’s what you thought, you couldn’t have heard it all! Don’t cry like that; it breaks my heart to hear it—listen to me! My mother and I were talking about Gayle, not you! When I took Gayle back to London last month, I knew something was wrong, but you refused to talk about it, so I questioned her instead. She told me—well, enough to get the gist of what had happened between you. I’d had no idea that she had entertained such hopes for a relationship between us, or that she could be so bitchy. I was explaining to my mother why I had to terminate my friendship with Gayle, because her relations with Gayle’s family had become strained.”

  “But she—she said that things couldn’t continue, and you said you would have to do something—I don’t remember what!” she said, muffled in the bare, throbbing warmth of his neck. She barely knew what she said. All her starving senses were focused on the surety of his hold on her, the animal comfort of his body, the hungry tenderness of his hand cupping her head, and her arms slid around the steady column of his waist.

  He sighed. She felt and heard it. “Stupid child,” said Harper with angry gentleness. “I’d just finished telling her of the strain Gayle had put between you and me. I wanted you to come to me yourself with
it, but you’re probably the most stubborn creature imaginable. She was concerned for you, that’s all.”

  “Well, you could have told me,” she said shakily. “You seemed to have told everyone else in the world.”

  He took her head and pulled her back so that he could look down into her face, and all the love in his voice was there tenfold in his dark eyes which were lit inside like a beacon. “How could I tell you?” he asked tenderly. “We happened on it too fast, we were racing out of control. You had so much to cope with. Your career, that vicious attack on you. I was the first man to make love to you, and for all I knew you were caught in some sexual infatuation and could have mistaken it for love. The fact that we became friends as well only seemed to complicate the issue.”

  “No,” she whispered, shaking her head, feeling her hair slide along the palms of his hands. “Our friendship made it so clear. I’m not just in love with you, I love you, with everything inside me, heart and body and soul.”

  All the residual harshness in his face melted, leaving him clear-eyed and young again. “I knew I loved you that Friday afternoon when I walked into Peter’s office and you looked at me with such shaken wonder, with all your innocent heart full in those beautiful blue eyes. But then,” Harper said wryly, “I was fighting it for all I was worth—a sorry struggle, for I was fighting myself. I wanted you so badly, it was like an ache in my gut, but, damn it, I have so many demands on my time—people, and work, and Charles, while you—”

  “Will either be your deliriously happy wife, or very miserable without you,” she said, her face misting with such wistfulness that he caught his breath and bent to kiss her softened, offered lips. “Oh, Harper, Johnny said you intended to ask me to marry you, but already you’re putting up barriers again,” she groaned against his mouth. “If you let anything else come between us, I’ll never forgive you.”

  “No,” he murmured, running his fingers along her cheekbones, down to her jaw, lightly over the slim vulnerability of her neck. “Nothing else between us. I cannot deny this, nor you, who are so wise and witty and young. The way you know me, and fit so close in my heart and to my body, it would be like denying part of myself.”

  She caught his hands and kissed them. “I’m sorry about Charles,” she said softly.

  Harper laughed quietly. “I take it you two had some heart-to-hearts while I was gone. God, I can’t leave you alone together for long! Either one of you would only get the other into trouble. The scamp told me he would never forgive me if I took you out of his life.”

  “Oh, no!” Nikki closed her eyes, both appalled and touched. “I’d better go talk to him soon. Harper, about Johnny—”

  His chest moved in a harsh, silent laugh and he leaned his forehead against hers. “Bad timing,” he said. “Bad, bad timing. But, as I was already in New York for business, it seemed only reasonable to look your family up and make a statement of intent, so that they’d finally become resigned to the possibility that you might never go back to the States again. Then, to my horror, your brother insisted on coming back to England with me. My heart was in my throat for the entire trip. I’d meant to talk with you first and explain things, but circumstances backfired on me.”

  “Oh, God,” she sighed, and kissed him repentantly. “If there hadn’t been so many misunderstandings, it would have been fine.”

  “Your family may never forgive me,” said Harper, stroking her lips with the tips of his fingers. “Your brother is a very determined young man. I like him tremendously.”

  “Nuts to my family—they’re interfering busybodies. Johnny likes you as well,” murmured Nikki, and a thought struck her so that she began to laugh. “Oh, let’s add to the list. Peter will have a fit when he finds out. He’s most upset about this painting I’m doing for you. We’ve cut out his position.”

  Harper said toughly, though his face was lit with a smile, “He’ll come to terms with it. But about that infernal painting. Please don’t torture yourself any more over it, my love. For God’s sake, it isn’t worth it.”

  “What?” she replied, looking at him blankly, and then she remembered. “Heavens, I wasn’t talking about the painting on Sunday night. I was talking about you. The painting is the best thing I’ve ever done.”

  “Are you sure?” he asked, even as relief spread over him. With every barrier peeled away, he appeared lighter, until he almost looked like a different man. A complete man, she thought, as she studied him with love. The two halves of his personality were finally melded together, no longer in conflict. “I’m so pleased. When can I see it?”

  She wrinkled her nose at him. “When it’s finished, and not a moment before! Otherwise you’ll spoil the surprise.”

  The unpredictable slant of his eyebrows became more pronounced. “You’re going to make me wait?”

  His mouth was so sexy when he held it like that, the mobility in taut control, the hint of sternness that would melt into such giving pleasure. She tilted up her small chin and her eyes sparkled as she told him challengingly, “For some things, yes. It’ll do you good. You get your own way too often, if you ask me.”

  The delicious bite was back again, the eternal pursuit and conquest, the spice of sexuality that flavoured their repartee, heightening her awareness to a fever pitch, as she knew a reawakening of the soul-shaking excitement. He narrowed his eyes speculatively and murmured, “I wonder if I could make you change your mind?”

  She bared her teeth at him and snapped, “Not likely!”

  “I could give it a good try,” he growled, and the dark hunger in his gaze lowered to her mouth as if he couldn’t help himself. The air began to crackle. He snapped the full swell of her lower lip with one fingernail, raking it gently as he whispered, “Your lips are like crushed velvet.”

  The stuffing left her legs in a whoosh, but she jerked her head away, stepped back and advised him with cool, taunting insouciance, “Hold that thought. In the meantime, I shall go down to visit with my brother and talk to Charles. The poor boy must be feeling quite neglected.”

  Thoroughly roused, Harper caught her by the hips and dragged her back to him, torso to torso, and he gave her a tight, predatory smile. “Oh, no, you’re not.”

  “Oh, yes, I am!” she flashed. Their eyes collided and sizzled, and Harper brought down his opened mouth like an avalanche when she whispered just one evocative word. “Later.”

  They both enjoyed the conflagration.

  In the end, they had all underestimated Nicole Ashton-Meyer—the gossip, society and fashion columnists, Harper’s business associates, and all the wedding guests. Despite her youth the vivid, dashing woman who appeared on her brother’s arm and started up the aisle bore not the slightest resemblance to a blushing, demure bride.

  Gordon as best man dug his elbow painfully into Harper’s side, who turned and began to shake with laughter. Her wedding dress that she’d kept such a secret was white, shoulderless, and figure-hugging down to her knees where the skirt flared extravagantly to the floor. Underneath the jaunty tilt of the most delicious, outrageous, frothy hat exploding with white feathers Nikki’s blue eyes peeped at him naughtily.

  She practically flounced up the aisle, and when Johnny very carefully gave her away, his face stiff with suppressed mirth, she whispered desperately out of the corner of her mouth to Harper, “For God’s sake, don’t let go! The hem got caught on a nail, and I keep tripping over it! If I fall now, I won’t be able to get back up because the dress is so tight!”

  His control over his expression was awesome. Harper whispered soothingly as he clutched her in an iron grip, “Don’t worry, love, I’ve got you.”

  All the audience saw was a very private murmured exchange, and then the groom tenderly took hold of his bride’s arm, and Harper Beaumont’s associates, rivals and outright enemies began to feel very smug at how possessive he looked. His lovely bride would mellow out that tempered steel personality; it
was clear that he was absolutely besotted with her, and they all began to predict a relaxation of that famous Beaumont ruthlessness.

  But then the minister asked her if she would take the groom for her lawful wedded husband, and the dreadful scamp of a bride hesitated for far too long, tilted up her chin and gave the marital catch of the decade a slow, considering look before she answered an affirmative. And the hearts of all Harper’s associates sank in unison at the brilliant, predatory look that hardened his handsome features into an expression they well recognised, and they knew to a man that they’d been guilty of wishful thinking.

  The reception was glorious. Even though the howl of frigid December winds whipped shrieking and bleak outside, the hall in London was filled with warmth and golden light like a spell of enchantment, intoxicating, atmospheric champagne.

  The happiness was infectious. Charles sipped at some stolen champagne and beleaguered Duncan Chang with his inebriated presence, but the slight man bore up well under the pressure, and on that night his rare, beautiful smile was ever-present. Helena Beaumont held gracious court at one end of the hall and it was observed that, while the bride’s family had a certain air of resignation about them, relations between two of the world’s wealthiest families appeared good.

  The indefatigable Peter Bellis handed out business cards to anyone who was willing to take them, but could not resist several speculative glances toward a huge covered canvas that was propped on an easel in one corner.

  It was Nikki’s wedding present to Harper, the painting finished just a few weeks ago, and it was to be unveiled later in the evening. But for the moment there were speeches to be made, and supper, and the cutting of the wedding cake, and dancing.

  After the formal photographs had been taken, Nikki had removed her hat, for the hall was very warm. She collared her mother for a few private moments in the cloakroom, and between the two women they had pinned up her dragging hem. Now her happiness was so intense and complete that she was everywhere, darting from group to group like a hummingbird. What sang through her mind over and over were the softly murmured words Harper had spoken in her ear just after the ceremony when they had become husband and wife.