Tender Deception Read online

  Sanity finally sprang to her mind. “Brant, let me go!” Her attempt at reproachful scorn came out more like pathetic subjugation, but he released her immediately and she almost fell to the concrete in weak surprise. “Sure,” he said with a devilish chuckle, “you sound much calmer now, and Harry is halfway down the street.”

  “I am anything but calm! I am furious. Irate. Inflamed—” Her voice was growing louder with each expletive. Grabbing her wrist, Brant’s fingers completely encircling it, he marched the few spaces to his own car, dragging her behind him. Her knees were still too rubbery to resist; she couldn’t find the air to vocalize a protest. He opened the driver’s door and propelled her in, following so closely that she was forced to move or be crushed by his steel-hard frame. He slammed the door, inserted the key into the ignition, and pulled out onto the highway, all before she could utter a word. Incredulous, strangling with indignation, she finally garbled a harsh, “What on earth do you think you’re doing?”

  He shrugged pleasantly. “I’m trying to talk to you.”

  “Talk! You weren’t talking! You attacked me!”

  “I did not!” He gave her a grimace of feigned shock. “Well, maybe for just a minute. But all’s fair in love and war, as they say. So I’m glad I made the attack. I won the skirmish.”

  “You didn’t win a thing,” she protested angrily.

  “Yes, I did,” he replied with firm simplicity, pulling his eyes from the road to glance her way for a second. What she saw in them in that split-second sent alternating flows of chilling ice water and boiling lava through her veins. His eyes weren’t brilliant with laughter or dark with rough-cut anger. They were clear, crystal-clear with pointed determination and something else she couldn’t quite discern, a shade far more dangerous than any she was familiar with already. Taking a deep breath, she decided to change her tactics. “Brant, I have to get home,” she said softly.

  “I’m taking you home.”

  “My car…”

  “I’ll pick you up in the morning.”

  So much for her new tactics. “Damn you, Brant Wicker! You’ve been playing too many roles! You can’t drive me around against my will. We are not living in Shakespearean days! You have no power over me; you can’t control me!”

  “Obviously I can!” Brant chuckled dryly. “But don’t worry, I don’t intend to often! You’ll shortly be controlling yourself—my way.”

  “You have gone stark raving mad!” Vickie charged him, inching as far as she could from his compelling warmth to keep her words aloof. She leaned against the door as she eyed him skeptically and added, “But don’t worry. I’m sure you’ll find a production of One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest somewhere, and fit right in.”

  He laughed easily and glanced her way with a patronizing smile curling the full lips, whose sensual touch she could still feel upon her own. “Snapping at me isn’t going to change a thing.”

  “What is there to change?” Vickie demanded with exasperation.

  “Us.”

  “There is no ‘us,’” Vickie objected calmly, but unable to resist, she added, “Don’t you think you should be having this conversation with Terry? I’ll bet she’d be just as receptive to your advances as you were to her apology.”

  “Do I detect a hidden note of jealousy?” Brant queried with a lifted brow, his eyes on the deserted highway.

  “No.” Vickie lied. “Simple fact.”

  “I was not receptive to Terry. I know exactly what she was doing. Do you take me for a complete idiot?” He glanced at her with his mouth forming a thin line.

  Vickie shrugged. The idea had occurred to her.

  “I had to accept her apology,” Brant continued curtly. “I could hardly challenge her with a right hook to her jaw.”

  “You weren’t suffering through the apology,” Vickie said dryly.

  In the flickering light of a streetlamp, Vickie saw his features tighten. “I don’t care what Terry does. I do care about what you do.”

  “Wonderful. So I get the right hook to the jaw,” Vickie snapped bitterly.

  “Damn it, Victoria. I said I was sorry.”

  “So Brant Wicker says he’s sorry and all is okay,” Vickie murmured.

  “Self-righteous, aren’t you?” Brant countered coolly.

  Vickie’s murky lashes fluttered and fell. Maybe she was, but she was always on the defensive, always wondering. She battled mental demons he couldn’t begin to imagine and, admittedly, she still resented him. She had had a child alone. She had battled for two years by herself to make a worthwhile life.

  But suddenly the long-ago decision she had to keep Mark’s birth a secret didn’t seem so right. Looking at Brant covertly, at the firm and rugged strength of his jaw, she shivered slightly. He would not consider her deception right. He would consider it self-righteous. God only knew what his reaction would be if he ever learned the extent of her deceit.

  A tangled web. She had started off lying, and now the lies had to go on, meshing into finer and finer threads that seemed to strangle her while others went on unaware.

  “Brant,” she said. “Let’s just forget it. I have to get home.”

  “I am taking you home.”

  “My car—”

  “I’ll pick you up in the morning.”

  Vickie clamped her mouth shut. She was too tired to argue futilely over transportation at the moment. In the morning she would be more up to handling him. Allowing her head to sink into the high, comfortably plush backrest of the car, Vickie closed her eyes. It would be so easy to open her eyes and discover that everything was a dream. But when her eyes opened, they did so with alarm. The Mercedes had taken a swift turn off the road and onto the embankment, and Brant had switched off the engine and was staring at her with dark mischief in his eyes.

  “Oh, no,” Vickie grumbled, returning his stare suspiciously. “What now? I have a son at home, and a baby-sitter still nursing an injured hand. I have to get home!”

  “I am getting you home,” Brant replied, and his smile went surprisingly soft as he watched her. Her hair, released from the restraining pigtails of her Godspell character, fluffed about her face, the deep inky black matching the thick lashes shading her tired gray eyes. Her lips were enticingly red against the creaminess of her fine features, but he refrained from touching them. She could elicit a throbbing flame of passion from him with a single glance, but that passion was now held in check by a deep-rooted tenderness. Brant knew a barrier rose between them; Vickie was capable of being a glacial wall of steadfast reserve, but he had seen cracks in that wall, and he was determined to gently tear the entire thing down.

  “I am taking you home,” he repeated softly, touching a tendril of the pitch black hair with a lightness that was almost reverence. “But first you’re going to promise to drive up to the panhandle with me.”

  She was immediately on the alert, jerking from the headrest. “Brant, I’m not even sure if I’m going—”

  “Liar!” he charged in impatient interruption. “I know you’re going. Bobby mentioned that your brother is taking Mark.”

  Vickie sat silently for a moment while Brant leisurely crossed his arms and emitted a sigh of resignation, settling back into the car. “Hey,” he murmured, “I can sit here all night. The stars are out; it’s a beautiful view.”

  “All right, all right!” Vickie half laughed and half wailed her agreement out without conscious thought.

  “Promise?”

  “Promise.”

  “I’ll hold you to it,” he warned, the blue of his eyes an intense violet in the night. “There will be an abduction if you try to back out on me.”

  “I won’t,” Vickie said softly.

  The Mercedes geared back into life. They were both quiet as they drove the few remaining blocks to Vickie’s house. She was dazed by her own acquiescence, staring at the white-gold splendor of his head caught in the play of the moonbeams, not thinking yet of consequences.

  He left her at her door with the br
iefest of good-night kisses, his lips barely brushing hers. But still their touch seemed ingrained…

  Vickie managed a few minutes of polite, idle conversation with Mrs. Gimball, then locked the door wearily when the sitter left before walking into the bedroom to check on her son. He was at complete peace as he slept, his lids lightly shuttering his blue eyes, his breathing tranquil. So like his father…

  Turning, Vickie walked into her own room and lay on the bed without bothering to undress. Like a wavering moth, she was moving closer and closer to a flame. But she couldn’t deny that the flame existed, or that she was actually willing to be scorched again just to feel its warmth one more time, for however brief a spell.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  IF SHE LIVED TO be one hundred, Vickie decided she would never understand Brant Wicker. After literally abducting her and holding her prisoner—if being swept into a Mercedes and held by a roadside for five minutes could be considered abduction and imprisonment—he spent the rest of the week practically ignoring her. He was polite and cordial, occasionally seeking her out, but no more so than any other cast member.

  Confused, Vickie didn’t know what to think. She should be grateful, but she had finally decided to accept carefully whatever the summer had to offer. Mechanisms in her mind warned that she could never really have Brant Wicker for so many reasons that they made her head spin. But just as surely as she knew the limitations, she knew she wanted whatever she could have.

  Which was nothing, she began to think as Saturday morning rolled around with no further word from Brant. Nothing but pure torture.

  Edward appeared for Mark about a half hour before the scheduled time, grinning at her doorstep and demanding she sit down with him for a cup of coffee to fill him in on the latest at the theater. Grinning in return at her tall, gaunt brother, Vickie affectionately pulled him into the house by a large-boned hand. Edward was gray-eyed and raven-haired like his sister, but none of his mother’s—or more recently his wife’s—efforts had ever put meat on his frame. He was too thin to really be a handsome man, but his eyes were deep with expression and sincerity, and when he smiled, which he often did, his face was lit with the beauty of an innate intelligence and compassion. Life did have its wonderful aspects; a brother like Edward was one of them.

  “So who is the star this summer?” Edward demanded as he stirred milk into his coffee and made himself at home at Vickie’s sunny yellow kitchen table.

  Vickie glanced at her brother with some surprise and then quickly averted her eyes, pouring herself a cup of coffee. “Haven’t you read the papers?”

  “Not in the last few days,” Edward answered regretfully. In the process of turning his hobby and love, tropical fish, into a full-scale business, Edward was often much busier than he would like to be. “So tell me, our man must be a biggie if he’s making all the papers.”

  “Brant Wicker,” Vickie told him casually.

  Edward let out a long whistle. “That is big stuff! Back to his humble beginnings, huh?”

  Vickie shrugged and sipped at her coffee. “He is one man I’d like to meet,” Edward continued. “I’ve always been impressed by him. He had one hell of a service record, you know.”

  “Did he?” Vickie inquired politely, wishing she could change the subject without being too obvious.

  “Ummm…” Edward began to ramble on about Brant’s past and Vickie suddenly decided to wipe down already sparkling counters while pretending to listen with interest and praying something would happen to halt her brother’s adulation.

  Something did happen. The doorbell started to ring.

  “Probably Bobby, come to cajole breakfast out of me!” Vickie told Edward cheerfully, escaping briefly to the living room, but Edward sauntered close behind her.

  Mark looked up from a pile of toy soldiers to helpfully inform her, “Door, Mommy.”

  Vickie smiled at him wryly. “Thanks, Mark.” Glad of the interruption, she quickly swung open the door only to freeze with dismay. Brant had chosen his moment to reappear.

  “May I come in?” he drawled with amusement as she gaped at him, stunned.

  “I suppose,” she murmured warily, her manner not particularly gracious as she backed away from the door.

  “Brant!” Mark threw down his toys and toddled swiftly on chubby legs toward the blond giant, annoying Vickie with his eagerness. However, no one was paying her the slightest attention. Mark and Brant were involved with themselves, Edward was gaping by the swinging kitchen doors, his expression much like his sister’s as she had thrown open the door.

  Recovering, Vickie jolted herself into a modicum of decorum. “Brant, I’d like you to meet my brother, Edward. Ed, this is Brant Wicker.”

  Brant looked from Mark, whom he had hoisted into his arms, with an amiable curiosity to meet the man standing in the hall. A pleasant smile lit his angular features and he strode to Edward with a hand outstretched. Once more, Vickie thought with a pang, it was easy to understand Brant’s personal popularity. He was fire; he was ice. But most of all, he was a man. His magnificent body held an assured arrogance, but he offered himself to others completely, treating those he met with an instant respect that created an overwhelming and immediate loyalty to him.

  She could see acceptance in her brother’s eyes as the two men shook hands. And then she saw something else. Puzzlement. Edward looked like a man who had the answer to a crossword puzzle right on the tip of his tongue but just couldn’t get it. And yet if he stayed long enough…if he had a chance to really compare eyes…Edward already knew full well that there was no Mr. Langley.

  Knowing that she had to get rid of her brother, Vickie sputtered to life. “Brant, we were just having coffee, would you like a cup? Edward has to leave right away; his wife is waiting for him and Mark.”

  “Sure, I’d love coffee,” Brant agreed comfortably. “It’s a pity your brother has to go.”

  “I don’t—” Edward began.

  “You do!” Vickie insisted, trying to feign a sisterly message that said she wanted to be alone with Brant. Unfortunately Edward knew her well; an unhappy suspicion of something was forming on his gaunt features.

  “I suppose I do have to get back,” Edward said, watching his sister and emitting messages as she had. His voice had a little harshness to it, and she knew that he was wondering just what she was up to.

  Although he had stood by her, Edward had never approved of her not telling Mark’s father that he had a son. He felt strongly that a man had a right to know he had a child—and that he also had a duty toward that child, no matter what the differences between the parents. Still, Edward was her brother. She wasn’t afraid that he would purposely betray her, but if he did put two and two together and come up with four, guilt would riddle his face. He was incapable of deceit. Brant would surely become suspicious.

  Fighting an almost overwhelming panic, Vickie called upon every reserve of training and poise to behave nonchalantly as she hurried Edward through his coffee and ushered him and Mark out the door, almost forgetting she wouldn’t be seeing her son for two days. It was Brant’s hug for the boy that reminded her, and she cradled Mark to her tenderly, reminding herself that he was truly the most important thing in her life.

  Brant stood in the driveway waving with Vickie until Edward’s Toronado was out of sight. Then, uneasily, Vickie realized that his piercing stare was boring into her back.

  “What was that all about?” he demanded point blank.

  Whipping around to meet the fathomless blue ice of his eyes, Vickie shrugged innocently. “What was what all about?”

  “Why were you practically throwing your brother out of the house?”

  “His wife is waiting,” Vickie replied without blinking, despising the fact that it was becoming so easy to lie without faltering. Knowing she wouldn’t be able to meet the cool opaque of his eyes for long, she swept past Brant and back into the house, knowing he followed her on his deceptively soft tread, but she braced herself for any further questions
.

  But there weren’t any and he made her increasingly nervous as he stood watching her collect cups, his wiry form exuding an unsettling energy that was as vibrant as sunlight despite the casual way he was leaning against the refrigerator. She had the prickly feeling that he might pounce upon her at any second and render her as helpless as a small child by his sheer force and indomitable willpower. But he made no move and she finally reached a state where she turned on him to snap, “What do you want anyway?”

  His brows arched in sardonic surprise. “What do I want? Just the pleasure of your company. You did agree to drive north with me.”

  Vickie washed a saucer for the second time. “The panhandle isn’t until tomorrow,” she said cautiously, torn between a desire to be with him and the near fanatical fear left her by her brother’s almost discovering the truth.

  “I know. But I thought we’d drive up tonight after the show.”

  Vickie’s hands froze on the plate. She felt a shiver within her, for she knew her answer would be significant in their relationship. She could be jumping from the frying pan into the fire, and yet she wasn’t jumping, she was somehow being pushed.

  As if from a great distance, she heard her own voice incredibly indifferent. “All right, if that’s what you want to do. I believe the drive is several hours.”

  Brant grimaced. “It’s not all that bad. If we can leave the theater by midnight, we’ll reach the beach house by three.”

  Vickie started as she found the saucer being patiently tugged from her hand and the running spigot being turned off. “I really do think that that thing is clean—sterile enough for a newborn,” Brant said dryly. “Why in hell are you so frightened of me?”