Beguiled and Bedazzled

by Victoria Gordon

  He merely shrugged, showing no sign that he had twigged onto her thoughts. ‘Whatever you were up to, it sure didn’t seem to be any sort of nightmare,’ he finally said, and again there was the hint of amusement in his eyes and voice.

  ‘Hardly surprising, since I wasn’t asleep,’ she replied, not sure if she ought to be miffed by his assumption or not.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. It isn’t always necessary to be asleep to have nightmares ... or erotic fantasies.’ And his eyes flashed now with what could only be mockery.

  Colleen bristled. ‘Is that what this—’ she pointed to the sculpture ‘—is supposed to be? Some sort of erotic fantasy in wood? I can’t imagine that many people would want to pay your prices just to stimulate their juvenile imaginations.’

  The amber eyes narrowed, first angrily, then in something closer to speculation.

  ‘That,’ he said, ‘will become a siren, as in mythology. If there is any erotic element — and there damned well better be — it won’t be for the purpose of stimulating juvenile imaginations, Ms Ferrar. It will be to illustrate the very essence of femininity — calculated attraction based upon even more calculated deceit.’

  He paused, eyes flickering from the statue to Colleen. Then he continued, ‘The wood, by the way, is black-heart sassafras. A particularly fitting choice, wouldn’t you say?’

  ‘I would say you’re bordering on becoming a misogynist, if you’re not there already,’ Colleen retorted. ‘If you dislike women so much, why bother to carve one at all?’

  ‘I don’t have a choice,’ he replied. ‘There is a siren in that chunk of sassafras and it’s my role to bring it out for the world to see. I can’t turn it into something it’s not.’

  ‘But why a siren? I accept, I guess, that it has to be a feminine figure — even I can see that — but couldn’t it be a Madonna, or just a simple, uncomplicated mermaid?’

  ‘A mermaid is still just a siren; same legend; different name. And as for a Madonna ... well, you’ve only to touch this piece of wood to know that it wouldn’t work. There’s a sort of.. .voluptuousness about it, a sensuousness that certainly doesn’t lend itself to simplistic elements of purity and goodness.’

  ‘Which is no compliment to your choice of model,’ she said. ‘What does it all make me?’

  ‘Said she who goes about trying to seduce poor, innocent answering machines just to get what she wants.’

  And his eyes fairly glowed. The look he was giving her, Colleen decided, neither answered her question nor even tried to; misogynist or not, there was definite seduction in those eyes, and, what was more, she was meant to see it.

  ‘I did not attempt to seduce your damned answering machine,’ she replied. ‘That was my answering machine that did that, and well you know it. I personally wouldn’t stoop to anything quite so ... so...’

  ‘Mechanical? Or should we say electronic?’

  ‘I was going to say calculating and deceptive,’ she snapped. ‘It’s more than a bit possible that machines, given half a chance, could have better human qualities than some humans. But then, I suppose that wouldn’t ever have occurred to you.’

  She was starting to get angry now, and didn’t really want to. Colleen shifted round to slide down from the carving bench, suddenly aware that half her bottom had gone to sleep; as her feet hit the floor she stumbled and would have fallen had not Devon Burns swooped forward to catch her in his arms.

  Once caught, she was held; he made no attempt to release her or even to slacken the encircling band of his strong, muscular arms. Instead, he held her close against him — so close that she could feel the beat of his body against her, could look up and see the amber highlights of his eyes from a proximity closer than she might have preferred.

  ‘Speaking of machines,’ he murmured in a low, throaty voice, ‘Ignatius had this message he wanted passed along to Bertha or whatever her name is. I presume you wouldn’t mind taking it with you.’

  ‘Wha—?’

  She got no further, and her mind was still pondering what foolishness this infuriating man could be about now, when his mouth dropped to cover hers, his lips forceful, almost punishing as they forced open her mouth to accept his kisses. His arms seemed to crush the breath from her, and so unexpected was his passionate assault that Colleen had no defence, no ready armour.

  When his fingers began to orchestrate a response, playing her spinal column like some sensual keyboard, she could only sag in his arms, her mind objecting but her body already conquered. When his tongue probed between her lips they opened to his kisses like the petals of a flower seeking the sun, revelling in the taste of him, the texture of his mouth.

  But it was his hands that so completely defeated her. As he lifted her against him her blouse pulled out from the waistband of her skirt, allowing access to fingers not work-roughened, not hard and callused and brutal, but so sensitive, so knowing as they frolicked over her bared skin that it was like being tickled by feathers, caressed by wind-driven flower petals.

  And then, as quickly as it had begun, it was over. Those sensitive, strong hands put her aside like a discarded tool, and the amber eyes, when they met her own, were cool, distant, with no sign in them of the passions he had roused in Colleen herself.

  ‘You’ll be wanting to get back now, I expect,’ he said, as if they had just finished a cup of tea. ‘And I have work to do.’

  Five minutes later she was driving back down the road, aware that her blouse was still not tucked in, aware also that her mind was even more thoroughly rumpled. She had been expertly dismissed, whisked away like a pesky pedlar whose wares were unsatisfactory or, worse, unwanted.

  ‘Here’s your hat; what’s your hurry?’ she muttered, far more angry in retrospect than she had managed to be at the time. Even when Burns had been kissing her, taking total control of her body and emotions with an ease that was frightening, she hadn’t really been angry; now she was.

  ‘Damn it! Nobody should be able to do that,’ she growled, still more aware than she wanted to admit of the touch of his fingers on her skin, his lips on her mouth. The reality had been far more intense than her earlier daydream had been able to suggest; the man’s sheer masculinity, his deliberate expertise had touched depths in Colleen’s own passions that she hadn’t quite expected.

  It was sobering — and maddening — to realise that he had controlled the entire experience. Had he wanted to take her, right there on the workshop floor, he could have done so and she would have let him. Helped him! She knew that now, and even if she hadn’t at the time, he had, which made it all the worse.

  And it was far from over. She knew that too and was both angry and confused by it. She had made a bargain and now had no real choice but to follow through on it. Unless she turned around this very minute and drove back there, unless she could renege, and do so before he had a chance so much as to touch her father’s wood, she was committed; sooner or later she would find herself having to take her clothes off to pose for his sculpture, would find herself exposed to the control of a man who didn’t even like her.

  Her mood was thoroughly black by the time she reached her rented townhouse, which unaccountably now looked somewhat bleak and sinister after the wonderfully nature-integrated setting of Devon Burns’ place.

  Entering the lounge, which she used as a workroom, she flung her handbag into one chair and herself into another, glowering at her reflection in the wall of mirrors across the large work table.

  ‘You’re a fool. Colleen,’ she muttered. ‘Nothing but a damned, silly fool. All this, just to get one of Devon bloody Burns’ sculptures for Dad ... and you don’t know what it will end up like, or whether you’ll even like it, much less whether he will.’

  She was still muttering when she glanced over to see the red light on her answering machine flashing.

  ‘OK, Bertha, or whatever your name is,’ she growled, but went immediately to review what messages might be there, because she was a self-confessed victim of telephone technology. If a
telephone rang during working hours, Colleen believed that it had to be answered — a throwback from her days on the mainland, where the phone had been such a vital part of her business day.

  Indeed, it had only been since her move to Launceston that she had managed to restrict herself to having only one telephone, and that in the workroom; at bedtime she turned off the bell and let the answering machine do the work while she slept. It had been necessary when she’d first arrived because her number had kept getting all sorts of mistaken calls that had wakened her every night for the first fortnight.

  It might be nice to be like Devon Burns, she thought. He seemed to have taken just the opposite tack — he ignored his telephone entirely when he was working and used it as a toy when he chose to bother with it at all. ‘And he’s probably too busy at night to answer it anyway,’ she muttered as she moved across the room to check her own machine.

  First, a message from her father, who lapsed into an office mentality occasionally, despite his retirement years ago, and wondered now why Colleen wasn’t at work in the middle of the day. Then her mother, who thought because she wasn’t there in the middle of the day that she must be working ... perhaps too hard? And then, that impossible, improbable voice...

  ‘Ignatius here. Art thou well, Bertha? ... or is it Imogen? No matter — “a rose by any other name...” et cetera, et cetera, and a very curvaceous bit of circuitry too, I fancy. One day, perchance, we could ... Well ... perhaps now is not the time for such dalliance. I but relay a message to your human person, who should arrive any moment now...’

  Colleen could hardly believe her ears, had to replay the message again to be sure she had actually heard aright.

  ‘My human person wishes to make it known there is a rather splendid production of A Bed Full of Foreigners at the Princess Theatre this week, and if your human person fancies dinner and the theatre could she (a) have you let me know absolutely soonest, and (b) please trundle down and get tickets for same. Friday night, if you please, and decent seating, if you please; not in the ashtrays. Oh, and my human person will arrange for dinner. Assuming this to be agreeable, please advise your person to dress appropriately — as in wear legs — and provide me with an address where she will be collected at six p.m. sharp.’

  ‘I’ll give you six p.m. sharp,’ Colleen cried, and grabbed up her telephone to begin punching out Devon Burns’ number as if she were trying to drive the buttons through the phone. But as she reached the last number a modicum of sense took control and she slammed the receiver down without completing the call.

  Burns, she had just realised, almost certainly wouldn’t answer the telephone himself anyway; he’d made it abundantly clear that he considered his telephone a servant for his own convenience and only used it for outbound calls, especially during working hours. So she would be dealing with his insane alter ego Ignatius, and for that a little preparation was in order.

  Ignatius! Just the thought of that name forced a splutter of laughter, but it was nowhere near enough to dampen her anger and astonishment at the overall turn of events.

  ‘The absolute nerve of the man! First he leads me down the garden path about the wood, then he kisses me stupid, then he gives me the royal heave-ho. And now ... this! What a ridiculous, absolutely asinine way to go about things!’

  It was an ardent, passionate speech indeed, but she noticed that the scowling reflection in the mirror wall didn’t seem overly impressed.

  Colleen sat there for long moments, staring first at her reflection then at the silent telephone, which crouched there like a cat waiting to pounce.

  Her first reaction was simply to phone him back and tell him what to do and where to put it, but that, she quickly decided, was too extreme, and hardly realistic if she was going to fulfil her commitment and get what she wanted out of this insanity. But to stay involved, especially on Burns’ own terms, was very, very dangerous. She would stay involved — but she would set the terms. Colleen decided. Just how was another question!

  First things first, she thought, and reached out for a pencil and paper. First, the proper response from...? Clearly she must find an appropriate name for her answering machine if she was to enter fully into Burns’ little game, even if it was only to be for this once.

  ‘Freda! If all male answering machines — except of course Ignatius — are named Fred, then a female one must be Freda. Good, that’s that little bit out of the way. Now...’

  It took her half an hour of writing, rewriting and more rewriting but finally she was satisfied with the first part of her plan, even if the rest was no more than a hazy intent to get even, one way or another.

  But by this time her mood had improved immensely; it was good fun, actually, orchestrating an overheated, flamboyant dialogue of sexual innuendo between two machines. She dialled Burns’ number, then waited with bated breath for the proper response. If he answered himself, she realised at the last instant, she would have to hang up immediately. But if things went as she expected...

  And they did. She was dutifully informed that Ignatius’s human person was recuperating under a ‘very long, very cold shower’ after what he described as a ‘truly harrowing experience’ earlier in the .day.

  ‘One for me,’ she chuckled as the message rambled on. And when it was her turn she was more than ready!

  ‘Ignatius, darling,’ she began, dropping her voice into what she hoped was a sultry if machine-like tone. Then she went into it with a vengeance, first disposing of the business at hand. Of course her human person would get tickets for the theatre; she would be instructed to rush out immediately if not sooner to get the very best seats still available. She provided her address, confirmed the time, affirmed that yes, legs would be worn. ‘Although why I simply cannot imagine, darling; I hardly ever wear them myself ... so inadequate, really, when one has the availability of much sexier and more useful optic fibres, don’t you think?’

  At the finish she got so carried away that she had to fight to keep the laughter from escaping into her voice. She did manage, in the end, to sign off with the smoochiest kiss she could impart to the phone.

  ‘So much for you, Ignatius,’ she said after hanging up. And I hope it sends you to the cold showers too. Now for your illustrious master...’

  Her plotting and scheming in that direction lasted through the next three days, during which she obtained the tickets for the show as requested, then pondered and fussed and nearly drove herself crazy trying to determine how best to put the handsome, irreverent Mr Burns in his place.

  She wandered past the theatre on the opening night and was dismayed to find that only a small proportion of the audience bothered to dress up at all. The next night was from a fashion point of view even worse. Launceston people quite obviously didn’t get terribly excited about dressing up for the theatre.

  ‘But I’m expected to,’ she said to herself. ‘Which indicates that he will too. Unless, of course, he turns up in work boots and a bush shirt, with that damned dog in tow. Which wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest, although I suppose it’s unfair to say so.’

  But it wasn’t. Not really. Devon Burns was so totally unpredictable, so completely irreverent and self-contained that just about anything, she thought, was possible where he was concerned. The problem, which only seemed to become more and more unresolvable as Friday evening drew closer, was what she was going to wear!

  ‘Legs, legs, legs.’ She was humming the words in a toneless dirge at five o’clock on Friday, with only an hour to go and no more ideas of how she would dress than she’d had two days earlier.

  She had decided on and discarded a variety of options from all over the fashion spectrum, and indeed almost settled on one or two vague possibilities. The concept of wild tartan tights with a slinky checked miniskirt and a striped top was suitably outrageous, but her natural good taste balked at the very thought. She looked at thigh-high boots, at tights in every conceivable pattern and style, long skirts, short skirts, miniskirts—the lot.

&nb
sp; And the problem really was, she had determined at this next to last minute, that she refused to compromise her own taste just for the questionable effect of stirring some reaction from Devon Burns.

  And her taste, really, was essentially simple and uncluttered. She had made her name with design that held its style and value in a market that changed with every passing breeze, and she just could not flaunt herself in some ridiculous outfit even for this very worthy cause.

  ‘When in doubt, simplify!’ she told herself firmly at five to six, all made up but so far dressed only in her skin and fast running out of time and options. When the doorbell rang two minutes later she was slithering into a deceptively simple, very short evening dress in classic emerald-green, fumbling to try and get both shoes on as she made her way to answer it.

  To hell with it all, she was thinking. If he wanted legs, then legs he would have. Legs, and plenty of bare arm, back and cleavage into the bargain; this simple short gown with its cross-the-throat halter-neck left very, very little to the imagination.

  And Devon Burns’ reaction to it, she was delighted and also somehow relieved to find, left absolutely nothing to the imagination. He looked at her as she opened the door, his eyes roving with undisguised pleasure from her rowdy hair to the pointy tips of the shoes that gained her a full three inches of height. Hardly enough to matter, in some ways, given that he was still five inches taller, but every little bit helps, she thought.

  His smile was startlingly bright against the darkness of his tan, as was the white dress shirt he wore beneath a dark suit that could only have been custom tailored. The overall effect, Colleen thought, was nothing short of stunning; if Burns had been impressive in snug-fitting work jeans, he was even more so dressed appropriately for a night out.

  Colleen had a momentary flash of the tartan / check / stripe combination that she had considered wearing and silently blessed her common sense, though she did let slip a smile about it. The smile broadened when Devon proffered a paper-wrapped bottle.