Beguiled and Bedazzled

by Victoria Gordon

  How dare you accuse me of being deceitful? she thought, and realised almost too late that if she kept up that repetitive train of thought those would be the first words out of her mouth.

  Rooster solved that problem. Sighting Colleen, he gave a throaty yodel of greeting and flung himself forward, rearing up to place his forepaws on her shoulders and slaver over her with wet, sloppy kisses as he almost knocked her over in his exuberance.

  Burns’ angry command was ignored. Colleen found herself hugging a damp, muddy, boisterous dog that seemed absolutely determined to drown her in affection.

  ‘You great oaf. Get down! Down, you fool,’ she cried, finally managing to push the big Chesapeake away. ‘Sit!’ she demanded then, one forefinger poised in admonishment. And to her great surprise he did.

  ‘I may shoot you, dog,’ Burns said as he strode forward to grasp Rooster by the scruff of his neck, glaring down at him, amber eyes meeting amber eyes in a brief contest of wills. It was no contest; Rooster quickly glanced away and tried to roll over in submission, his own eyes turning to Colleen as if for moral support.

  ‘Bloody great fool of a dog,’ Burns muttered, rising with unexpected suddenness to stand looking down at Colleen, his eyes taking in the mud that was smeared all down the front of her. His own trousers were muddy — an unavoidable hazard of retriever-training in water — but Colleen looked as if she’d been swept with a dirty broom.

  ‘Are you all right?’ The question somehow seemed to hold more than politeness. Burns’ manner at least seemed to show a measure of genuine concern.

  ‘Of course. He was just being friendly.’ Colleen looked down at her muddy clothes. ‘Although perhaps a bit too friendly.’

  Whereupon her irreverent mind leapt to her mouth, it looks as if that bath you forced on me might have been just a bit premature.’

  ‘That’s one way to describe it, I guess,’ Burns replied, his eyes suddenly unreadable. ‘He knows better too, or at least he should. I don’t know what it is about you, but do me a favour and please don’t ever turn up at a retrieving trial without me knowing it; I’d be a laughing stock if he pulled a stunt like that when he was supposed to be working, and I’d have the devil’s own time controlling the great horror with you around.’

  ‘Wouldn’t you just,’ she replied, her mind flashing to the kennel-control magazine she’d noticed on an earlier visit. It would serve him quite right too, she thought, lodging the idea firmly at the back of her mind and wondering how she could sneak another look at the magazine without him catching her at it. All the trials would be listed, surely, and...?

  ‘Which is a pity,’ he was saying. ‘There’s a trial next weekend, and I had been planning to ask if you’d like to come, but after that little performance, and now, seeing the mischief in your eyes... Really, Colleen, you shouldn’t even try to scheme like that.’

  ‘Like what?’ she demanded, forcing a tone of incredulity into her voice even while she knew that it wasn’t likely to deceive Devon Burns. Bad enough that he could read her like a book without him having to prove it at every opportunity!

  ‘You know very well what," he replied. ‘And so do I, because you’re as transparent as glass. Everything you’re thinking just comes out in your eyes like they were great, huge billboards.’

  ‘I do not know,’ she insisted. ‘Not that it matters anyway. How could you even think I’d go anywhere with you after what you ... well ... you know?’

  ‘I do? Well, I suppose I do, if you’re referring to your little dunking. And I assume you are. I also assume you’re waiting for an apology, but I told you then and I tell you now that you won’t get one. You’ve been playing games with me, and you know it and I know it, and you got no more than you deserved. Probably less, in fact, because I have a strong suspicion there’ve been transgressions I don’t even know about … yet.’

  Too accurate, too perceptive. Especially when he kept looking at her like that. Even if she had been able to create a suitable riposte, Burns’ uncanny ability to stay just one step ahead of her was disconcerting, unnerving. Did he somehow know about her little snooping expedition? Had he arranged it even? It wouldn’t have surprised her, but she was damned if she was going to admit it without him bringing up the subject first. It wouldn’t be so bad, she thought, if he wasn’t always so insufferably sure of himself!

  Like now.

  ‘I’d be happy to lend you something to change into if you like; unless you fancy eating dinner looking like that,’ he said as he held open the door for her with one hand and waved the big red dog back with the other. And before Colleen could reply he added, ‘Of course you could wear your modelling clothes, if you’d prefer. I’d even run you another bath.’

  Colleen had to struggle to keep from belting him right there and then. After all his hoo-ha about her tormenting him, leading him on, after raging at her and lecturing at her and throwing her into his cold hot tub … now he wanted to make seductive suggestions himself?

  She almost screamed, then replied as calmly as she could, ‘I’m quite comfortable like this, thank you.’

  But Colleen’s most scathing glare went begging; Burns only laughed, showing his delight at having got her goat yet again. He then added insult to injury by licking his finger and reaching out to brush it across the line of her cheekbone, wiping away some real or imagined smudge. And when she flashed her own hand upwards in defence he only laughed the louder, reaching out to capture it with his other hand while he completed the job.

  ‘Might as well have the boy in while we’re at it, then,’ he said with a chuckle. ‘I reckon he’s no grottier than you.’

  ‘He’s probably got better table manners too,’ Colleen snapped, struggling vainly to free her hand. ‘Maybe you could send us both to the kennels so that you can dine in proper style.’ And she looked pointedly at his own muddy trousers, then looked away again without saying another word.

  Burns, damn his eyes, she thought, didn’t even have the decency to grant her the point.

  ‘I simply didn’t want you to feel at a disadvantage when you’re savouring the delights of my culinary skills,’ he said, still not releasing her hand. ‘I am one of the world’s truly great pot-roasters, I’ll have you know. People have come from all over the world just to smell one of my pot-roasts.’

  ‘And to be overwhelmed by your modesty as well, I’m sure,’ Colleen replied, no longer so sure that even now she shouldn’t spike the dinner with cayenne pepper. The thought was deliciously tempting until she realised she too would have to suffer the consequences.

  ‘That also,’ he said with a grin, finally releasing her hand, but not before giving it a thorough inspection, looking first at her palm, then turning the hand over, almost but not quite as if he planned to kiss it. ‘Now come and get scrubbed up; you’ve a treat ahead of you, I promise.’

  His attitude was infectious, and by the time they’d ‘scrubbed up’ Colleen was finding it increasingly difficult to maintain even a semblance of her earlier chagrin. It would all be much, much easier, she decided, if only Devon Burns had the same consistent temperament of his big red dog, instead of being so mercurial that she never knew what to expect.

  She followed him towards the kitchen, her mind still awhirl with questions that she wanted to ask but didn’t dare … at least not directly. What had happened to the siren sculpture? And even more important: what had he been up to, having her pose for it when it wasn’t there? It seemed ludicrous for him to have kept her posing for a carving of Rooster; in fact it made no sense at all. And what about the Huon pine, the sculpture he’d promised for her father’s birthday? Surely he had no reason to hide that?

  The feeling of confusion was strong, but even stronger was the feeling that somehow, quite deliberately. she was being set up! The problem for Colleen was that she didn’t know why, couldn’t imagine exactly how, and had no idea what she could, or should, do about it.

  ‘You’ll fall in love with this,’ he was saying as he lifted the pot lid in
a flamboyant gesture, leaning over to sniff appreciatively at the contents. He motioned to Colleen to join him, and she was about to do so, if grudgingly, when a roar of barking erupted outside, followed by a distinctly feminine cry of alarm.

  ‘Don’t tell mc that damned dog has brought me another pigeon,’ Burns said, clapping the lid back on his pot-roast before he dashed to the front door with Colleen not far behind. Neither of them, she suspected, was quite prepared for what they saw, and Colleen was certainly unprepared for Devon’s reaction to it.

  ‘Rooster — get out of it!’ he shouted, and rushed forward to grab at the red dog’s collar. Rooster, growling fiercely, was doing his best to wrest a closed umbrella from the hands of a tall, elegantly dressed blonde woman who was backed up against her car, shrieking at the dog in some foreign language. The words were quite unintelligible but it didn’t take much imagination to guess at their meaning. Either way, Rooster was decidedly unimpressed; Colleen was certain that his growls were ominously different from his normal vocabulary.

  ‘Out of it!’ Devon roared, and finally the dog condescended to listen, although not without shooting his master a scathing glare as he relinquished the umbrella and stalked haughtily away to stare at the scene from a distance.

  ‘Devon ... darling; thank God you’re here!’ cried the blonde, dropping the umbrella and mincing forward in her fashionably tight skirt to take Devon’s hands in her own. ‘I was afraid that awful creature was going to eat me.’ Her grey eyes were alight with the excitement, and her carefully arranged hair had been shaken from its perfect coiffure.

  ‘You should have known better than to try and hit him with that thing, Ingrid. I’m surprised he didn’t take your arm off,’ Burns replied, holding the woman’s hands and drawing her closer to him. Or was it she doing the drawing close? Colleen wondered. But there was no question at all about who instigated the kiss that followed.

  ‘I did not strike the dog,’ the blonde insisted after she had released his mouth, ‘I was merely concerned about him leaping all over me; that is obvious, is it not?’

  ‘Perfectly,’ Burns replied. And his eyes roamed with all too obvious appreciation over her tall, slender, truly elegant figure — a figure, Colleen couldn’t help but notice with a professional eye, that was garbed in a very chic, very flattering wool suit that fairly screamed expense and exclusivity. As it should, she thought, although perhaps not quite so loudly; it was a copy of one of her own better designs. Not an original — a survivor of her war with Andrew.

  But it would take more than that dog, Ingrid, to disrupt your style,’ said Burns.

  ‘Always you are the flatterer,’ was the smiling reply, but Colleen noticed that there was no smile in those cool grey eyes when the woman glanced over to where Rooster still bristled. There was naked dislike in that glance, and Colleen sensed that the feeling was mutual; Rooster was not impressed with this pigeon. And there was neither a smile nor any semblance of warmth when the woman noticed, seemingly for the first time, Colleen standing in the open doorway.

  Those grey eyes flickered over Colleen with a haughty insolence that quickly turned to contemptuous dismissal as they took in her mud-smeared clothing and disarranged hair, instantly categorising her as irrelevant, although perhaps with some reservations. It was a look which she was all too familiar with, and Colleen had to smile inside at how much the haute-couture attitude was out of place in this rural setting.

  Having categorised and dismissed Colleen, the blonde woman returned her attention totally to Devon, whose hands she still held in a gesture that bespoke long familiarity.

  ‘Ah, Devon ... it is so good to finally get here,’ she said in a voice like cut silk. ‘I have been flying non-stop, virtually, from Paris, darling,’ the woman continued. ‘And I am quite totally exhausted. All that I want is perhaps one hour in your wonderful spa, yes? And then twenty-four hours, at least, of sleep.’

  Well, the spa wants heating up; it hasn’t had much use lately. You’d best have dinner with us first,’ was the reply. And Colleen wasn’t quite sure that he didn’t flash a quick, cryptic glance in her direction as he mentioned the spa.

  ‘And your timing is just about perfect too, Ingrid; Colleen and I were just about to sit down.’

  Now the blonde woman did look at Colleen, and her earlier dismissal got a revaluing as Devon went through the formalities of an introduction.

  Ingrid, whose surname turned out to be Johnsson, was Devon Burns’ principal agent in Europe, and had come, he said, ‘to hound and badger and harass me into getting my next exhibition ready quicker than I want to.’

  Somewhat to Colleen’s surprise, he adroitly avoided providing the blonde with any comparable details; he merely introduced Colleen by her first name and hustled them into the house, with Rooster following closely at their heels.

  She probably thinks I’m the kennel maid or something, Colleen thought, not particularly concerned at the prospect somehow, then had to mentally shrug off the thought that perhaps Devon had deliberately tried to spare his agent any possible embarrassment over meeting the designer of her not quite original outfit. Burns was, Colleen was certain, quite capable of knowing that much about women’s fashion. He might even have bought Ingrid the suit, she thought uncharitably, and flinched inwardly at her own cattiness.

  She told herself that this was one of those times when anonymity had its merits. Then she told herself that she wasn’t one whit perturbed by Ingrid’s too deliberate attitude of possessiveness concerning Devon Burns. Then she decided that she might be better off out of this.

  ‘You two will want to discuss business, I’m sure,’ she said, even as Burns was steering them towards the dining room. ‘Perhaps I’d best go and let you get on with it; I’m not especially hungry anywa—’

  ‘You’ll stay and sing the praises of this pot-roast or you’ll find yourself fair at the top of my blacklist,’ Burns growled, and his fingers clenched on her upper arm to reinforce the demand. Behind him, Ingrid’s expression made it clear that she much preferred Colleen’s idea.

  ‘No, really, I don’t want to intrude,’ Colleen replied, but her heart wasn’t in it and she felt that they both knew it. What she didn’t say was that it had already occurred to her that if he was going to show his work to Ingrid — as surely he must! — she too might have her curiosity satisfied.

  Burns seated both women, then disappeared into the kitchen, returning a few moments later with an opened bottle of red wine and glasses for all of them.

  ‘You lot can make a start on this,’ he said. ‘I’m just going to bring in your bags, Ingrid, and put a fire under that hot tub; you wouldn’t fancy hopping in there the temperature it’s at now.’ With which he shot a gleeful smirk in Colleen’s direction and walked out.

  Rooster followed him, although not, Colleen noticed, without what she chose to interpret as a suspicious glare at the blonde Ingrid.

  The feeling was obviously mutual; Ingrid gave a mighty sigh as the dog left the room and reached out one perfectly manicured hand to lift the wine bottle.

  ‘I do hope Devon leaves that monster outside this time,’ she confided as she filled the three glasses and passed one over to Colleen, glancing meaningfully at Colleen’s mud-stained clothing as she did so. ‘You also, I guess; that dog is a menace. Every time I am coming here he destroys something — the first time a pair of gloves, the last time a shoe. He has ruined several good pairs of stockings ... always he is jumping up on me, the ill-mannered beast.’

  Colleen looked ruefully down at her own clothing, thinking that it was messed up, fair enough, but hardly ruined. ‘He’s only a baby really,’ she replied, then laughed inside at the strangeness of hearing herself parroting Devon’s words, remembering that she hadn’t been amused at hearing them when she’d first met Rooster. But as she listened to Ingrid’s lengthy recital of the red dog’s sins she realised that not only did the blonde not like Rooster, she was terrified of him. And, Colleen thought, very likely terrified of all dogs.


  ‘You are … employed by Devon?’ she was asked then, in an abrupt change of subject that caught her rather by surprise.

  No. I’m ... well ... I’m just sort of helping him out,’ she finally replied, not wanting to be too specific without really knowing why. Ingrid’s question hadn’t seemed to be especially prying, but something about the blonde made Colleen instinctively cautious.

  "Ah.’ Again those bleak grey eyes assessed Colleen, then again appeared to dismiss her as irrelevant. Clearly this elegant, worldly woman didn’t see competition in a mud-smeared nonentity. Her air of possessiveness — or was it simply extreme confidence and self-assuredness? — was total, all-encompassing. Now she demonstrated her familiarity with Devon and his world by first refilling Colleen’s wineglass, then briskly laying out the cutlery and silverware to prepare for their host’s return.

  If the gesture was deliberate, it had the desired effect; in all her visits Colleen had never assumed nor been offered such familiarity. She had shared impromptu meals with Devon, had had coffee with him, but always with the strict sense that it was his home, totally under his control. Ingrid treated the place almost as if it were her own, even though from her remarks it seemed that she was at best an infrequent visitor.

  Perhaps, Colleen thought, ‘visitor’ wasn’t the appropriate word; Devon Burns and this cool, sophisticated blonde quite obviously had a very close relationship if she could drop in without notice or warning and feel assured of a hot tub and a bed — probably with Devon Burns in it. She thought for an instant of her own introduction to the huge redwood tub, then decided that it was better not to.

  Colleen gave herself a severe mental shake; none of this was any of her business, and she was only punishing herself by speculating. Burns had never given her any encouragement to become emotionally involved; if he could have seen the green-eyed monster that was so casually destroying her appetite just now he would have laughed himself silly.