Wolf in Tiger's Stripes

by Victoria Gordon

  Her arrival at the hospital, managed only after considerable consultations with a street atlas and even longer efforts to find a place to park, thankfully cleared her mind. The twins hadn’t bothered to wait for her. They must have been born, she realized with baffling clear hindsight, almost exactly at the moment she’d been speaking to Bevan alongside the road, the instant she’d been wondering if he would kiss her and if she’d allow him to kiss her.

  The twins were beautiful. Identical as two wrinkled prunes, which to Judith’s eyes they resembled, although she did not put it that way to their delighted new mother.

  “One of each. Isn’t that wonderful?” Vanessa had come through the experience with minimal problems, and now, several hours later, she was chafing at the bit to gather her brood and go home.

  “Wonderful indeed,” Judith replied. “Although I do think you might have spared them the carrot tops.” She had eventually grown used to her own copper-orange tresses, but as a child had never been much impressed by the color of her hair. Plus, she’d been teased mercilessly, the epithet “carrot-top” the mildest of her playmates’ torments.

  “It runs in the family. You’re proof of that,” Vanessa replied. “And how are you getting along with Bevan?”

  Judith blinked at the abrupt change of subject, then said, “Not – if you want me to be honest.”

  “Oh, what a pity.” Vanessa was her usual optimistic self. “You’re still speaking, I hope. I’d hate for my children’s godparents not to be on speaking terms.”

  “Oh, Nessie! You ... you wouldn’t!”

  “I certainly would. Although only with your approval, of course. I’ve named the children after you, though, so you’d best think a bit before refusing ... Judith Theresa, what’s so damn funny?”

  Judith had collapsed into uncontrollable laughter, her only defense against the tears that otherwise would have erupted.

  “Oh, Nessie, you have absolutely made my day,” she finally managed to gasp, not sure whether to laugh or cry, shaking her coppery locks at the sheer insanity of it all.

  14

  The voice on the telephone only added to the confusion of a Monday morning in which everything that could go wrong had, and everything to come seemed headed that way.

  “You about over being clucky yet?” Bevan asked without even bothering with the social niceties of “Hello” or “How are you?” His voice brought an instant vision to Judith’s mind, and even as she answered, she was making comparisons between Bevan and the man who sat across from her in Vanessa’s kitchen.

  Derek Innes hadn’t changed. How could she expect him to change in only a matter of months? He’d stepped out of a taxi, totally unexpected and unannounced, only moments before, obviously expecting Judith to just drop everything and cater to his every immediate need. That, she thought, was typical.

  And yet, somehow, he had changed. She couldn’t exactly say how, but even without the nebulous and indescribable changes, he simply didn’t stand up to comparison with Bevan Keene.

  How could she ever have thought those beady eyes, blatant in their cunning and deceptiveness, to be even remotely forthright or truthful? Indeed, Derek’s entire attitude now seemed smug and self-serving, rather than bold and adventurous as she had once thought.

  Ignoring the word “clucky,” which she assumed had something to do with ... well, with hens clucking, she said, “Not having started, I’m hardly likely to be over it.” As she replied to Bevan, she watched Derek’s eyes narrow in speculation. Obviously, he was trying to monitor the conversation. For an instant, she considered asking him to leave the room, but it seemed hardly worth the effort, all things considered. Moments later, she was glad of that decision.

  “I don’t suppose you’ve had any word from your little mate in Queensland?” Bevan asked. “The one who was supposed to be here last week? Everyone else is raring to go, and if he’d deign to make an appearance we could set out tomorrow for a few days shakedown to see how all this hi-tech equipment is going to work.”

  Judith paused before answering, actually found herself savoring the moment. Then she poured mental quicksilver along her tongue and said, “As a matter of fact, he’s sitting here right now. Why don’t I put him on the phone and you two men can discuss all this?”

  “Not for just a minute,” was the brusque reply. Which in one sense rather disappointed her, because Derek had definitely pricked up his ears. She had hoped for some recognizable reaction from Bevan, without knowing exactly what it should be. Still, in another sense she was flattered he wanted to speak with her rather than Derek.

  “I hope you’re able to tell me he isn’t a full-boogie vegetarian, like two of his local compatriots claim to be,” Bevan said then. “My oath! The way they go on about any sort of decent tucker, you and I will have to go off by ourselves in a corner someplace just so we can enjoy a decent bite of steak.”

  She couldn’t help but laugh, then laugh even more at the petulant look on Derek’s face because he didn’t know why she laughed. Derek didn’t enjoy being left out of a joke. Perhaps he feared it meant he could be the butt of it.

  “No, not that bad,” she said, carefully choosing her words. “There might be problems if there are any dragons in the party though.”

  Derek’s objection to anyone smoking was almost legend. Given the opportunity, he’d have lobbied for tobacco to be placed on the same blacklist as heroin and cocaine.

  Now it was Bevan’s turn to chuckle, and Judith realized she had just played right into his hands by revealing she was attempting to keep Derek from easily following their conversation.

  “So he’s listening in, eh? Reckoned so. And he doesn’t smoke and doesn’t think anyone else should, either. Just as well you gave him away, Judith Theresa. A man with no vices isn’t worth the trouble. Downright boring, if nothing else.”

  No vices? Judith shivered as she struggled to find a proper reply. By comparison to the vices she now realized Derek did have, smoking was very minor league indeed. But damned if she’d succumb to telling that to Bevan.

  “Hardly the way I’d describe it,” she eventually said. “Now, is there anything else before I put him on the phone?”

  “Oh, I could ask you how you feel about sharing this godparenting business,” Bevan said, and she could hear a mischievous lilt to his voice now, for sure.

  “Don’t!”

  “Ah. I rather thought it might be like that. I don’t know why you should feel that way, though, my girl. I’m told both the rug rats have your hair. If anybody should be complaining, it ought to be me.”

  “As you wish,” she replied calmly. And stopped right there. This was not a subject she wanted to discuss at all over the telephone, much less in front of Derek.

  “I’m inclined to be a bit cranky with Vanessa about the naming business, myself,” Bevan continued, ignoring her demand. “I mean, what’s going to happen when we get married and have kiddies of our own? If we pass our names on to them, the future will be amazingly complicated with a Judith, and a Mummy Judith and a Cousin Judith and an Aunty Judith—”

  Judith’s irrepressible spluttering cut him off in mid-sentence. Something inside her boiled over at his suggestion, let alone the implications involved. She felt herself going all breathless, her tummy roiling with a sensation she’d never encountered before.

  Even worse was how quickly her fertile imagination created a magical montage of erotically specific images, revealing precisely how such a situation might be accomplished.

  Dangerous ground, this. Get out. Get out now!

  “I’m going to put Mr. Innes on the phone,” she managed to say after she’d caught her breath. It’s either that or hang up on you, and wouldn’t Derek love being a witness to that?

  She gestured to Derek, handed him the phone, and told him who was on the other end and why. Then she said, rather pointedly, “I’ll just go out on the porch and give you some privacy.”

  If Derek noticed the implied criticism, he didn’t reveal it.
Even before Judith was out of the room, he was sliding into his oily, insincere, and yet so horribly plausible role, one she now found distasteful to the point of nausea.

  “Phony as a politician’s promise,” she muttered to herself as she left the room, then immediately regretted not having stayed, just to hear what approach Derek would attempt to take with Bevan Keene.

  15

  Reality struck at Judith about halfway along the journey from Hobart to Bevan’s property, and reality’s arrival was so surprising it nearly caused her to veer off the highway.

  Listening to Derek’s unceasing prattle, she suddenly became aware that he didn’t even realize that she knew his role in the incident that had caused her to lose her job, had, indeed, threatened her very career. If anything, he seemed to think her withdrawal to her cousin’s side in Tasmania was solely because of her embarrassment at having been sacked, not in any way because of his personal involvement and betrayal.

  And as they traveled farther and he talked on and on and on, boasting of his accomplishments and of having landed this plum of an opportunity, she also came to realize that he hadn’t – in his own mind – betrayed her at all. He’d merely used her, and he seemed to accept quite happily that she’d been placed on earth exactly for that purpose.

  By the time they stopped for coffee at Ross, Judith didn’t know whether to laugh or cry or up and shoot the bastard, whether to be outraged or indignant or simply explode with amusement at how ridiculous the whole thing now seemed.

  Hindsight, she decided, was a marvelous leveler. Looking back, she could see so easily how she’d been deceived, how she had, indeed, deceived herself, mistaking the rhetoric for the man, the apparent idealism and high standards Derek had built into his own façade. How downright egotistical and small-minded he really was. Derek lived in a world with only one agenda – his own. He was the center of his own universe, a power-hungry little man who would, she suddenly realized, stop at nothing, stoop to any extreme to gain and maintain power.

  Now, sitting across the restaurant table from him, Judith was hard put to keep from crying at the ease with which she’d allowed herself to be manipulated by Derek, at how easily she’d let her emotions be twisted and her normal common sense be diverted by those emotions.

  For shame, Judith Theresa. Are you really so insecure that you’d let a little weasel like this one lead you astray? Or is it because you’re that desperate for masculine attention? Shame ... shame ... shame ...

  And Derek was somehow oblivious to it all.

  “You must tell me about this Bevan Keene,” he said. “I know, of course, that he’s some kind of local identity, whatever that might be worth. But is he going to be important in forming the overall intellectual framework of this expedition?”

  “You’ll have to decide for yourself when you meet him,” Judith replied evasively, wondering in her own mind at the seemingly blinkered attitude Derek was revealing. Bevan, she knew, was of vastly superior intellect to this pompous little bureaucrat, but Derek seemed convinced he could be dismissed as irrelevant just because he was a native Tasmanian.

  “Well, of course,” he said. “But I had hoped for a bit of input from you, Judith. I realize that Jeremiah thinks highly of Keene, and I expect he will have some local contacts that might be useful, but ...”

  The carefully stage-managed shrug said the rest.

  “I believe this is your first visit to Tasmania, isn’t it, Derek? Don’t you think Mr. Keene’s local knowledge might be of value, considering that fact?”

  “Perhaps. Although of course the others on my team are also locals. They’re veterans of virtually every significant conservation campaign in Tasmania. The Franklin blockade, Lake Pedder, the Lemonthyme, Farmhouse Creek ...” He continued through a litany of protest events, most of them highly confrontational, in which his new team had played significant roles. Then he changed the subject abruptly.

  “Which brings me to the publicity aspects of this whole thing, and I must say, Judith, that we are not off to a very good start. For instance, I more than half expected to be met at the airport with photographers and requests for interviews. I did ensure that the media at home knew I was coming here to Tasmania, and I would have expected the local media to follow through.”

  “Tiger searches aren’t exactly big news here in Tasmania,” she said, hiding an amused grin. “Unless they’re successful, which of course none of them have been.”

  Judith had already had any notions of her publicist role dramatically reconstructed by the Tasmanian media. They’d hardly heard of Derek and weren’t particularly interested, and even the authority of Bevan Keene’s name hadn’t been enough to get her more than token coverage of the expedition thus far.

  “It might have helped if I’d known when you were arriving,” she continued. “Perhaps I could have arranged something. But I didn’t know, Derek, until I found you on the doorstep this morning.”

  “I expect they were more on their toes when David Bellamy was here,” he said, not in reply but merely continuing his original train of thought.

  Judith bit her tongue, forgoing the urge to mention that whether you agreed with his views or not, the noted English conservationist David Bellamy had a vastly higher profile than Derek.

  She waited until they were on the road again before casually prompting her companion for the information that she personally thought most relevant.

  “I’m rather surprised at your personal involvement in this venture, Derek,” she said, careful to keep her voice from revealing just how surprised. “Surely there’s nothing to a tiger hunt for somebody of your stature? I mean, it’s a billion to one chance at best.”

  “Odds have a way of changing,” Derek replied obliquely, and Judith kept her eyes on the road, suddenly conscious of the exploratory look he was sending her way.

  There was a short silence before he embarked on a convoluted explanation about the importance of having the conservation movement involved in any such expedition, of how important it was to ensure the strictest guidelines, the purest of motives.

  They were almost at Bevan’s gate before Derek finished what Judith had earlier recognized as the well-rehearsed spiel he’d prepared for the media who hadn’t arrived. And I’ll bet you spent the entire flight from Brisbane rehearsing it, too! There was savage satisfaction in the thought.

  But she said nothing, lost in the sobering realization that her private prejudices had already colored her own role in the proceedings, and that she must now strive to find professional balance, strict neutrality, or risk severe problems for herself over the next few months.

  And it wouldn’t be easy, she thought, realizing that she was no longer uninvolved, no longer as professionally neutral as she wanted to be, as she had to be. The worst part wasn’t facing up to her prejudice against Derek and her personal feelings there. She’d already done that, and her reaction to him now, while slightly surprising because she could see more clearly, was not a problem. What she now had to consider was her attraction to Bevan Keene, not least because she had to face up to the fact that she’d been denying her feelings for the Tasmanian grazier even as they had been forming.

  Except for the physical attraction. No sense trying to deny that, especially to yourself.

  These two men, she thought, would be fortunate indeed to agree on anything much past the time of day, while she would be stuck firmly in the middle, between a rock and a hard place no matter what she said or did or felt. It wasn’t Jeremiah Cottrell’s fault, but her own, which didn’t keep her from blaming him for luring her into this insanity, then damning herself for agreeing to it.

  And when they arrived at Bevan’s kitchen door, she damned him too, double-damned him for the look he gave her, a look so filled with smoldering promise, or threat, that she could almost taste the flavor. Then he had the audacity to reach out and, before she could imagine his intent, much less thwart it, he lifted her hand to his lips in a gesture that would have seemed totally ludicrous except for
the spasms of reaction it sent shooting up her arm.

  “Welcome back, Number One Godmother,” he said with a slow grin, obviously delighted with himself for his ability to upset her, to stir her emotions to the point of total distraction.

  Judith was reduced to a stammering introduction of Derek, and only by seeing the expression in his eyes did she realize the full impact of Bevan’s performance.

  Branded, just like one of his cows or sheep. And it wasn’t even meant for me, just the first blow in his campaign of one-upmanship with Derek.

  It was a telling blow, if all the more unnerving for that. Derek’s chilly courtesy was evidence he’d gotten the message, while Bevan’s casual air of patronization suggested even more strongly that he didn’t care much one way or the other. He’d staked his claim, stamped his brand, advertised the fact and dismissed Derek as any sort of competition – all in that single gesture.

  And all without giving a damn what I think about any of it! Worse, Judith wasn’t herself sure whether to be furious or flattered. The look on Derek’s face had been almost worth it.

  “Roberta’s stopping at home, and everybody else is bunking in at the shearers’ quarters,” Bevan said, his gray-eyed gaze on her face. “Do you want to bunk in with them, or would you prefer your old room back?”

  No hint of anything untoward in his voice, and he asked the question as if it were the most logical thing in the world, but once again Judith sensed that aura of gamesmanship. Or maybe it was simply a furthering of his claim. Either way, it served to fuel her concerns at her role in what was to come. It seemed too logical that she would become a pawn in what could only be described as a fiercely competitive macho contest.

  “Where everyone else is, of course,” Judith said, knowing it was really not her first choice and half afraid Bevan knew it too. But she couldn’t compromise herself any further, and staying in the house with Bevan while the rest of the team bunked in together would be the height of folly.