Tender Deception

by Heather Graham

  He was waiting for her, still as death as he sat in the darkness, his very stillness made ominous by the fury that exuded from him like a tangible, crackling tension. Vickie closed the door behind her and leaned against it, watching him warily as she grasped for support, her knees grown weak.

  He stayed silent for so long, a part of the darkness with his hair still black and his skin still stained, that Vickie feared the tumultuous pounding of her heart would cease altogether and she would sink to the floor. Then his voice thundered a single word with the ferocity of a bullwhip.

  “Well?”

  Her mouth was cotton, too dry to allow her to do more than stupidly rasp “Well, what?” in return.

  He rose with the violent wrath of a volcano erupting, heedlessly knocking his chair to the floor as he did so. He stalked her with vehement strides and none too gently grasped her arms to toss her to the couch, ignoring her faint cry of alarmed protest.

  “Don’t worry, Mrs. Wicker, I have no intention of causing injury to that alabaster skin,” he ranted, glaring down at her with his fists jammed into his pockets. “I just thought you might like to sit, since I think you have a few rather lengthy explanations to give me.”

  Her mind was working a mile a minute, but she couldn’t form a single word. What had happened? How could he know anything?

  “What’s the matter, Mrs. Wicker, no script planned for the occasion? No lines to rattle off? Think of the sofa as the stage. Here’s the scene: irate—no, no, that’s too tame—furious husband has discovered a serious oversight of sweet, secretive new wife. It seems she has forgotten to tell him about something, someone, who surely must be deemed important. So there you are, Victoria Langley, stage and scene. Adlib the lines. Perhaps you’d like a drink first? I’d rather like one myself.” A few swift strides brought him to the swinging kitchen doors, where he paused for a second to turn back to her mockingly. “Amazing how a dead man like myself could need a drink. I mean according to you, as Mark’s father, I am dead.”

  He returned a minute later to thrust a snifter into her hand. Brandy. She did need it; her entire body had gone numb. Brant righted the chair he had knocked over and sat again, studying her, his legs crossed negligently, one hand twirling the amber liquid in his glass, the other held prayer-fashion against his lips. Vickie’s fingers trembled as she sipped the brandy, then swallowed it down in one burning gulp, her head vociferously pounding out the word how.

  “Talk, Vickie,” he commanded in a dry grate.

  His malevolent, dangerous glare was driving her crazy, but denial now would be a level less than foolish. Somehow he did have his facts straight. “What do you want me to say?” she finally croaked in a faint whisper.

  “Good Lord, woman!” he bellowed scornfully, his fingers leaving his face to dig into the arm of the chair as he struggled for control. “I want you to explain why. Why didn’t you let me know three years ago? Why did you marry me with that kind of a lie? When were you planning on telling me? At my son’s college graduation? Or perhaps you didn’t trust me? You were never going to tell him, assuming in that sweet little mind of yours that something could go wrong and I might still insist upon sharing my son?”

  Each question lashed into Vickie with a painful bite. Her heart felt as if it sank from her body and lay bleeding at her feet. He hated her now. She had been wrong…or had she? His reaction was the one she had feared. She had laid herself bare for this agony. Stiffening her spine, she rebuilt her crumbling defenses. “I didn’t have your phone number in Hollywood,” she told him sarcastically, “so it was rather difficult to tell you anything.”

  “Don’t give me that!” Brant growled, “I had a right—”

  “You had a right!” Vickie said in a shrill voice springing from the couch to glower over him, shaking with the intensity of her fear and anger. “No! I had the rights! You were gone—you were busy becoming a damned star!”

  He stood and she instinctively stepped back a half a step, a grim twist coming to his lips. “You knew me better than that, Vickie. I would have come back, I would have taken care of you.”

  “You idiot!” she charged, digging her nails into her palms and fiercely biting her own lip to keep back tears. “I didn’t want to be taken care of! I could take care of myself.”

  “And Mark?”

  “Yes!” Vickie cried, “and Mark!”

  “You’re a righteous little bitch, Vickie,” he said coldly.

  “How dare you!”

  It was all she could say. He breached the few feet between them in a whirl and gripped her shoulders tightly to flounce her back to the sofa and hold her there this time, his hands irons that imprisoned her, his eyes blazing into hers. “Bad question, Mrs. Wicker,” he admonished her icily. “And don’t move that pretty little rump of yours again. I’m not through.”

  “I am!” she challenged, unable to stop her body from shaking like a leaf in a high wind. “You can just leave me alone. I knew you’d behave like this!”

  “You knew it? When did you know it? When I came back? When I told you I was in love with you? When we made love? When you married me? When did you know it, Vickie, when?”

  She dropped her head, but he lifted her chin back up. “Damnation! It was bad enough that you hid this from me at the beginning. Brave little girl!” he scoffed. “Having her baby alone! Sorry, it smacks of a little cowardice to me. Moralistic snobbery. You couldn’t give anyone else credit for caring, concern, or a sense of values. Dependability. Responsibility. Or love.”

  He released her shoulders in disgust with a slight shove, and paced to the middle of the room. His back was to her when he spoke again.

  “But I can understand that, Victoria. I would give my right arm to go back and undo it, but I can understand it. I was gone. You were frightened. What I can’t understand is how you could have married me, sworn to love, honor, and trust me, with that kind of a lie in your heart.”

  “I was going to tell you!” Vickie cried out.

  His powerful shoulders shrugged in answer. “Like I said, Vickie, when? On my son’s twenty-first birthday? Or perhaps when he was inducted into the army?”

  “I was going to tell you this week,” she said miserably, wanting to run to him or into the night but knowing both would be futile. “I—I couldn’t tell you before the wedding. I couldn’t take a chance.”

  “A chance?” he railed incredulously. “A chance on what?”

  “On your marrying me because of Mark…”

  “Oh, Lord, what an excuse! I had already asked you!”

  “Yes…but…but…oh, never mind!” Didn’t he know how terrified she had been? How uncertain? How pathetically in love? Obviously not. She raised her chin. “How did you find out?”

  “A little matter of a birth certificate.”

  Vickie gasped, and stood again in anger. “You bastard! You went snooping through my house—”

  “I think I suggested you sit!” Brant interrupted savagely, capturing her in a fierce embrace that brought them both breathlessly to the couch. Brant extended his length over hers and pinioned her arms above her head as she uselessly struggled against him. His expression was harsh and fathomless; he didn’t attempt to talk again until she went limp against him. “I wasn’t snooping, Mrs. Wicker, merely unpacking. I didn’t realize you hadn’t intended the top bureau drawer for me. And I must have been blind as a bat before, but since you had lied about his age, I simply didn’t see. Just out of idle curiosity though, how many people know that I have a son?”

  “Two,” Vickie muttered through clenched teeth.

  “Who?”

  “My brother and Monte.”

  “And how do they know?” Brant enunciated crisply.

  Vickie stared at him blankly for several seconds, weighing her answer. She had told Monte because he had been concerned and she had suddenly found herself desperately needing to talk…to release tension. She had told Edward rather than allow him to guess the truth at an inopportune time. But either way
, she had told them both, and she hadn’t been able to tell Brant. The answers sounded pathetically weak in her own mind.

  “I believe I stated the question clearly,” Brant grated.

  God, she wondered, still not speaking, still not blinking. He was angry now, and might become so much angrier. Perhaps she should lie again…tell him that they had guessed.

  “Vickie! I’m waiting for an answer!”

  His vise around her wrists tightened convulsively and Vickie gasped, blurting out the truth. “I told them!” The lies had gotten her into this position to begin with. Another, she realized vaguely when the words were out, would weave another web and build more tension, and, besides, what difference could it make now?

  “You told Monte, and you told your brother.” Brant stated her admission incredulously. “And you didn’t tell me.”

  “Yes.” She said it simply, too despondent to attempt an explanation. She had had her reasons, terrible fears, but now with the relentless intensity of his furious face above hers he was never going to understand, never going to try to understand.

  “You didn’t tell me,” he repeated almost tonelessly. “Why bother? I’m only the father,” he murmured sarcastically. “Have all these confessions to the wrong people been recent?”

  She sighed and chewed at her bottom lip. “Yes, since you’ve been back.”

  “God, I really was a fool,” Brant berated himself with a brittle laugh that brushed her ear with warm breath. “The last to know, they say…” His eyes bored into hers, blue fire. “That child is going to carry my name, Vickie, and not by adoption. We’ll take every conceivable blood test and hire every lawyer in the country if that’s what it takes. You’ve kept him from me for over two years, but I’ll be damned if I’ll ever let you do so again.”

  “No!” she screamed in panic. Her worst nightmares were coming true. He was going to leave her, and he was going to try to take Mark. “No!” she screamed again, her voice rising shrilly in the silent night.

  Brant tensed as if he had been shot. “Shut up!” he commanded Vickie harshly. God, how could she still deny him? He had given her his love, his trust, his soul, his life. She was his wife. His anger was pain, and each word she coolly spoke twisted a knife farther into him.

  And still he wanted her. She was irrevocably his, even as she railed against him. He could feel the soft firmness of her form beneath him, her harried breathing brought her breasts crushing to his chest, her stiff defiance melded her hips to his. Her eyes flashed like gray storms while her lips parted to deny him once again.

  He smiled suddenly, a grim smile that didn’t reach the ice of his eyes. Then his lips swooped down to muffle the sounds from her. His kiss was a bittersweet combination of tenderness and savagery, love and agonized anger. She attempted to twist her head, but he held her still, commanding response as he plundered the depths of her mouth and availed his hands of the curve beneath him. A familiar heat began to pound through him.

  Abruptly, he wrenched himself from her, striding swiftly for the door in his haste to hide the unsteadiness of his stance and gait. He had to get away from her. God, he was about to rape his own wife! A wife who had lied to him, betrayed him, denied him. Who now cried innocence while still denying him. Wasn’t she? She was dead silent now; she hadn’t moved. But she still intended to keep him from his own son…

  A shudder rippled through him and he bit down hard with his teeth and rolled his hands into tight fists. He stood like a ramrod. “Sorry about that,” he said with cool indifference. “I thought I should remind you that you are still my wife.”

  In a haze of pain and longing, Vickie knew only that he was standing by the door. He was leaving.

  She closed her eyes, willing no tears to flow. “Fine,” she said flatly. “I’m still your wife. Go on. Go wherever you were going.”

  She heard the door slam.

  CHAPTER NINE

  VICKIE AWOKE SLOWLY THE next morning, stiff and cramped. For a moment she wondered why; her dreams had been sweet, she had nestled with her new husband through the night. No, she hadn’t. Brant had walked out, and sometime after he had left, she had risen to drag herself into Mark’s room. She was cramped because she had fallen asleep with half of her body draped over her son’s bed. He still slept, a lock of raven hair swept over his brow.

  Vickie stood and tried to stretch the kinks from her body, hoping against hope that she would move out into the living room or kitchen and find Brant busily doing something. Hoping that he had returned later…

  But of course he wasn’t there. He would have never returned and left her half on the floor. She had to face facts—he wasn’t returning.

  She was grateful for the responsibility of motherhood that morning; it kept her from falling apart. It made it imperative that she function, shower, dress, care for her son, all without resorting to hysteria or a deluge of tears.

  And because of Mark, she made it to the theater dry-eyed, refusing to allow herself the luxury of worrying about the future, or what would happen next. Brant didn’t make idle threats. He would drag her into every court of the land.

  The excitement in the theater upon her arrival temporarily swept the tumult of her personal disasters from her mind. The reviews were in, and the least exalting of them called the production “a brilliant masterpiece.” Monte, high on a cloud of glory, was giving the cast members time to read the papers while they consumed coffee and doughnuts. Vickie picked up the nearest one and began to read. The bulk of the praise went to Monte and Brant, but she and Bobby had also been singled out for exceptional praise. The Sun-Times reporter proclaimed her “an actress of infinite depth, talent, and beauty,” who “created a character of ethereal charisma who stole the heart.” Nice, Vickie thought, silently thanking the writer for his words. Her ego could use the boost.

  Her skin prickled and she felt herself flush. Brant was behind her. His spicy masculine scent was warning of his presence long before his hand touched her shoulder.

  She whirled away furiously, remembering the words that had passed between them, the miserable night she had spent, and how he had forcefully inflamed her body, bruising her lips, reducing her to quivers and longing, only to walk out into the night. And not return.

  “Don’t jump from me like a damned rabbit!” he hissed, mindful of being overheard. “I want to talk to you.”

  Vickie assessed his features quickly for any sign of forgiveness, hoping against hope. But she could see nothing in his implacable eyes or grim tight lips.

  The blue that measured her in return was opaque, challenging, frightening.

  “You did enough talking last night,” she snapped scathingly, sickeningly aware that she was widening the breach between them to dangerous bounds. She didn’t seem to be able to help herself, but she didn’t want to hear his words. If he still loved her, he would have come home last night.

  What he wanted to talk about was Mark, and sharing him in the future. And she didn’t want to hear it…not now…not while her heart was still being torn piece by piece into little shreds.

  “You are going to listen to me, Miss Langley,” he insisted, reaching for her arm with another of his binding grips. “I realize that discussion and honesty are not your cup of tea, but there is the future to be settled—”

  “Hey!” Bobby cheerfully interrupted, such a whirlwind of exhilaration he didn’t feel the tension between the couple he accosted. “Have you read the Jacksonville paper yet? This guy sounds like he’s ready to call New York and insist we get every Tony Award out!” He paused suddenly, studying Vickie’s white face. “Lord, Vick, you really had better read it. You look like you could use some good news.”

  Vickie didn’t get a chance to reply, nor did Brant. Terry sidled up to them next, casually casting an arm around Brant’s shoulder as she picked up on Bobby’s remark with a saccharine smile. “Poor Vickie! Didn’t you sleep well? You really do look ghastly!”

  Vickie did her very best to return the sickly sweet smile. “I
feel absolutely ghastly,” she muttered, quickly jerking her wrist from Brant’s grasp. “I’m afraid I might be coming down with something. I’m going home. Tell Monte to call me when he can with any of his last-minute changes or instructions, will you?” Not waiting for assent from anyone, she turned and fled, aware that Brant would probably come after her, but determined to elude him or die in the process. Without looking back, she whipped open the Volvo door and slammed it hastily behind her as soon as she was seated, immediately hitting the locks.

  Brant did follow her. He shouted and banged on the glass with a force she feared would shatter the window, but she ignored him and put the car into gear, revving the engine. Practically stripping the gears, she jerked the shift into first.

  It might be foolish to run from things that had to be faced, but at the moment, she simply couldn’t face Brant Wicker. She needed a little more time to lick reopened wounds before raising the shield of indifference she would need for the confrontation that would come. Time to build an implacable strength.

  Brant followed her to the house, but by that time she had barricaded herself in. He had his own set of keys, of course, but she had bolts and chains in place. She could hear him cursing; she could hear the shrill of the doorbell as he leaned against it relentlessly. But the nightmare in her mind was louder. He didn’t want her anymore, but as she had always feared, he did want their son. He had walked out on her, but now he wanted to discuss Mark calmly. She was no longer safe behind the wall of his ignorance. Nor could she keep Mark from him any longer. It would be wrong for the child, and she knew it. She accepted it. She just couldn’t deal with it until she had somehow glued together the tattered remnants of her heart.

  The shrilling of the bell finally ceased. Vickie took two aspirin and bathed her face in cold water. She laid down until she could stop herself from shivering, her fingers from trembling. Then she called Monte—practice again!—and apologized coolly for missing the critique session that he considered so important before the real opening night whether they had received high praise from the press or not.