Duplicity

by Peggy Webb

  Or was it something else? What was the secret he was keeping from her?

  Suddenly he whirled around, and his face was so untroubled, she thought she must have imagined his earlier torment.

  "I thought I'd get your mind off the questions," he said. "Did I?"

  She clapped her hands together in mocking applause. "Bravo. You should get an Academy Award for your performance."

  "The kiss?"

  "No. The pretense." That she could move so smoothly from putty to iron was a tribute to her remarkable self-control. "You enjoyed that kiss every bit as much as I did. What are you hiding?"

  "This," he said smoothly as he removed his shirt. He tossed it carelessly onto a chair. "And this." His hand moved to his belt buckle.

  "Shock therapy won't work with me. Besides, I've already seen you without your clothes. "

  "Have you, my darling?" Giving her a wicked grin he let his pants drop to the floor. Hooking his hand into the waistband of his shorts, he said, "I sleep naked."

  "I don't care how you sleep as long as you don't parade it around in front of me," she yelled. "You are the most conceited man on the face of the earth." She stalked toward the bathroom, muttering as she went. "Always talking about hanky- panky and loving. Kissing me when I don't expect it. Lord, I should have stayed on Beech Mountain." She shut the door with a bang, and then opened it for one last word. "For your information, I've seen better bodies on gorillas."

  To her heightened senses the movement of his shorts hitting the floor was like lightning.

  "Good night, love," he said. "If you get lonesome, just yell. I'm right here." Giving her a last wicked grin, he lay down on the pallet and turned his back to her.

  She ducked back inside the bathroom and leaned against the wash basin for support. What was the matter with her? First she laid down the law about how this was just a business arrangement, and then she tried to find out who he was. Worse yet, she had come right out and told him that she enjoyed his kisses. Whatever had happened to the woman who did lonely research on a mountaintop, the woman who put her work first?

  She splashed water onto her hot face and considered leaving Lawrence County first thing tomorrow. With water spiking her eyelashes and dripping off the end of her nose, she stood in the bathroom and weighed her options. On the one hand were the relatives and Gigi, happily anticipating the family reunion and her involvement. On the other hand was the audacious impostor in the next room, goading her with his teasing and his expert kisses. Leaving tomorrow would disappoint the people she loved most and would probably give that arrogant, no-name pretender all manner of perverse satisfaction.

  She grabbed a washcloth and scrubbed viciously at her mouth, trying to wipe away the remnants of his kiss. How could she ever have thought she liked his kisses? Hell, she didn't even like him. She wouldn't leave tomorrow if Lawrence County sent out a posse to drive her away. She wouldn't give him the satisfaction.

  Dirk knew by the way her bare feet slapped the wooden floor that she was still angry when she came back into the bedroom. That was just the way he wanted it. He would use her anger to keep walls between them. If he felt a slight twinge of guilt at using her this way, he salved his conscience by telling himself that she was using him, too.

  He lay motionless on his makeshift bed and watched her walk across the room to the open window. The moonlight caught silver highlights in her blue robe and turned her hair to a halo of fire.

  He loved the way she walked, purposeful and confident, yet completely feminine. He studied her lovely profile as she gazed out the window, and wondered what was running through that brilliant mind of hers. Was she thinking of her work? Her relatives? The deception? Was she perhaps thinking of him?

  The idea pleased him inordinately, and he wondered what it would be like to have someone think of him. Remember his birthday. Worry about him if he was late. Years of training in waiting stillness kept him from shaking his head in self-disgust. Who was he kidding? Men in his profession were automatically set apart from those things.

  As she left the window and passed beside him, he caught a whiff of her perfume. It was like a breath of the outdoors, a light blending of wild flowers and heather, a scent reminiscent of spring showers and windswept hills. He reached up and captured her hand. "I was just teasing," he said softly.

  The move didn't startle her at all. She had known he was awake. She had felt the pull of those black eyes as they observed her. She had sensed the turbulence of his emotions. She waited quietly, not saying anything.

  "I don't prefer big-breasted women," he said. "I think yours are perfect."

  "And I don't prefer blond men."

  "Good night, Ellen."

  "Good night, Dirk."

  He held her hand a moment longer, feeling the surge of the current that snaked between them, and then he let her go.

  She climbed into bed and sank down into the feather-stuffed mattress. But it was a long time before she went to sleep.

  o0o

  Ellen was up before the rooster crowed, but even so, Dirk was already gone. Out of habit she automatically began organizing her day. The first thing to do was get those covers off the floor before Aunt Lollie came upstairs.

  She bent over the quilt, then stopped, her hand on the indention in the pillow where Dirk had laid his head. She stood with the pillow in her hand, staring into space. A sense of loss swept over her, a fleeting moment of regret for what might have been. Another place, another time, and things might have been different between them.

  She came out of her reverie and finished gathering the quilts off the floor. She was not one to waste time in useless regrets or senseless pipe dreams. Besides, she heard the whooshing of Aunt Lollie’s felt bedroom slippers in the hallway: her aunt wore the felt slippers the year round. Smiling, Ellen quickly deposited the quilts and pillow on the top shelf of the closet.

  "Are you up, dear?" Aunt Lollie asked, sticking her head around the door. Seeing Ellen standing beside the closet, she bustled into the room. "Dirk's been up for ages. My, my, he's a regular country boy. Followed Vester to the barn just like he'd been doing it all his life."

  She puttered around as she talked, dusting the bedposts and rearranging the crocheted coverlet. "You'd think a man of his status, being familiar with whales and all, would be uppity. My, my. Not that boy. There's not an uppity bone in his body."

  Aunt Lollie stopped talking long enough to give Ellen a keen look. "You look a mite peaked, dear. Didn't you sleep well?"

  "I slept fine, Aunt Lollie. It's just that I'm not used to a featherbed." Or to sleeping in the room with a man as unnerving as Dirk.

  Aunt Lollie put her arm around Ellen. "I know what you need. A nice country breakfast. Put some color into your cheeks. I've never seen anything that couldn't be fixed with a big plate of ham and eggs."

  Ellen smiled. Aunt Lollie loved to fix things, especially people's problems. If they didn't already have one, she'd invent it.

  "I never eat eggs. Aunt Lollie. You know that."

  "Oh, pshaw! You need to pick up a little weight before the wedding. You're as skinny as a fence pole." She laughed. "You should have seen the breakfast that man of yours put away. A fine figure of a man, he is!"

  She didn't know the half of it, Ellen thought. What would Aunt Lollie say if she could see Dirk without his clothes? The instant the thought came into her head, Ellen tried to dismiss it. What did it matter how he looked without his clothes, for Pete's sake?

  She quickly changed the subject.

  "Speaking of skinny, Aunt Lollie, I'm worried about Uncle Vester. He seems to have lost a lot of weight this past year. Is anything wrong?"

  "The doctor put him on one of those low-fat diets. I told the silly old poop if he didn't start eating again, he was going to dry up and blow away. Besides that, I said to him, 'How do you expect to ever get to Las Vegas if you don't have your strength?' He's been saving to go there for years. Personally I'd prefer to go up to Connecticut and see the whales. Dirk sa
id he'd be glad to show them to me."

  Ellen decided that she had created a monster. Instead of a short-term fiance, Dirk had become a hero. When they weren't singing his praises, Aunt Lollie and Uncle Vester were quoting things he'd said. The next thing she knew, they'd be making plans to move to Connecticut.

  As she began to dress, she made one last futile attempt to steer the subject away from Dirk. "Is there anything I can do to help you get ready for the reunion dinner?"

  "All I want you to do is look as pretty as possible. I want to show you off. Not all the Stanford girls turned out as nice as you did. You're a fine-looking woman. Dirk thinks so too."

  Ellen sighed. It was useless. She couldn't tell Aunt Lollie that she didn't care what Dirk did or said. And she certainly couldn't tell her that she didn't want to be shown off. Among the Stanford clan if you had anything to brag about you did, and if you had nothing to brag about, you invented something. It was an iron-clad rule, as unshakable as the Tennessee earth. Ellen resigned herself to being shown off.

  She quickly finished dressing and followed Aunt Lollie down the stairs to the kitchen.

  Dirk was lounging casually against the back door, looking rugged and windswept and altogether too sexy.

  "Good morning, love," he said. Ellen's face grew flushed as he strolled across the floor and kissed her soundly on the mouth. "Sleep well?"

  She could have shot him on the spot. He knew damn well she hadn't slept well. But then, neither had he. She had heard every restless move he had made. A wicked grin played around her lips as she decided to give him a dose of his own medicine.

  "You should know," she said. "You're the one who kept insisting that we not let the featherbed go to waste, love." To Dirk's astonishment she leaned over and flicked her tongue in his ear.

  His arm snaked around her waist, and he pulled her in tight to whisper in her ear. "Don't you think you're overacting a bit, my dear?"

  "You're the one who started it," she whispered back.

  Keeping his arm around her waist, he straightened up and spoke in a normal voice. "I've been exploring the farm this morning. It's a wonderful place."

  Now that their little performance was over, Ellen discreetly tried to disengage his hand from her waist. She might as well have been wrestling with an octopus. She decided to let it go. At least he was making sensible conversation now.

  "The farm is wonderful, isn't it?" she said. "What part of it did you see this morning?"

  "The hayloft." He grinned down at her. "It's the perfect spot for what I have in mind."

  She smiled sweetly and ground down on his foot with the heel of her shoe.

  "It's perfect for what I have in mind too." Turning her face so that Aunt Lollie couldn't see, she rolled her eyes and mouthed at Dirk, "Murder."

  He laughed.

  Aunt Lollie, who had been avidly following their conversation, spoke up. "Now you children just run on." Smiling, she waved her apron at them. "Shoo. Go on outside and explore the farm while I fix Ellen's ham and eggs. "

  Ellen didn't want the ham and eggs, and she certainly didn't want to explore the farm with Dirk, but it would be pointless to tell Aunt Lollie so.

  "Ring the bell when you want me, Aunt Lollie," she said. "I’ll be at my favorite spot."

  "Does Dirk know about your favorite spot?" Aunt Lollie asked.

  "Not yet." Ellen grinned. "But he will."

  "My, my," Aunt Lollie said as they walked out the door. "That girl's a sight."

  The door banged shut behind them as they stepped out into the early-morning sunshine. Hearing the sound, a small black and tan beagle loped across the yard and flung himself at Ellen's feet. She and Dirk bent down at the same time, and their hands met on the small fuzzy head.

  Casually Dirk began to caress the beagle's floppy ears, but there was nothing casual in the way he felt. The unexpected touch of Ellen's hand had suddenly made him feel vulnerable. It wasn't as if he had never touched her before. But there was something different this time. He guessed it had to do with the spontaneity of the touch, with the way they had reached toward the dog with affection.

  "A nice pet," he commented.

  Ellen hadn't missed a thing: the way his face had changed when their hands touched, the way he had pulled back from the contact. She fondled the beagle's head.

  "Uncle Vester always has at least one dog on the farm. He says pets are God's way of making people feel good about themselves."

  "That could be true. I never had a chance to find out."

  She studied his face closely. She had the feeling that a lonely little boy was peeping through his eyes.

  "Why did you never have a chance?"

  He was immediately on guard. "You don't believe in subtlety, do you?"

  "No. Why do you always answer a question with a question?"

  "Do I do that?"

  He gave the beagle one final pat and straightened. Life was deceptively simple on the farm. Feelings blossomed as naturally as the crops. The simple joy of petting a dog had set off a chain of feelings he had thought long buried. Childhood memories had tumbled out of hiding: of being six and having a child's faith that his stocking would be stuffed with a puppy, simply because he had written a letter to Santa; of being ten and falling in love with an old lop-eared stray hound that the orphanage director wouldn't let him keep; of being twelve and longing for something, even a goldfish, to call his own.

  If he wasn't careful, the door to that secret place where he kept his feelings would be wide open and he would have a hard time shutting it again.

  She shook her head in mock exasperation. "I think you should know that I don't give up easily. I intend to use this walk to explore more than the farm."

  Once more he assumed the mask of the reckless deceiver. "Why do I get the feeling that I've walked into a trap?"

  She smiled up at him, enjoying the crisp morning air, enjoying the feel of the sun on her skin, even enjoying Dirk's company.

  "Do I look like the kind of woman who would lay a trap?"

  "Yes."

  "Then why did you come along?"

  "Curiosity," he told her. Compulsion. Excitement. Intrigue. He lived on the cutting edge of danger, and she was a new kind of danger, a challenge he had never before allowed himself to face.

  "Curiosity killed the cat," she said.

  "Don't you know that cats have nine lives?"

  She smiled. "Don't say I didn't warn you."

  Spreading her arms wide as if to embrace the sun, she ran ahead of him across the pasture. Dew wet her shoes and honeysuckle drugged her senses. The man at her side was almost forgotten as she reentered the world of her childhood. Placid cows chewing their cud ignored her, and a family of martins was startled into flight by her exuberant progress across the pasture.

  "Last one over the fence is a rotten egg," she called as she put her hand on the wire and vaulted over. She stopped long enough to watch the Yankee make a fool of himself on the barbed wire. She was going to enjoy this. It would serve him right for all those remarks about the hayloft.

  Dirk was no stranger to barbed wire. He easily negotiated the fence.

  "How did you do that?" she asked.

  "It's one of my many talents." He smiled at her, a lazy cat's smile. "I'm especially talented in the hayloft. Would you like a demonstration?"

  She stared at him, standing there with the sun turning his eyes to dark crystals. What would he do if she said yes? What would he say if he knew that she had wanted a demonstration from the moment she saw him in her home on Beech Mountain?

  She would never know. She already felt too much for this man. Admiration. Strong attraction. Even compassion for the vulnerable little boy she had glimpsed beneath his surface arrogance. No, a turn in the hayloft would be more than a demonstration: It

  would be a beginning, a beginning that she had forbidden.

  "No," she said, feeling stiff and foolish.

  "Another time, perhaps.”

  "There will be no other t
ime for us, Dirk."

  The words hung between them like mists off Beech Mountain. He knew that what she was saying was true. Although he had made the hayloft offer halfway in jest, there was nothing frivolous in the way he felt. He supposed he should be grateful to her for putting up a stop sign. It was something that he should have done a long time ago.

  "You're right," he said. "I keep forgetting that I'm just a hired fiance." He turned and stepped back across the fence.

  She didn't know what she had expected, but it certainly hadn't been such ready agreement. For some reason she was disappointed.

  "Aren't you going with me to my favorite place?" she asked.

  "Not today.” Not ever. Favorite places weren't allowed in his kind of work.

  He walked away and never looked back. He knew that if he looked back at her, he might change his mind.

  Ellen squared her shoulders and lifted her chin.

  "Well, good riddance," she muttered, but she didn't mean it. She didn't mean it at all. She looked up at a mockingbird sitting on the topmost branch of an ancient oak tree. "What's the matter with me?" she asked.

  The bird gave her no answer. She waited a moment, trying not to look at Dirk's departing back, and then she could stand it no longer. She turned and watched him walk back toward the farmhouse.

  His shoulders were squared and his gait was strong and determined, but there was no jauntiness in his step. Her heart lurched crazily and she wanted to run after him, but she remained on the other side of the fence.

  "This is where I belong," she told the bird.

  Finally she made her way to her favorite place, but some of the magic was gone.

  o0o

  The Davy Crockett State Park was the site of the annual Stanford family reunion. Ellen parked her faithful Buick in the shade of a giant cottonwood tree and turned to her companions.

  "This is it, gang. Time for our big performance."

  "Why do I feel like a Christian being thrown to the lions?" Dirk asked.

  "Don't worry. Gigi will protect you."

  He looked at the large black hand gripping his shoulder. "That's what worries me."