Cry Wolf

by Amanda Carpenter

  Nikki nodded and moved with careful grace to the closed door. So far, so good. It looked as if Harper was interested enough to make some kind of offer.

  “Allow me,” said Harper, in a murmur as velvet as the top she wore, and one of his beautiful hands came over hers to grasp the doorknob.

  Nikki’s world rocked at the contact. She would have backed away from it, but the slight brush of clothing along her bare shoulder told her he was right behind her. He twisted the knob and gave it a gentle push so that it swung open to the empty room, and he followed as she entered.

  She ignored the chairs, indeed noticed nothing of the office, as she swung around slowly to face him, her limbs so sluggish and heavy that she felt as if she swam very deep waters. “You’re a wicked man to wind Peter up the way you have,” she scolded, taking refuge in attack.

  One eyebrow lifted, slow and satanic. “Tactics and manoeuvres,” he said. Oh, yes, the puppet master was in fine form. “Didn’t you sleep well, darling?”

  Damn her fine skin; the heat rose again to her cheeks. She murmured, “I fought it every step of the way. But then you should know, shouldn’t you?”

  “What an argumentative creature you are, ready to do battle with the world. One wonders why you felt the need to run off the way you did,” he murmured. Never taking his eyes away from her face, he began to circle around the chair almost in front of her, leisurely, patiently beginning his stalk.

  Nikki’s breathing was severely restricted; she felt the same panic from early this morning tremble through her body and only hoped it wasn’t visible. “I didn’t run away,” she replied—so casually! What a liar she was. “I’d had an upsetting evening, woke up with a headache and wanted to go home. But you wouldn’t take me when I asked.”

  “Very unreasonable of me, I know,” he said ironically. He was at the back of the chair now. “Especially when you were falling asleep in my arms. Instead I tucked you, into bed—I don’t know what came over me!”

  “I told you—you’re a wicked man who doesn’t play fair.” She managed that with an admirable show of serenity.

  “So I don’t,” he murmured. Now he was past the chair and circling another one. “You’ve got lovely legs.”

  Nikki’s eyes narrowed, and she said maliciously, “I looked in on you when you were sleeping before I left.”

  “I wasn’t sleeping,” he said lazily.

  Nikki’s composure broke, and she whirled away, almost immediately trying to cover the retreat by running an idle finger along the edge of Peter’s desk. But she didn’t stop until the length of it was between them, and only then turned back to look at him. Her blue gaze made contact with dark, somewhat quizzical eyes, and she said the first thing that came into her mind. “I didn’t think we’d see each other again.”

  Harper smiled a little, and with a deep-seated tremor she wondered what she had just revealed. God, but why bother trying to hide anything from that worldly, penetrating stare? He was too mature, too sophisticated, and, just as he’d done last night, he read her like a book. “To be sure,” he said, “I almost didn’t recognise you.”

  She laughed and recovered her composure somewhat. “I’m not surprised,” she told him ruefully, and gestured down at herself. “This professional image is quite a bit different from the ragged person you met last night.”

  “I thought you recovered quite well,” he replied, turning to study the various framed pictures with a slight frown. Nikki tried to ignore the nervous butterflies in her stomach that fluttered as he paused by one of the striking paintings. It was hers. It was silly of her, but having him study her work made her feel like an insecure teenager again, brought to her tutor’s attention. He sent her a sidelong glance. “Any lasting effects?”

  The grey hair at the back of his head curled over the collar of his suit, an intriguing contradiction in sensuality, for the steely colour belied the luxurious abundance. What would it feel like? She stopped the train of thought abruptly. She didn’t want to know.

  “Not a one,” she lied cheerfully. “Unless, of course, you want to count the physical. What a coincidence you came here today.”

  He laughed so softly that Nikki’s heart shook within her. “My dear,” drawled Harper as he turned back to face her, “I never do anything by coincidence. Gordon sends his love but he wouldn’t send a bill, although when I tell him how well you’re doing he just might change his mind. What a precocious thing you are.”

  That careless statement pierced straight through her, and she stiffened against it. “Precocious?” she mocked, moving to lean against the desk. “Why, thank you. I haven’t been called that for years.”

  “But you are,” he said, his eyebrows lifting smoothly. “Many designers are in their thirties before they reach the level of success you enjoy, and what are you—twenty-two, twenty-three?”

  “Twenty-four,” she replied, her eyes very bland. “Why, how old are you?”

  The hard, dark eyes lit with laughter. “Touché,” he murmured, “I’m thirty-six, and yes, I have worn the label myself and know how tiresome it can become.”

  Again she blurted out where her thoughts led her, without artifice or subterfuge. “Why did you come?”

  “Why?” he echoed, almost as if he had not considered the reasons, or as if he couldn’t believe she did not see them for herself. “To see what kind of images the woman I met last night would produce. To see how she would transform the perceptions she gleaned from other people’s eyes, to see the person who surprised my very reserved Duncan into rare delight, and bewitched Gordon away from a midnight tryst he had spent months trying to set up. I came to see if you were as good as you so arrogantly thought you were.”

  “I know my own worth,” she said coolly, flinging back her head in a proud gesture.

  “You are mistaken,” said Harper with clinical, debilitating dispassion. “You are not good.”

  She drew in a deep breath, eyes brilliant and bewildered. He played her like his namesake, the harp, plucking strings she didn’t comprehend, building an intimacy of understanding between them with such careless ease. The curve of Nikki’s mouth began to tremble, and she turned away from him for she would not let him see it. No, she didn’t comprehend what he was able to inflict by just the casual use of words. She didn’t know if she felt a strange kind of grief or just astonishment, but she did know that he was destroying her composure systematically, for the full knowledge and intent of what he did were in those wise, ruthless eyes, and she might never forgive him for it.

  “You are passionately superb,” he continued relentlessly, and her hands shook as she clasped them to her. “You are sensitive without too much delicacy, subtle without being insipid, gloriously alive with colour, and expression, and your pictures have a fathomless depth. By the time you have matured into your vast talent, you will be quite breathtaking. Have you never considered how you are wasting yourself with this kind of throwaway art?”

  “That’s a purist attitude. I’m not the kind of artist to forsake the world for the privilege of starving in a garret,” she said, numbed, tumbled inside out by his inexplicable, softly spoken, terrible assault. “These—” she gestured around the room “—these are real issues, and real people see them.”

  His eyes gleamed like old copper. “They are here today and gone tomorrow—why have you never painted for yourself?”

  She gasped, her exposed throat moving on the tiny escape of breath at his own presumption, his own arrogance, and then she gave him his own brutal honesty back. “Why do you hold yourself so compulsively aloof? Why does Gordon Stanhope never settle into stillness, but Duncan Chang carries inside him a bottomless pool of it? If you start asking questions like that, you should be sure you want to hear the answer.”

  Harper walked to her, the muscular, predatory body moving to some fluid purpose, and he cupped her averted cheek in the palm of one large hand as he sa
id strangely, “But why else would I ask, Nikki? Of course I want to hear the answer.”

  She didn’t want his wisdom, or his terrible insight, and she didn’t want this wretched desire for his hand to continue touching her. She turned her head and stabbed him with angry eyes. “I told you once before, don’t patronise me.”

  “Is the truth patronising?” he countered lazily, his hand falling from her face only to land with shattering intimacy on the naked skin of her shoulder. Her knees nearly collapsed under its feather-light weight. His fingers tightened on her when she would have pulled back, holding her to that position of skin on skin between them, demanding, as his gaze demanded of hers, a continued communication. “You are right, but only in part, for I am not always so compulsively aloof.”

  What was this tense conversation—an argument, an outright fight, an agreement of some sort that she couldn’t comprehend? Why did she feel like screaming at him, or breaking into tears, and why did she instead settle on some kind of explanation so that he would understand her?

  “I pay a price for what I do; don’t we all?” she whispered tautly. “Maybe I don’t paint for myself because people wouldn’t be interested. Now, as it is, at least I can pay my bills by doing the one thing that gives me pleasure. I don’t get weary, or disillusioned, or bored. Nothing else holds me the way my work does; it is the only thing in the world I can lose myself in.”

  “So you do it frantically, furiously. No wonder you’re as far along in your career as you are. Of course it’s the only thing in the world because it’s the only thing you will let yourself be lost in. What an innocent you are,” said Harper, and he bent his head.

  Chapter Three

  Nikki immediately saw Harper’s intention and underneath the unrelenting pressure of his hand her body stiffened in frozen, resisting panic. Perhaps he felt it, for his fingers tightened even further. But perhaps he didn’t, for with slow deliberation he continued to lower his mouth until those devastating male lips brushed hers. She held herself too tightly and her tension broke into uncontrollable tremors, the panic swamping her so that she couldn’t think or breathe, but the very consistency of the gentle, uncomplicated pressure from his mouth soothed her. He did not demand; indeed he did not even move until the trembling in her body eased somewhat and she gave a little unconscious sigh of relief.

  This was not passion. This was some kind of salutation, as if Harper recognised and greeted her for what she really was. Either that, or it was some kind of tender farewell to—to what? Was this goodbye? That possibility sizzled through her with the swiftness of a lightning bolt, followed by the thunderous rumble of disappointment.

  He had meant goodbye with his kiss. He had come, mingling personal curiosity with professional necessity, an astounding gesture from such an important, aloof man; but, for whatever reason, he must have decided to take his business elsewhere, and now he would turn and walk right out of her life, this time for good.

  Harper drew back and straightened, his dark gaze meeting her huge, bewildered eyes with clinical detachment, and of all that was inexplicable about him she found his expression at that moment the most puzzling, and the most disturbing.

  She felt his fingers trail lightly across the arc of her collarbone as his hand fell from her shoulder, and a convulsive shiver rippled down her spine. Then he smiled, and suddenly in his lean, handsome face was the calculating boardroom manipulator.

  “I have a proposition for you,” said Harper briskly.

  He was far too complex to understand, and too fascinating to turn away from. Nikki began to feel punch drunk. “What kind of proposition?” she asked, eyeing him as warily as she might a hooded cobra.

  Dark eyes lit with amusement, he drawled, “Why, a business one, of course. I want to buy some artwork from you.”

  Was that really all he wanted from her? She did not know what showed in her expression, but caution had her turning towards Peter’s empty desk to hide it. “If you want any of the advertising material you talked about earlier,” she said flatly, “you’ll have to discuss it with Peter.”

  “Not applicable,” he stated with decisive, compelling authority. “You see, the picture I want to buy from you is one you haven’t painted yet.”

  Her dark, bent head snapped up and around in astonishment, the blue eyes wearing a startled frown as she replied, “But I don’t do commissioned work. I—I don’t know whether I’d be any good at it.”

  The unpredictable slant of Harper’s sleek brows became more pronounced. “Then don’t you think it’s about time you tried?” he returned. “All I want to do is reserve your next piece of work. You may paint whatever subject you like. The painting may be large or small; I don’t care. The only stipulation I would put on you is that you spend not less than six months on it. I would, of course, adjust the price accordingly.”

  He suggested a monetary figure that was staggeringly huge, but Nikki barely registered the amount. Staring, she exclaimed, “Six months! I’ve never spent an entire six months on any single project before! How can you ask such a thing? How can you say beforehand how long a painting will take? That’s absurd!”

  “Not quite,” said Harper softly. His brown eyes pierced hers, the expression on his lean face turned into a forceful challenge. “As I said before, when you’ve matured into your talent, you will be quite breathtaking, but there is not a single piece I have seen this morning that I would consider buying, because you have yet to explore how far you can push yourself. I don’t want promise, I want fulfilment.”

  “How dare you?” she expostulated, stiffening in outrage. Nobody had ever rejected her work like that before!

  The smile that thinned his lips was almost contemptuous as he replied coolly, “How do I dare speak to you in such a way, or how do I dare hold an independent opinion? The simple truth is, my girl, you do not live in a citadel, and I do not lower my standards for anyone.”

  Nikki’s nostrils flared as she sucked in a harsh breath, as stunned as if he had reached out with one of those gentle hands and slapped her. The ineffable composure with which he had replied yanked ruthlessly at her perspective. She felt at once very young and inexperienced, angry and hurt, and the boredom in Harper’s face told her that he saw it and was totally unimpressed.

  Certainly nobody had ever dismissed her work so cavalierly. She had studied in one of the world’s most exclusive Parisian schools, and had received nothing but praise and encouragement from wholly dedicated, superb teachers. Even Peter was smug about his carefully orchestrated manipulation of her career. If she had a high opinion of her work, it was simply a reflection from everyone around her.

  How arrogant she had become, Nikki realised, whitening still further. How arrogant, and how complacent. Harper was right; she had gone unchallenged for far too long, and she was absolutely furious at the insufferable manner he had used to make her see it.

  And she also knew, in a flash of insight, that his was the unusually subtle mind that had matched the outstanding pieces of art in the lounge of his Mayfair house. The knowledge of that forced her to choke back her fury and say, coldly, because she hated to admit it, “You realise, of course, that the exercise could be a total disaster? I couldn’t vouch for the quality of the painting, since I don’t know what effect the time constraint would have on my technique.”

  “I’ve considered the possibility,” replied Harper distantly, sweeping his gaze down the length of her body as if in reappraisal of her merits and potential weaknesses. The muscles in her jaw clenched under another wave of pure, unadulterated rage, for that single downward glance made her feel as if she was physically on an auction block and for sale to the highest bidder. “But, from what I’ve seen today, I’m willing to take that chance. You would get paid for the painting, no matter what. But don’t take too long to decide, will you? I won’t wait long.”

  God, but he was behaving in a detestable manner! She bit out acidly, �
��You would have to wait six months, wouldn’t you?”

  “With the guarantee of an end result,” he pointed out, then added with sardonic amusement, “no matter what it might be.”

  That was the last straw. “Right,” said Nikki with glittering eyes and a tight, furious smile, “I’ll take you up on your proposition but at my price, not yours.”

  He had already offered her a king’s ransom for a possible failure, and something flickered at the back of his dark gaze that might have been cynicism, or the beginnings of distaste as he drawled, “I’m open to negotiation.”

  “My own standards are far too high to accept payment for a potential failure,” she stated, bristling with a contempt of her own as she tilted her head to stare haughtily down her little nose at him. “Although, to be sure, you must have too much money if you’re willing to throw away so much on a gamble. No, my price is much more expensive than money. First, if I do your painting, you must give Peter the account you took so much trouble to discuss this morning.”

  “Done,” he said immediately. “If you’re the designer who does the artwork. You’ll have to complete that project before you start your commission, however, for it won’t wait.”

  “Fair enough,” she said with dangerous softness, “but there’s just one other condition. If I agree to this, you must sit for me, as many times as I need, and as often as I want. I have a fancy to do the portrait of the very rich and reclusive Harper Beaumont. It would make such an excellent exhibition piece and be so popular, don’t you agree?”

  She had managed to pierce through his formidable façade. Harper stiffened, his grey head rearing back, his face darkening into anger at her deliberate insolence. He snapped, “That’s quite unacceptable!”

  “Isn’t it just?” she agreed in a hard voice, which arrested his gaze. “I never expected you to consent to it, Harper. I just wanted you to feel a little like you might be put up for sale, because it isn’t at all pleasant, especially if you suspect you might be found somewhat lacking, and that is precisely how you’ve managed to make me feel today. I might be arrogant, and I might not be challenged enough, but I also have every bit as much pride as you do!”