Tender Deception (16 page)

“No, we don’t,” Frankie protested with a guileless grin.

“Yes, you do!” Brant taunted. “The pasta maker called in sick.”

Grimacing, Frankie rose. “Okay, blond hero, get on to the romantic session of your lunch. But don’t forget to eat, eh? We’ve planned everything around you for the day!”

The warmth created by the familiar pair remained when mother and son left, yet Vickie was suddenly swept by inhibition. Watching the candle rather than Brant’s face, she murmured, “Your friends are very nice.”

“Too nice!” Brant grinned, slipping a hand over hers. “I’m going to have to watch out for Frankie, I can see.”

“Why don’t we just fix him up with Terry?” Vickie asked mischievously.

“That’s not a bad idea,” Brant agreed. “Save us both those little itches of jealousy!”

Their lunch began to arrive in a stream of platters that seemed endless. They were served soup, antipasto, and salad, and then a variety of pastas. Moaning that she couldn’t take another bite, Vickie was dismayed to find they hadn’t been served the main course yet. Certain she would never fit into her costume later that night, Vickie still managed to do justice to the tray of tender veal and peppers that appeared next. Dessert, however, was out of the question.

“Just cappuccino,” Brant assured her. “The best you’ll have in the States, I guarantee you.”

They settled on the cappuccino. The wine, the meal, the easygoing company, all had left Vickie in an amazingly indolent state, comfortable and lulled off-guard. Lazed back in the cushion of her chair, with the tranquility of the breeze and sea before her, Vickie was astounded by Brant’s sudden question.

“Why the Langley, Vickie?”

“What?” Her eyes snapped to his, the mask of coolness reaching them too late.

“You heard me,” he said grimly. “And don’t hedge around, telling me that you don’t know what I’m talking about.”

“Langley is my name,” Vickie said, facing him but blinking rapidly as she desperately wondered just what he did mean.

“A stage name?”

“It’s just my name,” she retorted.

“Your name?” Brant persisted, not touching her but commanding her attention with the tone of his voice. “There never was a Mr. Langley, was there?”

“Really, Brant,” Vickie began indignantly, her spine stiffening with the panic that raced beneath the surface of her rigid composure. “My past is none of your business, and I’ll thank you to remember that.”

“Your past is my business, because I’m your future. Being honest with me is going to cut out a few of the ridiculous problems between us. And it’s stupid as hell for you to keep lying, because I know you’re lying. There never was a Mr. Langley.”

Looking into his eyes, Vickie desperately stalled for time. He returned her stare with the opaqueness of a stormcloud. What did he know? a voice screamed to her inside her head. Not about Mark. He couldn’t. He wasn’t condemning her; he was simply demanding an answer.

“No,” she said coolly, picking up her demitasse cup. “There was never a Mr. Langley. I picked the name out of the phone book.”

“That was imaginative,” Brant said dryly. “Why all the lies?”

“Why?” Vickie was surprised she didn’t shout the word. What an incredible question.
Why?
“Because,” she stuttered. “Oh, Brant! That’s completely obvious!”

He shrugged, and his magnificent shoulders hunched toward her as the opaque quality left his eyes to be replaced by a tender compassion.

“Obvious to you, maybe, but silly. You’re afraid of what would have been said. Or of vicious tongues.”

“You’re not big on vicious tongues yourself?” Vickie reminded him curtly. “You had a fit over those interviews.”

“Only because they had been given by someone I trusted.”

“I see,” she told him icily. “Well, I don’t really trust anyone. And I’d definitely appreciate it if you would consider what I’ve told you as a confidence.”

He tossed back his head and his laughter rang into the salt air. “Christ, Vickie, I’m not after information for anyone else! I want to understand you! I had to know what was making you tick—what was making you so afraid. Terrified of the word marriage.”

“Brant, you’re a fool!” Vickie charged him, staring out over the ocean. “I still can’t marry you. We live in different worlds. I’d be terrified of marriage to you because I want a marriage that means forever, and you come from a place where it means until we grow tired of each other.”

“Stop it, Victoria!” The sound of Brant’s voice grated harshly in her ear. “I come from Tampa. And marriage means the same thing to me as it does to you. Yes, we’ll have career problems. We’ll have lots of things to work out. But so does every couple. They make a commitment—one of love. And that means compromise and working the problems out together.”

The irresistible urge to cry was seeping through Vickie. She kept her gray gaze out to sea and fought the tears that were slowly encroaching, like the incoming tide. A scratched recording echoed again and again through her mind—Brant’s matter-of-fact statement that he never lied.

“I don’t know, Brant, I just don’t know,” she murmured.

“I won’t pressure you,” he promised, adding with a teasing voice that didn’t reassure her when he added, “I intend to give you at least two weeks. Now, what about Mark?”

“What about him?” Vickie gasped, feeling a world of darkness closing in around her.

“What about his father? Will I be able to adopt him?”

“Brant, please, you’re going way too fast! I, uh, I don’t know what I feel for you, I don’t know—”

“I know,” he interrupted dismissively. “I’m planning ahead. What about Mark’s father?”

“He’s dead.”

“He really is?” Brant’s words were not a question to her, but a musing to himself. “One day, Vickie, you’re going to tell me all about it. You were hurt badly, that’s obvious, and I want to share all those hurts with you. I want to bring them out in the open, air them, and let them fade.”

Vickie’s most terrible urge was to laugh, not with amusement, but with dry, bitter agony. The more he offered, the more evident his sincerity became, the worse she felt. He was handing her the moon, but her fingers were too slippery to take it. Opportunities to bare the truth and her soul were coming to her on silver platters, and she watched them all drift by, shocked by the lies she automatically told. She should have told him when he asked, but without conscious thought she had spoken the words she had ingrained into her mind. And now the moment when she could have told the truth was gone, lost in the gray web of deception she seemed powerless to break.

“I don’t know, Brant,” she heard herself saying again. “This is all too sudden…I need time.”

“We have time,” he promised her, taking her fingers with a gentleness that seemed impossible for such powerful hands. He kissed each one, watching her eyes, moving his mouth with inherent sensuality over each, drawing a shiver from her as his teeth grazed the last one.

He stood suddenly, and his voice was rich and husky. “We’ve got to get back; you have to pack and you have a show to do tonight.”

Trancelike, Vickie rose with him.

The sky was changing as they bade fond farewell to the Leoninis and walked down the planked path to the car. Pink streaks tapering to crimson threads wove their way beneath a sun now shadowed by clouds turned gray. The weather touched Vickie’s heart as an omen. Nothing could ever be simple and clear again. But then, despite all shields drawn, nothing had been clear for almost three years. It had just taken her until now to realize it.

A
S WAS USUAL, THE
show went off without a hitch. A tribute to willpower, Vickie decided. No matter what went on in the mind, it was possible to make the body function normally. She could talk, walk, and breathe and appear to be tranquil. If one acted tranquilly and serenely at ease long enough, one became so. It wasn’t really anything new. Three years ago she had forged a wall of resignation, and therefore tranquility. She had moved through life with a pleasant dignity because of that. Suddenly it seemed possible again. The answers had been within her reach all the time. Now she had to be sure Brant was serious. She would never be completely free of fear knowing Brant’s temper as she did. But the lie she retained and the admission forced out of her began to jell to her advantage. Brant knew she had never been married, yet he still bore no suspicions regarding Mark.

It was actually perfect. She loved Brant; one day she would have to tell him about Mark. Explain everything that she had felt, everything that she had done. But how much better to tell him if they could build a life together! Their life would begin with deceit, but surely not a terrible one. Brant was already fond of Mark; presumably he would be thrilled to discover, eventually, that his adoptive son was his own.

Vickie could even admit the truth and assure Edward with a clear conscience that she would indeed tell Brant one day. He would understand. There was more to her decision to hold back than just the uneasy fear of reaction. She couldn’t tell Brant now for the same reason she didn’t three years ago. He might begin insisting on marriage for the sake of the child, an arrangement that was sure to be a disaster.

She had lived too long and gone through too much to settle for anything less in marriage than the total bond of a one-to-one commitment she had always dreamed of. A till-death-do-us-part commitment based on love.

Her dream was becoming a reachable star, as long as Brant was serious, and not living out summer fantasies of long ago.

Tonight she didn’t care. Scrubbing her face clean of stage makeup and applying just a glimmer of lipstick and a swift wand of mascara, Vickie grew recklessly exuberant. She was taking a chance, but she dryly assured herself that all life was a chance. She was gambling the high wall of safety it had taken long to build, but the possible rewards defied her dreams and imagination.

“You seem disgustingly cheerful,” Terry told her idly, breaking her inner concentration. The brunette perched languidly against the dressing table. “Did you decide to go up to the panhandle tomorrow?”

“Umm. I’ll be there,” Vickie replied evasively.

“How nice,” Terry said, but catching her gaze in the mirror, Vickie was sure Terry considered her proposed presence as anything but nice. Apparently Terry was still carrying her own torch for Brant.

Unable to forget the trouble Terry was capable of causing and still not sure of Brant’s immunity, Vickie smiled sweetly. “I’m sure it will be a very nice little vacation. Excuse me, will you.” Still holding her smile bright, she swept around Terry. Later the brunette would discover she had left with Brant, and she could fume all she liked.

Chuckling slightly as she entered the empty hallway, Vickie chastised herself for the smug and, yes, malicious, satisfaction she was feeling. But she was only human, and Terry was a born troublemaker as well as a born beauty. Supposed bonds of friendship were as fragile as silk if they stood in her way.

Her smile was still delicately curved into her lips as she reached the parking lot and sought out Brant. He was so easy to find, a silhouette as tall and sturdy as an oak in the darkness, his hair a golden beam of guiding light as he lounged against the Mercedes, waiting. For her. His eyes, following her from the indolent shade of thick honey lashes, welcomed her with devilish appreciation, their blue as warm as a summer’s day. With her new reckless take-a-chance mood, Vickie walked straight to him, stood on tiptoe, and brushed his lips with a feather-light kiss of promise.

“Ummm…” he murmured, cocking a speculative brow as she lowered to her heels, still smiling enigmatically. “To what do I owe this magnificent change of heart?”

“Never a change of heart,” Vickie told him in a grave whisper, her tone wistful. “I think you collected my heart with a string of others on the day I first saw you.”

Her abrupt change to candor was stunning to Brant, but he forced himself to usher her calmly into the car without saying a word. He wanted to tread carefully and not tamper with the return of a love he once discovered and nurtured too late.

But something had changed. Vickie was relaxed. And she was more stunning than ever. Her hair spilled over her shoulders in endless black waves that were streaked with a gloss of blue—a night ocean, alive beneath the moon. The thin veil of frost was gone from her gray eyes that met his clearly with the starlit eternity of deepest space. And she warmed to his touch without the slightest flinch.

Brant eased the car out of the parking lot and drove silently until they had left the city limits of Sarasota behind and came upon the coastal road. Then he glanced across the car at Vickie. “If I have your heart,” he told her wickedly, “how about scooting over here and lending me a shoulder?”

Vickie complied, wondering for just a moment if she had given too much away. No, her statement had been a teasing one, easily said. Brant Wicker knew he collected hearts on a string and tonight was a date, an exploration, nothing more. More would be in the future. But her guard was down; she was a healthy, normal, mature young woman out with a man she loved. But she was older now, savvy, careful, and totally aware of the consequences. And also totally receptive to the strong arm that rested behind her shoulder, she told herself dryly.

Fearing that she had taken a step further than she intended, Vickie began to make light conversation, discussing anything that came to her mind. But despite her efforts, each line of dialogue turned to something deeper. A clinical conversation on the pros and cons of living in New York City led her to silently wonder if she could find work in New York if Brant returned to Broadway. Could she be a success with such tremendous competition? Could two careers be harmonious? Would he expect her to give hers up? No, it wasn’t going to be New York. Not right away. Brant had mentioned doing a movie.

Somewhere along the line the incredible happened. Despite the whirling tempest of her mind, Vickie fell asleep on Brant’s shoulder. She awoke with a start to find the night still black and the hum of the car quiet. She hastily shifted her head to look up, and found Brant silently watching her, his features a stern mask of austerity in the green illumination of the dash.