Tender Deception (22 page)

It seemed incredible to Vickie when she woke on Tuesday morning that she was going to leave Brant if only for a few hours. As he had once walked into the theater and begun to dominate her life, he had now walked into her life and was dominating her being in the most wonderful of ways. He was a demanding man, but he asked no more than he gave. As his wife she would always toe a tight line, but he made no secret of the fact that he was equally tied to the line. Theirs would never fall into the category of an open marriage.

Rising carefully so as not to awaken Brant, she almost tripped over one of his valises. He still hadn’t finished unpacking, having decided he could do so when Vickie went for Mark. They had spent their time so engrossed in each other. She had been amazed when they talked to discover just how wealthy he had become, then humbled with a touch of special pride for him; he had several houses in the United States, and a few abroad, and yet he was content to call her small place home.

She watched him as she dressed; she would never tire of watching him. Even in his sleep he exuded a magnetism. Then, before picking up her purse and leaving, she gave into temptation and kissed his lips. He shifted, settling deeper into the covers, but did not awaken.

She tiptoed slowly, backing away from his sleeping form, suddenly poignantly remembering the last time, almost three years ago, when she had left him like that. It had been so pathetically different! She had left him with the sure, agonizing knowledge that she would never see him so again, her heart in shatters, her mind building a defensive wall.

Today her heart was singing with happiness. She had all she could ever want. She would return and see him again, lay down beside him at night, rest her head on his strong shoulder when she grew weary.

She left him with a tender smile of serenity.

He was gone when she returned. A note tossed on the neatly made bed simply read
Gone to the theater
. Vickie wasn’t alarmed at first, merely disappointed and puzzled. Why had he gone in so early? Monte, Vickie thought, narrowing her eyes with anger for her director. Monte probably had some problem and called Brant in to help. Damn him! He knew they had so little time…

She spent the afternoon playing with Mark. As dinnertime rolled around she set the table for three, hoping Brant would walk back in, but he made no appearance. She thought about calling the theater, but then decided she had waited too late. She would be there herself shortly.

Rushing into the busy theater’s dining room forty-five minutes later, she looked feverishly about for Brant but saw no sign of him. She considered a trip to the men’s dressing room to pull him out, but Jim cornered her and nervously sent her dressing herself. A few minor adjustments still had to be made on a costume. She became immediately immersed in the excitement and bustle of opening night.

She didn’t see Brant until they were onstage together, and consequently, she didn’t know anything was wrong until they walked into the wings. His touch upon her was like cold lead, and he released her the moment they reached the sheltered shadows of curtains and flies. Bewildered, slowly filling with dread, Vickie tried to study his face, but it wasn’t a face she knew.

It was severe, rock-hard in the shadows, the prominence of his cheekbones, square line of jaw, and arrogant length of nose all made more chillingly visible by the mahogany stain of the makeup and the ink black of his hair. In the austerity of his dark, savage scowl, his lips were little more than a thin, ruthless line. His eyes raked over her like daggers of crystal. His voice was a whiplash as he dropped her arm, stared at her with those daggers, and ignored her tentative “Brant—”

“Madam, I will talk to you at home.” With a slight inclination of his head he crossed his arms and strode away from her to hover near Jim’s podium.

Alone in the curtained shadowland, Vickie fought the panic that engulfed her. She wanted to run after him and shake him and demand to know what was wrong. But she couldn’t. A few feet away the play was going on. She had to pull herself together. She had a quick costume change and then the next scene.

The play had never gone better. The tensions that coiled on the inside of Brant and Vickie found the right channels in their Othello and Desdemona. Their timing was perfect, the pace fluid. And as the show neared its end, the murder scene was nothing short of brilliant. Laying silently as Brant rendered his soliloquy to her sleeping form, Vickie knew in a portion of her mind that the audience of critics was spellbound. Anyone who had ever loved, known heartache and betrayal, could empathize with the character. She could almost feel the audience, completely caught in the magic, held back merely by the barrier of footlights from telling Othello that he was making a grave mistake.

His lips, as he kissed her in sleep, a gentle farewell before the deed, were cold as lead. His monologue continued. “One more, and that’s the last…” His lips touched hers again, infinitely soft, but so deathly cold. This the last…It took all her years of training to remember it was a play. She wanted to open her eyes, to demand to know what was wrong. The line rang so very truthfully. Was it her last kiss?

“This sorrow’s heavenly, it strikes where it doth love. She wakes.”

She could finally open her eyes, the actress in control, playing a scene passionately and brilliantly, mesmerizing the audience with ardor and vibrancy.

But for Vickie it was a nightmare she lived, swearing a bewilderment and innocence that was ruthlessly ignored. Othello would kill his Desdemona rather than be betrayed. Love twisted to horror.

“Kill me tomorrow; let me live tonight!”

Her line was a passionate plea from the heart; his rejoinder equally adamant. As staged, she was swept into forceful arms and sent back to the bed with a poignant combination of lost tenderness and agonized resolution. His hands hovered over her threateningly, and for the briefest of seconds, she lost herself in the illusion. His eyes were so pained, so brilliantly condemning…

But of course, it was all make-believe. He was perfectly controlled. The audience’s eyes cruelly affixed on her—her throat, her flesh, not feeling the slightest pain.

Moments later she came temporarily back to life to speak her final lines, then fell into the death pose she would hold for the completion of the play. The stage came alive with activity; Iago was proved the villain and wounded, Othello went into his suicide monologue and fell heavily across her to die. Lodovico delivered the closing lines.

The applause was deafening; the players were rewarded with a standing ovation.

Brant smiled as he jumped to his feet to lead Vickie and Bobby forward for the curtain call. But his eyes, when they rested upon her, were still blue ice. The smile was as much an act as the murderous passion.

It was bedlam after the show. Reporters had come from all over the globe because of Brant, and it was hours later that the interviews and pictures ended. Monte was in his own seventh heaven. Catching Vickie for a moment in the confusion, he tapped her chin affectionately with elation. “Every director’s dream!” he exalted. “They’re saying this might be the finest production of the play since the Bard produced it himself!”

Vickie smiled weakly. She was thrilled for Monte, for the play, for her fellow actors. But she felt that she had never left the shadows. Nothing had fervor or taste without Brant beside her, and the only time he came near her was to uphold the priorities of picture taking. And now he had disappeared. When she had changed back into her street clothes, she loitered around the men’s dressing room, only to learn from Bobby that he had already gone home.

“I wouldn’t see him tonight if I were you anyway!” Bobby said cheerfully. “He’s in a hell of a mood.”

Vickie blanched slightly. Bobby didn’t know that she had to see Brant. The home he had gone to was her own.

“Did he say anything?” she asked quietly.

Bobby shrugged. “You know Brant. He never says anything. Just clams up and gets away as fast as he can.”

“Oh,” Vickie murmured, lowering her eyes as she realized that he was watching her suspiciously.

“You look pale,” Bobby said, concerned. “Want me to take you for a drink?”

“No, no, thanks, Bobby,” she said quickly, her voice faint. “I guess I’d better get home myself.”

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.”