Wolf in Tiger's Stripes Read online

  Judith looked up to meet gray eyes now the color of wet Tasmanian mudstone, eyes that only an instant before had been laughing, had held the texture of gray velvet, even while visibly bemused at her predicament. No longer. Now they were hard, accusing, almost frightening in their intensity. Bevan Keene was looking at her as if she’d just crawled out from under a rock, and Judith’s temper, matching her copper hair as it so often did, was poised to explode. Her own blue-green eyes flashed at the challenge in his gaze. She met his gaze fiercely, but in total calm, waiting for him to make the expected disparaging remark.

  But he said nothing. They sat there, each now oblivious to the dinner party around them, eyes locked in some strange form of combat for which Judith didn’t even know the rules. It seemed at first as if everyone around them was waiting, impatient for the explosion, but then somehow her surroundings faded, leaving only his eyes, his face with its beaky, high-bridged nose, his abundance of curly, sandy hair. Until finally she was compelled to break the unnatural silence because his eyes were changing even as they held her. His expression softened, the hostility melding into something else, something equally dangerous, but much less obvious. Now there was a sort of slyness there, strangely predatory.

  There was a warning, too, of some kind, but it wasn’t strong enough, or alarming enough, to quell Judith’s seething defensiveness.

  “You have something against journalists?” she heard herself asking, and then, unable to bear the silence, added, “Or is it just female journalists?” before he could possibly have replied to the first question. Then she waited and continued to wait as Bevan continued to look at her, his gaze now leaving her own and patiently, deliberately, stalking across her face, her lips, her throat, and down the slender lines of her body as far as he could see. Then back to meet her stare boldly, blatantly, challenging in its intensity.

  His gaze was that of a great predator assessing prey, until it suddenly changed – as did his eyes. At least they seemed to, although common sense said it wasn’t possible for them to flash in the instant from dove gray to a deep, menacing yellow shade. Wolf’s eyes. Tiger’s eyes. Predator’s eyes!

  And this time, when he used them once again to assess her body, it was with an almost tangible touch. She felt the caress that began in the hollow of her throat, shivered as it traced a circuitous track down to the cleft between her breasts. Her nipples literally sprang to attention as invisible fingertips plucked at them. In her tummy, thankfully hidden by her napkin, she felt an awesome tingling, almost a humming sensation. It was as if she’d gulped too much air and bubbles were floating there, bubbles which occasionally burst.

  When he did speak, it was in a voice so low that only she could hear, and that barely. His voice didn’t carry past her, couldn’t possibly have been heard across the table.

  “You’re overreacting.”

  Only the few words from his lips, but his eyes – miraculously gone back to gray again – spoke volumes. All in a language Judith didn’t want to hear, didn’t want to know, didn’t dare try to even comprehend. I want you, those eyes said. Loud as a shout in her suddenly feverish brain. I want your body and I want your mind, but your body first. And I’ll have it, too. When I’m ready.

  “Or is it environmental journalists you take such an immediate dislike to?” she challenged, having to force out each word against a heart that thumped in her breast like some great drum, making it hard to breathe, harder still to think. Overreacting? Well of course she was overreacting, but now that he’d mentioned it, damned if she’d admit it, anymore than she’d admit the incredible sensation of a caress that began at one kneecap and slowly, deliberately, crept up the inside of her thigh.

  Judith had to force herself not to look down, not to acknowledge the weirdness of it all. Because both of Bevan Keene’s hands were there on the table before him, in plain sight. And they had been all along. She was certain of it. Well ... nearly certain.

  Bevan raised one eyebrow, his eyes again light gray, gleaming like wet, radiant jewels. Laughing at her – she knew it. And she hated it!

  “You’re awfully defensive,” he finally said. “This is me, remember? Not whomever you were thinking of before.”

  “As if there were any relevant difference,” Judith said with a sneer, her mind somehow freed by the sound of his voice. But her heart still thumped like a wild thing caged, and she could feel his gaze, a caress upon her skin. Was the entire dinner party watching this bizarre exchange, she wondered? And, if so, what on earth would they make of it?

  She shivered, then fought the shiver before it could radiate to her very core.

  “Oh,” he said in that soft, curiously gentle voice, that distinctive Tasmanian accent. “There’s a difference all right. And you know it, too. Even a female ... environmental ... American ... journalist could figure out that much,” he added, stretching out the words, deliberately provoking her without raising his voice much beyond a whisper.

  “Not this one,” Judith snapped, again wishing she could just crawl away silently under cover of the table, or disappear in a puff of smoke. Anything that would allow her not to have to continue this farcical debate, a discussion all the more ridiculous because it had been she who started it. Because now that they’d clashed, now that they’d made more than just polite social contact, Bevan Keene could no longer be ignored.

  Not that she wanted to anymore. Quite the opposite. What she wanted was –

  “You’re just cranky because I didn’t react like you expected me to,” he said with a quiet chuckle. “You wanted me to go all feral and insulting, just so you’d have somebody to vent your spleen on.” He shook his mop of sandy curls. “That bloke who done you wrong sure did a number on you. Top job. He’s turned you off men and got your liver in a right royal snit at the same time.”

  It might have been funny, had it been true, but it was nonetheless far too perceptive. And it might have been even funnier, had she not, just a moment earlier, had her hand in his lap without having the faintest idea how or why.

  None of which explained why this man could somehow look at her and turn her insides to mush. She was saved from having to reply by a demand from farther up the table that they pass up their dinner plates to make room for dessert.

  It gave her a welcome opportunity to hop up and help with the job, and to scold Nessie when the two were alone in the kitchen. Not much of a reprimand – how vigorous could one be, after all, with a woman due to birth twins at any moment?

  “I’m sorry ... I’m sorry ... I’m sorry,” her cousin pleaded before Judith even got warmed up. “It just slipped out. It wasn’t deliberate.” Then Vanessa retreated into her own viewpoint, once she had realized she was safe in her advanced state of pregnancy. “What harm did it do, for goodness’ sake? I noticed you and Bevan getting on like a house on fire.”

  “More fire than getting on, Nessie,” Judith replied, thankful she could steady herself against the kitchen counter because she felt strangely weak in the knees. “Which isn’t the point! The point is that we had agreed – AGREED, DAMN IT! – not to mention my job. My former job, Nessie. I’m not any kind of journalist right now, except the unemployed kind. That’s why I’m here, in case you’ve forgotten.”

  “Oh, come on. You’ll have your job back soon enough. Or a better one. Much better, if you can get on Bevan’s good side and put this Tassie tiger story together,” Nessie said in what Judith considered her cousin’s usual blind naïveté.

  “For goodness’ sake, Nessie. There is no tiger story, and if there were, Bevan Keene would be the last man on earth to give it to me. And the last one I’d ask, if you want to know the truth. Why on earth did you have to saddle me with him tonight, anyway?”

  “Apart from the fact that he’s devastatingly handsome, charming, rich, and available, I hate uneven dinner parties,” Vanessa replied calmly.

  “You hate dinner parties, period! Anyone could tell that by your so-called cooking,” Judith muttered as she turned to shuffle slices
of store-bought lemon meringue pie onto serving plates.

  “Now you’re being catty, Judith Theresa,” her cousin replied. “And that isn’t at all like you. The Judith I remember would have been cutting up Bevan’s meat and feeding it to him by hand if it meant a crack at a fair-dinkum ‘tiger’ story,” she concluded, lapsing into the lingo of her adopted country.

  “I’d need a chainsaw to cut up any meat you’d cooked,” Judith snapped, her already fragile and aggravated temper betraying her. Of absolutely no consolation was her memory of a comment from her old friend Jeremiah Cottrell, a British magazine publisher, upon hearing of her sacking and anticipated trip to Tasmania to lick her wounds and recuperate. Jeremiah hadn’t offered her a job – that would have been too easy. He’d left her to her suffering instead, but with a bit of salt for the wounds.

  “Turn me up a new slant on the Tasmanian tiger saga – with pictures, of course – and I’ll almost let you write your own ticket,” he’d said. Joking, of course. He had to have been joking. The reality was what had been said at the dinner table. About once a year somebody resurrected the saga of the Tassie tiger and gave it another stroll down the proverbial garden path. Because – and she’d have been the first to admit that – it was such a wonderful story!

  An animal known to have existed right into modern times, but now presumed to be extinct. Except for the fact that people kept reporting having seen live specimens, even if no real evidence was ever produced. No validating pictures, or scat, or guaranteed tracks, or hair, or even – especially important – a recently dead tiger carcass. The last wild specimen of the Thylacine, the marsupial wolf called Tasmanian ”tiger” because of its partially striped coat, was accepted as having been shot in 1930, and the last specimen in captivity died on September 7, 1936.

  But people kept seeing them. Or saying they did. And for those who investigated such matters, the sightings provided a provocative mystery. Most reports were from bushmen, farmers, or rural residents who should have known what they’d seen. Others held somewhat less credence, but every year there were sufficient reports to keep the legend alive.

  Because people want the tiger to have survived, Judith thought. Just as they want there to be a Sasquatch, and a Yeti, and an Elephant Graveyard. Like the best of her professional colleagues, Judith was a confirmed skeptic, and yet ...

  *

  “So,” said Bevan Keene when she returned – having run out of plausible excuses to delay any longer – to sit down beside him, her temper somewhat cooled but her defensive armor fully in place and mollified not a whit by his politely rising to hold her chair. “What are your feelings about Tassie tigers, Miss Bryan? Do you believe, or do you consider them in the same class as the Dodo and the Passenger Pigeon? Or ...” and he grinned, “... your American Bigfoot, or Sasquatch.”

  His grin nearly did her in. It was a predator’s grin and the grin of a happy child and the smug, self-satisfied smile of a winner – all in the same package. But there was something else in that package, too, something sexual and sensual that struck her like a bolt of lightning. Once again, she felt her knees go weak and was immensely pleased he was holding the chair she collapsed into.

  “I’d like to believe they still exist,” she said, fighting to hide the raggedness in her voice. “It’s not that many years since they were known to be alive, and according to rumors on the conservation front, there’s been more than one shot since then, too. It’s just that nobody’s been prepared to admit such a thing. People want them to exist, want to believe in them. That’s why I think this latest suggestion that they try to clone one is going to fail, even if it were to succeed. People don’t want a clone. They want a symbol!”

  Like Bevan was a symbol ... of everything masculine. This man wore his masculinity like a second skin, not blatantly, but with a total, powerful self-assurance that threatened and promised at the same time. And he was focused upon her now with a frightening intensity.

  His expression seemed to reveal surprise. “You’ve studied the subject, obviously.”

  “It’s an environmental issue, and I am – was, actually – a journalist who specialized in such things.” Her reply was carefully worded, cautious. So was her reaction to Bevan Keene. She hardly dared meet his eyes, lest they lure her into inappropriate thoughts. Enjoyable inappropriate thoughts.

  My God! Did I just think that? I couldn’t have. But I did. And I do!

  Judith suddenly realized she was avoiding Bevan’s gaze by looking at his lap. Worse, her hand was following her glance, moving as if possessed of a separate will. She yanked it back before he could notice ... she hoped.

  “Was? That isn’t what Nessie said.”

  “Nessie is prone to putting her own interpretations on things even when she isn’t ... in her present condition,” Judith said, then hurriedly corrected herself. “No, let’s be fair. It’s got nothing to do with Nessie. Okay ... I am a journalist, and I did specialize in environmental matters. But I’m ... between jobs right now. There, does that satisfy you?”

  It didn’t satisfy her! She was physically holding her right hand with her left, willing it to stop this nonsense. But she couldn’t stop her imagination, much less the frisson of excitement that single word – satisfy – sent tingling down through her tummy.

  Some sort of emotion flashed across Bevan Keene’s face, but it was too fast for Judith to interpret. Then he was looking directly into her eyes, and his speculation was all too obvious.

  “I’m not easily satisfied, when it comes to some things,” Keene replied enigmatically. “Although I guess everybody needs their dreams. Even journalists. So tell me about your dreams, Ms. Bryan. Not the ones about the scoop of the century. I’ve no interest in that. But your real dreams.”

  And he spiced the question with a smile so devastating it nearly took her breath away, if only for an instant. This man was too clever, too perceptive. What would he reply, she wondered, if she told him straight out that he both fascinated and terrified her and she wasn’t even certain why?

  “Not a dinner subject, I’m afraid,” she said as calmly as she could. Lying and astonished she even could lie. “I’d rather discuss tigers.”

  “Oh, I’m sure you would,” was his reply. “I’m sure you’d like nothing better than to write a scintillating article about a prominent grazier who says he sees them regularly in his back paddock.” And again there was that devastating grin, only this time tinged with cynicism. Surprisingly, though, he didn’t wait for a reply. “Or, better yet, some reliable, responsible observer you could report as having seen tigers in one of the areas the greenies are trying to save. Wouldn’t that be a coup?”

  More than just cynicism, now. His voice, his entire demeanor, sparked with a sarcasm that bespoke a deeper anger. Obviously, he didn’t like activists.

  “Not without proof,” she said. “Real proof, I mean. Without concrete, unassailable evidence, it would be nothing at all. Unless, of course, a politician claimed it, in which case it would be less than nothing.”

  Bevan Keene raised one eyebrow. “Why, Ms. Bryan, do I detect a note of genuine cynicism there?”

  “Realism, not cynicism,” she replied. “Politicians are like bananas – they can be green or yellow or rotten, but they always hang together in a bunch and they’re always bent. That’s not my quote, but one I’ve found to be pretty accurate overall.”

  He didn’t so much as flinch. Never registered even a flicker of surprise.

  “My goodness. We’ve found common ground after all,” Keene said. And grinned hugely. “I was beginning to despair.” And he grinned again, this time a predator’s grin, smug and self-satisfied. Like the wolf in Little Red Riding Hood.

  He looked calmly around the table as if about to ask how everyone else felt about politicians. And he smiled again.

  My, what big teeth you have, Grannie, Judith thought. The better to tell lies with, perhaps. Common ground? There is absolutely nothing about you that’s common. Again, Judith had to mentally
recoil from Bevan Keene’s devastating charm, suddenly worried by just how easily he turned the charm off and on to suit his purposes.

  “It is my firm belief that there is nothing so perfect in this world that it can’t be totally stuffed up by a bit of political intervention,” he said, and the bitterness in his tone was there to taste, to smell. It was tangible, given life by his voice. Then he shook his head, and bowed his mass of sandy curls almost apologetically.

  “Forgive me,” he said, and appeared to be genuine. “I was just reminded of the time-honored rule that religion and politics ought never to be allowed in dinner party conversation.”

  “And sex. You forgot to mention that,” Judith said, the words out of her mouth before she realized she was thinking them.

  “How could I?” His words slid past a grin so deliberately wicked she might have laughed had he not followed up with “Merely put on hold, my dear Ms. Bryan. There is a time and place for everything.”

  He never touched her, but his glance was like a physical caress that began at her copper-red hair and flowed slowly downward, gently stroking her eyelids, touching the sensitive spots behind her ears, forcing her to lick at her lips to see if she could taste it. By the time the caress got that far, her nipples had hardened in anticipation, aided by an apparent inability to draw a decent breath.

  Merely put on hold? she repeated silently. I’ll give you “on hold,” you smug, arrogant bastard.

  Keene’s tongue flicked sensually across his lower lip, then – almost apologetically, she thought, though that made no sense – he looked away and reached down to spear a piece of the lemon meringue pie, giving her a chance to recover.

  But he was waiting for her to say something, so she let fly with the first nonsexual comment that popped into her head. “Have you really seen a Tasmanian tiger? I mean ... really, truly, alive and walking around?”