Wolf in Tiger's Stripes Page 5

  “I doubt very much that Bevan needs your help to deal with this Derek person.” Vanessa looked thoughtful, an expression that in her case could, and often did, prove deceptive. “You might have lucked into a wonderful position to get revenge on Derek,” she ventured, eyes brightening at the prospect of witnessing such activity.

  “Not on your life. I am not a vengeful person. All I really wanted was never to see or hear from him again as long as I lived, and I certainly didn’t get that wish.”

  “That was your choice, wasn’t it?”

  “It was my red-ink bank account’s choice.”

  Vanessa beamed. “Someday, Judith Theresa, when I’m not in such a delicate condition, maybe you’ll condescend to tell me truthfully whether this is all about finances or maybe just a wee, tiny bit because Bevan Keene’s involved. In fact, you could tell me now, if you like. I’m robust enough to handle it, I think.”

  “Well, I’m not, so you can just wait.” Judith wondered – not for the first time during her brief stay in Tasmania – if she would ever truly understand the national sense of humor, not least the pastime of stirring the pot just to provoke a reaction. “And just now, I’m not half as interested in the man as I am in his library.”

  I am such a poor liar. But what else can I do? Admit that I fancy Bevan Keene like crazy, to use Nessie’s words – but it’s all physical? Or is it?

  “You can ask him about that tonight,” Vanessa said. “After all, you’re supposed to be working on this project together.”

  It took a moment for the implication to strike, but when it did, Judith felt a curious little hollow forming in her stomach. Or maybe not a hollow place – maybe just the beginning of another huge rock.

  “What do you mean, tonight?” she asked abruptly.

  “When you go to Launceston with him, of course. I told you. Oh, no, I didn’t actually tell you, I wrote you a note. I ... oh dear, oh shit, oh dear ... the note’s in your room, and of course you haven’t seen it yet. Oh, Judith, I’m getting so scatty I hardly know what day it is. I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be sorry,” Judith snapped. “Just tell me what you’ve got me into this time – presuming you can remember.” Then she stopped and hung her head, astonished at her own temper. “I’m sorry, Nessie. This whole thing has got me flustered too, I guess.”

  “No. It’s my fault. Honestly, I meant to tell you as soon as you walked in the door, but when you did, it just flew out of my mind. Nobody told me being pregnant was going to make me totally scatterbrained.”

  Judith refrained from suggesting the pregnancy had only exacerbated an already-existing condition. Instead, she laughed at her cousin, then went to read the note before it disappeared in a puff of smoke or something equally ridiculous. She read it, looked at her watch, and suppressed the immediate urge to go back out and throttle her scatty cousin. The note said there was a lecture being given in Launceston that very evening, that Bevan Keene knew she’d be interested, and would be picking her up—

  “In fifteen minutes! Nessie, you ... you ...” Judith swallowed the rest of her rant as she caught her disheveled reflection in the mirror. There was no time for throttling, not even enough time for a verbal dressing-down – not that either would do any good. Quickly stripping off her soiled clothes, she fled to the shower.

  Less than five minutes later, her short, crisp, coppery hair glistening with droplets of water and her slender body wrapped in an oversized bath towel, she rushed just as swiftly back to her room. She dressed quickly in a white wool sweater and snug dress slacks in British racing green. Medium-heeled shoes to match, a quick touch of lip gloss, and she was ready for anything, she thought.

  Then the doorbell rang to announce Bevan Keene’s arrival, and she realized with a start that her preparedness was only physical. Mentally, she was totally, completely, thoroughly, and frighteningly unprepared.

  6

  Keene said nothing at first. He just stood there on the stoop and looked at her, his gaze roving along her body with an almost studied insolence. It wasn’t until he’d looked her over quite thoroughly that the tall grazier deigned to speak, and when he did, his voice somehow managed to hide more than it revealed.

  “You look quite, quite splendid, Ms. Bryan,” he said with a slow smile. “Very professional. I assume you’re ready for what may turn out to be a long and hopefully interesting evening.”

  “Ready when you are,” she replied, unable to match his cool, but game to try. And quite prepared to spend a moment of her own on simple physical assessment – fair’s fair, after all.

  Bevan was dressed much as she would have expected, in expensive but casual clothing that suited him perfectly. A soft flannel shirt tucked into sharply creased slacks over gleaming boots; a subdued but expensively tailored Harris Tweed sport coat.

  “You’d best bring a jacket of some sort,” he said, and his voice was gruff enough for Judith to wonder if he resented being given the same sort of onceover he’d bestowed upon her. “It might turn fairly cool before we get back,” he added.

  Unwilling to argue, Judith obeyed without comment, and after a brief farewell to her cousin, she allowed Bevan to escort her to his vehicle. Or at least to the footpath outside Vanessa’s home, where Judith took one look at Bevan’s transportation and stopped dead in her tracks, unable to believe her eyes, unable not to believe them.

  “It isn’t mine, and you’re not thinking anything I haven’t thought a dozen times over,” her companion growled, clearly not amused by her reaction, but sharing it. “Mine’s in for a service and couldn’t be got ready on time, so I had to borrow this from my tame mechanic.”

  “Tame?” The question escaped before Judith could think. What awaited them was a flashy, American-style pickup truck, all glitz and chrome and perched so high above the street on custom suspension that she thought it might require a stepladder just to get into the thing. A monster truck, and that was only the half of it!

  “Tame as any woman could be,” he muttered. “She’s a good mechanic. The best. But I shall never understand her taste, assuming taste is the word.” Bevan said with a shake of his head, “Is this, or is this not, just about the most ghastly contraption you’ve ever seen? Gives a whole new meaning to the term ‘Yank tank,’ I’ll tell you that.”

  “That,” Judith said as they stood together staring at the apparition, “is putting it mildly. A monster truck – how cool!”

  The customized F-150 was a vision in gleaming black duco and chrome, with the addition of what could only be considered a fantastic imagination gone awry. Flames poured up over the hood and from the wheel-wells to frame dynamic scenes of sword-wielding warrior women in bloody combat with incredible monsters, while spaceships and ringed planets hovered overhead. There was no arguing the talent of the airbrush artist who’d done the work – it was truly splendid. But as for taste ...

  “You said her. This really belongs to a woman?”

  “And a beautiful one, on the rare occasion she sluices off the grease and grime and changes her mechanic’s overalls for a dress,” Bevan said, this time with a wry grin. “A top mechanic, if a bit of a feminist. I think she considers this truck some sort of definitive statement, but I’ve never worked up the nerve to ask her what it is she’s trying to say.”

  He helped Judith clamber up into the vehicle, where she found the interior just as impressive as the outside, with plush velvet fittings, inch-thick carpeting and a dazzling array of sound equipment. And when Bevan turned the ignition key, the machine responded with the throaty growl of an angry living creature. Bevan laughed as Judith flinched at the rumbling sound.

  They maneuvered their way northward out of Hobart, heading – as Bevan explained over the burbling of the beast’s breath – for the Mud Walls Road and eventually the Midlands Highway to Launceston. It was, he said, perhaps a two-and-a-half-hour journey, although “She swears I could do it in one if I pushed this animal to its limits. Fat chance of that,” he said with a scowl.

&nb
sp; Judith became increasingly amused at how Bevan seemed embarrassed by the borrowed vehicle and its outlandish appearance but couldn’t resist letting himself enjoy it just a little, too.

  “I’m not sure we’ll have time for tea – that’s dinner, to you – before this damned lecture,” Bevan muttered as yet another youthful motorist beeped in recognition. “Every copper in Tasmania will have this beast on his list, and we’ll likely get stopped a dozen times once we hit the proper highway.”

  Judith couldn’t be certain whether he was avoiding mention of the dinner party incident or merely saving his comments for a better time. She didn’t stay uncertain for long.

  “Speaking of which,” he said when they stopped at the first red light he encountered, “I sincerely hope you’re intending to play fair tonight, at least while I’m driving.”

  “Play fair?” she asked, playing for time.

  “Don’t be obtuse,” he said, a grin softening the abruptness of his remark. “It means no groping while I’m driving. If you absolutely can’t keep your hands off me, just please say so and I shall stop and take care of your animal desires.”

  “I ... you ...” Judith knew she was stuttering but couldn’t make her mouth work properly. “You don’t honestly think I’d ...”

  “I wouldn’t have thought you’d do what you did during dinner the other night,” Bevan said in a voice that seemed infuriatingly calm. “Not that I’m complaining, mind you, merely reminding you that the time and place for such antics is not while I’m driving somebody else’s vehicle. Your time will come.” And there was a threat and a tension there she couldn’t ignore, dared not ignore.

  He relaxed visibly as they left the suburbs and began their way north through the dry grazing lands of the Coal River valley, and when they moved into the sweeping curves leading up to the Craigbourne Dam, north of Campania, he seemed to be enjoying himself, pushing the powerful vehicle to sports-car–like exertions.

  Conversation, however, was difficult when not impossible. The burbling growl of the exhaust turned to a fierce, resounding bellow whenever Bevan stepped on the accelerator. Judith welcomed the lack of conversation and used the respite to study the passing landscape and – when opportunity presented itself – the man doing the driving.

  Bevan unexpectedly slowed at one point to indicate with a forefinger the shape of a homestead in the distance. “My baby sister lives there,” he said. “You met her at the dinner party, I think. I could stop there and trade this thing for a civilized car, but she and my mechanic are good mates, so it would only get me into heaps of trouble with both of them. Something,” he added somewhat ruefully, “I’d just as soon avoid.”

  Judith couldn’t resist a reply. “I have great difficulty seeing you worrying about a thing like that,” she said, but her attempted levity fell flat.

  “Because you think I’m the ultimate male chauvinist pig,” Bevan muttered over the burbling exhaust sound, even though he didn’t bother to turn and look at her. “Which I am, perhaps. But the fact of the matter is that one is stuck with one’s relatives, but really good mechanics are worth their weight in gold.”

  With which profound if enigmatic comment he returned his attention to the narrow highway and his driving, leaving Judith free to ponder the scenery – Could there really be this many sheep in the world? – and wonder if taking on this job had really been such a good idea after all.

  Close in to Hobart, the landscape had been relatively lush and green, but the farther north they drove the more dry and sere it appeared. And the sheep weren’t white, either. In some places they were as rust-red as the seemingly barren paddocks on which they wandered. Once they reached the Midlands Highway, she found the bizarre vehicle – whatever its aesthetics – could truly get up and move, and once settled more or less on the speed limit, the acoustics improved to the point where conversation was actually possible, presuming anybody wanted that. Judith decided she did.

  “You never actually explained where we’re going, or why,” she finally ventured. “Am I to presume it has something to do with this project we’re to be involved in?”

  “If I’d just wanted a date, there’d be easier ways of going about it,” was the reply, and she thought she saw the glimmer of a smile forming around his generous mouth. So difficult to tell, though. Until now she had thought him almost brutally direct. His reply had been neither answer nor question, and she found it difficult to continue her inquiry without sounding as if she were deliberately probing. Which, beyond argument, was just what she intended, although she’d hoped to be a bit more subtle about it. If only he would give her something to work with, some concept of how he really felt about the three-month task ahead of them.

  And how you feel about me. No way you can be this casual about what happened at the dinner party. No man could be.

  But it seemed Keene was more comfortable than she with long silences. He let considerable time elapse before saying, “There’s an academic type giving a lecture at the Queen Victoria Museum tonight on research he’s done into some aspect of tigers. Judging from the title, I doubt he’ll touch on anything very relevant to our ‘project,’ as you call it, but you never know. And it’s a nice evening for a drive, if nothing else.”

  If nothing else. Judith found her mind floundering for the right words to keep the conversation alive. Jeremiah’s comments had made it seem likely that Bevan had only become involved in the project because of Judith’s own involvement, which made no sense at all. Unless, of course, he had in mind retaliation for her impulsive, quite improper behavior at the dinner party.

  She glanced over at Bevan’s profile, again noting the strength of his features – the fierce, hawk-like beak of a nose, the sun wrinkles that flowed from the corners of his eyes, the generous, mobile mouth, half obscured by his pirate’s mustache.

  All her feminine instincts prickled at sheer machismo of the man, but she couldn’t find the right words to search for the answers she wanted. And clearly he wasn’t going to make it any easier for her.

  They sped north in the flamboyant pickup truck, but Bevan kept his silence, answering her occasional direct questions, and those only briefly. He kept his eyes on the road and his hands on the wheel, and Judith wasn’t totally sure if she preferred it that way or not.

  As they reached the outskirts of the northern city, he glanced at his watch before turning off one secondary road and onto another. “We’ve got time for tea after all, if we’re quick. Chinese okay?”

  “Whatever,” she replied, and wondered what he’d have said had she objected, because he was already slowing to park near a restaurant named the City Pearl.

  “I don’t know if this is the best of its kind in Launceston,” he said as he silenced the growling vehicle. “But I found it by accident a year or two ago and somehow never got round to trying any of the others. Good tucker.”

  He must, Judith decided, have been a fairly frequent customer ever since, judging from the way the staff made them welcome. This early on a Wednesday evening, the small restaurant was nearly empty, which ensured them speedy and efficient service, but Bevan was greeted like a long-lost friend.

  Bevan made a point of sitting well out of her reach, softening the reminder with a slow smile when he was sure she’d got the message. He ordered a bottle of dry white wine by name without bothering to consult the wine list, then offered to guide Judith through the extensive menu.

  “You choose,” she said. “I’m like a goat. I eat anything that’s put in front of me.”

  “That might be fun,” he said with a perfectly straight face, then proceeded to order a sampling of several starters including squid fritters, honey chicken wings, and Chinese sausage, before going on to the main courses.

  “We’ll share everything,” he told the smiling waitress. “And” ... with a raised eyebrow and a fanciful glance at Judith ... “we’ll use chopsticks, please.”

  “Is this some sort of test?” Judith found herself inexplicably prickly about his decisi
on, though she had no valid reason, and knew it. “Some designation of how civilized a person might be, perhaps?”

  “Test? No,” he said. “I just think a girl eating with chopsticks is sexy, that’s all.” And he said it with such a straight face, such a bland, straightforward innocence, that it took Judith way too long to catch the devilish gleam in his eyes. By which time, of course, it was too late; she’d already nibbled at the bait and both of them knew it.

  When their food began to arrive, Bevan attacked his with chopsticks dexterously manipulated. Judith found herself fumbling, her fingers made clumsy by his unexpected comment. It was worse than embarrassing. Bevan cast an air of sensuous intimacy over the meal. His even white teeth teased at morsels of chicken, but his eyes said they were nibbling at Judith’s earlobes. His gaze roved across her face and neck and shoulders and breasts with the same anticipation and appreciation he devoted to the meal.

  She barely took her eyes off the recalcitrant chopsticks in her clumsy fingers, ever conscious of his glances, ever certain she was about to drop something gooey down the front of her snowy sweater. The food was delightful, but her enjoyment was increasingly hampered by the treacherous reactions he so easily aroused in her. His every glance and gesture was a caress, an invitation, a promise.

  It was so blatantly, deliberately sexist that under any other circumstances she might have found it either amusing or enraging, but now – perhaps because it was so deliberate and blatant – Judith could only fume at her inability to combat his tactics. And at her own body’s betrayal. Mentally, she knew she was being led down the proverbial garden path, but her nipples throbbed at the touch of his gaze, and her tummy fluttered with empty anticipation despite the food she was desperately forcing into it. The wine did not help.