Wolf in Tiger's Stripes Read online

  “Because this dossier I’ve been collecting on you is quite specific about how thorough a researcher you are,” he said. “And since I have the most exhaustive collection of Thylacine data all in one place of anyone in the country, it seems obvious you’re not going to be happy until you’ve had a chance to look through it. Simple logic, not mind reading.”

  Dossier? That word alone still tumbled around in her brain when Bevan finished speaking. And continued through the silence that followed while she searched for words. Just how much did he know? It wasn’t that Judith felt she had any deep, dark secrets – the humiliating details of her being fired and Derek Innes’s involvement with it notwithstanding – but she instinctively felt it could be dangerous to let Bevan Keene know any more about her than he already did.

  Knowledge is power, she thought, and shivered inwardly at the implications. There was just too much truth in that simple statement. It made her decidedly uncomfortable to accept that Bevan knew more about her already than she wanted him to know.

  “Hey! You still there?”

  “Yes. I was just ... thinking,” she replied, noting the sound of satisfaction in his voice. He’d shaken her all right, and he knew it, and she now realized he’d intended all along to do just that.

  “Well, how about thinking about coming up for dinner tonight? And, more to the point, you might also give serious thought to staying over for a couple of days at least,” he said, then continued without seeming to worry about how she might react to such a blunt invitation. “The first of the equipment for our little junket has arrived already, and I could use a hand sorting things out.”

  “You could? And this is somehow, I gather, what you consider to be my role in the expedition? Sorter-outer?” Judith could hear for herself the challenge in her voice, could feel the totally unjustified anger that Bevan must be hearing, but she could do nothing about it. It was as if someone else were scripting her replies.

  “I thought you might be interested,” he said, voice calm, revealing nothing of his feelings except to register a coolness that hadn’t been there a moment earlier. “I was informed you were to be the official recorder, whatever that is, for this wondrous expedition.”

  “Which is not the same as being official sorter-outer,” she reminded him, wincing at how blunt she must sound, but still unable to find the right words to say it gently.

  “Well, you’re going to have a helluva time recording all this gear if it isn’t sorted out,” he replied, voice definitely cold now, almost concealing his irritation.

  Judith took a deep breath, fighting more with herself than with Bevan. What was it about this man? Why couldn’t she even talk to him without sparks flying? At this precise instant, she realized, her defensiveness was almost entirely a result of his mentioning that damned dossier, but it went further than that. He was getting under her skin. And the worst part was that she wasn’t at all certain he was even trying!

  “You’re right, of course,” she forced herself to say. “But this business of staying for several days ... ?”

  “It’s a damned long drive, otherwise,” he replied bluntly. “You’d spend more time driving than working, and time’s getting short. Your boyfr– your little mate Innes will be here next week, and from the sound of him we can expect he’ll want to go bush right away, which means being ready when he gets here.”

  Judith felt a shiver along her spine at his reference to Derek, not to mention his too-innocent, too-deliberate fumble over the word “boyfriend.” It had been, she was positive, far more deliberate than innocent, and she resolved not to let him know he’d scored.

  “I expect Derek will want to ‘go bush’ right away,” she said calmly. Then added, “But what about the rest of our party? Surely it isn’t expected that you and I will be doing all the preparation.”

  “Ted Norton, who – okay – should be doing the quartermaster’s work, is off bush someplace himself and won’t be back before Friday. And Roberta’s not going to be free until Monday, not that it matters especially because she’s always totally organized, and will be no matter what Innes decides. As for the greenie contingent, I still have to find them, so I’ve no idea what help they’re going to provide in the preparation.”

  If any, he might as well have said, although the tone of his voice did it for him. Judith found herself wondering again just how harmonious relationships on this project were going to be.

  “I see,” was all she could think to say. Then found herself forced to add, hurriedly, “Well all right, then, I’ll come.”

  What choice, she asked herself, did she really have? True, her contract from Jeremiah hadn’t yet arrived and wasn’t expected for the better part of a week. But he had said she’d be on his payroll beginning with that first phone call, and her research successes to date hardly justified the magnificent salary she was theoretically drawing.

  “I’ll come,” she repeated more emphatically.

  “I expect you will,” Bevan replied, and the sexual innuendo that replaced the coldness in his voice was no great improvement. “Are you going to be all right about finding the place?”

  “I should hope so,” she snapped, now inexplicably on edge without being certain why. “I’ll need, oh, an hour to pack, I suppose. And ... what? ... two hours to get there?”

  “More like three, assuming you don’t get lost. No great fuss, anyway. I won’t start cooking tea until you actually get here, and you’ll have all afternoon to do that.”

  “And you expect me to stay for how long?” she asked through gritted teeth.

  “Oh, three or four days should do us unless a whole lot more gear arrives in the meantime. Which it probably will. You might as well come prepared to make a weekend of it, and that way we’ll be ready to launch if your boy comes in Monday morning and wants to start things off with a hiss and a roar.”

  Not without time to organize a press conference, he won’t, Judith wanted to say, but didn’t. Instead, her mind switched topics.

  “You do realize that Vanessa is due next Wednesday?” she asked. “And I hope you also realize that I don’t intend to miss that occasion. Not for you, not for Derek Innes, not for all the fictitious Tasmanian tigers in the entire state!”

  Or the real ones, for that matter. Ignorant man! I suppose you think I’m here in your precious “Island” state just to hide from the real world. Well it ain’t so – I’m here to support Nessie – first, last, and foremost. Not that I’d expect you to recognize anything that simple. And she scowled at the thought, more than half angry with him despite not being entirely sure he deserved the anger.

  “I would expect nothing else,” Bevan said with a soft, surprising chuckle. “And you shall be there, too. That much I can promise.”

  10

  It was Bevan’s promise that kept floating in and out of her mind as she made the long drive north to his property in the southwestern foothills of Ben Lomond. He had pointed out the highway exit during their journey the night before and given her more specific directions over the phone, so she thought it would be impossible to get lost.

  And she was right. She found the property easily after a trip that lasted just two and a half hours door-to-door.

  The laughter shared with Bevan on the phone had vitally changed her mood. His sense of humor, she had decided, might be decidedly quirky, but it matched her own sufficiently to be appreciated. And, more important, it seemed to be genuine. Not like Derek’s, which she had found increasingly dependent upon other people’s misfortunes and shortcomings.

  Judith emerged from her rental car and stood looking up at the massive sandstone house. The sound of dogs barking furiously at some distance continued until a disembodied voice commanded them to stop, but nobody came out to meet her.

  She walked over to knock at a magnificently carved front door but paused before doing so as she realized the front door of the house was apparently not in use. The stoop was covered in pots of flowering plants which appeared to have lived there for some
time.

  “You’ll have to come round this way,” said Bevan’s distinctive voice from behind her, and she turned to find him watching her, a half-smile on his generous mouth.

  This was yet another Bevan Keene – the working grazier, dressed in work boots and khaki pants and shirt, his sleeves rolled up and the shirt open halfway down his broad, muscular chest. It was strange, she thought, that with his wet-sand colored hair and mustache and the khaki clothing he didn’t look sort of nondescript and washed-out, as so many outdoorsmen did. With Bevan, the khaki clothing only seemed to intensify his pale gray eyes, and the gleaming whiteness of his teeth as he smiled at her.

  “Am I too early?” she asked with deliberate innocence. “I drove a bit quicker than perhaps I should have, but I didn’t want to find myself getting lost without time to find myself again.”

  Utter and complete bull – and Bevan clearly realized it, from his grin.

  “You’re just in time to peel potatoes, actually,” he said. “But come in and have a drink first to fortify yourself against such non-journalistic labors.”

  He guided her around to the rear door, explaining that the formal entry to the immense house hadn’t been used since the family had bought the property some years previously.

  “Typical, here in the country,” he said. “I expect it only got opened twice in the history of the previous owners, too. When they bought it and when they sold out.”

  Inside, having entered through a gigantic kitchen that had been modernized without diminishing any of the house’s traditional elegance, Judith found herself carrying a very large glass of red wine as she followed Bevan on what he called “the two-bob tour.”

  The house was as gracious as she might have expected. It was sparsely furnished, but each piece of furniture was clearly chosen with good taste and great care. His, she wondered? And remembered how Bevan’s much-younger sister had exhibited a similar quality of taste at the incineration dinner party.

  “Alana was some help in getting the place fixed up as far as we’ve got,” he said, and Judith had to hide her flinch at the way he seemed to read her mind. “There’s a way to go yet before it can ever approach the way it once was, and will be again. I’ve sort of slowed down now because the rest of the work is getting into that personal taste area that requires a lot of thought.”

  And somehow, without his even mentioning the word, Judith found herself thinking it. Wife! The house clearly didn’t have one, a fact she found annoyingly satisfying, but such redecorating as had been done had been halted just at the point where the personal taste of whatever woman would live here simply had to be considered and consulted before anything further could be done.

  The original builder had clearly been a person of vision. The house was sited to face the most-used rooms north and east, providing both winter sun and a wonderful view of the imposing bulk of Ben Lomond as it loomed above with an air of solid protectiveness. Impressive plantings of both native and European trees provided for summer shade and year-round privacy from the property’s work buildings and yards.

  But for Judith, the crowning highlight was the library, a large, well-lit room absolutely alive with books and atmosphere. Everything was neatly displayed, but the entire room seemed to shout that it was a working library, that every book was there to be read, enjoyed, cherished. The room and its contents seemed to have a life of their own, a total personality that cried out to Judith. She felt her fingers itching to open first this book, then that, and then yet another. So enchanting was the wondrous mixture of novels, research books, records, and other works that she could happily have stopped right there and stayed, all else forgotten.

  But the tour didn’t stop at the house.

  “You might as well see it all,” Bevan suggested. “We’ll have a good wander round, work up an appetite for dinner.”

  Judith was thankful for having dressed appropriately in jeans and a sweatshirt, not to mention comfortable jogging shoes. By the time they’d toured the outbuildings, the neat and well-maintained yards, met the dogs in their individual runs and inspected the denizens of the “hospital paddock” she was more than ready for dinner.

  As they returned to the house, she found herself evaluating Bevan Keene in the light of his home, the way his animals appeared to be treated, and the way he seemed to fit his surroundings as if born to them, which it turned out he had been.

  “Our family settled originally around Ouse,” he told her during their walk. “That’s a little place out west of Hobart, in the Derwent Valley. The old man was a rum’n – what you’d call eccentric. Some would have said he was mad as a meat axe, but he knew what he was about, and by the time I was half grown he had fingers in so many pies I don’t think even he knew the entire picture. He had land holdings everywhere, and the worst record-keeping system you can imagine.”

  Then Bevan laughed, and it was a generous, genuine, comfortable laugh.

  “Caused us no end of hassles just before he died. Got into strife with the taxation department because of the way he’d organized the family holdings, this one among them. I wasn’t much impressed, but Phelan was the one that really got done over. He ended up with his share, but he got a wife to go with it.”

  As he related the tale of his brother and tax officer sister-in-law Vashti – both of whom Judith had met at the dinner party – Judith found herself warming more and more to Bevan. It seemed as if all the prickles in their relationship had dissolved during their walk, for which she was extremely grateful.

  Until he finished the tale by saying, “I think Phelan and Vashti have finally forgiven little sister Alana for her part in the whole sorry tale, but I haven’t forgotten and I’m not about to. So kindly remember if you get to talking to her that she is not to be trusted. Not a single inch!”

  A roundabout, but hardly subtle way of reminding her that he wasn’t looking for a wife and wouldn’t welcome his sister’s intrusions into such affairs if he were?

  “In fact, I considered aiming her at your little mate from Queensland,” Bevan continued, confirming Judith’s last thought. “Alana would keep him so confused and off-balance he wouldn’t know which way was up, and that might be a good thing for our little expedition.”

  And he looked at Judith directly, his eyes flickering with unholy lights that she interpreted as a warning of worse to come.

  “Except I suppose you mightn’t think much of that idea.” And now his grin was that of a predator, some crouching jungle cat just waiting.

  “I quite liked your sister,” Judith replied after too long a silence. “Whatever she’s done, or you think she’s done, she doesn’t deserved being aimed at Derek Innes. She couldn’t possibly deserve it. Nobody could!”

  Carefully and quickly thought out, but her verbal reply was wasted. Bevan had clearly made up his mind about her relationship with Derek, and wasn’t going to let facts get in the way, as he said, “Rather keep him to yourself?”

  Bevan didn’t even bother to look at her, simply threw the remark in as a sort of aside, making it neither question nor direct statement. Deliberately baiting her. Making no bones about it.

  “I’d rather he stayed in Queensland, and I expect you’ll feel much the same once you’ve had to deal with him for very long,” she said. And then, patience strained, she added, “In fact I really don’t know why you’re involved in all this. The project is ridiculous and we both know it.”

  “If it’s so ridiculous, then why are you involved?” he countered. And now he did look at her, but there was virtually no expression in those pale eyes. No warmth, no discernible hostility, just a sort of deep, fathomless emptiness.

  “I needed the job,” she admitted, making no attempt to either dress up the issue or evade it.

  “Ah.”

  He made a veritable meal of that tiny, single word, seeming to roll it around in his mouth, savor it, taste it. As if he was savoring, Judith thought, his ability to make her most thoroughly uncomfortable with this accusative inquisition.


  As he did so, his pale eyes roamed the terrain of her face. Then his gaze roved even farther afield, drifting down the line of her neck, lingering with intent on the fullness of her breasts, then returning to meet her gaze – mocking her, and doing so quite deliberately.

  “My needing a job seems a far simpler reason than any you’re likely to have,” Judith protested. She could see the wry downturn at the corners of his mouth, could palpably feel the disbelief he was registering.

  “Certainly does seem so,” he replied enigmatically, then quickened his step because they were nearly at the door and before she could even think, he was opening the door, holding it for her, bowing her inside with exaggerated formality.

  “I think it’s time for another drink,” he said. “And while you’re getting around that, I shall bring in Madam’s baggage, properly park her car, and” ... whereupon he smiled broadly ... “promise to stop rousting on her until after dinner.”

  “You can roust on me all you like,” she said. “But yes, it would be nice if you’d feed me first. I can get very, very cranky on an empty stomach.”

  “Hah! One thing, at least, in common,” he said with a genuine attempt at a friendly grin. “That’s probably what’s wrong with both of us. We’re hungry and starting to show the effects.”

  Judith didn’t answer that one. He was certainly correct in her case, but she didn’t think his was quite so simply explained away. It was obvious Bevan was leading her toward something, and she wasn’t certain she liked the direction.

  The vocal silence lengthened as he built them each a fresh drink. Then he handed hers over with a bow and said, “Right, that’s a start. Now I’ll get your bags and then excuse myself for long enough to throw my body beneath running water, if you don’t mind. We won’t be dressing for dinner, but I’d like to be a bit more civilized than this.”

  Judith wandered into the library after his departure, and although thoroughly entranced by its contents, she was also uncomfortably aware of the man himself, the man whose presence fairly haunted the large room. It was a haunting ultimately enhanced by the faint sound of his voice as he sang – and sang quite well, too – in a distant shower. She couldn’t distinguish the words, but the tune sounded vaguely familiar.