Duplicity (6 page)

"I'm just dying to know how you two met," Aunt Lollie added.

"It was at a concert," Ellen said.

"It was at a football game," Dirk said at the same time.

"Well, which was it?" Uncle Vester asked.

Ellen smiled at him over the vegetable soup. "To tell you the truth I was so stunned the first time I met him, I don't remember what we were doing."

"But you remember later, don't you, darling?" Dirk asked. "The moonlight, the wine, the hayloft."

He knew she was equal to the occasion, otherwise he would have found another way to protect himself. That moment on the porch had been an epiphany for him, and he had known then that the only way to survive this family reunion and walk away unscathed afterward was to submerge his feelings. He'd play the role of devil-may-care adventurer—along for the ride and any pleasure he could get from her.

She swallowed the soup and glared at him. Reminding herself that she had wanted this charade and that it was all for a good cause, she plunged full speed ahead.

"That must have been that wretched Waylings girl, Dirk." She tried a pout and hoped she didn't look like she had stuffed her mouth with cotton. "You never took me to the hayloft."

"An oversight I shall try to remedy, my dear." He lifted his glass of iced tea in salute to her.

"You can use mine," Uncle Vester offered.

Aunt Lollie, who could talk about making babies and cozy afternoons in public, but who thought real nitty-gritty sex should be discussed in whispers, kicked her husband under the table.

"You've had other girlfriends, Dirk?" Her tone was mildly disapproving. For her, real romance meant having a one-and-only.

"Never looked at another woman after I met Ellen, Aunt Lollie," he said. "The poor little ol' Waylings girl was jus' a friend. " He leaned over and pinched Ellen's cheek. "You know how jealous women in love can be."

Ellen rolled her eyes at his choice of Southern phrasing. She pinched him back and whispered in his ear, "Your drawl stinks."

Uncle Vester and Aunt Lollie could spot a Yankee a mile away. The ridiculous attempt didn't fool them. Now that they had determined he was virile enough to help Ellen carry on the Stanford bloodline, they wanted to know his background. After all, he was staying at their house. If he had anything to be ashamed of, they'd want to know before the big dinner so they could collaborate on the proper story to tell the rest of the clan.

"What part of the country are you from?" Aunt Lollie asked. She hoped it was somewhere glamorous like New York, but Pennsylvania would do.

"Connecticut," Dirk said. It was partially true, he told himself. It was one of the many places he was from.

Connecticut didn't sound like much to Aunt Lollie, but she guessed she could glamorize it by telling Fronie it had whales.

"I don't suppose you work in one of those places with whales, do you?" she asked.

Seeing that Aunt Lollie was enamored of whales. Dirk said, "Whale sighting is a hobby of mine."

"He's a lawyer, Aunt Lollie," Ellen said. Her conscience hurt her only a little. After all, she was making them happy. She tried not to think ahead to the time when she would have to undo her fiance.

"A fancy criminal lawyer, I'll bet," Uncle Vester said.

He was so excited he slurped his soup. He didn't give a damn about whales. Money was what interested him. It would be wonderful if his brother Mike's only daughter had snagged herself a rich husband after waiting until she was almost an old maid before she got married.

Dirk cheerfully supplied information for Uncle Vester's fantasy. "I don't like to brag, but I'm the best in the country at what I do. I've come up against some of world's biggest crime figures."

Uncle Vester pounded his fork on the table with glee. "Whipped them all, did you, boy? Put 'em right where they belong."

"You'd have been proud of the job I did on them." Dirk knew that the truth can sometimes be disguised as fiction, and he salved his conscience by telling himself that he was making two old people happy.

By the time they got to the roast beef, Uncle Vester and Aunt Lollie were suggesting that Dirk might someday run for President, what with his background in criminal law and whales, and Ellen had decided that if Dirk weren't such an arrogant bastard, he would be the most decent man she knew.

As they walked up the stairs to their bedroom she put her hand on his arm and looked up at him. "Thank you."

He gazed at her beautiful face and thought of the four-poster bed and the long night ahead. "Don't thank me yet."

Ellen began arranging their separate beds the minute she walked through the bedroom door. Her shoes tapped smartly against the polished wooden floor as she walked to the closet and began taking down quilts.

 Out of the corner of her eye she noticed that Dirk was standing in front of the window, apparently intent on gazing at the moonlit pasture behind the farmhouse.
Who was he
, she wondered,
this enigmatic man who was outrageous and arrogant one minute and thoughtful the next?

 She flipped a quilt in the air and spread it on the floor. It was more than scientific curiosity that motivated her. It was more than the remembered feel of his hand on her leg. She was fascinated by Dirk the same way she was fascinated by the unrestrained violence of nature. And she could no more explain that than she could fly to the moon. She only knew that from the time she was a child, she had taken every opportunity to stand at the window and watch a thunderstorm. No hiding her face under the covers for Ellen Stanford. No covering her ears and shrieking in fear. She had reveled in the raw power of nature just as she was beginning to revel in the raw power of the black-eyed stranger who was to share her room.

She added two more quilts to the floor, trying to make his pallet as comfortable as possible. "So you're from Connecticut?" she said. She tried to make the question sound casual, small talk to fill the time.

"Sometimes." He didn't turn from the window. He seemed preoccupied with his own thoughts.

"What about other times?" She covered her interest by retrieving a feather pillow from the closet shelf and placing it on the pallet.

"Here and there."

Strike a big fat zero for place
. She decided to try occupation.

"You played the part of a criminal lawyer quite convincingly, I thought. Is that really your profession?"

He turned from the window and gave her a slow, lazy smile. She shivered as if she had suddenly caught the attention of a big black panther.

"Gathering scientific data, Dr. Stanford?"

She would have walked over hot coals before admitting that her interest was personal. "You could call it that. I'm trying to see if I can use you as an income-tax deduction. Research or legal advice."

"How about hanky-panky?" He crossed the room with long, swift strides and took her into his arms. "I believe that's what you're paying me for." His embrace tightened and he bent his head to nuzzle her neck.

She tried to squirm away, but not because she didn't like his touch.
No, indeed
. The problem was that she liked it too much. She liked the feel of his hot breath on her skin. She loved the way parts of her seemed to melt and flow into his body. She loved the hardness of him, the rocklike strength.

 She liked it so much that a certain gorilla named Gigi was completely wiped from her mind. Years of meticulous research dwindled to nothing in the overpowering presence of this mysterious man. There was no room in Ellen's life for a man like that, a man who edged her work out of first place.

"Don't waste your performances on me," she said. "Save them for my relatives."

"This is no performance."

He took her lips with embarrassing ease, moving ever so slowly, teasing, probing until he had elicited the proper response. She felt as if jagged lightning was suddenly coursing through her body. Her arms wrapped involuntarily around his neck, and she pressed close to his muscled strength as her lips invited him to further exploration.

There was a groan, a combined sound of agony and ecstasy, and neither of them knew who had made it. They were too enraptured by the thrust of tongue against tongue, the straining of flesh against flesh, the exchange of thunderbolt sensations.

A dozen thoughts hovered around the edge of Ellen's mind, seeking admittance, but she refused to allow them in. She knew that she was flirting with danger, but for the moment she was going to enjoy the excitement that only Dirk could give her. She was going to allow herself this forbidden pleasure, and then she would pull away and get on with the business of real life.

But she never got that chance. Dirk was the first to pull away. As she felt the ecstasy leave her lips, she opened her eyes and caught a glimpse of his face. It was twisted in lines of torment as if he were wrestling with demons more fierce than hers. He raked his hand through his hair, and strode quickly away from her.
Was work his demon too?

Or was it something else? What was the secret he was keeping from her?

Suddenly he whirled around, and his face was so untroubled, she thought she must have imagined his earlier torment.

"I thought I'd get your mind off the questions," he said. "Did I?"

She clapped her hands together in mocking applause. "Bravo. You should get an Academy Award for your performance."

"The kiss?"

"No. The pretense." That she could move so smoothly from putty to iron was a tribute to her remarkable self-control. "You enjoyed that kiss every bit as much as I did. What are you hiding?"

"This," he said smoothly as he removed his shirt. He tossed it carelessly onto a chair. "And this." His hand moved to his belt buckle.

"Shock therapy won't work with me. Besides, I've already seen you without your clothes. "

"Have you, my darling?" Giving her a wicked grin he let his pants drop to the floor. Hooking his hand into the waistband of his shorts, he said, "I sleep naked."

"I don't care how you sleep as long as you don't parade it around in front of me," she yelled. "You are the most conceited man on the face of the earth." She stalked toward the bathroom, muttering as she went. "Always talking about hanky- panky and loving. Kissing me when I don't expect it. Lord, I should have stayed on Beech Mountain." She shut the door with a bang, and then opened it for one last word. "For your information, I've seen better bodies on gorillas."

To her heightened senses the movement of his shorts hitting the floor was like lightning.

"Good night, love," he said. "If you get lonesome, just yell. I'm right here." Giving her a last wicked grin, he lay down on the pallet and turned his back to her.

She ducked back inside the bathroom and leaned against the wash basin for support.
What was the matter with her?
First she laid down the law about how this was just a business arrangement, and then she tried to find out who he was. Worse yet, she had come right out and told him that she enjoyed his kisses. Whatever had happened to the woman who did lonely research on a mountaintop, the woman who put her work first?

She splashed water onto her hot face and considered leaving Lawrence County first thing tomorrow. With water spiking her eyelashes and dripping off the end of her nose, she stood in the bathroom and weighed her options. On the one hand were the relatives and Gigi, happily anticipating the family reunion and her involvement. On the other hand was the audacious impostor in the next room, goading her with his teasing and his expert kisses. Leaving tomorrow would disappoint the people she loved most and would probably give that arrogant, no-name pretender all manner of perverse satisfaction.

She grabbed a washcloth and scrubbed viciously at her mouth, trying to wipe away the remnants of his kiss.
How could she ever have thought she liked his kisses? Hell
, she didn't even like him. She wouldn't leave tomorrow if Lawrence County sent out a posse to drive her away. She wouldn't give him the satisfaction.

Dirk knew by the way her bare feet slapped the wooden floor that she was still angry when she came back into the bedroom. That was just the way he wanted it. He would use her anger to keep walls between them. If he felt a slight twinge of guilt at using her this way, he salved his conscience by telling himself that she was using him, too.

He lay motionless on his makeshift bed and watched her walk across the room to the open window. The moonlight caught silver highlights in her blue robe and turned her hair to a halo of fire.

He loved the way she walked, purposeful and confident, yet completely feminine. He studied her lovely profile as she gazed out the window, and wondered what was running through that brilliant mind of hers. Was she thinking of her work? Her relatives? The deception? Was she perhaps thinking of him?

The idea pleased him inordinately, and he wondered what it would be like to have someone think of him. Remember his birthday. Worry about him if he was late. Years of training in waiting stillness kept him from shaking his head in self-disgust. Who was he kidding? Men in his profession were automatically set apart from those things.