Read Tender Deception for Free Online Page B

suddenly came striding out from the darkened stage to sit at its edge, his legs dangling. “Sorry to have kept you all waiting. I should have let you get out of costume.” He grinned delightedly. “Our guest was spotted by reporters and held up, but he’ll be here momentarily.”
    “Who is it—God?” Terry muttered, unintentionally audible.
    Monte gave her a sharp stare, and she had the grace and good sense to smile as if her words had been a joke. “Come to think of it, Miss Nicholson, I think you did compare him to God at one time,” Monte said dryly, his grin taking on a slightly malicious cast. “A few of you know him, a few of you know only his work.”
    Monte’s voice droned on, but Vickie wasn’t listening anymore. Small stabs of fear were beginning to shoot through her. It couldn’t be! No, it just couldn’t be him, she thought desperately. The last she had heard, he had completed one of the recently popular space-adventure movies and gone on to Broadway. His television series had been successful, but he had pulled out when he felt its course had been run.
    No! She shook her head vaguely, feeling the whip of her pigtails as they hit her face. How absurd. He had been gone three years. He was worth a fortune; he could call his own shots. Why should he come back to such a comparatively small theater town?
    “Oh, and here he is now!” Monte said, jumping to his feet and smiling warmly toward the dark right wing from where Vickie could hear assured footsteps and just begin to see the tall, broad-shouldered frame of a man. “Ladies and gentlemen,” Monte called in a ringing voice, “may I present with much pride and great pleasure one of my own protégés, our summer guest, Mr. Brant Wicker.”
    The room filled with ecstatic applause, but Vickie didn’t hear it. A buzzing began in her ears as her face blanched beneath the greasepaint. She sat motionlessly, not able to register thought, as Brant appeared on the stage, his cobalt eyes twinkling merrily, his full, sensuous mouth set into a heart-rending grin, his blond head gleaming like a halo.
    Then, as if she were an outside observer, an unknown entity sailing above her own body, she made a few mental notes. He had changed. His jaw was squarer, firmer, his face leaner, the hollows beneath his high cheekbones more pronounced. Small lines etched their way around his eyes and the corners of his mouth. His body was still long and trim, wire-muscled, but it had filled out; the shoulders and chest were now wide, tapering to a narrow waist and slim hips.
    Like a marionette, Vickie jerked around as Bobby emitted a loud yelp and rushed for the stage to pump Brant’s hand. Terry followed him; they had been the two who had worked with Brant before, the two who had been with the company before Brant Wicker, the Tampa football hero turned actor, had left his home state for fame and fortune. A cacophony of excited voices rippled through the room, but they didn’t register in Vickie’s mind. Only the deadly buzzing. Nice guy, she thought, the words shooting shrilly in her mind. That was what even the most probing and vile of the fan magazines said. Oh, yeah, nice guy. Good man. Ethical, dignified, and unaffected. Hysteria was rising beneath her immobility. Calm down! she warned herself, finally managing to lick her parched lips. Play it cool! He won’t remember, I know he won’t remember.
    Monte was walking with Brant around the tables where the cast sat scattered, introducing him to all the members. Vickie reached across the table for Bobby’s pack of cigarettes and somehow lit one without fumbling. She seldom smoked—it was hard on a performer—but at the moment she needed that cigarette as much as she usually needed air to breathe. Inhale, exhale. “That’s better,” she told herself, noting thankfully that her long, slender fingers were steady and her hands composed.
    “Come to think of it,” Monte was telling Brant as they approached her, alone now at