Caprice

CAPRICE

Amanda Carpenter

Men adored her, women envied her

Caprice lived up to her name. A tantalizing, colorful butterfly, she

was an unpredictable young beauty who kept everything hidden

beneath the surface. No man had ever gotten close to her, and that

was the way she wanted it.

Why, then, did her mind dwell on the handsome, enigmatic Pierce

Langston? Why did he excite her... and frighten her?

Caprice knew the answer. It lay in his disturbing gaze, which seemed

to see right through her; in his touch, which sent sensual shivers

down her spine ....

'I DON'T know,' said Caprice, doubtfully. 'I guess I'd have to think

about it.'

'Good God, Cap!' said Roxanne, in an explosion of impatience.

Caprice turned her head to look at the brunette who was possibly her

closest friend, and the only one who got away with calling her 'Cap'.

'What is there to think about? Either you want to come, or you don't.'

Then Roxanne turned suddenly doubtful herself. 'Right?'

Caprice turned back to the outfit she was considering with a vague

eye. She had a particular talent for putting all her friends and

acquaintances off stride with her preoccupied air, as though she were

somewhere else, or at least wishing she was.

And she knew it. That air of distraction was carefully cultivated, and

her sudden changes of mood, along with her apparent indecisiveness,

kept everyone around her on their toes and hopping. The fact that

Roxanne was apparently Caprice's closest friend but that nobody

could really tell for sure was just another example of elusiveness that

clung to the girl wherever she went. It drove the opposite sex quite

crazy, but they seemed to go for it like panting, thirsty dogs, for an

entourage of young men from Caprice's acquaintance gathered

around her constantly.

She put her slim forefinger to the side of her mouth, pulling down her

lower lip thoughtfully as she stared from Roxanne to the dress she

was holding, to the floor and then to the ceiling, and then back to

Roxanne. 'We'll just have to wait and see,' she said then, sweetly.

Her friend was flabbergasted, and frankly close to fury. She had

jumped to accept the weekend invitation for the two of them, for

Jeffrey Langston's family lodge in New England was reputed to be

quite luxurious and was most certainly exclusive. Not everyone got

an invitation for the weekend, but Caprice didn't seem to realise that.

Roxanne had even let her frustration show, but Caprice had shrugged

the irritation aside as if it were no more than a buzzing fly.

Sometimes nothing seemed to get to the other girl, and Roxanne

wondered briefly if she was as dumb as she sometimes seemed.

But no. .One thing that could safely be said about Caprice was that

she most definitely was not stupid. She had gained high marks at

Vassar yet had hardly ever opened a book, Roxanne remembered,

and occasionally would let slip statements that showed a keen

working intelligence behind her ever-shifting, changing facade. She

had once said of one of the brunette's boyfriends that he had Rox on

the brain, and such comments came from her at, to say the least, the

most unsettling of times.

Caprice shook the dress by the hanger, making the creases fall out of

the static-charged skirt. She was fully aware of what Roxanne was

thinking, knew better, most likely, than Roxanne herself, but she let

none of it show on her face. Then she held the dress to her front and

stared at her reflection in the full length, polished mirror.

A sun-kissed, golden brown face peered back at her, with silver gilt,

baby fine hair. It fell to past her shoulders, for the most part fairly

straight from the weight of the length, but with wispy tendrils that

escaped and framed her face in a luminescent halo. Huge midnight

violet eyes were in the middle of this delicately framed, delicately

boned face. Perhaps the jaw was rather firm, but nobody ever

noticed, for the immense, eloquent eyes were what captured the

attention and then gently but quite inexorably held it.

She murmured, imagining herself dancing in the dress under soft

lights, 'I think it's the wrong colour for me, don't you?'

With a short, gusty sigh, the brunette turned her attention to the dress

also. 'It looks fine to me,' she said.

Those violet eyes turned to her friend, noting the pique. She held the

dress next to Roxanne and then dreamily replied, 'Mmm. It would

look better on you.'

That attracted the other girl's attention, who then peered into the

mirror herself and said, on an interested note, 'Do you really think

so?'

'Yes.' Caprice abandoned the dress by shoving it into Roxanne's

hands, and then she went along the rest of the small boutique,

humming lightly under her breath. On a whim, she threw several

different outfits over one arm and headed back to the dressing-rooms

to try them all on. Snagged by the praise Caprice had given her,

Roxanne trailed behind, still clutching the dress.

About forty minutes later, they were both walking out of the shop,

laden down with packages. Caprice slid a quick glance over to

Roxanne's larger load. If the other girl wondered why she had been

the one to end up with the larger purchase when it had been Caprice's

idea that they go shopping in the first place, she didn't say so aloud.

'What now?' asked Caprice lightly, as she stood in the middle of the

pavement and looked around her. In the sun, her hair nearly

shimmered and sparkled, it blazed so brightly. 'Lunch?'

'I don't know.' Roxanne looked up and down the street. 'I spent more

money than I had expected to. My allowance for this month is

practically gone, and it's only the nineteenth,'

'No problem.' Caprice's reply was serene, and she headed down the

pavement. 'I'll buy today.'

The restaurant they went to boasted superb service and exorbitant

prices. They were soon seated, and within no time a bottle of white

wine was ordered and brought to the table, frosty and dripping from

the bucket of ice it resided in. Out of the corner of her eye, Caprice

could see Roxanne settling back to enjoy the treat, sipping

pleasurably at a glass of the chilled wine, and she turned her attention

to the menu selection, frowning delicately in indecision. After they

had ordered, Roxanne turned to her and said, 'About next weekend,

Cap -'

'Oh yes, of course,' she said mildly, hiding her bored resignation. 'I'll

go.' She watched as Roxanne stumbled to a halt in the middle of a

non-existent argument.

The other girl asked carefully, 'Just like that? You'll go? I thought

you wanted to think about it.'

She resisted a caustic retort. 'I have. I think it'll be fun.'

'I—see.'

Caprice smiled very slightly as Roxanne let her mouth hang open as

if to say something else, but then apparently changed her mind and

shut it tightly. Within a very short time, their lunch was served, cold,

delicately flavoured shrimp and leafy salad, and then they turned

their conversation to other, mundane things while they ate.

Later, after she had dropped Roxanne at home, she went home

herself, humming as Three Dog Night howled over the radio. She

pulled, quick and yet neat, into the driveway and to the huge garage,

pressing the automatic door opener and watching it swing up with a

slight motor whine. She parked her Porsche neatly, and then grabbed

for her packages as she climbed out of the car, and entered the huge

old colonial house from the garage.

Her parents weren't home yet, so after calling a cheery greeting to

their housekeeper, Liz, who was busy in the laundry room, she raced

upstairs to her bedroom. Because of the house's age, every bedroom

had a fireplace, and exquisite, polished hardwood floors which her

mother only occasionally, and not very sincerely, lamented. Caprice

had a French tapestry rug spread on the floor of her room which

dated back to the late 1800s, with heavy dark wood furniture and a

Victorian dresser with a marble top. The colour of the wood reflected

a golden warmth whenever she lit a fire in her room.

She carelessly tossed her purchases on to the neatly made, canopied

bed and went to her tiny bathroom to work the tangles out of her

windblown, silver blonde hair. She stared into the bathroom mirror

with a certain amount of wryness.

She was the very first of anyone to admit that she was a rather odd

creature. Her mother was Italian, though not full-blooded, having an

English grandmother from whom Caprice inherited both hair and eye

colouring. But her skin was definitely Latin, as she tanned deeply and

quickly to that sun-burnished dark gold without a hint of a freckle

anywhere on her slim body. Her first name was an Italian adaptation,

and a difficult one to live with at that. But her last name, Hagan, like

her father, was decidedly Irish, which was all fair enough considering

that they were at least third generation Americans, and part of the

huge melting-pot which mixed ethnic groups indiscriminately.

But to saddle her with a name like Caprice was cruelty beyond all

cruelties. She tried a frown into the mirror and noticed that it came

out petulant, as her frowns always did, so she ironed her brow out

again with a sigh. Oh, well, it could have been worse. She could have

been named something totally unspeakable, like Olympia, or Myrtle.

The problem was, people tended to form instant impressions about a

person from their name, and Caprice certainly didn't lend itself to

immediate respect.

To be perfectly frank, she realised, as she walked back to her

bedroom and sat on the edge of her bed—and incidentally on the new

blouse she'd bought—she really was a bit capricious. She
was

whimsical, and given to impulse. What was it, really: a case of the

name predicting the personality, or the personality fitting itself to the

name? She didn't know. Her hand, still clutching the brush, sank

slowly to her lap.

For a moment, and only for a moment, something desolate and

terribly lonely looked out of the exquisite, immense violet eyes. The

whimsical aspect of her personality was only a part of her, she knew.

Wasn't it? But thai that was all anybody saw in her, even down to her

closest friend, so perhaps she was wrong after all. Her expression

lightened again, without a single lingering trace of the odd darkness

that had showed just a moment before. What difference did it make?

Her life was amusing, and diverse.

With a shake of her slim shoulders, she dismissed philosophy from

her mind and ran down the stairs in search of her younger brother.

Perhaps she could persuade Ricky to play a couple of games of tennis

before supper. After that large lunch, she needed to work up an

appetite.

She managed to coerce Ricky into playing with her. He had just

started college the year before, whereas she had just graduated, but

they had one characteristic in common; they were lazing the summer

away. They were also well-matched for hard tennis playing, for what

Caprice lacked in sheer bulk and power, she made up for in finesse

and experience, having played for several years longer than Ricky.

But in the end, her large lunch told against her, and she lost rather

heavily, much to her brother's mild derision. One commendable