Книга - Unwilling Surrender

Unwilling Surrender
CATHY WILLIAMS


I'm immune to male charm and good looks!That was what Christina told herself - and Adam Palmer had more than his fair share of both qualities… as Christina knew only too well, having had a crush on him since she was a teenager! But he'd responded to her naive infatuation with arrogance and scorn, and Christina had finally managed to harden her heart against him… just as Adam seemed to take a sudden interest in her!What was he up to? Famous for preferring leggy blondes, he had to be amusing himself by toying with plain, sensible Christina's affections! Well, two could play at that game… .









Unwilling Surrender

Cathy Williams











www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)




CONTENTS


CHAPTER ONE (#uaaa69dfa-f8a2-5d2d-871e-edb1ed63c663)

CHAPTER TWO (#u1c7ab06e-1fe7-5af3-878e-1299a9fe9350)

CHAPTER THREE (#ua9332fa4-d573-59b4-bd87-a306478b7d22)

CHAPTER FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER SIX (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)




CHAPTER ONE


IT WAS two-thirty in the morning and the telephone was ringing. Right next to her bed. Sharp, insistent rings that demanded answering, and her immediate groggy thought was that some catastrophe had occurred. Something awful that couldn’t wait until a more civilised hour. After all, what voice at the end of a telephone at two-thirty in the morning was going to be the bearer of good tidings?

For a split-second she was tempted to let the damn thing ring, to let the bad news wait until morning, but she couldn’t. It wasn’t in her nature. She had never had much success in dodging reality and she wasn’t about to achieve it now.

She reluctantly lifted the receiver and waited for the person on the other end to speak. Which he did.

‘I knew you were there.’ That dark, velvety voice which could charm the birds off the trees was cold and abrupt and Christina felt her head thicken with a sudden, overwhelming tension, even though she told herself that that was silly. She was a grown woman of twenty-three and she had nothing to fear from Adam Palmer.

But old habits died hard. Ever since she was a child, he had been able to fill her with a similar sickening nervousness.

‘What do you want?’ she asked, knowing immediately why he had called and forestalling his inevitable question. ‘Have you any idea what time it is?’ Her head felt as clear as a bell, her mind alert and already in a position of self-defence.

‘I know exactly what the time is,’ he returned dismissively, ‘and, just in case you’re waiting for an apology for my phoning you at this hour, there won’t be one forthcoming. So don’t hold your breath.’

Oh, charming, she thought angrily. Has it occurred to you that I might not exactly relish being dragged out of sleep at this ungodly hour?

She had a mental image of him. Tall, strikingly handsome and frighteningly clever. A man who had probably never suffered even the most fleeting attack of self-consciousness in his entire life. She doubted that he had even given a second’s thought to the hour of his phone call.

She sat up straighter in her bed, her body stiff even though she was alone in the bedroom.

‘You could have waited until morning,’ she began on an indrawn breath, hanging on to some semblance of politeness while her mind conjured up satisfying pictures of him falling down a couple of flights of stairs, or finding himself lost in the middle of a desert somewhere with no help in sight. ‘You may think nothing of being up at this hour, but some of us happen to lead more orthodox lives.’

‘Cocoa at nine and then bed by nine-thirty, Tina?’ There was lazy mockery in his voice, and it sent the blood rushing to her head.

How wonderful to have been able to think of some bitingly acid retort, but as usual on these occasions her mind went blank.

She made a little strangled sound down the line and then took a deep breath, counting to ten. It was unwise to enter into any sort of argument with Adam Palmer, because he invariably won. In fact, it was unwise to let yourself become in the slightest bit ruffled by anything he had to say.

‘Yes,’ she said calmly, ‘and very enjoyable it is too, except when I get bothered by phone calls at this hour in the morning.’

‘What an exciting little girl you are,’ he remarked, in the same mocking voice, and she could have screamed. ‘But fascinating though your personal life is, you know my reason for calling you. Where the hell is my sister?’

‘I have no idea.’

‘And now that you’ve got that little lie off your chest, why don’t you tell me the truth? Where is she?’

She should have prepared some suitable lie. She had known as soon as Fiona flew the nest that her brother would come barging along for a few answers. After all, she was Fiona’s closest friend. But lying didn’t come easy to Christina. She was a placid, self-controlled girl who found that the wheels of life moved far more smoothly without intrigue.

‘I can’t tell you that,’ she said into the waiting silence, and she heard the furious intake of breath down the other end. ‘Fiona made me promise not to reveal her whereabouts.’

‘Oh, she did, did she?’

‘She’s not a child any longer, Adam,’ she continued hastily, because it didn’t take a genius to realise that his rage was climbing a few degrees higher with every word she spoke. ‘She’s twenty-two now. She can vote, she can go to pubs, she can even get married if she wants to.’

‘So that’s what she’s up to, is it?’ he bellowed down the line, and Christina held the phone a little way back from her ear. ‘Marriage? To that...that...’

‘You’ll get high blood-pressure if you don’t relax,’ she said with a weak attempt to defuse the situation, which was utterly futile.

‘You’ll damn well get high blood-pressure in a minute,’ he roared. ‘I’m on my way over.’

She heard the slam of the receiver and then that dead dialling tone and she looked at the phone with mounting horror.

On his way over? To her flat? Now? The prospect of Adam swooping down at her in a thunderous rage and demanding answers out of her made her tremble with apprehension. It had been bad enough merely hearing his voice down the receiver.

She thought of him in his Jaguar screeching over and her body was galvanised into action. Very quickly, she washed her face, combed her hair sensibly away from her face, and stuck on a pair of jeans and a jumper, feeling very odd being suddenly fully clothed when less than half an hour ago she was cocooned under a layer of blankets, sound asleep.

Fiona, she thought, this is all your fault. Why did you have to involve me in your wretched schemes?

But she really wasn’t cross with her friend. She had known her as long as she had known Adam, which was getting on for fifteen years, and she had long ago accepted her for what she was—an adorable, impulsive creature, who sailed through life blithely ignoring anything that remotely resembled cares or worries.

That, perhaps, had been the essence of their friendship, the reason why it had survived intact for so long. Opposites attracted, and Christina knew that she was exactly the opposite of her friend: composed where Fiona was apt to dramatise, controlled, level-headed, practical.

They even looked completely different. Fiona was small and intensely pretty, with raven-black hair like her brother, and the same vivid blue eyes. She had spent her life captivating men. It was the thing, she often told Christina, that she did best.

She, Christina, on the other hand, was tall and slender, without the curves that men seemed to go for. Her hair was an unremarkable brown, falling straight to her shoulders. She had long ago abandoned any attempt to make it appear more interesting than in fact it was. Her eyes, also brown, were usually serene. Only close observation revealed them to be what she in fact herself was, namely astute and humorous.

She glimpsed her reflection in the mirror and grimaced. She was plain. There was no denying that. It was one of those inescapable facts of life, like the sun rising every morning. She accepted it and in fact she was often thankful for it, because great beauty often brought great problems, whereas she could continue, for the most part, on her merry way, without her life being disturbed overmuch. She was never a threat to other women, and consequently had quite a few girlfriends, men enjoyed her company without any of that macho need to make a pass and, all in all, life was calm and enjoyable.

Only Adam Palmer had ever made her acutely aware of her lack of looks.

Not that he was cruel or derisory. Maybe it was because his own life was so crammed with gorgeous women that she immediately felt, in his presence, as if she was being given the once-over and found wanting.

She waited gloomily on the sofa in the lounge for his appearance, perched on the edge of the chair like a patient waiting for the dentist to summon.

He wouldn’t be long, she knew that. They both lived in London, albeit in wildly different areas. Her flat was a modest two-bedroomed place in Clapham. His house was a massive affair in north London, in an area where the profusion of trees could actually make you forget that you weren’t in suburbia.

He had inherited it on his parents’ death seven years previously, and he had lived there ever since with Fiona, looking after his sister with a fierce protectiveness which had often made Christina smile, but which Fiona, admittedly, had sometimes found stifling and exasperating.

She heard his car before the doorbell went. There was a squeal of tyres, then three sharp buzzes on the doorbell.

Christina resignedly pressed the button to open the main door in the lobby, and unlocked her own front door.

Then she waited on the sofa, hearing his footsteps mounting the stairs, and the rap on the front door, which was pushed open before she had finished telling him to come in.

He brought the cold air of winter with him. It clung to the black coat and the temperature in the room seemed to drop a few degrees. Christina reluctantly found her eyes drawn to him, looking at him and feeling as overawed and as taken aback as if she had never seen him in her life before.

Because every time she saw him she realised that she had forgotten just how tall and commanding his presence was. It filled the flat, giving off a vibrating, impatient energy that made you think of some caged jungle animal.

‘Would you like some coffee?’ she asked, standing up and watching him as he removed his coat and then sank on to one of the chairs, for all the world as though he were an invited guest.

‘Have you got anything stronger?’ he asked, fixing her with those amazing blue eyes of his. ‘Whisky? Gin?’

Christina’s lips tightened a fraction. Trust him, she thought. In a minute he’ll be mentioning that he feels a bit peckish and could I fix him a little something to eat.

‘There might be some wine in the fridge,’ she said with an edge to her voice that she hoped would leave him in no doubt that he was unwanted in her flat. ‘I don’t normally keep a supply of hard liquor in the flat.’

‘Very pointed,’ Adam observed, running his eyes over her in a way that made her think that he probably did that automatically every time he was with a woman, whatever her age or appearance. ‘No, forget the wine. I’ll have a cup of coffee, please, black and very sweet.’ He rubbed his fingers over his eyes. ‘God, I’m exhausted,’ he said. ‘Up at six this morning, back home at two-thirty, only to be confronted with some damn note from that sister of mine informing me that she’s gone, God knows where.’

‘What a stressful life you lead,’ Christina said without sympathy.

Back at two-thirty in the morning? Her heart was not bleeding. Chances were high that he had been out enjoying himself in the company of one of his entourage of glamorous adorers. Tired he might be, but only because he had no doubt been burning the candle at both ends.

She stalked into the kitchen and banged about in the cupboards, hoping that all the noise would end up giving him a thumping headache, and finally emerged ten minutes later with two mugs of coffee.

‘You knew about this, didn’t you?’ he asked as soon as she had handed him his coffee.

Christina didn’t reply immediately. She walked across to the sofa and sat down, tucking her long legs under her and taking a tentative sip from her mug.

Adam gave an impatient click of his tongue. ‘Well?’ he demanded, raking his fingers through his black hair in a frustrated, angry gesture. ‘Don’t just sit there. Answer me! You knew all about my sister and her hare-brained plans, didn’t you?’

Christina felt some of her calm evaporating. It had always been the same with him. She could remember being roused to rage in her early teens, stamping her feet, while he looked on, quite satisfied with his achievement, thinking that he could pour oil on troubled waters with the offer of tea in a café somewhere.

She couldn’t stamp her feet now, but she still felt like doing it.

‘You’re in my flat now,’ she said defensively, ‘and I would appreciate it if you don’t try to bully me into answering your questions.’

Adam frowned. ‘Me? Bully? I have no idea what you’re talking about. You always were a little over-sensitive, Tina.’

With remarkable restraint, she let that one go.

‘I don’t know why you bothered to come over here,’ she said, fighting to hang on to her self-control. ‘I’m not going to tell you anything more than I already have.’

‘Dammit, Tina! Why are you protecting her? I only want to find out her whereabouts so that I know she’s safe.’

‘She’s safe. Trust me.’

‘I’d rather not. Where is she?’

He had sat forward a little and she could feel his personality enfolding her so that it was a struggle to think clearly.

The man was hypnotic. Those eyes could prise out the most guarded of secrets. He would look you straight in the face, forcing you to fall under the spell of his powerful, persuasive personality, and slowly but surely he would end up finding out exactly what he wanted.

Little wonder women were forever tripping over themselves in their haste to grab a little bit of him, to try their luck at netting the biggest fish in the sea.

But she wasn’t one of his women. She had also known him long enough to see right through those tactics.

She stared back at him and repeated that her friend’s whereabouts were strictly confidential.

‘If she had wanted you to know, she would have told you in her note,’ Christina pointed out with irrefutable logic, and he glared at her furiously.

‘Stop trying to be clever with me! You know she wouldn’t let on to me what her plans were. For some reason she seems to think that I’m a bit over-protective.’ He transferred his glare to the mug of coffee, as if it had suddenly become responsible for his irritating situation, and Christina smiled.

Sometimes the set of his features reminded her of when he was much younger, and right now was one of those times. He had always been as stubborn as they came.

He looked up and caught her smiling and said angrily, ‘I’m glad you find the whole thing so amusing. You might not be quite so amused if Fiona lands herself in a spot of trouble. You know what she’s like just as well as I do. She has her head in the clouds. She goes through life thinking that nothing untoward could possibly happen to her, and one of these days that attitude is going to get her into a lot of trouble. The world isn’t ready to cope with my sister’s brand of naïveté.’

Christina knew that what he was saying was true. She also knew that trying to keep Fiona under lock and key was not the way to overcome any potential problems.

The truth of the matter was that Adam Palmer found his inability to restrain his sister frustrating. Unlike everything and everyone else in life, she refused to respond to his persuasion. Oh, she listened well enough, and nodded her head in all the right places, but then she proceeded to do just precisely as she wanted.

‘You can’t fight all her battles for her,’ Christina said eventually. ‘She has to learn from her own mistakes. Trying to run her life for her is just going to make her resent you.’

‘Is that what she told you? That she resents me?’

Christina sighed heavily. They were getting precisely nowhere and she was feeling very tired.

‘More or less,’ she hedged, and Adam stood up and walked across to her.

‘And I suppose you agree?’ He leant over her, gripping the back of the sofa on either side of her so that she was trapped by him.

She found her breath coming in small, quick gasps.

‘She has to make her own mistakes,’ she stammered, confused by his proximity and wishing that he would remove himself to some other, safer, part of the room. Or, better still, out of her flat altogether.

‘And you think that that includes marrying Simon West? That snivelling leech who’s only attracted to her because of her money? Should I stand back and watch her make that ultimate mistake without trying to do anything about it?’

He was still leaning over her, and she found that her thought processes seemed to have seized up.

The sensation brought back vivid and unwelcome memories of when she was a teenager, and hopelessly infatuated with him. Then, she had experienced that same dizzy, disorientated feeling whenever he was around. It would have faded away of its own accord, she was certain of that, despite the power that he had held over her, but time and adulthood had not been allowed to take their course. He had spotted the intensity of her private feelings with the shrewd perceptiveness of the born predator and he had laughed them off. Young and tactless, he had found her infatuation amusing, and that had left a sharp tang of bitterness in her mouth.

But that was a long time ago. She had recovered from that inconvenient passing fever. She had moved on with her life.

‘He may not be as bad as he seems,’ Christina muttered feebly, thinking of Fiona’s latest boyfriend with distaste. She had met him a few times, and each time some new feature of his personality had further reduced her impression of him. She could understand Adam’s concern.

He swung around from her and began prowling through the room, absent-mindedly looking at the pictures on the walls, the ornaments on the tables.

‘He’s as bad as he seems,’ he said finally, ‘and worse. How could you let her run off with him? You’re supposed to be her friend.’

Stung, Christina’s head snapped up.

‘I’m not her keeper!’ she bit out angrily. ‘Of course I didn’t encourage her in her plans to go to...in her plans. I tried to talk her out of it, but when Fiona decides to dig her heels in she does so with a vengeance. She wouldn’t listen to a word I was saying. And in the end, it’s her life.’

Adam stared at her as if she were some foreign species of animal. And she knew why. He was accustomed to having his orders obeyed. He had come to expect it. All this talk about freedom of choice was irritating for him, because he knew what was right for his sister and he could not understand why she failed to see his point of view.

What made matters worse, Christina thought, was that the damned man was always right.

‘Are you going to tell me where she’s gone?’ he asked softly, moving to sit alongside her on the sofa.

She shuffled inconspicuously away from him so that she was pressed against the armrest and eyed him drily. ‘You don’t give up, do you? You’re like a dog with a bone.’

For the first time since he had barged his way into her flat, his features relaxed into a smile, a coaxing, charming smile which she had observed on his face before—when he had been in the company of a beautiful woman. It had always amazed her that none of these women could see through it to the single-minded, relentless man underneath, the one who had taken his father’s ailing company and turned it around in a matter of months, the one with the reputation in business circles of being a force to be reckoned with.

He must be a very good actor, she decided, if he could sublimate all those characteristics in his relationships with women.

Was he hoping now that he could pull that smile on her and coax her around to his way of thinking?

Did he really think that she was as empty-headed and as eager to be pleased as the women he chose to be associated with?

‘You know me, Tina.’ He smiled again and she ignored it.

‘Unfortunately.’

‘You don’t mean that. Next to my sister, you’re my longest-standing female friend.’

Lucky old me, she thought. He makes me sound like a piece of furniture that’s stood in the same place for a thousand years.

‘I shouldn’t be too proud of that fact if I were you,’ she muttered, thinking that he would not hear her, but of course he had. His eyes narrowed, even though the smile was still playing on his lips.

‘Meaning?’

‘Why boast about the fact that you shed women with appalling regularity?’

‘Don’t you start preaching to me!’ He scowled at her and she smiled back at him.

Had Fiona been telling him the same thing? she wondered. Normally she did not stand up to him. Maybe she was developing a little bit of fighting spirit. Christina hoped so. The world, as far as she could see, was altogether too short of people who were prepared to give Adam Palmer a piece of their mind.

Money bred an unhealthy awe in people, and he was wealthy enough to have inspired this kind of awe for a number of years. Combine that wealth with a brilliant, restless intellect and good looks, and the combination was fatal.

‘Well, you do have a certain reputation,’ she murmured in a honeyed voice.

‘Not one that I’ve ever courted.’

‘You’ll have to excuse me if I don’t agree.’

‘Will I?’ He leaned back and surveyed her from under thick black lashes. ‘I don’t know how you can be an authority on my love-life when you’ve never been a part of it.’

Christina felt her cheeks go pink, but her composure remained firmly in place. She looked at him in silence, wondering how on earth she had ever had a crush on this man.

‘In fact,’ he said with a certain amount of lazy good humour, ‘have you ever been an authority on anyone’s love-life? I’ve known you all these years, yet you’ve never changed from being the cool little creature who always studied hard at school and always, always had her head screwed firmly on the right way.’

Christina could have thrown the lamp at him. Aiming straight for his head. Who did he think he was with his snide insinuations and thinly disguised insults?

‘There’s nothing wrong with that,’ she replied evenly, but some of the tranquillity of her expression had evaporated.

‘Not terribly exciting, though, is it?’

‘Please, spare me your observations on what makes an exciting life. If exciting means bed-hopping the way that you do, then you’re welcome to it.’

She heard her voice sounding acid and prim and she could have kicked herself.

His blue eyes had taken on a distinctly wicked gleam at that. Wasn’t he tired? He had said earlier on that he was, but there was nothing tired about the man sitting next to her now. He looked invigorated, ready for a few hours of discussion, probably on her love-life, or lack of it, which he seemed to find highly entertaining. Maybe this was his sly way of extracting his pound of flesh for her silence over Fiona’s whereabouts.

‘What a damning statement,’ he said. ‘Bed-hopping? You have a very vivid imagination. I may have slept with a few women in my time, but I certainly don’t make a habit of jumping in and out of beds on a routine basis. Any chance of another cup of coffee?’ He held out his mug and Christina looked at it scathingly.

‘No chance whatsoever. I’m tired and it’s time that you left. I have no intention of telling you where Fiona’s gone, so you might as well forget it, Adam.’

His lips thinned.

‘I’ll do nothing of the sort. If you don’t tell me what I want to know, I’ll personally make sure that Simon West pays for any mistakes that my sister’s made.’

‘How do you intend to do that?’ Christina asked apprehensively. She had no doubt that he could and would do precisely as he had threatened. He certainly pulled enough strings, had enough power in the right circles to ensure that his threats weren’t hollow ones.

‘He’s an actor, isn’t he?’

She nodded without saying anything.

‘A very precarious position, wouldn’t you agree?’

She nodded again and felt like a mouse that had strayed into a trap and was waiting for it to clamp shut.

‘I’ve been on the look-out for a theatre company to buy. There could be a lot of money in that. I’ve been meaning to broaden my interests in the field of the arts for quite some time now.’ He allowed a little silence to fall between them. ‘It’s a tight community, the artistic community. One word about someone can spread faster than a bush fire.’ He turned the mug over in his hands, inspecting it.

‘You wouldn’t ruin his career,’ Christina whispered, horrified. ‘You couldn’t.’

‘I’ll do what I can to protect my sister.’ He slammed the mug down on to the coffee-table, making her jump.

He had put her in an impossible situation. Keep quiet and risk watching Simon West’s career, such as it was, bite the dust. Tell all and betray her friend’s confidence.

Simon might be everything that Adam had said he was. Certainly, from what she had seen, he was vain, egotistic and irritatingly convinced that the world was somehow a better place with him in it. But she could not stand aside and let Adam do his worst.

‘All right,’ she said wearily. ‘They’re using that cottage in Scotland. The one your parents owned.’

‘That?’ Adam gave her a long, hard look and then began to laugh. ‘Well, I can’t see romance blossoming in that run-down place, can you? Especially in weather like this. West hardly strikes me as the sort of man who knows how to survive without central heating and all mod cons.’

‘Fiona said that they needed privacy.’

‘She gets privacy. In fact she has all the room she needs.’

‘Very little, when you’re under the same roof,’ Christina said under her breath, and he frowned.

‘Well, I shall have to go up there and try and talk some sense into her. Just in case she’s contemplating doing something crazy.’ He stood up and immediately the lounge seemed to shrink in size.

‘Like what?’ Christina asked, momentarily distracted by the sheer power of his presence.

‘Like marrying the half-wit.’ He snatched up his coat and began putting it on. Black and thick, it gave him the air of a raffish highwayman, not that he seemed aware of the impression he made. He was frowning, thinking.

‘Wouldn’t they need a licence or something?’ Christina asked, anxious now. ‘Besides, Fiona has more sense than that.’ But her voice was even more dubious.

‘Who knows how long they’ve been planning this little jaunt?’ He looked at her narrowly, and she shook her head in answer to his unspoken question.

‘I, for one, did not,’ she denied vehemently. ‘Fiona dropped this on me like a bombshell yesterday.’

He was staring at her, as if trying to work something out in his mind, and it made her uneasy. Nothing was ever straightforward with Adam Palmer. She rose to her feet and walked across to the door, her hand resting lightly on the handle.

He had got what he wanted, she thought. She could have saved herself a lot of trouble merely by recognising from the very start that he was going to get the information out of her, and by telling him what he wanted to know without bothering to beat about the bush.

But he had always brought out the argumentative side in her. Even when she had been madly infatuated with him, when she used to follow him with her eyes every time she saw him, she had still never been submissive enough to listen to what he had to say without responding.

He moved across to the door to stand by her, looking down at her with a calculating little gleam in his eyes.

‘Busy right now?’ he asked, and she stared into his blue eyes, surprised and taken aback by his sudden digression.

‘Quite busy, yes,’ she said warily. ‘Why?’

He shrugged. ‘Merely being polite. After all, we’ve hardly exchanged pleasantries since I got here.’

‘I don’t remember a time when that bothered you particularly,’ Christina commented matter-of-factly.

He raised one brow, but she knew that he really couldn’t care less what she thought of him. He liked her well enough; time, after all, did bring a certain unsought familiarity into any relationship. But as far as he was concerned she existed on his periphery. His sister’s friend. The plain little girl who had grown into a quite ordinary-looking young woman. He had never looked twice at her and he never would, and so he had nothing to prove with her. He didn’t even have to pretend to care what she thought about him.

‘What interesting jobs have you got lined up? Fiona keeps me well informed about your fascinating line of work.’

‘Does she?’ Christina asked politely, thinking that he sounded anything but fascinated.

‘What was your last project? Photographing a member of royalty for a magazine cover?’

Christina nodded and wondered where this line of questioning was leading.

‘Must be very convenient, freelancing,’ he murmured, looking at her sideways. ‘I sometimes wish I had that sort of luxury.’

‘What? And give up the stress of the concrete jungle?’ she asked sarcastically. ‘I don’t believe that for one minute, Adam.’

He laughed softly. ‘No, perhaps you’re right,’ he murmured. ‘Still, you work to your own timetable, don’t you?’

‘Not really.’

He ignored that. ‘Which is particularly convenient right at this moment, because I want you to come with me to Scotland to fetch my sister.’




CHAPTER TWO


‘YOU want what?’ Christina stared at him as though he had gone completely mad and he stared back at her with an insufferable look of patience on his face.

‘I want you to come with me to Scotland,’ he repeated, very slowly, ‘to fetch my sister. You’ve already agreed that she was crazy to have just vanished with that fool of a boy. Who knows where it will lead? And if she makes the mistake of marrying him, it’ll be over my dead body. So naturally I have to prevent that from happening at all costs.’

‘Oh, naturally,’ Christina spluttered angrily. ‘You go right ahead and do what you feel you have to do, but please don’t include me in your plans.’

She opened the front door and a cold blast of air wafted in.

Her flat did not lead directly out to the street, but rather on to a small landing shared by her neighbour’s adjacent flat. Even so, it was cold outside.

He pushed the door shut and leant against it, his arms folded.

‘You have to come, Tina, you’re her friend. Supposedly.’

She gave him a long, withering look. She hoped it spoke volumes, because she didn’t trust her vocabulary to cover precisely what she wanted to say on the subject, which was a good deal.

‘Don’t you dare use that sort of blackmail on me,’ she said emphatically. ‘You might be able to get your way with most people, over most things, but not with me and definitely not on this matter!’

There, she thought, take that.

But instead of moving out of her way, instead of acknowledging defeat, he continued to look at her, his face grim. He wasn’t playing any games when it came to this. She could see that. Ever since his parents had died, he had taken care of his sister zealously. Despite her age, he considered her his responsibility, probably until she settled down and married someone in whom he could safely entrust her well-being.

As far as he was concerned, Fiona was in danger of committing the biggest mistake of her short life and he was not going to stand around without doing something about it.

Christina could follow that line of thought, even though she wasn’t quite sure whether she agreed with it or not.

However, as far as she was concerned, coercing her into some kind of confrontation with his sister was out of the question.

She was not about to start taking sides with anyone, because she would have hated it if she had been in Fiona’s situation. Hardly likely, she acknowledged honestly, since highly unsuitable men weren’t attracted to her in the slightest, but that was not the point.

‘I’m not leaving here until you agree to accompany me,’ he said blandly enough, although his face was hard and determined. ‘You know my sister as well as I do. She’ll have a fit if I show up on the doorstep, playing big brother. But if she sees you, she might feel more inclined to listen to sense.’

‘Alternatively, she might just slam the door in both our faces and tell us to mind our own damn business!’

‘It’s a risk we’ll have to take.’

‘Correction; it’s a risk you’ll have to take.’

She glared at him and he reached out and gripped her by her arm, pulling her towards him so that their faces were only inches apart.

‘Now you listen to me,’ he said with razor sharpness. ‘You’re coming with me whether you like it or not. You can just get down from that “you’re entitled to do what you like in life” platform. This is Fiona and we’re not talking about some casual little fling here. She’s been seeing this boy for quite a while and she seems serious about him.’

‘It might be mutual,’ Christina interjected feebly, but she was on weak ground here, she knew that.

‘We both know that that’s not the case. God knows why my sister can’t see the obvious, but that’s irrelevant. The fact is, I don’t want her doing anything she’d live to regret.’ He took a deep breath and looked at her coldly. His fingers were still biting into her arm, and Christina gave a little tug, which he ignored. ‘Have I told you that he was throwing out feelers as to how much money she stands to acquire on her twenty-fifth birthday?’

Christina gasped, appalled. ‘No! Surely not!’

‘Yes, that’s right.’

‘Did you mention that to Fiona?’

He gave a short, cynical laugh. ‘Don’t be ridiculous. That would have had the opposite effect.’ He released her abruptly and she massaged her numb arm, trying to get the blood circulation back into action.

‘You’re probably right,’ she agreed.

‘Now do you still think that it’s all right to let her get on with her own mistakes?’

‘She’s a grown woman,’ Christina protested helplessly, but his revelation had taken the wind out of her sails and she knew that his sharp eyes had not missed that.

‘She’s got years of living to do before she can be called that,’ he said bluntly, though his eyes were indulgent. ‘She’s always been as flighty as a butterfly, and I’ve always accepted that. But not this time. This boy is a nasty piece of work. He could ruin her life.’

There was a little silence between them while Christina digested all this.

She had not banked on any of this happening. Oh, she had known that he would contact her as soon as he had read Fiona’s note, but she had been adamant that she would reveal nothing of her friend’s whereabouts.

Not only had she failed miserably in that decision, but here she was, teetering on the brink of agreeing with him that yes, maybe chasing her up to that cottage in Scotland wasn’t such a bad idea after all.

The man’s powers of persuasion were limitless.

‘Well?’ he pressed. ‘What’s your decision?’

‘I can’t just rush off and leave my work commitments,’ Christina said weakly, grasping at straws.

‘You’ll be gone two days at the outset. It’s hardly going to kill any potential jobs you might have.’

He had a point, she thought with an inward sigh of resignation. February was not a good time for her, for some reason. There was enough work to keep her going, but nothing like the demand which she normally had for the remainder of the year.

‘Not that that would stop you,’ she muttered gloomily, but he was relaxed now, smiling even, though with no real humour.

He had succeeded in getting her where he wanted her, and if she could have she would have wiped that look of satisfaction off his clever face, but she couldn’t.

‘Now, now,’ he soothed, ‘you make me sound like a tyrant.’

‘Do I?’ She raised her large brown eyes to his. ‘And that would be so far from the truth, wouldn’t it?’

He laughed, a low chuckle that somehow managed to addle her.

‘When you were much younger, I would have slapped you over your rear for that piece of cheek,’ he said, still with that crooked smile.

‘You always did have a way about you,’ she said with asperity, but her face had gone pink at the thought of Adam Palmer’s laying a hand on her, for whatever reason. ‘When do you propose to leave for Scotland?’ she asked, changing the subject, and he frowned, thinking about it.

‘As soon as possible. We can take the shuttle out of Heathrow Airport to Glasgow and then drive to the cottage. Arduous, but it’s the only way of getting there. I’ll give you a call as soon as I find out the details. We can meet at the airport.’

‘What about the weather?’ This consideration had only just occurred to her, but there was no way that she was going to find herself stranded in that cottage, which she knew from old was in the middle of nowhere, alone with him. That was the sort of stuff that bred nightmares.

‘What about it?’

‘Snow?’ she said patiently. ‘Impassable roads? Stuck miles away from civilisation?’

‘Dear me,’ he murmured with an aggravating note of mockery in his voice, ‘we can’t have that, can we?’

‘It’s not a joke!’ Christina snapped. ‘I have no intention of being stuck up there with only you for company.’ Her skin prickled at the mere thought of it.

No doubt there were hordes of women who would give their right arm to be in that situation. No doubt that was what was flashing through his mind even as he stood there, looking down at her with that annoying half-amused look on his face. But she was going to make it absolutely clear that she was not to be counted in that number.

She would listen to the weather reports and if there was any mention of snow—any mention of a passing flurry, for that matter—she would cancel that trip without giving it a second thought.

‘There was a time,’ he countered smoothly, ‘when you would have found that thought quite appealing.’

She met his eyes and looked away in sudden confusion.

‘And what is that supposed to mean?’ she heard herself asking.

‘Oh, you know what I mean, Tina. Remember that crush you had on me? You must have been all of what—fifteen? Sixteen? Sweet sixteen and never been kissed? I should have been flattered, but it was awkward, wasn’t it?’

Christina’s mouth went dry. She wanted the ground to open and swallow her up. Anything to spare her from this awful, nightmarish embarrassment washing over her.

‘You must have—’

‘Stop it!’ she interrupted in a high voice. She took a deep breath, counted to ten, and when she next spoke she was relieved to hear that some of her self-control had returned. ‘I was young. And stupid. Very stupid. Fortunately for me, I was cured of that little problem. So there’s no point in dragging it up, is there? The fact of the matter is I’m not going unless the weather reports are favourable, and that’s that.’

She couldn’t quite bring herself to meet his eyes, so she stared at her fingers instead. A thousand things were running through her head, but really they all amounted to the same awful, vicious circle of memories that she had tried to put to the back of her mind. She had been so naïve. She had literally thrown herself at him and he had laughed with that sickening mixture of surprise and genuine amusement. ‘You’re a child,’ he had told her but what he had meant was that she just didn’t possess the easy charm and bold beauty of the women to whom he was already drawn.

What a picture she must have made, with her mousy brown hair and brown eyes, next to those blondes and brunettes and redheads who had adorned his parents’ house with predictable regularity during the university holidays.

‘Of course,’ he said, ‘I have no intention of getting stuck in ten-foot snowdrifts either. Not that your honour isn’t safe with me, so you needn’t fear anything on that score. You’re Fiona’s friend and...’ He shrugged and the unspoken words hung in the air, their meaning crystal-clear. He found her physically unappealing, was what he was saying, so she could relax, but instead of reassuring her it brought tears of anger and humiliation to her eyes. It reminded her of how she had felt when her teenage crush had been ever so smilingly handed back to her.

‘I’ll call you.’

‘Fine,’ she said stiffly, looking at her watch. It was nearly five in the morning. He had been there much longer than she had thought. Hours. ‘Now do you mind? I want to catch up on some sleep. As you do too, no doubt.’ She hadn’t meant to, but her voice implied that he needed the rest since he had spent the night doing God only knew what, but it didn’t take a genius to imagine.

‘Oh, I think I’ll go to the office,’ he said casually, reaching down to turn the doorknob.

She removed her hand from it quickly, to avoid any contact between them, then immediately hoped that he had not noticed her reaction.

‘At this hour?’

‘I have a lot of paperwork to clear before I can go anywhere. You aren’t, believe it or not, the only one whose tidy little schedule has been interrupted.’

‘I never said that I was,’ she muttered.

‘You don’t have to. The implication was there in your voice. You always did have a way of saying much more with your silences than with your words.’

That piece of insight startled her. Had he noticed that? It was a trait which she herself was aware of. She thought of it as tact, because she knew that if she relentlessly said what was on her mind there would be quite a few people who would be unnecessarily offended by her remarks. So she often kept silent, allowing her thoughts to supply the missing bits in her conversations.

But no one had ever been aware of this ploy. He must, she now thought, be incredibly perceptive to have picked that up from their numerous but casual encounters over the years.

Perception along those lines made her uneasy. It made her think that he could read her mind, and she didn’t like that sensation.

‘Really?’ she said blankly. ‘I’ll expect to hear from you a little later, then. If I’m not in, you can always leave a message on my answer machine.’

‘Fine. But make sure you’re around from this afternoon. I’ll probably try and get us on the earliest flight after lunch.’

It wasn’t a suggestion, it was a command. Be home after twelve or else.

She shut the door on him after he had gone and retired to her bedroom, where she spent the next hour trying to court sleep.

But it was difficult. She felt as though she had been abruptly swept up in a whirlwind and, now that she had been let down from it, she still couldn’t quite manage to find her feet. One minute she was in control of things, her diary all planned out with her various jobs, her social life, if not buzzing, then ticking over. The next, everything had been turned upside-down and she was off on some foolish rescue mission with a man who, after all these years, could still succeed in making her feel acutely uncomfortable with herself.

And that made her cross. Why did he arouse that reaction in her? Was it because, in the enforced intimacy of her flat, the power of his personality had seeped into her and made her over-conscious of herself?

That had to be the explanation, she decided. In the past, she had seen Adam frequently enough, but always in the company of other people. When they had been alone, she had been usually waiting for Fiona to put in an appearance. She had been able to step back and view him with detachment, never putting herself in a situation where his presence could overwhelm her.

Tonight, though, it had been different. There had been no one else around to dilute the sheer force of his masculinity. She had been obliged to face him, one to one, and she had found her composure wanting.

All the more pathetic, she told herself with disgust, when he had made it clear that he found her quite unappealing as a member of the opposite sex. I don’t care, she told herself philosophically, I’m no longer addicted to him. But she would have to watch herself. She had no intention of being tripped up by that stupid charm of his. That wouldn’t do at all. She now had a plane trip and a car ride alone with him to contend with and, if she was going to sit through the whole thing in a state of nervous tension, then she would end up in need of medical treatment at the end of it all.

She finally drifted off to sleep and when she next opened her eyes it was after nine o’clock.

She had appointments. Two to cancel. She sprang out of bed, bustled into the lounge for her diary, and rang them both.

Mrs Rafferty, her first appointment, who wanted photographs of the interior of her house taken for inclusion in a book she was writing on stately homes, was easy enough to pacify. She had been working on her book for two years. A short delay in the photographs was not a matter of life or death.

Her second client, however, was somewhat harder to placate.

Mrs Molton was an irascible woman at the best of times. Now she listened while Christina made her excuses, then she bellowed down the line, ‘This isn’t good enough!’

‘I’m sorry, Mrs Molton,’ she said, ‘but I’m afraid it’s unavoidable.’

‘Unavoidable? The word doesn’t exist in my vocabulary!’

Christina could well believe that, thinking of her now. Thin, wiry, with a voice that could shatter glass.

‘And what about the dogs? My little poopsies? Don’t you think that it isn’t stressful for them, having to pose for photographs? They’re beautifully groomed. Today you would have got it right, I know it.’

Christina thought of her subjects, two corgis as irascible as their owner. Was it any wonder that this shoot was taking twice as long as it should have?

‘I can rearrange you for next Tuesday,’ she murmured, not wanting to stray on to the subject of the two infernal hounds.

‘And I can always rearrange you, young lady!’ Mrs Molton informed her testily down the line. ‘You’re not the only photographer in the world, you know. My niece may well have recommended you, but that doesn’t mean that I have to employ you. The world,’ she continued in a booming voice that belied her stature, ‘is full of talented photographers. I’ll allow myself and my poopsies to be rearranged just this once, but not again!’

Christina released a long sigh as she replaced the receiver.

Thank you, Adam Palmer, she thought. Now if I lose this job, however unchallenging it may be, I blame you entirely.

She spent a desultory morning throwing things into an overnight bag and lethargically reviewing some negatives for a job which she had undertaken a fortnight previously and which were due for submission to a magazine in a week’s time, but her mind was working overtime.

She kept thinking of Adam. She thought of the way his body moved, the way his eyes were somehow fierce yet coolly mocking at the same time. Had she forgotten all that, she wondered, or had she shoved it to the back of her mind?

These were irritating questions. She was acting like the silly teenager she had been all those years ago. She was no longer a teenager and she liked to think of herself as too clever to let herself be swayed by a man’s appearance. She might not be beautiful, but she was smart enough, and she wasn’t about to abandon her good sense by letting him get under her skin.

She glared at the jumper in her hand and then threw it into the bag.

Weather report or no weather report, she was going to make sure that she travelled with an ample supply of thick clothing.

The man on the radio had self-confidently assured her that there would be no snow in Scotland, although conditions would be freezing, but weathermen had a talent for getting it wrong.

At three in the afternoon Adam called to inform her that they would be leaving in an hour and a half.

‘Meet me at the airport,’ he said in the quick tone of voice which implied that he had better things to do than converse with her over the phone. ‘Take a taxi and charge it to my company.’

‘Yes, my day’s going just fine, thank you for asking,’ Christina said sweetly. ‘Usual sort of problems when one has to postpone commitments, but I won’t bore you with the details. Thank you for asking, though. And yes, I can meet you at the airport for four-thirty. Any specific place, or shall I just aimlessly meander around in the hope that I spot you somewhere?’

She heard the impatient click of his tongue and grinned wickedly down the line. Poor Adam. Not much time for her now that he had got what he wanted. She wondered whether he was looking at his watch and wishing that this silly woman would get off the line. He always did have a restless streak in him that spared little time for what he considered frivolities.

Unless, of course, those frivolities concerned getting a woman into bed. Then he had all the time in the world to play his elaborate games of seduction. Or at least that was what she had gleaned from what she had seen of him in the company of women and from what Fiona had told her. Confidentially.

‘I’m busy,’ he told her bluntly. ‘I don’t have time to waste chatting. I’ll meet you at the check-in counter.’

He promptly hung up with that and she glared at the telephone in her hand.

What manners. He was busy, was he? And what about her? She would have been busy if it weren’t for him. Had he considered that? Fat chance.

She wondered how many of his lady friends were informed by him that he was busy and couldn’t waste time chatting with them, and decided that she preferred his honesty after all. It was always nice knowing where you stood.

She dressed warmly for the trip up: jeans, boots, a jumper with another one in her holdall, and a duffel coat which zipped up the front. The entire outfit made her appear ten pounds heavier than she was and she grimaced at the reflection that stared back at her in the mirror.

There goes one of your few assets, she told the reflection—your figure. No one would guess that you had one under all of this.

But that really didn’t bother her very much. She had become quite accustomed to her appearance and to the fact that she seldom if ever attracted second glances from members of the opposite sex.

Her boyfriends had all been men who had got to know her well before becoming interested in her physically, and frankly she would have preferred their friendship to remain on a platonic basis only most of the time. She disliked fighting off prospective suitors who did nothing to send her blood-pressure soaring.

No one will ever send your blood-pressure soaring, she informed the reflection. She thought about Greg, dashing Greg, who had come the closest to doing something to her blood-pressure. He was the image that she had resolutely shoved to the back of her mind for the past year. Not that she had been in love with him, but she could still taste the ashes in her mouth at his scathing comment when they broke up. Frigid, he had informed her, plain and frigid, a woman who should be grateful to be looked at twice. He had been turned on by her intellect and by the contacts she had had in her job, but, he had told her, stripped of those, she was nothing but a plain Jane without the wherewithal to hold a man’s interest. If she had slept with him, or had introduced him to some useful people, or preferably both, then he might have consented to continue seeing her for a while longer, but in the absence of both these prerequisites she was, he had made it clear, not a very desirable option.

She tightened her lips and forced herself to push that unpleasant scene back into the shadows of her mind, where it belonged, as a silent warning to her.

You’re destined to be a career woman, she told herself. Not that she saw anything wrong with that at all.

She loved what she did, and she considered herself lucky. What had been a teenage hobby had blossomed into a fulfilling profession when, at the age of seventeen, she had entered a photography competition and won a fully paid photography course and some impressive equipment, most of which she still relied on. She enjoyed her work and, if Mr Right didn’t happen to bounce along on his white stallion, then it was hardly the end of the world.

Her mother would be disappointed, of course. She baked bread, made jam and had a desperately old-fashioned outlook on the role of women in society. But Christina could cope with that.

No, the closest she imagined she would get to ardour was watching Fiona’s antics from the sidelines.

She thought of Adam and frowned. Why had his image popped into her head just like that, without warning?

Because, she told herself, it was time to go. She gathered her belongings together, tried one last time to tune in to some weather news and failed, and edgily sat down to await the arrival of the taxi, which arrived promptly.

And Adam, she was heartened to see, was also waiting for her at the check-in counter. He had his back to her, chatting to the woman behind the desk, and she stopped for a few seconds to look at him.

He really was aggressively male, she thought with detachment. All broad-shouldered and slim-hipped, which made him look as though he spent hours working out. If she remembered correctly, though, he exercised very little.

Fate had seen fit to endow him with a body that somehow managed to stay perfectly tuned even if he did nothing about it.

She took a deep breath and walked up to the counter, noticing that the woman to whom he had been chatting, an attractive brunette, impeccably made up and with a hairstyle that looked as though each strand of hair had been individually glued into place, was not quite as warm when her attention was directed towards her as she was when it had been directed towards Adam.

‘I hope you haven’t been waiting too long,’ Christina said, turning to Adam with a polite smile.

‘Ten minutes,’ he replied, ‘but don’t worry about it. I haven’t been bored.’

Christina glanced at the brunette, now busily attending to some paperwork, and thought, I’ll bet you haven’t been bored. ‘I wasn’t worried about it,’ she said in a saccharin-sweet voice, ‘and I’m sure you haven’t been bored.’

There was a wicked little smile in his eyes at her tone, even though his face remained serious, and she ignored it.

‘Have you checked us in?’

He nodded and took her by the elbow, an instinctive gesture that made her body tense until she told herself that she was being silly. Again.

The brunette had looked up and was now pouting regretfully at him. She hoped he had a wonderful flight and an enjoyable stay in Scotland. When next he was around, he must promise to come to her counter; she would take some time off and treat him to a cup of coffee.

What a pretty sight, Christina thought, looking at the other woman. Was she as amenable towards all her passengers?

Then she looked at Adam, who was treating the brunette to some of that limitless charm of his, and she tapped her foot impatiently.

‘How subtle you are,’ he drawled as they moved away into the crowds. ‘I’m surprised you didn’t add looking at your watch and yawning to your little foot-tapping routine.’

He guided her effortlessly through the terminal, hardly looking around him at all. It was easy to see that he was a seasoned traveller, but that didn’t come as a surprise to her. He owned and virtually single-handedly ran a massive publishing network, and she knew that he travelled world-wide on business throughout the year.

They glanced up at the departures board and Christina saw with relief that they were due to board the shuttle. At least that would cut down on time spent at the airport terminal.

‘You looked,’ she said, following on from his sarcastic observation, ‘as though you were about to spend the rest of the day chatting to the brunette.’ If not the night, she added uncharitably to herself.

Adam threw her a sidelong glance, which she felt rather than saw, since she steadfastly kept her eyes averted.

‘I was merely killing time, waiting for you, and being polite in the process.’

‘Polite? Oh, so that’s your definition of being polite. Chatting up women.’

‘Don’t you get high-handed with me,’ he said in a hard voice. ‘You may drink your cocoa and go to bed by nine, but please don’t assume that the rest of the world follows suit and that if they don’t they’re somehow debauched.’

Christina reddened. How dared he tell her off as though she were a six-year-old child! She refrained from saying anything, though. She had to survive the next few hours in his company, undiluted, and there was no point in starting off with an argument.

‘How are we going to get from the airport in Glasgow to the cottage?’ she asked stiffly. He had released her arm and was walking in long strides so that she had to half run to keep pace with him.

‘I’ve arranged a car,’ he said tersely. ‘My subsidiary in Glasgow has a stock of company cars. Someone will drop it off and we can drive straight from the airport.’

‘Convenient,’ she murmured. ‘Are you going to be up to the drive? Did you actually go to the office after you left me?’

She was panting a little, which didn’t sound terribly dignified, especially as he was barely exerting himself, and was relieved when they finally reached their gate and slowed down to allow for control checks before they boarded the plane.

There were quite a few people on the flight. Ninety-nine per cent of them were businessmen, clutching their Financial Times and looking harassed.

‘Yes,’ Adam said, ‘in answer to both your questions.’

They passed through and made their way to the plane.

‘So you haven’t slept since...’

‘A while back,’ he finished drily. ‘But you needn’t fear that I’m going to fall asleep at the wheel. I’m quite accustomed to getting very little sleep and functioning adequately on it.’

She could believe that. He didn’t look in the least harassed. If anything, the thick cream jumper, the dark trousers and the jacket slung casually over his arm made him look in the peak of health and fighting fit. He looked, in fact, terrifically well rested. Christina knew that if she had gone for a day and a half without sleep she would resemble one of the living dead.

The flight was short. She sat next to the window, staring outside, and next to her Adam dozed. No doubt he would wake up as refreshed as if he had had eight hours’ sleep.

She wasn’t looking forward to the drive to the cottage. She remembered it from years back as being long and uncomfortable, a network of tiny roads that threatened to taper out into dead ends at any minute. She doubted they would have improved vastly in the intervening years. It was an isolated spot, and isolated spots were not normally earmarked for super road systems.

In fact the bumpy journey at the age of thirteen had been quite a highlight. Now, with just Adam and her own awkward feelings for company, she suspected that that would not be the case.

The company representative was waiting for them as soon as they emerged from the terminal. Christina eyed him drily as he bowed and scraped in front of Adam, showing them to a Range Rover which had been located specifically just in case the weather turned.

‘It won’t,’ Christina assured him. ‘Adam has given instructions that it’s to stay dry.’

The young boy blushed, unsure as to what response this remark called for, and Adam gave her an amused little grin.

‘Now you’ve sent the poor chap away confused as hell,’ he murmured to her as they settled into the car and glided smoothly out of the compound.

‘Have I?’ she responded in an innocent voice, staring through the window at the dreary, wind-blasted scenery flashing past and wishing she was back in London photographing Mrs Molton’s two temperamental corgis. ‘And I thought you really had had a word with higher powers and given instructions for the weather pattern over the next three days. You disappoint me, Adam.’

‘Do I? You don’t disappoint me. You still have the ability to make me laugh even when I’m cold and tired and on a trip which I’d rather not be doing.’

Christina looked at him, surprised. Did he really find her humorous? He had never given any indication of that before.

She didn’t know whether to be flattered or vaguely insulted. Do I really want to be seen as some kind of stand-up comic, she wondered, or would I rather be viewed as someone attractive and sexy?

She frowned, confused that she should even be thinking about Adam Palmer considering her sexy. Sexy, of all things. There was about as much chance of that as of Mrs Molton giving her corgis up for adoption.

Besides, she didn’t care one way or another what he thought of her. Once upon a time she had, but she had since learnt that fairy-tales and reality were poles apart, and that a girl with her lack of looks was destined to forge a career and leave the posing to other, more beautiful models.

‘Let’s hope it’s worth it,’ she replied impassively, ignoring his personal remark and concentrating on getting the conversation on to a safer topic. ‘Fiona can be stubborn and she isn’t going to like being followed around by her big brother.’

‘Which is why you’re here. She values your opinion.’

‘Oh, great,’ Christina muttered with a sigh, ‘as if I’m any authority on relationships.’

‘Aren’t you?’ He gave her a swift sidelong glance. ‘I gathered from my sister that in between the cups of cocoa and the early nights your love-life wasn’t exactly non-existent.’

‘I beg your pardon?’ she gagged, going bright red and swearing to throttle Fiona as soon as she could lay her hands on her. ‘No, don’t repeat your remark. I heard it perfectly well, and I can only say that it’s none of your business.’

‘True,’ he agreed. ‘Call it natural curiosity.’

‘There’s nothing natural about wanting to pry into my private life just for the sake of small talk. And it’s not curiosity, it’s nosiness. I don’t ask you about what you do with those women of yours.’

‘No, you make lots of generalisations instead.’

This was getting out of hand. She reached down and fiddled with the dials on the radio until she tuned in to one of the local channels.

‘Is that a hint?’

‘No,’ she said with heavy sarcasm, ‘I’m genuinely interested in the farming news.’

She pursed her lips and looked out of the window, and next to her she could feel him grinning like a damned Cheshire cat and she wanted to hit him. Hard.

Two more hours, she thought with a groan, two more hours before we get there.




CHAPTER THREE


AT LEAST the weather was fine. It was freezing cold, though beautifully warm inside the car, and with that crisp clarity that marked a fine British winter’s day.

The farming news eventually gave way to a programme on classical music, which Christina rather enjoyed, and she focused her attention on the scenery outside. The trees were bare of leaves and as they left civilisation behind the landscape took on a bleak, rugged beauty that was awe-inspiring rather than appealing.

The main roads petered out into a series of much smaller roads, which the Range Rover handled well, although, with darkness rapidly descending, Adam was concentrating hard on the driving, the lines on his face grim as he manoeuvred the car round bends and down the twisty lanes.

What a place to pick, Christina thought. Hardly Fiona’s style, and not at all up Simon’s alley, if she had read him correctly. He was more the sort who liked hanging around the smart set, and a cottage in the middle of nowhere could hardly qualify as that.

The thoughts drifted through her head as they drove in silence, but not an uncomfortable one.

It was quite dark by the time they finally made it to their destination.

The cottage was set down a narrow path and overlooked a loch. It was beautiful in spring and summer, but eerie in the depths of winter.

As the car slowed down to accommodate the erratic nature of the path, Christina leaned forward in her seat and peered around her, trying to see beyond the patches of landscape illuminated by the headlamps of the car.

Outside, she could almost hear the silence. It was a nerve-racking feeling, especially after London. A bit, she imagined, like being whipped into the black hole, lost in time and space.

She laughed nervously and turned to Adam.

‘Spooky, don’t you think? I can remember thinking that last time I was here with Fiona and your parents, and it hasn’t changed.’

‘It has got a timeless quality about it,’ he concurred absent-mindedly, driving dead slow now. ‘Don’t you find that charming?’

‘I find that off-balancing,’ Christina said honestly. ‘I think I’ve become far too accustomed to all the noise and chaos in London.’

‘A city girl,’ he murmured, making it sound like an insult.

‘It’s where the work is,’ she responded tartly, wishing she hadn’t bothered to try and make conversation.

They lapsed into silence and she waited to see the impact of the cottage as they cleared the final bend. Its location had always impressed her. It was so startling against the deserted landscape, like a beacon keeping watch over the loch, guarding against evil spirits.

They turned the bend and the very first thing she noticed was that the cottage was in pitch-darkness. She felt her stomach plummet and a sick feeling of dreadful anticipation rose up into her throat. Adam was frowning heavily. He stopped the car outside the front door and looked at her.

‘I don’t see any lights, do you?’

Christina didn’t answer. She was desperately trying to make out if there was a car parked at the side of the house, but she couldn’t see a thing. No car, no lights. No Fiona.

‘Perhaps they’ve popped out for a minute,’ she said feebly.

‘Popped out? Where? Down to the local nightclub? There’s nowhere around here to pop out to, is there?’

He stared at her impatiently, his eyes glittering in the darkness inside the car, and she felt her temper flare.

‘Shall we go in?’ she asked, trying to keep a polite face on things. She pulled down the door-handle and opened the door, not giving him the chance to hurl any more accusations at her.

Besides—who knew?—Fiona and Simon might well be inside the cottage. With the lights out. Having a romantic evening. Maybe their car was parked at the back. Maybe, maybe, maybe. She knew that she was clutching at straws, because a little part of her desperately did not want to be here, alone, with a man who could still make her pulse race however hard she told herself not to be a fool.

She heard him slam his own car door behind him and she didn’t look around. She stood by the front door, patiently waiting for him to unlock it, which he did with a grim expression on his face.

He pushed open the door, to an isolated and freezing cold cottage, and then turned to her.

‘Well, so much for your bloody girlish confidences. No sign of life here, or did you deliberately bring me here on a wild-goose chase?’ He didn’t give her the time to answer. He switched on the lights, and then began walking briskly out of the door.

Christina raced behind him and yelled out, ‘Where are you going?’

No reply. He heaved their cases out of the back seat and then strode back inside.

‘Don’t worry, much as I’m tempted to leave you here after having led me here on this wasted trip, rest assured that I won’t.’

He dumped the cases on the ground and she followed him into the tiny kitchen, furious that he was blaming her for this. Her! As if she had dragged him kicking and screaming out here! As if she had held a gun to his head and demanded his co-operation! When in fact it had been the other way around!

‘I did not lead you here! And I resent your implication that this—’ she gesticulated to the deserted cottage ‘—that this is all my fault!’

‘Well, whose fault is it? You told me that this was where she was, didn’t you? Or maybe that was just a little ploy to get me up here when you knew perfectly well that Fiona was somewhere else, probably a thousand miles away in the opposite direction! I was crazy to have believed a word you said. I might have guessed that you were in cahoots with my sister. Who knows? Maybe it was your idea that they take off. Maybe all that sincere concern about Fiona and Simon and their incompatibility was just a clever front. After all, clever is the one thing you are. And still waters run deep, so they say!’ He looked at her narrowly until she began to feel giddy. What was he thinking?

‘Or maybe,’ he continued, his voice as hard as ice and cold with speculation, ‘there was another reason you dragged me up here.’

He let that provocative remark hang in the air until she snapped nervously, ‘What on earth are you talking about?’

‘Can’t you guess?’ His lips curled cynically. ‘Maybe you got me up here because you thought that in this isolated splendour you might be able to pick up the strands of the relationship which you wanted all those years ago, and which never got off the ground.’

She could feel the colour drain out of her face, and somewhere at the back of her mind she knew that she was trembling, on the brink of losing control. But that she wouldn’t do. Let him insinuate whatever he liked.

‘I won’t bother to answer that. I’ll only say that you have the biggest ego I’ve ever seen if you could think that—’

‘You still want me after all these years?’

‘Yes! I...’ She took a deep, steadying breath. ‘How was I to know that Fiona decided against coming here?’

‘Female intuition? Or is that one of those things missing in your life?’

There was a deadly silence and then Christina flushed. One of those things missing in your life. One of how many things? Looks, perhaps. Sex appeal. Was that what he was referring to? Were those the other things missing from her life?

He pulled down two mugs from the cupboard and she watched in silence as he poured them both some coffee, then proceeded to sit at the kitchen table drinking it, cradling the mug in his hands.

Neither of them had removed their coats and after a while he said neutrally, ‘I’ll have to get some logs in and do something about lighting a fire or else we’ll both freeze to death here.’

Christina wished that she could summon up the self-control to respond to him, but his implied insult, his fantastic speculations, had winded her. Instead she continued to watch him covertly over the rim of her mug, taking in his strong hands, the width of his shoulders, the powerful body.

He inspired confidence. However dynamic and impressive he was in the field of business, that did not mean that he could not cope in a situation such as this. If he said that he would get logs and make this place warm, then he would do so, even if it meant felling a tree in the process. Somehow, from somewhere, he would find the ability to perform the impossible.





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