Unwilling Surrender

by Cathy Williams

  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 ey
es 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.