She had her back to him and was rummaging through the cupboard, extracting anything promising.
‘I can see that,’ he murmured. ‘You’re very thin.’ She felt his words race up her spine like a warm touch, making her stiffen for just a fraction of a second.
She wasn’t going to let him get under her skin, though, so she pretended that his remark was not worthy of an answer. Instead she asked him where he was going to get the logs.
‘The shed outside.’ He stood up and stretched, a long, lazy movement that a cat would make. ‘Let’s hope they’re not too damp to light.’ He came close to her, so that his voice was by her ear. ‘Or else we might have to think of alternative ways of keeping warm.’
Christina turned on him sharply. ‘Over my dead body,’ she bit out, and he laughed.
‘Little joke. No need to rise up in arms. As I said, your maidenly honour is perfectly safe with me.’ He left the kitchen, still chuckling under his breath, and she thought, Very funny, very hysterical. He might find his brand of humour highly amusing, but it left her cold.
His comment had been patronising. She wasn’t a sex kitten by any stretch of the imagination, certainly nothing that would catch his fancy, and she resented his sly innuendo, which was really just an attempt to laugh at her. Like his remarks about her drinking cocoa. Little gibes at her expense. She hoped he developed a severe case of frost-bite out there. Oh, she would see the funny side of that all right.
She slammed around a few tins, making an effort to be creative with their limited supply and then abandoning the attempt. Baked beans, corned beef and tinned macaroni cheese would never constitute a gourmet meal, however artistically she arranged the ingredients.
She heard the front door slam shut and busied herself all the more in the kitchen while, out of the corner of her eye, she watched him remove his waterproof jacket and set to work on making a fire. His movements were quick and assured. Had he done a course on this sort of thing? In under fifteen minutes there was a fire burning, taking the edge off the biting chill in the cottage.
Christina removed her coat, and then her jumper. When he strode into the kitchen a few minutes later the food was on the table.
‘It was the best I could do,’ she said defensively, before he could make the expected remark. They both stared at the concoction on the plates and she felt the corners of her mouth twitch.
‘Basic fare,’ he said, sitting down. ‘Beans are very good for us. Lots of fibre.’
She sat opposite him and grinned reluctantly. ‘If I were a cordon bleu cook I could have turned this into something a bit more appetising.’
‘And spoil the challenge of finding out whether it tastes as basic as it looks?’ He grinned back at her and it struck her again how potent a male animal he was. There was arrogance and aggression in the hard lines of his face, but when he smiled those hard lines could seem staggeringly charming. ‘Actually,’ he said conversationally, ‘it makes a change to find a woman who isn’t dying to get into my kitchen and start proving to me what a wonderful cook she is.’
Christina raised one eyebrow. ‘Aren’t you the lucky one?’ she mocked. ‘I don’t know of too many men who would turn that away.’
He shrugged. ‘Depends whether you want a woman getting under your feet, doesn’t it?’
Good grief, she thought, what a heart of gold this man had. Good thing he had the funds to wine and dine his women and not have to endure them cluttering up his kitchen.
‘Have you ever got under a man’s feet?’ he asked in the same casual voice, his eyes on his food.
‘I hope not,’ she answered in an equally casual voice, even though she found this digression into her personal life very disquieting. ‘I would hate to think that I was anyone’s doormat. That fire’s really coming along, isn’t it?’
‘Nothing like a real fire. And you’ve never fallen head over heels in love with anyone? Not even...what’s his name...Jim? Gary? Oh, no, now I remember—Greg. I understand from a mutual acquaintance that he actually disturbed the smooth ripples of your life.’
‘Fiona had no right to discuss my private life with you,’ she bit out, mortified.
‘Maybe she didn’t consider it a secret. Was it?’
‘Was it what?’ Her heart was beating painfully, and looking at him with any semblance of calm was costing her a great deal of effort. She wasn’t one to talk about herself, and least of all to this particular man.
‘A secret. Were you ashamed of him?’
‘Of course not!’ she lied vehemently. ‘Why should I be?’
‘Well, I would hardly call Greg Robinson the sort of man that every mother longs for for her daughter.’
Christina was beginning to feel dizzy. She wanted to close her eyes and pretend that this conversation wasn’t taking place, but she couldn’t, not when his eyes were boring through her.
‘You know him?’ she asked faintly, and he nodded, not taking his eyes off her face.
‘He tried to involve Fiona in a relationship a while back—quite a while back. When that failed he began dropping hints to her about wanting to climb into my social scene, and that was when I started taking a personal interest in him. I discovered that he’s quite unscrupulous. I guess that was why Fiona told me when you started going out with him. She was worried for you, but she didn’t feel that she could say anything to you. After all, what is it they say? That the bearer of bad tidings always takes the blame?’
Christina’s mouth was too dry to find an answer to that. Not only did Adam Palmer know all about her private life, but he knew more about it, in a way, than she did. Another wave of sickening humiliation washed over her and she hated him for that.
‘I don’t see what these revelations have got to do with anything,’ she said in a strangled voice.
‘I merely wondered whether that had anything to do with the way you’re so absorbed in your work.’
‘I’m absorbed in my work because I happen to enjoy it,’ she countered, forcing herself to look at him politely, blankly. ‘Greg was a mistake, I can’t deny that, but we all make them. One thing I can say is that he taught me a lesson. I’m immune to so-called male charm and good looks.’ She gave him a cool, pointed smile even though her mouth felt stiff with the effort of it. She closed her knife and fork and carried her plate to the sink, carefully washing it and stacking it on the draining board.
‘What time do you think we can leave tomorrow?’ She dried her hands and stood looking at him, her arms folded.
‘You don’t like me asking questions of a personal nature, do you?’ he said, tilting his chair back and clasping his hands behind his head.
Those bright blue eyes caught hers and held them until she felt her legs go shaky.
‘Does anyone?’ she threw the question back at him.
‘We’ve known each other for years,’ he said, and she wondered whether he expected her to concur that their long-standing familiarity gave him the right to question her.
‘I don’t follow you.’
‘Don’t you? Then you’re not as clever as I thought.’
She wished he would stop staring at her. It made her feel horribly self-conscious, too aware of her physical shortcomings for her own liking.
She was sure that he was measuring her against the women he knew and finding her wanting, and the thought made her cringe.
Of course I don’t care, she told herself severely. I stopped caring what Adam Palmer thought of me a long time ago. It was his attitude, she convinced herself, that she didn’t care for. He had been patronising her when he had mentioned Greg, laughing at her, she was sure of it. There wasn’t much to do here, isolated in this cottage, and the devil would always find work for idle hands.
Was it any surprise that he made her feel flustered and hot under the collar?
She reached out for his plate, asking him whether he was finished, and he caught her by the wrist. The movement was so sudden that she froze for an instant, then she wriggled to snatch her hand away.
‘I’m not going to bite you,’ he murmured, amused.
‘Let me go!’
He was as strong as she had thought. Her efforts to pull herself free were as good as useless.
He released her and she flew back, her brown hair swinging against her face. Her cheeks were bright red and she wanted to cry with anger and embarrassment, but she wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of knowing how much that brief physical contact had disturbed her.
She stood there, massaging her hand and willing her features to assume their normal cool expression.
‘Why did you do that?’ she asked evenly, and he gave her a lazy smile.
‘I didn’t want you washing my plate. I’m really not as much of a male chauvinist as you’d like to believe.’ He stood up and walked across to the sink, whistling under his breath. ‘You can go into the living-room. I’ll bring you in some coffee.’
Christina hovered for a few seconds longer, then went into the living-room, to sit in one of the ancient but comfortable chairs by the fire.
The cottage was basically well built and comfortable. Over the years not much had been done to it. Bits and pieces had been replaced, but a lot of the furniture was the original pieces brought in when the place had first been bought.
She looked around her and wondered how often it had been used since Fiona’s and Adam’s parents had died. When they had been alive it had been used during the school vacations regularly, but that was—she wrinkled her nose and thought about it—at least seven years ago.
Fiona, she knew, rarely came up, and she was certain that Adam came no more frequently himself. He didn’t strike her as the sort who found a cottage holiday in the wilds very tempting, and she couldn’t imagine any of those women she had seen him with in the past putting up with this level of rusticity.
She was so engrossed in her thoughts that she wasn’t aware of him until he handed her a mug of coffee; then he sat down opposite her, his long legs stretched out and crossed at the ankles.
‘So what are you going to do about Fiona now?’ she asked curiously, blowing on to the hot surface of the coffee and then taking tiny exploratory sips.
‘What can I do? I have no idea where she is. I’ll just have to wait until she decides to make an appearance, and in the meantime hope that that shifty bastard doesn’t talk her into marriage.’
‘She has got a choice in the matter,’ Christina pointed out, relaxing a bit now that they were on neutral ground, and he looked at her blankly. Not if I had my way, was what he was probably thinking, she decided wryly.
‘When have you ever known my sister to be rational about anything?’
Christina thought about that one. ‘She did take that secretarial course,’ she suggested finally.
‘On my insistence. I felt it was important for her to achieve some measure of financial independence, even though there was no necessity for it. People need to focus their lives on something if they’re to have any purpose.’
‘I agree with you.’ For once, she thought.
‘I realise that,’ he drawled. ‘I’d say your life has never lacked purpose at any point. You worked hard at school, worked hard at college, and now you’re working hard at your photography.’
‘You make that sound like an insult,’ Christina said stiffly, her hackles rising again.
‘I admire it.’
Admirable, she thought, but unattractive. Wasn’t it funny how easily men could categorise women? There was the wife, the mistress and then the career woman. And the career woman was invariably the one who lost out on the sex appeal.
‘Thank you,’ she said blandly. ‘I like to think that I put everything into my work. It’s a competitive field. I could never afford to sit back and keep my fingers crossed that jobs were going to come in.’
‘So how exactly do you get your work?’ he asked, placing his empty mug on the table next to him and folding his hands on his lap.
‘Word of mouth most of the time.’
This was the first time they had ever really spoken about what she did. Normally they held fleeting, polite conversations in the company of other people. Talking to him now, with his attention unwaveringly focused on her and no one else, made her feel oddly uneasy—as if she was giving a little bit of herself away, as if that in itself was something which she knew she ought not to do.
‘We might be able to make use of you on some of our shoots,’ he said, and she could feel herself suddenly become defensive.
‘There’s no need. I have plenty of work. I wasn’t hinting.’
‘I never said that you were,’ he pointed out mildly, the blue eyes hooded as he looked at her. ‘We normally use our own team of people, but who knows? One of our magazines isn’t doing as well as it should. Perhaps a different perspective might do something to change that.’
Christina smiled politely and didn’t say anything. Adam owned a massive publishing chain which incorporated a wide cross-section of magazines, all of them expensive and glossy. When she had first started out Fiona had suggested that she use him to get her foot on the ladder, but she had refused. That smelt a bit of asking for favours for the wrong reasons, and her pride would not allow her to do it.
So she had quietly built up her own clientele. It had been hard work, but over the years she had managed and she was proud of her achievement. She wasn’t about to be enticed by Adam Palmer into doing shoots for one of his spin-offs because he perhaps felt sorry for her. Poor plain little Christina, struggling hard in her career, burying herself in her job after a disastrous, embarrassing relationship with a man who was obviously known to all and sundry as a cad—all and sundry, that was, except her. Why not throw her a kind hand-out? No, thank you.
So she sipped from her now lukewarm coffee and refrained from saying anything.
This wasn’t the response that he had expected from her. His mouth narrowed into a faintly impatient line and he said aggressively, ‘Well, wouldn’t you like to do a spot of work for my company? I guarantee that the pay would be excellent.’
‘I’m sure it would be,’ she hedged.
‘You’ll have to let me see your portfolio.’
‘Sure,’ she murmured vaguely, averting her eyes from his. She pretended to stifle a yawn and stood up. ‘Which bedroom do you want me to use?’
The cottage had three bedrooms, a legacy from when it was used by the entire family. They were quite small but comfortable.
‘Whichever,’ Adam said carelessly, and she had the feeling that he was still piqued by her dismissal of his offer. The thought brought a genuine smile to her lips. ‘I’ve lit fires in two of them, so you can take your pick.’
‘You’re not going to sleep?’
‘Presently,’ he said in a dismissive voice, and she collected her holdall and then left him in the living-room, staring broodingly into the fire and thinking who knew what?
She used the bedroom which she remembered from years ago, the one she had shared with Fiona. It was exactly as she remembered it, and the very fact that it had not changed was delightful.
The wallpaper, a pattern of small lavender flowers, still adorned the walls and the bed was the same one, with the soft mattress dipping in the middle.
She washed her face at the sink in the bedroom, deciding that she would have a bath the following morning before they left, and then settled under the quilt cover, feeling wonderfully warm.
The cottage might lack central heating, but Adam had been right when he’d said that there was nothing like a real fire. The room glowed with it, and it was lovely to think of the cold outside, banished by the flames in the bedroom.
She pulled out her book which she had brought with her to read, but she didn’t get far. After a while her eyelids began to feel heavy and she switched off the bedside lamp, lying in the darkness, sleepily aware that her thoughts were of Adam, which was irritating. Did he really think that she had contrived to get him up here so that she could have him to herself? A desperate woman who was on the rebound from a go
od-for-nothing charmer? Of course not, a logical voice inside her said. That’s just his line in being provocative. It was a trait he had been born with. She had responded correctly, had refused to rise to the bait, but the insinuation still niggled away like a nasty insect under her skin.
She decided to think of Fiona instead. Where had she gone? Had she made the ultimate mistake of getting married to Simon behind her brother’s back? If she had, then she obviously possessed enormous courage, because Christina personally couldn’t think of anything more daunting than Adam in a rage. Not just angry, but in a real, unabatable rage.
There I go, she thought drowsily, thinking of that stupid man again.
Gradually she drifted into sleep. She had no idea what the time was when she next opened her eyes, but she knew that it wasn’t morning. It was too black outside. Also the fire had not quite died.
Of course, it was the strangeness of the bed. She was too accustomed to sleeping in her own bed. The dip in the mattress, which had been a source of fun in her early teens, had given her a backache, and she slipped out from under the covers, shivering at the drop in temperature. She slipped on her robe and wandered out into the tiny corridor that led to the living-room and kitchen.
There was no milk in the cottage and the thought of coffee wasn’t appealing. She would have to make do with a glass of water.
She tiptoed into the kitchen, fumbling to find a glass and quietly turning on the tap. She didn’t want to make a sound and run the risk of waking Adam.
She was walking back to the bedroom when out of the corner of her eye she saw a figure lying on the chair, and she stopped in surprise.
It was Adam, asleep in the chair, his arms flung out on either side of him.
She edged across to where he was, fascinated at how youthful his face looked in repose. He was breathing quietly, not snoring at all, and there was something terribly appealing about him as he semi lay there on the chair.
She reached out and gave him a soft shake. He might look peaceful enough now, but once the fire had died completely he would catch his death of cold. She shook him again and bent towards him, so that her face was only inches away from his.
Unwilling Surrender Page 5