She could remember quite a few practical jokes which he had pulled on them years ago, when she and Fiona had been too young and unimaginative to retaliate.
This would be a bit of delayed poetic justice.
She made a point of shopping very carefully for her outfit. Fiona hadn’t mentioned numbers to her, but she had a feeling that it was going to be quite a big party. There would be all the glamorous people, well-known faces, and, much as she knew she couldn’t compete with the likes of models, there was no reason why she shouldn’t look her best. Nothing too startling, of course. Startling outfits only ever really looked good on women with startling looks. But something chic and subtle. Something that would blend into the background without being thoroughly boring and nondescript.
She ended up buying a black dress with a wide neckline edged with a collar of narrow black chiffon, which lovingly outlined her figure and made her feel reasonably attractive.
This, she thought that Saturday, as she eyed her reflection in the mirror, was only fair, since the outfit had cost the earth, and what was the point of spending a lot of money if you ended up feeling run-of-the-mill?
She was taking a taxi to Fiona’s house, and she was under strict instructions to be there no later than seven-thirty.
‘We’ve all got to be well hidden by the time he arrives at eight-thirty,’ she had said. ‘I’ve told him that I’m bringing Simon over because there’s something terribly important that we need to discuss. Together, as a family.’
‘That should work,’ Christina had replied, amused. She tried to imagine Adam’s cold fury at the thought of what such a discussion might mean.
The house, large as it was, was already bursting at the seams by the time she arrived an hour and a half later.
Fiona greeted her at the door, divested her of the small gift she had brought along, and made a rudimentary effort to introduce her to some of the faces. But she was no good at that sort of thing. She was too easily distracted, and after fifteen minutes Christina began circulating on her own, quite content to observe from the sidelines.
She had been right about one thing: there were lots of beautiful people there. Some she recognised from previous parties. The well-known faces tended to clump together, no doubt sharing similar experiences of being accosted by fans of one sort or another.
The less well-known ones seemed by far the most interesting, and over the next forty-five minutes she made a huge effort to introduce herself to them.
It was a technique which she had mastered over the years, even though she might be feeling scared stiff inside.
It was, in fact, one of the advantages of freelancing. It forced you to cultivate contacts, to brave the possible scorn, or boredom, of people whose business you wanted to court.
Now it was a talent that appeared to be standing her in good stead. She was chatting amicably with a journalist, who was there, he swore, socially and not on business, when Fiona announced, in a wildly theatrical voice, that it was time to turn off the lights and await Adam’s imminent entrance.
A little ripple of laughter spread through the crowd as the rooms fell into darkness, and voices which had been booming a minute before became hushed and conspiratorial.
Now’s his cue, Christina thought, to throw the whole thing into mad disarray by not appearing.
But he did. After ten minutes of increasingly restless silence they all heard his car swing into the drive, followed shortly by the sharp click of his footsteps up to the front door.
Christina grinned as his key was inserted. Then he was there, standing framed in the doorway, his black coat billowing around him because it was a freezing, windy evening.
She felt a little shiver run through her which she assumed must have been from the cold air blowing in, although she admitted that he did make an impressive sight, tall, lean and silhouetted quite starkly against the night skies, mesmerising, but dangerously so.
It was only a fleeting impression, because then the lights were switched on and everything was sudden chaos. The yelling of ‘Happy birthday’, the streamers, the guests crowding around him.
Christina watched from a distance. There was no way that she was going to get caught in the general stampede in his direction.
It was hard to tell what exactly was going through his head. She could see him distinctly, towering over most of the other people, his face a mask of politeness as he accepted their good wishes. Then he began making a path for himself through the crowds, a laborious process as he was continually stopped on the way.
Christina headed towards the kitchen, which had emptied on Adam’s arrival and showed no signs of refilling.
It was cool there. She poured herself a drink of water from one of the dozens of bottles standing on the counter and stood for a while, staring out of the kitchen window.
She was hardly aware of the soft tread of footsteps behind her, and when he spoke into her ear she visibly started, spilling some of the water down her dress.
She turned around and made a great fuss of wiping it off, hardly daring to look into his face. It was funny, she had been as cool as a cucumber when he had walked through that front door, but now that he was standing right in front of her she was disgustingly nervous and apprehensive.
He was still in his suit, a deep grey hand-tailored one that emphasised the powerful lines of his body, although he had removed his tie and undone the first couple of buttons of his shirt. She could glimpse a tantalising sliver of muscular chest, and she quickly averted her eyes.
‘Happy birthday, Adam,’ she said huskily.
‘”Happy” isn’t quite the word I would use,’ he replied. ‘”Happy” conjures up pictures of a meal in a restaurant, maybe the opera or the theatre. A surprise party definitely doesn’t enter into the category of happy.’
He poured himself a gin and tonic and stood there drinking it, observing her over the rim of the glass.
‘I expect you and Fiona are feeling terribly pleased with yourselves?’
‘I don’t know what you mean,’ Christina protested feebly, and he raised his eyebrows expressively. There definitely was something dangerous about him, she decided, even without the startling backdrop and the billowing coat. It was there in the calculating glint in his eyes, the hard set of his mouth, the general impression of a man of formidable intellect and self-control.
‘You know exactly what I mean. You always know exactly what I mean. It’s simply that at times you choose to pretend that you don’t. Another one of your odd little traits.’
Odd little traits? ‘Thank you very much for making me sound like a creature from another planet,’ she replied, not liking his observation. ‘Shouldn’t you be out there mingling with your guests? After all, we’ve been here for well over an hour waiting for your arrival.’
‘I’m sure you have. With bated breath. Fiona knows I hate these sort of affairs, and I suspect you know it as well.’ He swallowed the rest of his drink in one gulp and she suddenly wanted to laugh out loud. Poor little Adam, how nice to see him in an uncomfortable position just for once.
‘I suspect I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ she said, stifling her amusement, and his eyes narrowed on her, ‘but I’m having a wonderful time, just in case you’re interested.’ The two glasses of wine, top-quality stuff and very drinkable, had gone to her head and she was feeling pleasantly warm towards the world.
‘So it would seem. But is it because you’re enjoying the party, or enjoying a quiet little laugh at my expense?’
‘I’d never dream of laughing at you, Adam,’ she said, working hard to appear serious. She moved towards the door, but before she could pull it open he was ahead of her, propping himself against the shut door with one hand, so that she had to stand there and face him.
‘What a complex little creature you are,’ he mocked. ‘I’d forgotten until we had that little spell of enforced intimacy at the cottage in Scotland. Isn’t it funny what you can rediscover about a person in a matter of a few da
ys?’
His eyes wandered down to her lips, and she felt a jolt of alarm shoot through her.
She wasn’t the game-playing type, and this smacked of something of a game to her. One played at her expense. Did he imagine that he could rattle her with that deliberately suggestive look in his eyes? She might be feeling light-headed from the drink, but she was far from feeling out of control. She knew and he knew that she wasn’t his type, so all this intent charm was wasted on her.
‘Isn’t it,’ she agreed coolly, transferring her attention away from his face to the door-handle. ‘But I can stand only so much enforced intimacy with you in a lifetime, and I think my limit was used up at the cottage, so if you don’t mind?’
His face hardened, and she felt a little jab of satisfaction. She didn’t care what he thought of her, just so long as he didn’t suspect that she was more vulnerable to his charm than she wanted to be.
‘You’re a cool customer, aren’t you, Tina?’ His voice was speculative. ‘So self-contained. What happened between you and that Robinson chap? Under all that control, there’s a fire burning, isn’t there? I felt its heat for a brief while at the cottage. Did he discover that he couldn’t handle you? Was that it?’
‘I don’t have to listen to this!’ The roar in her heart was deafening.
He ignored her strangled protest. ‘What did he do for you? Did you sleep with him? Were you in love with him?’
‘That’s none of your business.’ She turned away, her voice barely audible. ‘I don’t pry into your life!’ She raised her eyes to his, floundering in the unfathomable blue depths. ‘I don’t ask you about the women you’ve slept with!’ she continued defiantly. ‘What if I were in love with Greg?’ she asked. ‘He might have been everything you said, but you’re hardly a shining example of what every woman wants, are you?’
‘There are a lot of women who would disagree with you on that score,’ he said, unperturbed by her fast-disappearing self-control, that wonderful self-control that had fuelled this conversation in the first place.
‘And where are they?’ Christina threw at him. ‘I don’t exactly see them queuing up to give glowing reports about you to their successors! If you’re such an eligible candidate, how is it that you’ve never married? Or is eligibility synonymous with playing the field?’
‘I play the field,’ he answered with steel in his voice, ‘because the alternative has never appealed. Marriage, from what I’ve seen, is an institution that leaves a lot to be desired.’
‘Your parents were happy!’
‘My parents were anything but happy. My father slept with a series of women. In fact he was such an avid womaniser that running the company eventually took a back seat to his affairs. Why do you think it was in such a mess when I took over after his death?’
Christina opened her mouth, but nothing came out.
‘But,’ she eventually stammered, ‘they seemed...’ Her voice trailed off as she saw the derisive curl of his lips.
‘So they did. Not even Fiona suspected a thing. I suppose that’s one thing I should be grateful for—that she, at any rate, was left with a few illusions. So you see, my dear Tina, as far as I’m concerned, commitment is a joke.’
They were staring at each other and she felt as though she were standing on the edge of a precipice, hardly daring to breathe in case she fell over.
‘That still doesn’t give you the right to treat women how you want,’ she said eventually, her mind still reeling from his revelations.
‘I treat women how they want to be treated, believe me.’ He paused and gave her a long look, his blue eyes hooded and unreadable. ‘When I touched you in the cottage, it was because you wanted to be touched, whether you deny it or not.’
There was a thick silence and Christina felt giddy with apprehension and nerves. She wanted desperately to push past him, to get away from the hypnotic gleam of his eyes, but her body was locked in a block of ice and she found that she was rooted to the spot.
‘No!’ she managed to protest, which made him laugh softly.
‘Just as you want to be touched right now.’ He raised his hand and trailed a lazy line along her collarbone, over the chiffony neckline, then along her breast, circling the nipple, which hardened under the light caress.
Then a wild, hot flush spread through her, jerking her into action. She stumbled back and at the same time the door was pushed by someone outside.
He released her, the door opened, and she escaped quickly back into the living-room, losing herself in the noise and crowds.
What was happening to her? she wondered, trembling. One minute everything in her life seemed to be ticking along nicely. Her job was satisfying. Her most tiresome problem had been the two corgis and their temperamental owner. But even that problem had only really aroused a certain amount of affectionate amusement.
Now a network of unexpected complications seemed to have cropped up all over the place. Her mind kept insisting on replaying images of Adam, memorising little details about him, adding those details to a reservoir of stored-up images which she had not even known, until now, that she possessed. And if that wasn’t disturbing enough, she now found that her body had decided to turn traitor as well, responding to him with a hunger that made her head swim.
Back there, in the kitchen, he had touched her, lightly and expertly, to prove a point. He might not be prepared to offer commitment to the women he slept with, but that didn’t mean that they didn’t want him anyway. Except, she told herself with angry disgust, she wasn’t one of his women and never would be, never would want to be.
She looked at him across the room, surrounded by a circle of friends, the majority of them women. He had his arm around one of them. She was tall, blonde and had that sort of drop-dead beauty that would make most heads swivel. Her hair was straight and short, her make-up understated, but not so understated as to give the impression of someone scrubbed clean. Of course she would be a model. Weren’t they all? This was his type of woman. That thought slowly brought her back to earth and restored some of her shattered calm.
She caught Fiona’s eye and watched as her friend weaved a way through the crowds and finally deposited herself on the stair next to her.
‘A huge success,’ Christina said, covering her confused thoughts with a grin. ‘You should give lessons on throwing parties. You’ve managed just the right combination here of beautiful people, good music, good food and plenty of drink.’
Fiona pulled a face. ‘I was hoping for more of an adverse reaction from Adam,’ she said with a plaintive sigh, ‘but he didn’t even seem embarrassed by the whole thing.’
Christina’s eyes drifted across to where he was standing. Was it her imagination or was the space between the blonde and him a little less than when she’d looked over a minute ago? If this continued they would fuse in about half an hour.
She dragged her eyes away, because the sight of it was producing a bitter taste in her mouth which she could only put down to disgust.
‘I’m sure deep down he’s furious,’ Christina soothed, recalling their conversation in the kitchen.
‘Really? He doesn’t seem terribly furious from where I’m sitting.’
‘No,’ Christina agreed, and her voice was a shade cooler, ‘he doesn’t, does he? Who’s his lady friend?’ She hadn’t wanted to ask that question. She hadn’t wanted to betray any curiosity at all, but she couldn’t seem to help herself. Her mouth framed the words independently of her brain and uttered them before she had time to think.
‘Frances,’ said Fiona, frowning, ‘I think. I’ve only met her once. She’s a model.’
‘Oh, really? What a surprise.’
Fiona laughed and turned to her friend. ‘He’s always been attracted to the same type.’
‘Maybe he finds women with brains a little too intimidating.’
‘You could be right. Although he likes you and you have brains.’
Christina laughed shortly. She didn’t want Adam Palmer to like her. �
�Like’ was such a nondescript word. It was what you felt about your next-door neighbour, or the butcher. Not that it mattered to her whether he liked, disliked or thoroughly detested her, she decided.
‘He doesn’t like me, Fiona,’ she said, ‘he tolerates me. The way you tolerate something unpleasant and inconvenient that you accidentally might bump into.’
‘Like a traffic jam?’ Fiona asked helpfully.
‘That wasn’t quite the metaphor I had in mind. But it doesn’t matter. You know what I mean. Your brother puts up with my company when it’s absolutely necessary. Not,’ she added emphatically, ‘that I mind in the slightest.’ She laughed. ‘I’m the same towards him.’
‘Are you?’ Fiona looked at her friend dubiously. ‘You once had a crush on him.’
Good grief, Christina thought, had that been apparent to the entire universe, and was she destined to be reminded of it for the remainder of her life?
‘Once,’ she said, trying not to sound annoyed at this unwelcome reminder of her stupid youthful folly. ‘Once. Once I wore my hair in pigtails. That doesn’t mean that I still do so now, does it?’
Fiona looked at her blankly and said, ‘You’d look cute in pigtails. Like a schoolgirl. You have such a young face.’
Christina was torn between a desire to laugh and one to groan aloud in frustration. Dear, sweet Fiona. How could Adam be so hard, so arrogant, so damned sharp, when his sister was so adorable and ingenuous? They were like chalk and cheese. No wonder he felt obliged to protect her for her own good. In the wrong hands, she could be putty.
‘What I’m trying to say,’ she murmured gently, ‘is that I don’t particularly care for your brother, and the feeling’s mutual.’
‘Is it?’ Fiona thought that one over for a few seconds, then she said, ‘If that’s the case, then why does he want to employ you?’
Christina’s eyes had been wandering around the room. It was fun watching the various stages of inebriation. She only hoped this crowd of people would be taking taxis back to their homes. Now, at Fiona’s words, her attention returned sharply to her friend sitting on the stair next to her.
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