Unwilling Surrender

by Cathy Williams

  She relaxed and her body moulded softly against the hard contours of his own.

  They made their way to the savannah. Adam had somehow managed to get them special permits that allowed them access to photograph the bands passing on to the stage from a privileged position, and he released her to drink from a can of ice-cold pop, while she snapped a series of pictures with professional ease. In between shots, he reached out to hand her the can, and she drank from it, savouring the long gulps of ice-cold liquid.

  When he came to stand next to her, and began asking her questions about what she was shooting, she answered breathlessly, her colour alive with the excitement of the occasion.

  ‘Wait a minute,’ he said, and before she could object he took the camera away from her and was taking pictures of her, her face half laughing, half surprised, her hair everywhere.

  ‘You never told me you were a photographer!’ she laughed as he handed the camera back to her, and he said with a wry grin,

  ‘I’m not. So don’t expect masterpieces when you develop that roll of film. When I was a boy, I had a knack of taking those clever shots that somehow manage to chop heads and limbs off of people, and I’ve only improved slightly since then.’

  Christina laughed, throwing her head back. Everything was conspiring to make her feel bold and sensuous, and the expression in those blue eyes staring back at her seemed to be telling her something. What, she couldn’t put her finger on, but something that seemed ridiculously alluring in this heat.

  She turned away and continued snapping, eating her way through her rolls of film.

  As the bands filtered one by one on to the raised stage, which was overlooked by rows upon rows of makeshift stands, filled to bursting with thousands of spectators, including the team of judges, the band members, costumed and full of energy, danced in an orgy of wonderful abandon.

  Christina snapped women with their heads thrown back, their eyes closed, lost in the music and the ambience.

  Where was Frances in all of this? Not very happy, wherever she was, that was for sure. She had made a point of displaying her possessiveness with Adam to everyone in the crew and she wouldn’t be impressed at having found herself without him by her side.

  The thought of the other woman was a dampener on her high spirits and Christina immediately shoved the image to the back of her mind.

  She lay down her camera for a moment and stood with her hands on her hips, her head tilted back, staring at the ongoing spectacle taking place only a matter of yards away from her.

  She felt Adam move towards her from behind, then his hands were on her shoulders, massaging them. Christina opened her mouth to protest, but instead of speaking she lapsed into silence, breathing deeply with enjoyment as his fingers kneaded the firm flesh of her back.

  She half closed her eyes.

  ‘Does that feel good?’ he asked her, and she could hear the smile in his voice. Too good, she wanted to tell him, but how could she say that without betraying her feelings? As far as he was concerned, this was a friendly gesture, and no doubt he was swept up in the heat of the moment, anyway, just as she was. It might feel erotically pleasurable to her, but it would not feel that way to him.

  The realisation made her body tense, and he murmured persuasively, ‘Relax. Concentrate on the bands. Forget what I’m doing to you.’

  Forget what he was doing to her? She wanted to laugh outright at that one, but she couldn’t. Her mouth felt too dry and she was slowly beginning to realise why.

  She was more than simply attracted to Adam Palmer. Mere physical attraction would have been inconvenient and embarrassing, but it would not have made her feel so giddy and alive whenever he was around.

  No, that headiness had its roots in quite another origin. She was in love with him, hopelessly, passionately in love with him, even though, she now realised, it was something she had been desperately trying to hide from herself ever since they had found themselves thrown together in that cottage in Scotland.

  The potent attraction which had hit her from the very moment she had become aware of him as a member of the opposite sex had subsided, lain in waiting, and now it was no longer just the sharp innocent tug of teenage attraction that she had once felt, but the deep, aching essence of love.

  What she had felt for him as a girl had been hopeless infatuation. What she felt now was just as hopeless, but in a different league altogether. It was an adult’s fierce passion, born from respect and admiration and cemented in desire.

  The impact of her realisation snaked through her, making her shiver convulsively in the heat. How could this have happened? It was illogical, absurd. Years ago he had tactlessly handed her girlhood crush back to her. Had she forgotten that? Had she idiotically let herself think that a few years would have made him more receptive?

  She was a plain Jane. Greg had told her so in no uncertain terms, and at the time, when she had recovered from the hurt of that insult, she had persuaded herself that he had done her a favour, that he had instilled a necessary caution in her dealings with the opposite sex.

  So how could she have fallen in love with a man who didn’t even breathe the same air as she did? They had known each other for years, but in this they might well have been two strangers from different planets. Adam Palmer was the man every woman wanted, and the man who refused to commit himself to any. Experience had taught him his own bitter lessons.

  And she...she was the woman who scarcely rated a second glance, who had believed fervently that after Greg she would never allow herself to feel anything towards a man but friendship and a certain amount of contented attraction—certainly nothing like the agonising, confusing range of emotions stilling her powers of reasoning.

  No wonder she had conveniently chosen to forget all about Frances’s presence. Why, she thought with a stab of bitterness, let reality intrude when she could spend a few stolen hours pretending that it didn’t exist?

  She felt sick and dizzy and if she could have she would have fled, but she couldn’t. She had no option but to keep this silly grin plastered across her face, like a circus clown, and pretend that everything was fine.

  His fingers had moved down her back, working their way along her spine, and she eased herself out of his grasp.

  She didn’t think that she could face him; she would betray too much to those clever eyes of his.

  So she wriggled her shoulders and said without looking around, keeping her voice light and even with a huge effort of will, ‘That was just what the doctor ordered. You should take it up professionally.’

  ‘I’ll bear that in mind should my businesses ever decide to go under,’ he said drily from behind her.

  His voice sent little threads of awareness shooting through her and she stooped to retrieve her camera and then moved away, closer to the stage, where one band was moving off and another was eagerly waiting to take its place.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Adam asked sharply, turning her around to face him, his long fingers coiled into her hair.

  ‘Nothing,’ Christina lied quickly. She knew that she was blushing, and she hoped that he would believe the heat was the reason behind it.

  He gave her a disbelieving look. ‘Really. One minute you were totally relaxed and carefree. Now, you’re acting as though you’ve suddenly found something unpleasant in the soup. So out with it. What’s wrong?’

  ‘Honestly,’ she persisted stubbornly, ‘nothing.’ She knew Adam, though. He was persistent. So she said with as much conviction as she could muster, ‘Actually, I do have a bit of a headache. I guess it must be all the concentrating, combined with the noise and the heat.’ She rubbed her temples meaningfully and shifted her eyes away from his powerful body to a clump of shrubbery slightly behind him.

  Adam nodded. ‘Is it very bad? Perhaps we ought to think about getting you back to the hotel. There’s nothing worse than having a headache and knowing that it’s going to get worse and worse. I’ve suffered from them occasionally and I know that it’s not a pleasant exp
erience.’

  Christina wished he wouldn’t show this amount of sympathy. A bit would have been fine, but there was something too understanding in his eyes as he looked down at her, and that made her feel guilty and uncomfortable.

  ‘I’ll be fine,’ she muttered, backing slightly. She gave him a bright smile and he frowned.

  ‘Are you sure that a headache is the only thing bothering you?’ he pressed, and she laughed.

  ‘What else? Besides, I can’t go back to the hotel just yet. I have one last band to cover.’

  ‘I’m sure you’ve already covered it. You were out here yesterday, don’t forget. And we did manage to see most of the bands throughout the course of today. I can’t have you collapsing on me in a heap because you think you’re under pressure to stay out here in this blazing heat taking pictures until the cows come home.’

  He moved towards her and she felt a surge of panic rise to her throat. She didn’t want him close to her. That made her thoughts go into mad disarray, and what it did to her body didn’t bear thinking about.

  ‘I’ll take a few more and then I’ll return to the hotel,’ she compromised insistently, desperately, and he nodded.

  ‘A few,’ he said in a warning voice, ‘and that’s it. Don’t forget who’s the boss here.’ His voice was light, but there was a serious glint in his eyes as he surveyed her.

  Christina turned away and refocused her attention on what was happening on the stage, but all of that carefree enthusiasm had evaporated. She was too conscious of him standing right there beside her, dark and threatening, a danger to her peace of mind.

  All this brotherly sympathy irritated her. She didn’t want it. She knew what she wanted; it was the sort of hungry response which she imagined a woman like Frances could arouse in him. She wanted him to look at her and feel the same fierce, uncontrollable desire to reach out and touch as she felt for him.

  She thought of herself, her mousy plainness, camouflaged just now under the warm glow of a tan, but as soon as that had faded she would revert to her old unremarkable self. It was laughable. She was laughable.

  She concentrated on taking pictures, trying to ignore his presence, even though her body tingled with an awful awareness of him, when she felt his hand on her shoulder and he said into her ear, ‘Enough. It’s not getting any cooler. You’ll probably faint in a minute if you’re not careful.’

  ‘If I do, I won’t hold you responsible!’ Christina snapped.

  ‘I said put the camera down. We’re going back to the hotel.’ His voice was flat. He had decided and he was in no mood for a lively debate on the subject.

  She shrugged and fiddled around with her equipment, not looking at him, wishing that he would vanish into a puff of smoke and leave her to get on with her life the way she had been doing before he stepped on to the scene.

  They began walking away from the savannah, weaving in between the crowds of people.

  The hotel was within walking distance of where they were, and as they cleared their way out of the savannah she could feel her feet beginning to ache. Wasn’t that always the way? Sheer momentum could keep you going for hours, days, but the minute you relaxed all the aches and pains jumped on you and began pounding away.

  They walked slowly and in silence. The streets were littered with debris: used paper cups, streamers from some of the costumes, actual headgear which had been discarded because of the weight at some point during the march to the savannah.

  The blinding sun had dipped and twilight was beginning to set in. The descent from daytime into night was swift in the tropics. Within an hour it would be much darker. Christina glanced across at the figure striding alongside her, his hands in his pockets, the angles of his face unyielding. She had seen the boy grow into the youth, then into the man, and still she could feel an illicit thrill of awareness whenever she set eyes on him, as though he were a stranger with all the power in the world to disturb her. And wasn’t he?

  The streets were much emptier here than they had been further back. The onlookers would all have followed the bands to the savannah. They would move on to private parties as night fell. By midnight all that would be left of these two days of carnival would be the rubbish-strewn streets.

  ‘My head feels a lot better,’ Christina said, to break the silence.

  ‘Good.’ He spared her a brief glance and she wondered what was going through his mind.

  ‘I suppose you’re eager to get back to Frances,’ she said, making herself remember the madness of what she felt, and he turned to her, his eyebrows raised.

  ‘If I didn’t know better, I’d say that you were jealous of her,’ he said blandly. ‘Are you?’

  ‘Don’t be absurd.’ Christina laughed as heartily as she could. ‘I’d be a wreck if I became jealous of every model I ever photographed. Or, for that matter, every wealthy person whose house I was ever invited into to take pictures of their pet budgies or rock gardens. I’m just not the jealous type.’ Was she overdoing the spiel? she wondered. The fact was that she was ripped apart at the thought of Adam and Frances together.

  ‘I would never have become so close to Fiona if I were the jealous type,’ she continued, making sure that she rammed her point home, because to have him think that she was jealous of Frances was only a step away from having him think that she was jealous of the other woman because of her relationship with him. ‘If you recall, my parents weren’t from the same exalted background as yours. If they hadn’t saved to put me through private school, I would never have come into contact with Fiona, would I? Our social circles would have been a thousand miles apart.’

  ‘Did that bother you?’ There was an element of curiosity and interest in his voice. This was what was so dangerous about him, she thought. When she wasn’t angry with him, it was too disturbingly easy to be charmed by that talent he had for making her feel special. It didn’t matter if intelligence and common sense told her that it was a talent which he used with every woman he ever spoke to.

  ‘No, it didn’t,’ she said shortly. ‘I had a very happy childhood. Why should I have been jealous?’

  ‘Because that’s the way human nature operates. Envy isn’t a noble emotion, but, then again, how many of us are noble?’

  ‘Are you envious of anyone?’ Christina asked, turning the question round to him.

  ‘Not that I can think of offhand.’

  ‘Lucky you,’ she said more sarcastically than she had intended. ‘One of the noble few.’

  ‘Merely philosophical,’ Adam returned smoothly. ‘Why waste time and effort on envy? That’s how life passes you by. As far as I’m concerned you’ve got to get out there and achieve your maximum potential.’

  You’ve certainly succeeded there, she wanted to inform him. Most men would kill for what Adam Palmer possessed—money, status, power, looks, brains. And, of course, his pick of women. In fact, she thought, most men would kill simply for the pick of women bit.

  They had left the crowds way behind them. They turned off the savannah and began walking slowly up the incline that led to the hotel.

  Dusk had settled over them, a shadowy darkness filled with the growing sounds of crickets chirping, insects calling to each other, frogs croaking in the bushes at the side of the road.

  ‘So,’ he spoke into the silence, ‘you’re not the jealous type. You don’t smoke or keep late nights. You don’t sleep around. So what vices have you got, little Tina Reynolds?’

  Christina gritted her teeth. She didn’t care for that description of her. Little Tina Reynolds? He made her sound like someone who had just progressed out of dolls and easy-to-read books. God knew what he would think if he knew beyond doubt that she had never slept with Greg, that when it came to the crunch the thought had frightened her and turned her off.

  He also managed to make it sound as though vices were enormously exciting attributes, while she, devoid of any, was as dull as dish-water—weird and boring.

  ‘I don’t like men who patronise,’ she answered calmly, cho
king down her anger.

  ‘Meaning me?’ He laughed softly under his breath as though he found her reaction amusing.

  ‘If that’s how you think of yourself, then yes,’ she said, noticing that her reply didn’t meet with quite the same level of amused mockery.

  ‘And what do you think of me?’ he asked casually, in a voice that implied that he was just passing the time of day. Or night. They happened to be walking together, his tone said, on a balmy night; this question was just for the sake of providing conversation.

  She was quite certain that her answer didn’t interest him in the slightest. But now that he had asked, why not tell him?

  ‘I think,’ she said carefully, ‘that you’re extremely intelligent and extremely well off, and you know it. You’re well aware of the advantages both those things can bring, and you exploit those advantages to the full. Look at all the Frances look-alikes that waltz through your life, for instance.’

  ‘There you go,’ Adam drawled, ‘harping on about Frances yet again...’

  ‘I was not harping on. I was using her to cite an example.’

  He ignored her interruption. ‘What makes you think that the women I go out with are attracted to me because of my intelligence? Or my money for that matter?’

  ‘Because...’ Christina said, floundering ‘...because...’

  ‘Because those are the qualities that attract you in a man? Greg didn’t have a great deal of money and from all accounts he was hardly intelligent, except in that street-wise way that con men have, so what turned you on about him?’

  She had the funny feeling that she had managed, somehow, to throw away her chance of giving him a few insights into his character. He had turned the tables on her so expertly that she was left trying to find an answer for his question, something glib and amused that would cover her confused outrage at his speculations.