Avoiding Mr Right

by Sophie Weston

  Christina found her voice. ‘I’m sure you can.’ It did not sound like her voice at all. She cleared her throat. ‘I mean could.’

  His eyes were very dark. ‘No, you mean can.’

  She shook her head. She compressed her lips to stop them trembling. For one brief, crazy moment she thought of going away with him—away from the Princess and whoever she might choose to socialise with. Away from the boat, somewhere distant and private where Luc could take her in his arms and... She stopped herself with an effort that was almost physical.

  ‘No.’ It was all she could manage. It scraped her throat like sandpaper.

  He looked incredulous. ‘Are you going to say you’re not that sort of girl?’

  That hurt too, but Christina learned fast. She had seen it coming and hid the instinctive flinching more successfully this time. She raised her head and met his eyes squarely.

  ‘I don’t have to make excuses, Luc,’ she told him quietly. ‘You asked me to spend the night. I said no. End of story.’

  He frowned. ‘Why not?’

  This was awful. She could not say, Because I want to so much that you could convince me black was white.

  She kept her voice steady with a supreme effort. ‘I don’t have to give you reasons either.’

  He was unmoved. ‘You do when you kiss me like that.’

  The eyes that met hers held a challenge, and this time there was no amusement whatsoever. Christina lifted her chin.

  ‘All right. Tell me, then. Is Luc Henri your real name?’

  He hesitated.

  Christina pressed on. ‘And aren’t you as much interested in the Princess Marie Anne as you are in me?’

  Luc looked wary and amused in equal measure. ‘I wouldn’t say as much,’ he drawled.

  Christina refused to back down. ‘But if she weren’t here you wouldn’t be here. Would you?’ she flung at him.

  He shrugged, looking bored. ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Don’t lie to me, Luc. You’re following her, aren’t you?’

  His eyes narrowed. ‘What do you mean?’

  Christina took one look at his bleak expression and decided that her sympathies lay with the Princess. ‘You weren’t in that hotel by chance. I saw you at the fax machine.’

  ‘Really?’ He was clearly not going to explain himself.

  He sounded icy.

  Christina refused to be intimidated. ‘Really,’ she said with spirit. ‘What’s more I wouldn’t spend the night with you if you were... were...’

  ‘The last man on earth?’ he prompted, his eyes glittering.

  She glared. ‘I was going to say, the Emperor of China, but it amounts to the same thing.’

  He stared at her as if she had struck him. There was a sharp silence. A muscle worked in his temple. Christina put her hand on the doorhandle. His mouth hardened.

  ‘Doesn’t it just?’ he said at last.

  ‘Goodbye.’

  She turned away, opening the door.

  ‘You’ll walk away from—?’

  He stopped as she swung back on him, suddenly savage. ‘From what, Luc? A few kisses? A man who was quite willing to hound me through the backstreets of Athens in a damn great Mafia limo? A man who can’t even tell me anything about himself because he doesn’t want me to know what he does for a living?’ Her voice spiralled upwards.

  Luc stared at her. She had the impression that he was utterly taken aback. It was some balm for her wounded feelings, but not much.

  She drew a shaky breath and said more quietly, ‘I don’t know what sort of girl you think I am, Luc. But I can tell you what I’m not. I’m not the sort of girl who spends the night with a man she can’t even trust.’

  She flung herself out of the car without waiting for his reply. She ran along the quay and scrambled quickly down the slippery steps where the car could not follow. She leaned back against the warm stone wall, her blood pounding in her ears.

  She did not know how long she stood there, the sun on her closed eyelids. Her breath slowly came back to normal. Luc did not follow her.

  Eventually she heard the expensive engine start and purr away down the sweep of the harbour road. When she looked, he had gone.

  Christina sank shakily down onto the sun-warmed steps. Her brain was whirling. Not just her brain, either. Physically she felt as if she had just withstood a tornado, every nerve alert, every muscle trembling faintly. And when she touched it her mouth was tender.

  How can a man affect me like this? she thought. Especially one I don’t know and don’t trust!

  She could find no explanation. Oh, there were plenty of excuses: he had startled her, she had not been braced to resist him, she had never met anyone like him before, she was trying to protect the children and the Princess by removing him from the hotel in the first place...

  But Christina was honest enough to admit that they were only excuses. She had gone with him, stayed with him for hours because she was deeply attracted to him, maybe was even a little in love with him. In spite of the heat haze she shivered. It was not a pleasant thought.

  She had never felt like this before about anyone. She had never had to face this tension between attraction and deep mistrust. She did not know what she ought to do. She did not even know, in her heart of hearts, what she wanted to do. She only knew that she did not want to think about the invitation she had rejected in case she regretted it too bitterly.

  That was where Christina stopped her thoughts dead in their tracks. ‘Who are you kidding?’ she muttered aloud, despising herself. ‘You don’t want to think about it in case you change your mind!’

  The thought was so alarming that she banished the whole subject. She stood up with resolution. There was still a job to be done. And first the children had to be collected.

  When she got to the hotel she did not even think about going through the main reception area. That was where she had encountered Luc Henri last time. This time she made her way round through the garden to the sports complex. In the distance, a couple were hand in hand. Christina took in their quiet air of perfect harmony and winced.

  Luc had teased her, ordered her around and kissed her nearly senseless. He had not held her hand. She wished he had.

  Sharply she turned away. It was nonsense, of course. Luc had not been thinking about love or anything like it. He had offered her a night of passion and, if she remembered correctly, a good time. Pacing in a sunlit garden, hands and eyes locked in mutual absorption, had not been on his agenda at all.

  And don’t you forget it, Christina adjured herself. But she still ran down the path to the sports complex as if all the demons of jealousy were after her.

  The children were waiting, perched on bar stools that were too high for Pru, sipping importantly at violent-coloured drinks. The barman grinned at Christina’s look of horror as she came up to them, panting.

  ‘Dinosaur’s Blood,’ he said, nodding at Pru’s sundae glass of fizzing purple mud. The ice-cubes in it were green. ‘Speciality of the house. Mainly cherry cola.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Christina, slightly reassured.

  Pru negotiated the bendy straw into the corner of her mouth and said pleasurably through it, ‘We’ve got a secret.’

  Simon kicked her. ‘No, we haven’t.’

  Pru rocked. However, she remained upright. It showed the experience of a girl who had had bar stools kicked from under her many times, Christina thought wryly.

  Pru clung to her point tenaciously. ‘You said we could tell Christina.’

  Simon frowned. He stared out at the garden with heavy meaning. Pru continued to look at him mulishly but Christina followed his eyes. And stiffened. The anonymous lovers had wandered into view, still hand in hand. They were no longer alone, though. This time they were surrounded by a laughing group of tanned and beautiful people whose manner said that they knew everyone in the place was looking at them and that it was no more than they expected. Among them was the Princess.

  Christina looked quickly at Simon. For the
first time since she’d joined the Lady Elaine, the Princess was not looking bored or bad-tempered. She was laughing at something one of the women had said to her. It made her look mischievous and incredibly beautiful. It was clear that that was what the movie star thought too.

  Watching the famously handsome Stuart Define watch Simon Aston’s mother, Christina felt her heart sink. Poor child, he knew his mother was bored and lonely and he was quite old enough to add two and two and make five. Quite as capable as any underhand gossip columnist anyway, she thought. All her protective instincts rose. She hated Luc Henri at that moment.

  But all she said, very gently, was, ‘If it’s your secret and you want to tell me, that’s fine. But I don’t think you should tell me anyone else’s secrets. You might be wrong, you know.’

  Simon looked hugely relieved. Christina’s heart twisted. She ruffled his hair suddenly. He looked surprised and scrambled off his seat.

  ‘Come on,’ he said in his usual lordly way. But Christina thought he was quite pleased, even though it was beneath his dignity to admit it.

  They went back to the boat. The first officer met them at the gangway with a spate of complaints: Christina should have come straight back, she should never have stayed ashore so long; there had been someone from the port authorities on board screaming at them about some trivial infringement of their petty bureaucracies; she should have been there to interpret; the captain was very annoyed.

  Since all this was delivered in Greek in an angry undertone, the children were not supposed to understand it. But Simon was acute.

  ‘They’ve got you into a mess again,’ he deduced.

  Christina sent him a harassed look. ‘No, they—’ She met his eyes and remembered that it was no use trying to lie to children. ‘Oh, hell,’ she said, giving up. ‘What if they have? It’s not kind to gloat.’

  Simon looked surprised. ‘Uncle Kay will have to come and sort it out,’ he said simply.

  It was clear that he looked forward to that eventuality with a lot more enthusiasm than Christina did. She nearly said so, but his love and trust in his uncle was too evident, so she bit her lip.

  When he summoned her to his presence, Captain Demetrius shouted at her enjoyably for ten minutes, then dismissed her with instructions to make sure she gave the crew a decent dinner for once.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ murmured Christina, straight-faced.

  Much pleased by this exercise of his authority, he waved her away. In the galley she gave way to mirth.

  ‘Oh, well, my heart may be broken,’ she told the spotty mirror over the sink cheerfully, ‘but at least I can still laugh in the wrong places.’ Then she stopped, shocked by her own words.

  Heartbroken? After four meetings, three kisses and one indecent proposition? Ridiculous.

  She was still telling herself how ridiculous it was, when the intercom beeped.

  ‘Christina, would you come to the main stateroom, please?’ said the Princess.

  Relieved to go back to what she was paid to do, Christina went. She half expected to find Stuart Define and his friends there, but they were not. Instead the Princess was sitting in the padded seat under the porthole, one arm round Pru, to whom she had been reading. Simon was sprawled on a Kashmiri rug, reading a book of his own.

  ‘I want to give a dinner party on board,’ she began.

  Christina nodded. The film people, she surmised. She fished her notepad out of her pocket. ‘How many?’

  The Princess grimaced. ‘Depends. Eight or so, I suppose. We can’t expect my husband to be here, of course.’ There was an edge to her voice.

  Simon did not look up but he began to kick the rug ferociously. Christina said nothing but her heart went out to him.

  His mother did not seem to notice. ‘Nor my brother, from the looks of it. Really, it’s too bad of them.’

  Pru looked up from her position in the crook of her mother’s arm. ‘Uncle Kay is coming,’ she announced.

  Simon turned his head.

  The Princess gave her a squeeze. ‘Yes, darling, of course he is. We just aren’t sure when.’

  She met Christina’s eyes over the top of Pru’s head. ‘Men,’ she said. ‘I don’t care for myself but I can’t bear it when they let the children down.’

  Christina did not comment. She hardly needed to. She and the Princess were at one on the subject. The absent Prince could not have slipped much further in her estimation anyway, so she was not surprised by this revelation.

  In fact, she thought wryly, there was only one man who came lower on her personal scale of values and that was Luc Henri. Which made it all the more crazy that a bit of her was still regretting that she had turned him down.

  There was the sound of running feet on the deck above them. Violent voices followed. Christina recognised one or two key words. She put down her notes.

  ‘I think,’ she said carefully, ‘I’ve just realised what the port authorities wanted. Excuse me, madam.’

  She pelted out of the stateroom and up to the bridge. Alarmed, the Princess followed.

  The captain was nowhere to be seen. Two of the crew were standing there looking worried. A small boat was racing across the water towards them. The harbour-master was standing in its stern with a loud hailer. Fierce Italian fell about their ears. Christina winced.

  ‘We were supposed to move,’ she said to the crew crisply. ‘They want to berth that big yacht over there here. We should have cast off ten minutes ago,’ she added, in an edited translation of the screams from the launch.

  She became aware that the screams were being answered in equally excitable Greek. Instead of moving the Lady Elaine, the captain and his first officer were leaning over the side, enthusiastically exchanging bilingual insults.

  One of the sailors in the launch saw her and said something to his master. Captain Demetrius followed the pointing finger. He swung round, looking up. He saw her.

  ‘Get down here,’ he yelled, adding an unaffectionate epithet. ‘Tell that idiot I don’t understand a word he’s saying.’

  It was only Christina’s professional standards that made her obey him—that and the faint, dwindling hope that she might be able to avert disaster. It was hopeless, of course. Translating, hauling on ropes that had got too wet to handle properly, running to pass information between Captain Demetrius and the harbour-master in the launch, Christina could see it coming.

  Watched by excited children and a disbelieving Princess, the captain took the Lady Elaine through a series of complicated manoeuvres that seemed to take for ever but did not move her appreciably from her original mooring. Meanwhile, the big yacht, coming beautifully in under sail, got close and closer.

  The harbour-master danced with fury and frustration in his launch. ‘Have these morons ever taken a rubber duck into the bath with them?’ he roared at Christina. ‘Do they know anything about steering?’

  She did not translate that.

  And then the captain gave one last, exaggerated turn to the wheel. Slowly, gracefully, the Lady Elaine swung her bow out to sea and rammed full into the side of the yacht.

  The Princess screamed. The captain swore. The harbour-master flung his loud hailer into the air and howled. The children looked on with sparkling eyes.

  And Christina sat down on the bottom step of the companion-way, dropped her head in her hands and gave way to helpless laughter, until she became aware of Simon standing in front of her, his eyes gleaming.

  ‘Now,’ he said with immense satisfaction, ‘Uncle Kay will have to come and take charge.’

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHRISTINA stood up. ‘Oh, I think we can manage without His Highness,’ she said, ruffled.

  She smoothed her hair, curbed her giggles and went to assist negotiations.

  ‘Where do you want us?’ she asked the harbour-master, at last.

  She was editing Captain Demetrius’s inflammatory speech with abandon. It was clear that the harbour-master knew it. He glared at the captain.

  ‘Where I want
this floating traffic hazard is somebody else’s harbour,’ he spat, but he could not resist cornflower-blue eyes. He sighed. ‘You are persuasive, signorina. And I suppose I would not want it on my conscience that I let Captain Blood up there loose on the high seas again. Very well. But you tell the Prince that he gets a new captain or this boat does not leave port. Understood?’

  She nodded diplomatically but under her breath she said, ‘Gee, thanks.’

  When the launch had gone, zipping over the waves like an angry wasp, she eyed Simon thoughtfully. She had been entertaining a suspicion about Simon for several hours. From the complacent look on his face now, she was almost certain that she was right.

  ‘Simon, you know how to get in touch with your uncle, don’t you?’

  Complacency dissolved into consternation so fast that it was ludicrous. ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ he hedged. ‘Mother calls his office...’

  Christina pursed her lips. ‘I’m not talking about your mother. I’m talking about you. I think you could speak to him right now if you wanted to. In fact, I think your uncle Kay may be lot closer than anyone thinks. And you know it even if your mother doesn’t.’

  Simon went red.

  ‘Uncle Kay says Mummy is a nuisance,’ Pru remarked chattily. ‘Do you think he’ll say the captain’s a nuisance as well?’

  ‘I should think he’ll say we’re all a nuisance,’ said Christina, her antagonism fanned by the small girl’s artless confidence. What right had the man to be saying such things to Pru about her mother? Especially as he could not even be bothered to join the cruise that he had sent them all off on. ‘Simon—’

  ‘Oh, no. He likes you,’ Pru said with confidence.

  But Christina was narrowing her eyes with intent at Simon. She flapped an irritated hand at this diversion. ‘Your uncle Kay doesn’t even know I exist.’

  ‘Uncle Kay knows everyone,’ Pru said proudly. ‘Sir Goraev says that’s what makes him a great man.’

  ‘Who is Sir Goraev?’ snapped Christina. ‘Court flatterer?’

  That went over Pru’s head. It was probably just as well, thought Christina. This situation was hardly the children’s fault.