Avoiding Mr Right

by Sophie Weston

  ‘I didn’t do you a violence,’ Christina protested.

  He looked at her consideringly. ‘Didn’t you?’

  ‘A few bank notes—’

  ‘I wasn’t,’ he said quietly, ‘talking about the bank notes.’

  And suddenly neither of them was laughing any more.

  He said roughly, ‘I shouldn’t have taken you on as crew, you know that? You weren’t cleared and none of the usual agencies could get a lead on you. I should never have had you tracked down and offered that job. They all thought I was mad.’

  Christina was chilled. ‘The officials and the bodyguards?’

  ‘Particularly the officials. Goraev was so worried that he cancelled everything. That was why he joined us at the villa.’

  Christina flinched, remembering that final interview with Sir Goraev all too vividly. ‘I can imagine.’

  ‘Yes.’ Luc met her eyes. ‘I didn’t realise. I was a fool. You see, Goraev has a daughter and he was hoping we might make a match of it. I don’t know the girl very well. It never crossed my mind.’ He looked suddenly haunted. ‘So it never occurred to me he would get rid of you like that. What can I say?’

  Christina hid her hurt. She said in a light, hard voice, ‘Think nothing of it. Though I don’t see why he bothered. I imagine he’s used to it.’

  Luc’s head came up. ‘What do you mean by that?’ he said grimly.

  Christina thought of Sir Goraev’s casual dismissal of the gorgeous Juliette. She took an angry step forward.

  ‘Are you telling me he hasn’t got rid of ladies for you before? When they were surplus to requirements, I mean.’

  Luc whitened. There was a little silence.

  ‘What did I ever do?’ he said at last. He sounded stunned, as if he was in real pain—as if he could hardly believe it.

  Christina swallowed. ‘I got the impression he’d got rid of the actress,’ she said, not entirely lucidly.

  She could feel Luc’s eyes boring into her. She refused to look at him. If she did he would see her whole heart in her eyes. She could not afford that. He was too clever. And her heart was too unguarded.

  After a pause he said in a level voice, ‘Then he misled you.’

  That startled her. She looked up quickly. A muscle was working just below the prominent cheekbone. His expression was unreadable.

  ‘I know, of course, the lady to whom you refer,’ he said precisely. ‘She is—a friend. For a while she was perhaps more than that. She is gorgeous and clever and—well, you have seen her.’

  Gorgeous, amazingly poised, amazingly sexy. Everything that a student-cum-ship’s cook was not. It hurt like an ice burn.

  Christina could have sworn that she did not make a move, but his voice sharpened into urgency suddenly. ‘I swear it was no more than that. For either of us.’

  She shrugged, quite as if she did not care. Luc was not deceived.

  ‘Believe me. I don’t know what Goraev said—or what you thought you saw at that party—but it is all history.’ He smote one hand down on another suddenly. ‘Christina, please. You cannot reject me for nonsense like this. Listen to me.’

  Reject him? What was he talking about?

  But he misread her bewilderment. ‘If you walk out on me now, I will follow,’ he said fiercely. ‘I’ll never let you alone until you’ve given me a fair hearing.’

  She was shaking. She pressed her hands together so that he wouldn’t see.

  ‘I’m listening.’ It did not sound encouraging. It was not meant to.

  Luc gave her a baffled look. ‘Juliette and I—well, we were in the same boat. Both famous. Both followed by the paparazzi. She had her life and I had mine and we were both serious about our careers. They get lonely—careers. For a while—well, what can I say?—we salved each other’s loneliness. It was not for ever and neither of us thought it was. She knows how I feel about you. I told her at that damned party. She wishes us both well. One day maybe she’ll find the same thing.’

  Christina looked away. She resisted the impulse to demand what exactly he hoped Juliette would find.

  He said with abrupt anger, ‘And, if Goraev told you he’d warned her off, he was lying. He has no right to speak for me in my private life. I never discussed Juliette with him or anyone else.’ He paused. ‘How can you think I would? I didn’t even discuss her with you, for God’s sake.’

  ‘Even me?’

  ‘If anyone had a right to know, you did.’

  Christina said nothing.

  After a moment he went on. ‘My sister tells me she told you Juliette and I were lovers. Is that true?’

  ‘She mentioned it, yes.’

  ‘And you didn’t ask me about it?’

  ‘What chance did I get?’ Christina said on a flash of temper. ‘The only night we spent together, I don’t remember us exchanging the stories of our lives.’

  It might have been her imagination but she thought that the elegantly suited shoulders flinched.

  Luc said quietly, ‘You have a right to be angry.’

  ‘Oh, I’m not angry,’ Christina said lightly. ‘Why should I be? I had the job of a lifetime. And a truly enriching personal experience to go with it.’

  ‘Stop that,’ he said, slapping his hand down flat on the polished table.

  It sounded like a pistol shot. Christina jumped. ‘You have every reason to be hurt. I accept it. I will deal with it. But I will not put up with cheap shots like that. I haven’t deserved it and they aren’t worthy of you.’

  ‘Oh, aren’t they?’ said Christina, roused to combat at last. ‘Not what you’re used to, Your Highness? Am I supposed to bow politely and say thank you for turning my life upside down?’

  His eyes gleamed. ‘Did I?’

  ‘Yes, you—’ She recovered herself. ‘You just might have done if I hadn’t...’ She met his eyes and looked quickly away. ‘That is, if Sir Goraev hadn’t explained the situation to me.’

  ‘As I have just been saying, he did not understand the situation.’ Luc sounded exasperated. ‘So he certainly couldn’t have explained anything.’

  ‘Oh, I think he had a pretty fair idea,’ Christina said with an irony that did nothing at all to conceal her hurt.

  He took an impatient stride towards her. ‘He is an old man. He just doesn’t live in the present. His fantasy world is one part of the nineteen-twenties, three parts Strauss opera. He nearly ruined my sister’s chances of putting her marriage back together with his nonsense. You can’t let him do the same to us.’

  Christina stared. All of a sudden her heart seemed to be beating so loudly that she could almost believe Luc could hear it. She said carefully, ‘How could he have any effect on your sister’s marriage?’

  Luc looked irritated, but he answered patiently enough. ‘My brother-in-law is a workaholic. When he is busy he forgets to spend time with her and the children. She complained. Sir Goraev told Richard to take no notice, she’d always been like that, she would forget it. As a result, Richard has been ignoring the problem and my poor sister has been playing with fire.’

  Christina shook her head. ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘I think you understand very well,’ Luc said shrewdly. ‘From what Simon says, you saw her flirting with Stuart Define. You never mentioned it to me. Impressive discretion, that.’

  Christina was not sure whether she was being laughed at. She said haughtily, ‘I thought you were a grubby reporter.’

  ‘A grubby reporter?’ He sounded stunned.

  ‘Extremely grubby,’ she said with relish. ‘I was trying to protect everyone from you.’ She sent him a darkling look. ‘By the time I realised the only one who needed protection was me, I didn’t feel like telling you anything.’

  Unexpectedly, his mouth quirked. ‘I remember.’

  ‘Anyway, I wouldn’t have discussed the Princess’s business.’

  ‘Very right and proper.’ Luc’s tone was dry. ‘The trouble is, if no one discussed it, how was my brother-in-law going to find out tha
t his marriage was on the line? He wasn’t there enough to see it for himself. And I was too full of my own affairs to notice.’

  He looked at her broodingly. The hammer blows of her heart became deafening.

  Christina said with constraint, ‘I take it they have sorted out their differences now?’

  ‘They’re beginning to. Mainly thanks to Simon’s bolt for freedom. They’ve talked it through and realised that neither of them wants the sort of polite, semi-detached marriage that Goraev thinks people like us ought to have.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Christina.

  The all-perceptive retainer was beginning to shrink to human size. Inexplicably, her spirits rose comparably.

  ‘You make him sound like a complete busybody.’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Luc.

  ‘But—I thought you took his advice. I thought he knew everything.’

  ‘So did he.’

  He sounded so impatient that Christina’s heart lifted a couple of notches further.

  ‘But you did tell him to get reports on me?’

  He spread his hands. ‘Security checks, I said. They’re not just specific to you. Everyone that works for us has had them.’

  She nodded. ‘I see.’

  Luc’s eyes flickered. ‘When we went to the villa, it was the first time I’d had the chance to talk to Goraev for a month. I told him I already knew everything about you I needed to know,’ he said quietly. ‘And I didn’t get it from a secret-service report.’

  Christina began to feel breathless all of a sudden. Her eyes fell.

  ‘But Sir Goraev didn’t agree?’

  Luc showed his teeth. ‘Apparently not. We—er—discussed it. After you’d gone. It was rather an unpleasant interview. In the end Goraev agreed that the reports showed enough to satisfy him that you weren’t going to blow us all up or kidnap the children.’

  He paused, not taking his eyes off her.

  ‘But, you see, the trouble was that that hadn’t been what he’d been afraid of once he had seen you.’ He reached out and touched her face, making her look at him. He held her eyes. His own were unfathomably dark. ‘And seen me.’

  Quite suddenly Christina began to tremble. All her laminated nonchalance melted as if touched by a flame.

  ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ she said, almost voiceless.

  ‘He knew that I was in love with you,’ Luc said evenly. ‘He knew I wanted to marry you.’

  Christina found that she could think of nothing at all to say. She did not believe him. Of course she did not. And yet—though his eyes were masked and his mouth was under rigid control, that little muscle in his cheek was flickering again. And he was not laughing; she knew that for certain.

  She stood as if turned to stone. Luc did not touch her.

  But he said in a voice that he seemed to keep level only with an amazing effort, ‘Now can we please go?’

  She went past him out of the door without a word. Luc put a hand on her elbow. Christina stiffened but he was only guiding her towards a lift.

  It echoed through her mind: ‘He knew I wanted to marry you.’ Wanted? Did that mean he did not want to any more? Her mouth twisted in fierce self-mockery. Not now that she had proved conclusively that she was that sort of girl by spending a night of ecstasy in his arms.

  She looked at Luc sideways. He looked appallingly grim—nothing at all like a man on the brink of a proposal of marriage. She could not deceive herself. He looked as if he almost hated her.

  He took her to a courtyard she had not seen before. As soon as they went out into the harsh sunlight, a man in a chauffeur’s uniform got out of a dark limousine. It was Michael. This time Christina recognised the car too. It temporarily displaced her tormented confusion.

  ‘It was you chasing me that night.’

  Luc moved his shoulders as if trying to cast off an unpalatable memory.

  ‘I apologise for that,’ he said in a clipped voice. Clearly he did not relish apologising. ‘At the time I could not think of another way to keep track of you.’

  ‘Oh.’

  How could he have wanted to marry her? He hardly knew her. They were worlds apart. Her thoughts whirled.

  This time he did not pretend that the car was not his, or dispense with the chauffeur.

  ‘The hotel, Michael.’

  The chauffeur held one of the heavy doors open for her. She slipped in, flushing slightly. Luc got in beside her and Michael closed the door on him with a faint thud. Christina swallowed and said the first thing that came into her head.

  ‘Your car has the heaviest doors I’ve ever come across.’

  Luc gave an odd little grimace. ‘Bulletproof, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Oh!’

  She was shocked. It had never occurred to her. Nothing could have underlined more completely the difference between them, Christina thought numbly. She said nothing on the rest of the journey to Athens’s premier hotel.

  She was still in a state of shock when he took her up to the luxury suite and dismissed the hovering secretary. As soon as the man had gone Luc swung round on her as if he could contain himself no longer.

  ‘The first time I saw you,’ he said. ‘The very first time. Do you remember?’

  ‘I hit you with a revolving door,’ Christina said literally. She was completely at sea and feeling faintly intoxicated by it.

  ‘You hit me with more than that.’ He punched his fist into his open palm. ‘I’ve never behaved like this before, believe me. Never felt like this. I know you think I’m high-handed but I have never felt I had to move so fast before. I couldn’t afford to let you get away. Do you understand?’

  Christina did not dare to. ‘No.’

  Luc said quietly, ‘Do you remember saying that we could afford to be honest with each other because we wouldn’t meet again?’

  For some reason tears were pricking at the corner of her eyes: Christina nodded, wordless.

  ‘Well, that’s how I thought it was. A pretty girl who didn’t know who I was. A morning at a café table, forgetting my responsibilities. Just being a normal man talking to a normal girl about the tourist sights and the wonderful light. Flirting a little. The sort of casual, fun conversation I haven’t had for twenty years. Even less so since I inherited. I was doing what other men do and enjoying it. Only...’ He hesitated.

  Christina held her breath.

  ‘It wasn’t like that,’ he said at last, abruptly.

  She moistened suddenly dry lips.

  ‘What made it different?’ Her voice was a croak.

  ‘I don’t know. It may have been when you said crewing was your bid for freedom. It was a long time since I’d felt free. Or even thought about it. It struck a chord, that. I’d never met anyone like you.’

  He fell silent, his dark face brooding. Christina wanted to touch it. She did not quite dare. She locked her hands together hard. She struggled to make her voice normal.

  ‘Not used to women who don’t. fall at your feet?’ she mocked.

  But he did not laugh in return. ‘Not used to women who treat their prejudices like a religion,’ he said harshly. ‘When we met on the quayside you couldn’t wait to tell me what a disaster the Prince of Kholkhastan was. You did not even know that you had met me and yet you decided I was a villain, sight unseen. And nothing was going to change your mind.’

  Her chin came up. ‘So you set out to change my mind, did you?’ Christina challenged him coolly. ‘What did you think would do it? Your lying to me? Or your seducing me?’

  Luc stared at her, baffled and furious. ‘I told you. I wanted you to see me as I was, damn it.’ He shouted suddenly, ‘Was that too much to ask?’

  Christina thought, I’ve never heard him raise his voice before, not even when he sacked Demetrius. He just gets cold and deadly. And now he’s shouting like an ordinary man. It came to her slowly: an ordinary man at the end of his tether.

  ‘Desperate?’ she said, suddenly believing it.

  Luc gave a harsh, unamused laugh.
‘Completely.’

  ‘Then when you seduced me—’

  ‘We made love, for God’s sake,’ he interrupted furiously. ‘You and me mutually. I thought—That’s one area where we meet as equals. Never mind the advance publicity, never mind the prejudices. In bed it’s just you and me not pretending.’

  Christina was awed to silence.

  Luc took a hasty step towards her. He still did not touch her but when he looked into her eyes his expression was naked.

  ‘Was I wrong, Christina?’ he said quietly. ‘Were you pretending, after all?’

  She scanned the thin, handsome face. That haughty brow could be so intimidating. Luc didn’t look intimidating now. He looked as if he was being tortured. Wonderingly Christina put out a hand.

  It was seized and held fiercely until the bones nearly cracked.

  She said softly, ‘Desperate for me?’

  Luc closed his eyes. ‘I’m not sure I can live without you,’ he said simply. He opened his eyes. ‘I was always afraid you’d run once you realized how I felt. That’s. why I told you to wait for me when I went to look for Simon. I wasn’t sure you would. When I came back and you were still there—well, I went a little mad, I think. Most uncharacteristic.’ He gave a bitter laugh. ‘I’m famed for my self-control. But with you...’ He shrugged. ‘Well, you’ve seen.’

  Christina said shakily, ‘I can’t pretend to be what I’m not.’

  He looked as if she had stabbed him.

  ‘I mean I’m not in your class. All those clever, international types at your party, to say nothing of the film stars—I’m not like that.’ She struggled to put what she meant into words. ‘It’s just like when we were swimming. You should have beaten me but you chose not to. I can’t live like that. Everyone would be making allowances for me all the time. I—’

  Luc put out his hand and touched the back of it to her hot cheek. Christina fell abruptly silent, her eyes brimming with panicky tears.

  ‘Darling, listen to me. I told you being a prince was a performance. Well, the performance has been taking me over. All those film stars, no doubt.’ His smile was bitter.

  Christina rubbed a fist over her face and sniffed. ‘I don’t understand.’