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The Trusting Game
PENNY JORDAN


She would not be seduced!A pretty woman with no head for business? Christa Bellingham had worked hard to banish this image of herself. Did that mean that she now came across as too outspoken particularly about men?She had learned the hard way that men were not to be trusted. And Daniel Geshard's line of business attracted the worst of deceivers.He said Christa's cynicism was a disguise and he could teach her to trust. Daniel seemed so genuine, but didn't he have a lot to gain if he could win her over?"Penny Jordan's stimulating and colorful writing will stir the imagination."Romantic Times







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PENNY JORDAN

Phenomenally successful author of more than two hundred books with sales of over a hundred million copies!

Penny Jordan's novels are loved by millions of readers all around the word in many different languages. Mills & Boon are proud to have published one hundred and eighty-seven novels and novellas written by Penny Jordan, who was a reader favourite right from her very first novel through to her last.

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Penny Jordan is one of Mills & Boon's most popular authors. Sadly, Penny died from cancer on 31st December 2011, aged sixty-five. She leaves an outstanding legacy, having sold over a hundred million books around the world. She wrote a total of one hundred and eighty-seven novels for Mills & Boon, including the phenomenally successful A Perfect Family, To Love, Honour & Betray, The Perfect Sinner and Power Play, which hit the Sunday Times and New York Times bestseller lists. Loved for her distinctive voice, her success was in part because she continually broke boundaries and evolved her writing to keep up with readers’ changing tastes. Publishers Weekly said about Jordan ‘Women everywhere will find pieces of themselves in Jordan's characters’ and this perhaps explains her enduring appeal.

Although Penny was born in Preston, Lancashire and spent her childhood there, she moved to Cheshire as a teenager and continued to live there for the rest of her life. Following the death of her husband, she moved to the small traditional Cheshire market town on which she based her much-loved Crighton books.

Penny was a member and supporter of the Romantic Novelists’ Association and the Romance Writers of America—two organisations dedicated to providing support for both published and yet-to-be-published authors. Her significant contribution to women's fiction was recognised in 2011, when the Romantic Novelists’ Association presented Penny with a Lifetime Achievement Award.




The Trusting Game

Penny Jordan







www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)




CHAPTER ONE


GRIMACING at the rain, Christa Bellingham hurried from the car park to the hotel forecourt, cursing the abrupt and unforecast change in the weather which meant that she had neither coat nor umbrella to protect her from the heavy downpour.

Up ahead of her a taxi was disgorging its two male passengers into the protection of the canopy above the hotel entrance as Christa ducked her head against the driving rain, mentally bewailing the vanity which had led to her deciding to wear her precious Armani. She was only calling in at the hotel to drop off some fabric samples and prices for John Richards, the hotel manager, on her way to the local Chamber of Commerce, where a talk was being given later in the evening on a subject in which she took a deep and antagonistic interest.

She had protested against the speaker’s being invited to address them right from the start, but Howard Findley, the new head of the chamber, had insisted that it was time they shed their old-fashioned stick-in-the-mud image and open themselves up to the possibilities of new theories and projects.

‘We might as well give a blank cheque to every charlatan who wants to come and cry his wares and get paid for it,’ Christa had protested bitterly.

‘Daniel Geshard doesn’t charge a speaker’s fee,’ John had told her mildly, but Christa had refused to be mollified. No matter how much John might have been impressed by the man, Christa knew exactly what type he was—and what he was up to. Deception was the name of the game for men like him, and they didn’t care how much pain or suffering they caused in achieving their ends, as she knew all too well…All too well.

Daniel Geshard was coming to talk to them for one purpose and one purpose only—so that he could sell himself and his spurious New Age theories to anyone gullible enough to buy them, and that included the council.

Her head full of angry thoughts, Christa closed her eyes briefly in despair. Howard Findley was a nice man, genuine and good-hearted, but he was no match for the likes of the Daniel Geshards of this world, and already, just on the strength of a telephone chat with the man, Howard was talking enthusiastically about persuading the council to fund several groups of key employees and officials through one of Daniel Geshard’s miracle courses.

‘He’s got this wonderful idea about being able to reach out to even the most disaffected members of our society and to help them get back in touch with themselves, with their real emotions and motivations,’ he had enthused.

Howard talked like that. Christa much preferred the plain straight facts and realities of life, rather than having them wrapped up in fancy words and theories…

‘Whoops!’

The amused male warning and the shock of her totally unexpected contact with the hard, warm body attached to it brought Christa’s head up sharply and her mind back to the present. The automatic brisk apology she had been about to give died on her lips as she found herself staring dazedly into a pair of pale grey, thickly lashed male eyes alight with warmth…warmth and something much…much more personal.

Yes. There was a lot more than mere good humour in the way their owner was studying her, just as there was a lot more than mere male good looks in the face they belonged to, Christa admitted as she suddenly found herself struggling slightly for breath while her heart flipped over inside her chest and her pulse-rate beat out an excited tattoo message of approval and attraction.

And he was attractive, Christa recognised, as she stood there half mesmerised, the pouring rain forgotten in her bemused concentration on the man standing in front of her. Tall and powerfully built, almost athletically so, if the speed and skill with which he had so adroitly prevented her from running full-tilt into him was anything to go by, with thick, dark, well-groomed hair and skin that smelled of fresh air and rain rather than some cloying, unpleasantly heavy aftershave.

The dark business suit was fashioned, Christa recognised with an expert eye, out of extremely good cloth and tailored here in this country, which meant that the slightly battered basic Rolex watch he was wearing had probably got that way through constant use on his part rather than being bought second-hand as the latest statussymbol fashion accessory.

This was not a man who needed to underline his masculinity with status symbols of any kind, Christa decided approvingly. This was a man who would have looked equally impressive in an old, worn pair of jeans-equally impressive and very, very male.

Just for a second her mouth curled upwards in delicious feminine fantasy as she momentarily exchanged his suit for those jeans and their present surroundings for a certain TV advertisement made very popular with female viewers by the actor Nick Kamen. As she smiled, the expression in the grey male eyes deepened slightly, intensifying as though he too was conscious of her physical attraction towards him—and shared it.

The strong physical and emotional pull she could feel was so completely unfamiliar to her that it had taken her completely off guard. She felt as though she had somehow stepped into a special and magical world, encompassed by his smile and the warm aura he had thrown almost protectively around her.

As he continued to watch her, the temptation to do something totally out of character and dangerously reckless almost had her taking that small but oh, so giveaway step towards him which he seemed to be silently encouraging and inviting; but then, from the hotel doorway, she heard the man with him calling out impatiently, ‘Come on, Daniel, let’s get booked in and then I’ll go and scout around the town and see if I can find two pretty and willing girls for us to enjoy ourselves with after this talk of yours is over and done with. You’ll be ready for a bit of light relief by then, and besides, I need a drink…’

‘I’ll be with you in a second, Dai.’

Daniel…Christa felt her whole body turn to ice as she stared at the man in front of her in sick disbelief.

‘What is it—what’s wrong?’ he was asking her in apparent concern, taking that small step towards her himself now and, in doing so, narrowing the distance between them to one of close intimacy, the distance of lovers…of seducers.

Daniel. Christa’s throat felt as though it had been scraped raw with sandpaper and then doused with acid.

‘That wouldn’t be Daniel Geshard, would it?’ she asked him gnttily, her hands balling into small, tight fists.

He was frowning now, his expression puzzled. ‘Yes, as a matter of fact it would. But…’

Christa didn’t wait to hear any more. Her face flushing with anger and mortification, she immediately stepped away from him, ignoring the hand he was reaching out to detain her, her voice icy with distaste and harsh with angry disgust.

‘Is that normally how you see your business meetings, Mr Geshard…as a boring preliminary to the real enjoyment? Hadn’t you better go?’ she added pointedly. ‘Your friend appears to be getting impatient.’

Before he could say anything to her, she turned on her heel and left. John would have to wait for his samples and his quotes. If she followed Daniel Geshard into the hotel foyer now, there was no way she could trust herself not to tell him exactly what she thought of him and all men of his type.

But as she hurried back to her car it wasn’t just anger she could feel. So much for her belief in her ability to judge someone’s character! How could she have been so stupid? Why hadn’t she guessed who he was…what type he was? How could she have been so gullible…she of all people?

Seething inwardly, she got into her car and drove home. She had just enough time to change out of her now damp clothes before the Chamber of Commerce meeting began. There was no way she was going to miss attending it now…no way she intended not to make quite plain her views, her views on the subject of Daniel Geshard’s speech…And on the speaker himself?

As soon as she got home, Christa dialled the number of the hotel and explained to the manager that she had been unable to call with his samples but that she would drop them off another time. Then she hurried into her bedroom, where she stripped off her clothes, grimacing in distaste at their clamminess; then she quickly dried and rebrushed her long, thick chestnut hair, confining it with a simple headband after she had put on fresh clothes.

Small and curvaceous, with widely spaced, almost aquamarine-coloured eyes in a pretty heart-shaped face, Christa had had to work hard to banish other people’s image of her as a pretty woman with no real head for business. Firmly refusing to compromise or alter the way she looked, or make herself conform to a stereotypical and often male idea of what a businesswoman should look like, hadn’t always been easy, especially in the early days when she had taken over the business from her great-aunt. She knew that there were still those locally who thought she had fallen on her feet in inheriting her aunt’s textile import business, but in the years before her death her great-aunt had let the business become very run-down.

Christa had been brought up by her great-aunt after her own parents’ deaths, and before going to university and training as a designer she had frequently travelled abroad with her relative, visiting the various suppliers from whom she bought her cloth.

It had been cheaper and more practical for the older woman to take her great-niece with her during the school holidays, rather than try to find someone else to look after her, and out of loyalty and love for her great-aunt Christa had kept silent about the way in which she had lost her grip on the business.

It had saddened Christa to discover how much her great-aunt had lost her old skills of running ahead of the market and picking the right fabrics, and to see how some of her suppliers had started to fob her off with inferior cloths.

Christa had had to work hard to reverse all that. Sometimes she had had to behave more ruthlessly than was really in her nature to do, but at least the business was beginning to pick up again. Her training and flair as a designer had helped her, of course, and the bank manager was just beginning to stop frowning every time he saw her.

‘You’re so damned self-possessed,’ a would-be boyfriend had once complained to her. ‘Sometimes I wonder just what the hell it would take to break down that barrier of yours. Whatever it is, whoever it is, it isn’t me…What is it you’re waiting for, Christa?’ he had demanded angrily. ‘A prince?’

‘I’m not waiting for anyone…any man,’ Christa had told him truthfully.

And yet earlier this evening, just for a moment…Angrily she picked up her jacket.

Thank God she had realised just who Daniel Geshard was before…before what?

Nothing would really have happened. She just mustn’t allow her feelings, her emotions, however powerful they might be, to control her. She had seen all too clearly the disastrous consequences that could result from a woman believing she was in love and loved in turn by the kind of man who earned his living through deceit…Like Piers Philips.

Quickly she closed her eyes. Even now, after all these years, it still hurt her to think of Laura. To remember…

She and Laura had been at university together, and they had both been in their final year when Laura had met and fallen for Piers Philips, a New Age selfacclaimed philosopher and guru with whom Laura had become so besotted that she had dropped out of the course before taking her finals and married him.

Laura’s father was an extremely wealthy industrialist, and Laura herself had inherited a considerable amount of money from her grandmother. She and Piers intended to use this, she told Christa enthusiastically, to buy a large country house where Piers would open a counselling and stress clinic.

Christa had to admit that even she had been taken in by Piers’ enthusiasm and ideals. She had been so very gullible and innocent then, even half envying Laura her charismatic husband and the wonderful life they were going to build together.

But, once Laura and Piers were married, things very quickly started to go wrong. Laura complained then that she suspected that Piers was being unfaithful to her; that he neglected her.

Christa would never forgive herself for the fact that she had allowed Piers to convince her Laura was suffering from some kind of hormonal depression brought on by her pregnancy, and that the affair she was accusing him of was completely imaginary, so that, instead of supporting Laura, she had urged her to put aside her doubts and concentrate on the future, to think of her marriage and her coming baby.

Piers had taken her out to dinner to thank her for her support. ‘Laura couldn’t have a better friend,’ he had told her.

A better friend…Christa’s throat tightened in remembered grief and pain.

The only excuse she could give herself was that she had been young and naive and that, even then, Piers had been an arch manipulator, enjoying the game he was playing with both of them, enjoying deceiving them.

Three months after their baby, a little girl, was born, Piers had left Laura amid a storm of gossip. The girl he had left Laura for came from an aristocratic and very rich family. Laura’s money, the money she had inherited from her grandmother, had all gone; all she had had left was the mountain of debts Piers had run out on.

‘Some of his clients have even threatened to sue for malpractice,’ Laura had sobbed when Christa had tried to comfort her.

‘You’ll get over him,’ Christa had told her comfortingly.

‘No, I won’t…I’ll never get over him,’ Laura had told her bleakly. ‘How can I?’

Six weeks later she was dead. An overdose taken while she was in the grip of post-natal depression had been the official verdict, but Christa suspected otherwise…It was her relationship with Piers, and his systematic and cold-hearted deceit of her, that had killed her, she was sure, and Christa had vowed that never, ever again would she allow herself, or anyone else, to be taken in by that kind of man; she would do everything and anything she could to reveal and to expose what they really were.

As she intended to do this evening with Daniel Geshard.

She looked at herself bleakly in the mirror before she went downstairs. It had shocked and disturbed her that she would have so easily fallen victim to his apparent charm. Was she in some way particularly flawed, in that she seemed destined not to be immediately able to recognise his type? Well, Daniel Geshard was one con-man she was not going to be taken in by, and she intended to make sure that he knew it.

* * *

‘And now, on behalf of us all, I would just like to thank our speaker for his most informative and…’

Informative rubbish. Christa fumed; everything she had heard tonight only confirmed and strengthened her belief that the kind of role-changing games advocated by this supposed guru of the latest business fad were, in real business terms, completely worthless.

And as for the speaker himself…anger deepened the warm peach-coloured skin of Christa’s face as she contemplated the man standing behind the podium with glittering aquamarine eyes.

For some reason she had anticipated that Daniel Geshard, their speaker, would have cultivated a slightly more green and politically correct appearance, choosing to wear, instead of his immaculate suit—a suit which she had already observed at close hand and knew to be extremely expensive—something more disarming and ‘friendly’…battered cords, perhaps, and a thick handknitted sweater…or jeans and…

No, not the fantasy of the jeans again! The angry glitter of her eyes became even more pronounced, the self-derisory curl of her mouth even stronger, and she reflected on her own idiotic folly in actually imagining that she could possibly have found such a man physically attractive, that her heart had actually skipped that betraying beat, that she had actually felt that small dangerous thrill of sensual excitement.

He was a poseur, a charlatan…a con-man bent on coaxing the foolish and unwary to part with their money in return for some unsubstantiated and unsubstantiatable claim that he could somehow turn their supposedly tired and stressed employees into people with so much enthusiasm for their work that they would doubtless enable their employers to recoup the cost of sending them on his courses by their astonishing diligence and delight in their work.

No. The only person to profit from what he claimed he had to offer would be him, Christa decided contemptuously.

The head of the Chamber of Commerce was asking if anyone wanted to ask any questions.

Immediately, Christa got to her feet.

The manufactured pleasure in Daniel Geshard’s grey eyes as they studied her made her lip curl in disdain. Oh, yes, she had seen the way he had reacted when he’d spotted her in his audience, the quick, oh, so false smile of warm pleasure—followed by a small questioning frown as she turned her head away, refusing to acknowledge his recognition of her.

But then, of course, it was in his interests to deceive her into believing that he found her attractive. Grimly she wondered how many female executives had succumbed to that heart-twisting grey-eyed message of interest and attraction, only to discover that what he really wanted was their signature on a form enticing their employees to take part in one of his ridiculous courses.

‘Er—yes, Christa…?’

She could hear the chairman clearing his throat nervously as he acknowledged her intention to speak. Unlike her foe, he would, of course, know exactly what was coming. She had never made any secret of her views when the subject of inviting this man to speak to them had first been mooted.

And nor, she reassured herself firmly, did her intention to demolish the very smooth and polished persuasiveness he had just used to attempt to sell them his New Age theories have anything to do with her personal feelings about him as a man—nor with her potentially humiliating misreading of his body-language and the look of warm male interest she had mistakenly thought she’d seen in his eyes when she had not known his identity.

Fortunately, she had discovered who he was in time!

No matter what other people’s views might be, she was not taken in by his pseudo-psychological expertise—she knew a fake when she saw one.

What real proof had he offered them, after all, that this centre he owned and ran in the Welsh mountains really benefited the people who attended his courses?

‘What I would like to ask the Chair is what actual proof Mr Geshard can offer us that his courses, his centre do improve the profitability of the companies sending their executives to him.’

He was a good actor, Christa acknowledged grimly, as his expression betrayed neither discomfort nor surprise at her question.

‘Very little.’

His prompt ‘very little’ made Christa’s eyebrows snap together in amazement.

‘You don’t feel there is any need to keep such records, then?’ she questioned him mock sweetly. ‘Unusual, especially in an age where even the most obvious of fake wonder-cures insist on producing reality-defying “before and after” test results.’

Although she had not taken her eyes off his face, Christa was still aware of the faint ripple of disapproval that ran through the chamber. Disapproval which she knew was directed at her and not the speaker—but then she was not a man, was she, not part of the unofficial ‘club’ which ran such organisations?

‘Perhaps, but since we’ve only been open less than a year, and since none of the companies who have used our services has yet produced a full year’s accounts, we do not as yet have access to such figures. However, it seems as though I may have inadvertently given the wrong impression with my speech. Our aim is not specifically to increase our client’s profits, but rather to improve and enhance the quality of their employees’ lives, both at work and away from it.’

‘By forcing them to play games?’ Christa demanded, maintaining eye-contact with him.

‘It’s a well-known and accepted fact now that children who are deprived of the opportunity for play are far more likely to grow into maladjusted adults. What we are about is teaching people to work harmoniously together, teaching them how to combat the stresses of modern living.’

‘But you admit that you cannot back up your claims with hard facts,’ Christa persisted doggedly, refusing to be quelled by the cool grey-eyed stare he was giving her, so very different from the warm male interest with which he had regarded her earlier that day—correction: the warm male interest with which she had thought he had regarded her; just like his claims this evening, that warmth, that interest had been completely spurious.

‘Was it an admission? I rather thought I was merely correcting your—er—inaccurate interpretation of my speech.’

The male laughter which greeted his comment made Christa’s face burn, but she wasn’t going to be bullied into backing down, and she certainly wasn’t going to be stupid enough to fall for that false look of brief sympathy which had flashed in his eyes.

‘You have no real proof that what you are doing, the courses you offer, have any kind of genuine benefit, other than to your cash-flow.’

Now she had got under his skin, she realised triumphantly as she saw the way his mouth and eyes hardened.

‘Not perhaps in balance-sheet terms—either my own or anyone else’s—but I certainly believe in the benefits of what we are doing, and I can tell you this: if you were to undergo one of our courses yourself, I promise you it would completely change the way you view your life.’

His voice had dropped slightly as he spoke and for some reason Christa felt her face start to burn again, her thoughts winging back to that small, betraying moment that afternoon when he had looked at her, and yet she had been drawn towards him, the deepest feminine core of her instinctively responding to him and to the message he had seemed to be giving to her.

When her heartbeat accelerated now, though, it was with anger and not attraction, her eyes darkening as she challenged him. ‘Impossible.’

‘On the contrary, I can categorically promise you and everyone else here that after, say, a month at the centre, your views on life, the focus of your life will have changed—and I’ll go even further. I’ll add that you yourself will be happy to admit to those changes, to acknowledge them and want to share them with others…’

‘Never!’ Christa denied.

‘Let me prove it to you.’

Christa opened her mouth to vehemently refuse his challenge and then realised abruptly that she had backed herself into a very imprisoning corner.

‘I think that’s a very generous offer, and an excellent idea,’ the chairman was saying warmly to the audience, taking advantage of Christa’s momentary silence. ‘We shall all be most interested to see the results of Christa’s visit to your centre…’

‘No, I can’t,’ Christa started to protest breathlessly. ‘My business doesn’t generate the kind of profits for—’

‘There won’t be any charge.’

Christa gulped in air. What had she done? If she refused now, she would not only make herself look a complete idiot, she would also be allowing him to gain the advantage. To win. She could see already how impressed the others were by his confidence, his belief in himself.

‘You can’t back out now, Christa,’ the chairman was warning her jovially, but Christa could see his resentment of her in his eyes. ‘Otherwise we’ll begin to think that you’re the one who doesn’t have the courage of her convictions.’

‘I had no intention of backing out,’ Christa denied stiffly. ‘I shall need a week to organise my business affairs,’ she told her opponent without looking directly at him.

‘Yes, of course…’

How smooth he was…how assured…how confident of victory; but the war wasn’t over yet, and it would take more than charm and confidence to change her mind. Much, much more…In fact, Christa decided, recovering slightly from the shock of the way he had turned the tables on her, he was the one who would ultimately lose out, not her, because there was nothing, nothing that he could say or do that would convince her.



‘Our speaker outmanoeuvred you very neatly tonight, didn’t he?’

Christa frowned, increasing her speed as the man addressing her fell into step beside her. She had never particularly liked Paul Thompson. He had an unctuous, almost oily manner which did nothing to hide the blatant sexual curiosity Christa had seen in his eyes whenever he looked at a woman. She had had to rebuff the heavyhanded attempts at flirting with her on more than one occasion, and, although she had no doubt that he would be quite happy to go to bed with her, she knew that he also resented her, and she suspected that he was one of those men who secretly did not really like women at all.

She felt very sorry for his wife, and avoided him as much as she could.

‘You’ll have to be careful,’ he warned her, mock solicitously. ‘Our speaker is going to pull out all the stops now to make sure he gets you to back down. He can’t afford to do anything else. Not having gone so public, so to speak.’

‘I’m not the kind of person who is easily persuaded to change her mind once she’s made it up,’ Christa told him shortly. ‘You should know that, Paul.’

‘You’re a woman, though,’ he retorted, plainly nettled by her comment, ‘and by the looks of him he’s the kind of man who…’

‘Who what?’ Christa demanded acidly.

‘The kind of man who thinks he can persuade and seduce a woman into changing her mind…her principles.’

‘Well, if that’s the case, he’ll be wasting his time with me—I’m not so easily persuadable and certainly not seducible!’ Perhaps, a small inner voice warned her, but if she had not realised in time just who he was…But she had realised, she reassured herself firmly, and having done so—well, if Daniel Geshard was thinking for one moment along the lines that Paul was so mockingly suggesting, he was going to be in for one hell of a big surprise, she told herself with grim pleasure. Let him just dare to try it—let him just dare.




CHAPTER TWO


CHRISTA frowned as she heard her front doorbell ring. From her attic workroom it was three flights down to the front door of the large Victorian semi which had been her home ever since she had come to live here with her aunt, after her parents’ death.

Whoever was ringing her doorbell had no right to be doing so anyway; everyone knew that her working hours were sacrosanct and that she was not to be interrupted.

Her aunt had preferred to work in the small office attached to the warehouse where they stored their cloth, but Christa, with her training as a designer, loved the large north-lit attic-room, where she could work in peace without any interruptions.

Where she could normally work in peace without any interruptions, she corrected herself, as the doorbell continued to ring.

Well, she wasn’t going to answer it, so whoever was there would just have to go away. Before she left for Wales tonight she wanted to finish the project she was working on. People outside the business always expressed astonishment when they learned how far ahead she worked. The fabric samples she was studying now would not be on the market until the summer season after next, and the design council, along with the fashion industry, were even further ahead, working on the colours and styles that people would be wearing two winters from now.

Designers were obviously much taken with the theme of the new century and of the change in the stellar constellations which would bring in the new age of Aquarius. The samples she was studying now featured all manner of such symbols: stars, suns, moons, along with various interpretations of the sign of Aquarius and its link to water.

The colours, too, reflected that same watery element, blues and greens, highlighted with a range of sand colours from palest beige right through to glittering gold.

Thoughtfully she fingered a piece of deep blue damask, gazing at the neat piles of samples on the table in front of her until she found what she was looking for. The old-gold brocade looked good with the damaskgood but slightly dull, she acknowledged, thinking ahead to how the various combinations of the fabrics she would choose would feature in advertising displays. The aqua fabric with the gold suns on it, while not to everyone’s taste, provided a dramatic contrast to the two plainer fabrics.

The buyer from the designei shops had been flatteringly complimentary about her present range of fabrics, even if the order he had given her had been smaller than she could have hoped.

‘Nice, but very expensive,’ had been his comments about one of the damasks she had shown him in rich jewel colours.

‘Because of the quality of the fabric,’ Christa had told him. ‘In ten years’ time this fabric will just be starting to develop the elegant shabby patina you see in fabrics in old houses, where something cheaper will merely be wearing away.’

‘Mmm…In my business we don’t always encourage our clients to think long-term,’ he had responded drily.

The doorbell had stopped ringing. Christa smiled in satisfaction, and then frowned as it suddenly started to ring again.

Whoever it was was plainly not going to go away.

Thoroughly angry, she put down the samples she had been studying and headed for the stairs.

By the time she reached the front door Christa was not only out of temper, she was out of breath as well. Flipping her hair back off her face, she pushed it out of the way with one hand as she opened the door.

‘Look,’ she began irritably, ‘I’m working and…’

Her voice died away as she gazed in shock at her unexpected visitor.

Daniel Geshard. What was he doing here? Had he come perhaps to tell her that he had changed his mind, that he was withdrawing his challenge to her?

The amusement in his eyes as he studied her didn’t seem to suggest that he was a man who had come cap in hand seeking favours, and Christa flushed as she recognised that part of his amusement seemed to be caused by the fact that she was barefoot.

It was a habit of hers to spread her samples on the floor and kick off her shoes when she knelt down to study them. She had never in the past thought of her feet as a particularly provocative part of her body, but now, for some reason, she could feel her face starting to flush as she fought down the urge to curl her toes into the carpet in an effort to conceal them from him.

He looked so much taller than she had remembered, so much more…more male. He was wearing jeans, a warm-looking blue shirt tucked into the waistband, and Christa felt her hot colour deepen slightly as she remembered how she had fantasised about seeing him wearing just such clothing.

Her imagination had not done him justice, she acknowledged unwillingly. No man had any right to have such long legs, such powerful thighs.

She tensed as, without asking her, he edged through the door and into the hallway, affording her a sideways view of his very male profile and his tautly firm…Christa swallowed quickly. Trust him to catch her at such a disadvantage, wearing an old, comfortable top and a pair of leggings, her face free of make-up, her hair loose and all over the place. Where had he got her address from? she wondered as she studied him surreptitiously. He was a very good-looking man, a very virile-looking man, she had to give him that. She shivered slightly, hastily looking…‘What do you want?’ she demanded, trying to control the situation again as he paused to study a collage of fabrics she had made while she was at college and which her aunt had proudly insisted on hanging in the hallway.

She should have taken it down, Christa reflected as he withdrew his gaze from her collage and focused it on her.

‘What do I want?’ he repeated. ‘Well…’

Something in the way he was looking at her made Christa feel as though she had unexpectedly stepped on to a patch of sheet ice and found herself dangerously, physically, out of control because of it.

‘I meant, what are you doing here?’ she corrected herself swiftly.

‘Ah.’

A rueful smile curled his mouth. Determinedly, Christa hardened her heart. In any other man his apparent sense of humour would have delighted her, but with this man nothing could be taken at face value, as she already had good cause to know.

It was in his interests, after all, to win her over to his side—part of the softening-up process he undoubtedly intended to use on her to get her to change her mind about his precious centre.

‘I’ve come to collect you,’ Christa heard him saying in response to her question. ‘The centre isn’t that easy to find…”

‘To collect me? I’m not a parcel!’ she said, adding acidly, ‘And in view of the fact that I’ve so far managed to find my way to some extremely obscure parts of the world, I doubt very much that finding my way to Wales should prove too much of a problem.’

‘You do still intend to take the course, then?’

Christa shot him an angry look. Did he honestly think she was going to back out; that she could back out?

‘Of course I intend to take it,’ she confirmed fiercely.

‘Good.’

‘But the course doesn’t start until tomorrow morning at ten and I still have work to finish, so if you will excuse me—’ Christa began pointedly.

The dark eyebrows rose. ‘The last train from our nearest main-line station to our local one leaves at four in the afternoon. You’ll be cutting things pretty fine.’

Train? Christa stared at him.

‘I don’t intend…I’m not travelling by train; I’m taking my car.’

‘Ah…I’m afraid not. People attending our courses are not allowed to bring their own transport,’ he told her firmly.

‘What? I don’t believe it…you…’

‘It’s in our brochure,’ he told her unapologetically. ‘I did send you a copy.’

Yes, he had, and she had promptly thrown it away without bothering to read it, so angry had she been at the way she had allowed herself to be manipulated into such a time-wasting situation.

‘That’s why I thought you might appreciate a lift…’ Suspiciously Christa watched him through narrowed eyes. What was the real purpose of his visit? Not to do her any favours, she was sure of it. If she didn’t arrive on time for the commencement of her course, would he gloatingly proclaim that she had backed out of their arrangement and seize this as evidence that she was afraid of losing?

‘I can’t leave yet,’ she told him edgily. ‘I’m still working and I haven’t packed…’

‘That’s all right. I can wait…’

Wait…Where? Not here, Christa decided, but he seemed to have other ideas.

He was studying her collage again.

‘Nice…’ he told her. ‘You have an excellent eye for colour, but did you know that your choice of such rich colours, especially the red, denotes a very powerfully driven and ambitious personality?’

‘And you, of course, would know about such things,’ Christa agreed derisively. ‘It goes hand in hand…’

‘It is one of the subjects I have studied,’ he agreed, apparently not picking up on her contempt. At least not on the surface; whatever else might be fake about him, she was pretty sure that his intelligence was genuine enough. Which meant that he was more than likely suppressing what he really felt…because he wanted to lull her into a state of false security. Well, she would soon make him realise his mistake.

‘You’re wasting your time, you know,’ she told him curtly; ‘there’s absolutely no way that spending a month or even six months in the middle of the Welsh countryside is going to change anything about me or my outlook on life. And besides,’ she challenged him, her eyes narrowing watchfully, ‘surely I’m right in thinking that the normal duration of such courses would only be two weeks at the most?’

He looked, Christa recognised in swift triumph, almost uncomfortable—uncomfortable and rather caught off balance by her question, although he quickly hid it, turning his head slightly away from her so that she couldn’t see his full expression. Was that just discomposure she had seen in his eyes or had there been a hint of anger there as well? she wondered gleefully. If she had managed to get under his skin already, then so much the better. She was not afraid of his anger—she welcomed it. When people lost control of their emotions they betrayed themselves more easily.

‘Normally, yes,’ she heard him agreeing, ‘but in your case…’

‘You decided to balance the scales in your own favour and give yourself extra time,’ she suggested tauntingly.

To her surprise he didn’t try to deny her accusation or to defend himself, instead giving her a look that for some unaccountable reason made her pulse start to race frantically and her heart to execute a high-dive.

‘It’s no good,’ she repeated quickly, ‘I shan’t change my mind…

The long, level look he gave her rather surprised her. That he should acknowledge her antagonism was to be expected, but that he should allow her to see that it affected him wasn’t. Men like him were very much into control of their own emotions as well as those of the people around them. She would have expected him to want to give her the impression that he was above acknowledging her dislike, not to react to it with such a very male and challenging gleam in those cool, grey eyes…The kind of gleam that, if she was foolish enough to be vulnerable to his particular brand of male magnetism, could quite easily have made her heart beat just a little faster and her body…

‘You sound very sure about that.’

The gleam was gone now, replaced by a cool, distancing scrutiny. ‘I am,’ Christa confirmed firmly. ‘I know myself very well.’

‘Yourself, or the self you allow yourself to be? You do realise how stressful such rigid control of your personality is, don’t you?’

Christa glared angrily at him.

‘And you would know about such things, I take it. Tell me…what exactly did you do before you jumped on the modern bandwagon of the…the quasiprofessional soothsayer and reader of runes?’ Christa demanded insultingly.

She waited for the storm to break, for the grey eyes to darken and the sensually curved male mouth to utter retaliatory insults, but to her consternation he said simply instead, ‘I lectured in psychology at Oxford. I don’t want to rush you, but it would be a good idea if we could leave pretty soon. I don’t want to get back too much after dark. We haven’t had much wind recently, and if the power supply is low it might mean starting up our subsidiary generator…’

The speed with which he changed subjects, the apparent calmness in his manner after delivering a statement which had left her feeling as flattened as though she had been mown down by a boulder, left Christa floundering and impotently angry, not just with him but with herself as well.

A lecturer in psychology…

‘It was in the brochure, along with the qualifications of the other members of our staff.’

The quiet statement brought a surge of humiliated colour to Christa’s skin, despite her attempts to stop it.

‘A generator,’ she repeated, determinedly adopting his own tactics. ‘Does that mean you don’t have a proper reliable electricity supply?’

‘We aren’t on the national grid, no,’ he agreed. ‘Our electricity is generated by wind machines. We try at the centre to be as environmentally aware and as independent as possible. That includes generating our own electricity, growing our own fruit and vegetables. We even tried supplying our own meat, but that didn’t work out too well.

‘The sheep became too tame and no one wanted to send them to market,’ he explained. ‘Same with the hens; none of us could bring ourselves to wring their necks.’

Mentally, Christa contrasted what he was saying with the lives of some of the people in the villages she had visited in India and Pakistan. There they did not have the luxury of allowing their livestock to become tame pets.

As though he had read her mind, he said quietly, ‘Yes, I know what you’re thinking and you’re probably right, but would you have wanted to be the one to sign the death warrant?’

His perception was beginning to disconcert her.

‘It would depend whose name was on it,’ she told him pithily.

The sound of his laughter surprised and irked her. He was supposed to get offended, angry, to be betrayed by his pride and ego into revealing himself as he really was-not to be tolerantly amused.

Daniel Geshard was dangerous, Christa acknowledged uneasily. His claim that a month on one of his courses would change her entire outlook on life was one she still scathingly discounted. Her own claim to herself that, knowing who he was, or more importantly what he was, there was not the slightest risk of that initial tug of empathy and attraction she had felt towards him being rekindled—that claim was the truth, wasn’t it?

‘What’s wrong?’

Christa tensed against his choice of words—not the impersonal, ‘Is something wrong?’ but the much, much more personal, ‘What’s wrong?’ as though he already knew her so well that it was taken for granted that he knew that something was.

‘What’s wrong?’ She gave him a cold stare. ‘Nothing’s wrong,’ she told him bitingly, ‘apart from the fact that you’ve interrupted me in the middle of some important work, practically forced your way into my home, tried to take total control of my life…’

‘The decision to accept my offer was yours,’ he pointed out easily. ‘You could always have refused.’

Liar, Christa wanted to say. He knew damn well she could not have refused it without totally losing face. As she turned her back to walk away from him she heard him saying to her, ‘You’ll need to pack at least three changes of outdoor clothes, plus a warm weatherproof coat. When we get snow…’

‘Snow?’ Christa stopped and whirled round. ‘It’s October,’ she objected derisively. ‘We don’t get snow in this country in October…’

‘Maybe not, but Wales is a different country and we do get snow, and we’re up in the mountains, high enough to have bad snow as early as September in some years.

‘Did you manage to get walking boots, by the way?’ Daniel called after her.

‘Walking boots?’

‘It was on the list of required clothing,’ he told her.

And the list had no doubt been with the brochure which she had thrown away, Christa acknowledged hollowly. What else had she omitted to discover through that foolish piece of stiff-necked pride?

‘No, I did not manage to get walking boots,’ she enunciated grimly. ‘But then I shan’t need them as I shall not be doing any walking.’

If she had expected him to respond to her challenge by arguing with her she was disappointed…As though she simply hadn’t spoken, he continued easily, ‘Well, don’t worry about it too much. There’s an excellent sports and climbing equipment shop in our local market town. You’ll like visiting it—everyone does. It’s still very much a traditional market town, with a weekly cattle auction. You’ll enjoy it…’

Christa gave him a withering look.

‘I hardly think so,’ she told him dismissively. ‘I’m a city person, I’m afraid…’ It wasn’t really true, but she was beginning to feel not just resentful but, more worryingly, slightly afraid of the way he seemed to be continuously reading her mind, second-guessing her. ‘Watching some bucolic farmers haggling over the sale of a handful of ragged sheep is hardly my idea of pleasure…

‘No?’ The dark eyebrows rose. ‘That isn’t what I’ve heard. Apparently they’ve learned to be extremely wary of the English cloth-lady in the factories of India and Pakistan.’

Christa tensed warily. Where had he learned that?

‘Buying cloth is my job…watching other people buying sheep isn’t. Besides, I thought the ethos behind these courses was that one put aside all thoughts of work and learned, instead, to play,’ she commented mockingly.

‘Our ethos, as you call it, is to teach people, to help people to live well-balanced and fulfilling lives; to learn to acknowledge and accept that the human psyche has other needs besides the more material ones.’

‘Oh, the trauma of the poor stressed-out executive,’ Christa taunted disparagingly. ‘How great his need, how noble the role of the one who eases it for him. There’s a real world peopled by human beings who are starving…dying…’

‘Yes, I do know,’ he told her quietly.

There was a certain note in the quiet male voice which for some reason made Christa flush slightly and look away from him, as though she was the one in error…at fault.

‘I cannot alleviate the ills of the starving—would that I could—but I can help people to come to terms with themselves, to learn to live in harmony with others. If all the world lived in such harmony,’ he told her gently, ‘there would be no wars, or famine.

‘I’ll wait down here for you, shall I?’ he continued.

Christa looked at him blankly. His words had caused her to feel such emotion…He baffled and bewildered her, catching her so repeatedly off guard that she felt like a wooden doll on a string which he manipulated.

Careful, she warned herself as she hurried upstairs, you’re letting him get to you and you mustn’t. Remember what he is, not what he seems to be. He’s a psychologist; he knows how people behave, how they react, and he knows how to project a specific image, how to gain someone’s sympathy and admiration.

But he would soon learn that she wasn’t so easy to deceive, and before her month in Wales was over he would be bitterly regretting his foolish public claim to be able to change her whole outlook on life. God might have wrought such a transformation in St Paul on the road to Damascus, but Daniel Geshard was a mere human being.

A mere human being…She paused, just with one foot on the second flight of stairs, her heart suddenly missing a small beat. There was nothing ‘mere’ about the man, and she would do well to hang on grimly to that fact.




CHAPTER THREE


‘IS THIS it?’ Christa asked in dismay at the ramshackle collection of stone-built, low-roofed buildings beyond the closed farm gate.

‘This’ looked more like a small farmhouse surrounded by farm buildings than a study centre. For starters, from the size of the main building she doubted that it could house more than four or five people.

‘Not exactly,’ he returned calmly, bringing the Land Rover to a halt in front of the gate.

Christa had been startled at first when she had seen the Land Rover. Somehow she had expected him to drive something more…more expensive…more imagereinforcing…A four-wheel-drive vehicle, certainly, but a top-of-the-range model, not this battered vehicle which looked as though it was held together with bits of string.

As he had watched her studying it, Daniel had told her with visible pride that he had rescued and rebuilt the vehicle himself.

‘Yes, it looks like it,’ Christa had agreed grimly, and then had felt oddly mean as she saw the pleasure fade from his eyes. Men did have, somewhere within their make-up, that little-boy eagerness and enthusiasm for certain cherished things.

‘What do you mean, not exactly?’ she asked him suspiciously as he opened the Land Rover door

‘This isn’t the centre,’ he admitted. ‘This is my home…The centre closed down at the end of last month…to give the staff a chance to have a break and to enable the builders to finish work on a new extension.’

‘What…you mean you’ve brought me here under totally false pretences?’ Christa flashed. ‘Well, in that case you can just turn this…this collection of rusty metal and string around and take me back again.’

‘Impossible, I’m afraid,’ Daniel told her calmly. ‘For one thing, I’m almost out of petrol, and Dai won’t be here with a fresh supply for me until some time tomorrow, and for another…it’s too late, Christa,’ he told her quietly, looking at her, watching her. She recognised a small heart-stopping surge of confused emotion—anger because he had deceived her and relief because he was refusing to let her go?

‘You agreed to come here,’ he reminded her, repeating his earlier words to her.

‘I agreed to attend a course held at your centre, not to…what do you mean, all the staff are having a break?’ she questioned him uncertainly.

‘Just that,’ he told her. ‘But you needn’t be concerned; I’m quite happy to conduct your course personally,’ he assured her. ‘In fact,’ he told her, his voice taking on a disturbing husky timbre, ‘I’m positively looking forward to it…’

‘Well, I’m not,’ Christa snapped. ‘And in fact-What’s that?’ she demanded, her eyes rounding with shock as the Land Rover suddenly rocked startlingly from side to side. In her efforts to counteract the rocking effect she reached out instinctively to brace herself against it, one hand pressed against the doorframe, the other…

The other, she recognised, was pressed flat against something much more solid and warm than a doorframe. And that something was Daniel’s chest, his heartbeat a steady regular rhythm beneath her hand.

‘It’s all right.’ She heard him laughing. ‘It’s only Clarence…he’s come to welcome us home…’

‘Clarence…’ Christa stared wildly at him. ‘Clarence,’ she repeated uncertainly. She couldn’t see anyone through the windows of the vehicle.

‘He’s a billy goat,’ Daniel told her, ‘who hasn’t yet learned that a head-butt is not always exactly an approved mode of welcome.’ He was laughing at her, Christa recognised indignantly as she saw the small creases fanning out around his eyes and the humour in the upward curl of his mouth. ‘I’m sorry if he frightened you. I should have warned you…’

‘I wasn’t frightened,’ Christa denied untruthfully.

She started to pull away from him and then tensed in shock as one of his hands covered hers, holding it trapped against his chest while his thumb stroked caressingly over the soft skin of her inner wrist.

She could feel herself starting to tremble slightly; the skin of his hands was slightly rough, as though he spent a good deal of time outside, and the small abrasion of it rubbing against her much softer flesh was causing odd shivers of sensation to quiver through her body.

‘Liar,’ she heard Daniel accusing her softly.

Shaking, she tried to focus on what he was saying to her instead of what was happening inside her.

‘Your pulse is fast,’ he told her in explanation. ‘And a fast pulse means…’

‘All right, so it was a shock,’ Christa admitted, anxious to bring an end to what was becoming an increasingly hazardous situation. Fear was one cause of a racing pulse, it was true, but there were others. She bit her lip, chagrined by the knowledge that what her body had idiotically interpreted as a small caress had, in fact, been nothing more than a clinical examination of her pulse-rate.

‘Whoops, hang on…’ The sensation of Daniel’s arms suddenly coming round her and holding her wrapped tightly against his chest choked the breath out of her lungs, leaving her totally unable to make any kind of verbal protest as Clarence sent the Land Rover rocking a second time.

‘I think he’s getting impatient,’ she heard Daniel saying somewhere above her head.

She was pressed so firmly against him that to make any comment would have meant risking her lips virtually touching the warm, bare skin of his throat as she tried to speak. In fact, if she opened her mouth at all, it would be almost as though she were doing so in order to kiss him.

‘Hey…you’re trembling…it’s all right, Clarence isn’t so fearsome. In fact he’s quite a softie once you get to know him…come on.’

Thank goodness he had started to release her and turn away from her to open his door before he could realise that the reason for that small, intense shudder had not been anything to do with Clarence at all, wary though she was of the animal.

What was the matter with her? There was obviously a very large communications gap between her body and her brain; her body was still locked into that first initial meeting between them and the instant attraction she had felt towards him.

It was time that her brain told it very clearly and firmly just what the real situation now was.

‘Come and meet Clarence,’ Daniel invited, holding open the passenger door for her.

Reluctantly Christa climbed out of the vehicle. It wasn’t just the goat that was making her feel on edge, with his impressive set of formidably sharp-looking horns, but the man standing beside him as well.

‘I bought him as a kid. Goat’s milk is extremely good for you and the plan was that his harem would contribute towards making us self-sufficient.

‘Unfortunately things didn’t turn out quite as I’d hoped. It’s cheaper and easier to buy our milk from the supermarket. It wasn’t so much Clarence’s and his wives’ predilection for breaking out of their pen that caused the trouble as their taste for clothes…

‘They ate them,’ he explained with a grin when Christa turned her head briefly away from the wary study of the billy goat to him. ‘I managed to find homes for his wives but Clarence unfortunately has proved hard to rehouse. Still, he makes a very good guard animal and, unlike a dog, he has to be neither licensed nor muzzled.’

Christa didn’t quite like the way the goat was watching her, or her clothes, but she was damned if she was going to admit as much to his owner.

When Daniel turned to walk away from her, calling over his shoulder to her, ‘Hang on a sec, I’ll just get your case,’ Christa had to suppress her desire to betray her weakness and protest.

Clarence returned her determined eye-contact with an unblinking stare that she could have sworn had a faintly taunting element to it. And when the animal suddenly started to move towards her, she had to fight to stop herself from scuttling behind Daniel’s protective bulk.

‘He’ll soon get to know you,’ Daniel told her as he reached out to scratch between the animal’s ears.

‘I can’t wait,’ Christa muttered sardonically, firmly keeping Daniel’s body between her and the goat as they walked towards the house. What on earth had she got herself into? she wondered bitterly as she waited for Daniel to unlock the door. A month cooped up virtually alone with a man who she already knew was a danger to her, and for what? Just so that she could prove a point?

She must be feeling more tired than she had realised, she decided as Daniel pushed open the door and motioned her inside. Her principles and her beliefs had always been very important to her. Her great-aunt had been the old-fashioned type, with very strict and strong values which she had passed on to Christa.

The door opened directly into a large, low-ceilinged kitchen. And as Christa glanced round the room, observing the bright red Aga and the solid cherrywood kitchen units, she reflected cynically that no expense had been spared in creating what, at first glance, might appear to be a plain and practically furnished room.

Christa, who was interested in all aspects of design and fashion, knew better.

But then, no doubt the fees he earned from his spurious ‘professional’ activities enabled him to enjoy such extravagance.

He had good taste, she had to admit that, Christa acknowledged grimly. The kitchen was actually what she would have chosen for herself had she been able to afford such a luxury. The cupboards might look plain and workmanlike but there was no mistaking the cherrywood’s expensive subtle gleam, nor the high quality of the furniture’s design.

It would be interesting to see how the rest of the house was furnished.

‘Hungry?’ she heard Daniel asking her.

‘Why?’ she asked him. ‘Do meals come extra?’

She made no attempt to hide her hostility, but his reaction to it brought a hot, shamed flush to her face as he told her quietly, ‘No, of course they don’t. As I’ve already said, there’ll be no charge for your stay here. This venture isn’t something I’ve taken on purely to make money, although I’d be lying if I said that my motives were completely altruistic. I do have to earn my living, but profit has never been my sole motivation—for anything.

‘You’re determined to think the worst of me, aren’t you?’ he accused her almost gently. ‘I wonder why.’

Angrily Christa turned her head away from him.

‘Stop trying to psychoanalyse me,’ she told him irritably. ‘And yes, I am hungry…’

‘Good, so am I, although I’m afraid it will have to be something simple: soup and a salad. I’ll take you up to your room first, though. It’s this way.’

‘This way’ turned out to be through a door which led into a spacious rectangular hallway.

‘The house was originally built by the youngest son of a Victorian industrialist who wanted to return to his family’s roots, hence its size. The fact that very little land goes with it makes it something of a white elephant to the local farming community, so I was able to buy it reasonably cheaply.’

Why was he being so informative? Christa wondered. As a means of trying to disarm her? Well, it wouldn’t work.

His unsubtle ploys might not impress her, but the house certainly did, she admitted, as she followed him upstairs. The Victorian younger son had obviously had money and a good architect. The house was solidly built, its style simple and plain.

Christa paused on the stairs to admire the proportions of the dado rail and skirting-board, her eye caught by a newer-looking piece of wood where the rail had obviously been repaired. Unable to resist, she reached out and stroked her fingertips along the wood; the join was so smooth that you couldn’t even feel it, and only the slight difference in colour gave the repair away.

‘I see you’ve spotted my repair work. Not many people do.’

Christa turned her head to look in astonishment at Daniel. ‘You did this?’ she demanded, unable to conceal her surprise.

‘Yes, joinery is my hobby…I made the units in the kitchen. My grandfather was a joiner, a true craftsman, justifiably proud of his skill and his work.

‘Your room’s this way.’

Silently Christa followed him. That easy, friendly manner of his—was it natural or was it merely assumed? Deceit had to be an integral part of his nature, surely, simply by virtue of the way he earned his living? The art of concealment, or of projecting a false image, so polished and perfected that it was easy for him to make others believe the illusions he created.

Look at the way he had deceived her that first afternoon, the way she had been so certain that the warmth, the admiration in the look he was giving her had been real, until his companion had betrayed him.

What would have happened if he hadn’t done so, if she had never discovered his real identity, if for instance that afternoon he had been alone, if he had chosen to follow up on the promise of that exchanged look…?

How much damage could he have actually done to her emotions before she had realised the truth?

Her own vulnerability had come as a shock to her. She had thought herself so fireproof to men of his particular type.

There was only one reason that he had brought her here, virtually kidnapping her in order to do so. No man liked being challenged by a woman, especially when that woman won the challenge, and both professionally and financially he could not afford to be defeated.

It was going to be war between them, and he had some pretty devastating weapons in his arsenal, she acknowledged as he stopped outside one of the several doors off the broad corridor.

‘I’ve put you in here,’ he told her. ‘You’ve got your own private bathroom.’ He pushed open the bedroom door, allowing her to precede him inside it. The room was furnished plainly and simply, with an antique brass bed and a few pieces of highly polished, age-scarred oak furniture, including a desk.

‘I’ll leave you to settle in and then over supper we can discuss the structure of your course. One of the things we teach here is the importance of harmonious teamwork and its benefits. We find that many executives lose sight of the importance of working alongside others; our culture breeds a need to dominate, a desire for supposed superiority. We aim to redress the effects of that; to teach the benefits of co-existence, of valuing and supporting one another, of integrating with one’s colleagues and team-mates.’

‘I don’t have any team-mates,’ Christa told him drily. She was on safer ground here, and with every word he spoke she could feel her resistance to what he was saying growing. ‘You should try going out into the real world,’ she added cynically. ‘I promise you, it doesn’t work. One of the first things that would happen if I and my fellow importers started empathising supportively with one another is that our buyers would accuse us of setting up a cartel and of price-fixing.’

‘You don’t fool me, Christa,’ Daniel told her softly, by way of response. ‘You may think you sound hard and cynical, but that’s just a disguise, a form of protection.’

He had gone, closing the door quietly behind him before Christa could summon up a suitable retort.

Her need protection? Ridiculous. Protection from what—from who?

Christa hesitated in the hallway, the temptingly rich smell of soup coaxing her to go into the kitchen, the knowledge that Daniel was waiting inside it for her stopping her. But when the door opened and he appeared in front of her the decision was taken out of her hands.

‘Soup’s ready,’ he told her cheerfully, ‘although I can’t claim much credit. All I had to do was to reheat it in the microwave.’

Who had cooked it? Christa wondered curiously ten minutes later, seated at the kitchen table dipping her spoon into the thick rich broth. A comfortably middleaged local farmer’s wife, or someone else—younger-prettier? Daniel was a very attractive man, both sexually and in other ways, or at least he would have been, she amended hastily, if she didn’t have the intelligence to see through that very deceptive maleness and recognise what really lay behind it.

However, not all women were fortunate enough to have the benefit of her past experience and knowledge to protect them.

It would be all too easy, she suspected, fatally easy in fact, for a more vulnerable woman to be taken in by his apparent warmth and caring, his sense of humour and his pseudo-readiness to be open about himself, especially once they had looked into his eyes and seen the look she had thought she had seen when they first met!

Fiercely, she clamped down on the memory of how she had felt then, her body tensing.

‘What is it? What’s wrong?’ Daniel asked her solicitously. ‘Soup too hot?’

Thank God he couldn’t really read her mind, Christa reflected wryly as she avoided his eyes, shaking her head as she responded guardedly, ‘No, it’s fine. Very good, in fact. Who made it?’

‘I’m not really sure. Some of the local farmers’ wives are involved in their own small business, cooking and supplying home-made food,’ he explained. ‘They cater for functions, speciality events, weddings and the like, and run a stall on market day, and they also provide me with a rota of cooks and staff for the centre when it’s in operation.

‘This soup was part of a batch of food that was in the centre’s freezer. I brought it up here to save it being wasted. Normally I cook for myself or eat at the centre.

‘I’ve drawn up a basic programme outline for your course,’ he continued. ‘We normally follow a more specialised routine, but in your case…’

‘In my case, what?’ Christa pounced suspiciously as he opened the folder he was holding. ‘What makes my case different? Or can I guess?’ she challenged him cynically. ‘You’ve already altered the odds in your own favour by doubling the length of the course, but I can tell you now, it doesn’t matter what you say or do, I shan’t change my mind,’ she told him triumphantly.

Just for a second, the grey eyes hardened slightly as he focused on her. ‘The extended length of your course has nothing whatsoever to do with my trying to shorten the odds in my favour, as you put it,’ he told her curtly. ‘It’s simply that without any shared group interaction it will take longer to…’

‘To brainwash me,’ Christa supplied acidly. ‘Why don’t you just lock me in my room and starve me into submission?’

He was angry now, Christa recognised, a small thrill of apprehension running down her spine as she saw the way his eyes had darkened, his mouth hardening as he looked at her.

‘Don’t tempt me,’ he told her softly. But then his expression lightened, a brief smile touching his mouth as he said, ‘You, submissive…? Somehow I doubt it.’

There was something in the way he was looking at her…something in his smile…Thoroughly flustered, Christa dropped her head.

Damn the man! How had he managed to turn her angry challenge around so that suddenly it was filled with such subtle sexual innuendo that she could actually feel her body starting to grow hot?

‘So what exactly are you planning to do with me?’ she demanded quickly—too quickly, she realised, biting her lip in chagrin as she waited for him to use the verbal slip she had just made; but to her relief, and to her surprise as well, he didn’t do so, merely looking down at his file and telling her,

‘The course comprises a mixture of physical and mental exercises designed to promote trust in others and to foster an ability to share control through group activities and group discussions.

‘The group activities make use of our surroundings and include mountain-walking, where the walkers are paired together, and, similarly, canoeing…’

‘Canoeing…’ Christa stared at him. ‘No way, you can forget that,’ she told him, visions of the flimsy, frail craft he was talking about filling her horrified imagination. She could swim—just—preferably in a heated pool with no current and no waves, but if he expected her voluntarily to risk her life…

‘There’s nothing to be afraid of…’ she heard him telling her, as though he had read her mind. ‘The canoes are unsinkable; the worst that can happen is that they might roll over if badly handled, but you’ll be wearing a wetsuit and…’




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