The Trusting Game

‘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.