The Trusting Game

‘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.