Unwilling Surrender

She glimpsed her reflection in the mirror and grimaced. She was plain. There was no denying that. It was one of those inescapable facts of life, like the sun rising every morning. She accepted it and in fact she was often thankful for it, because great beauty often brought great problems, whereas she could continue, for the most part, on her merry way, without her life being disturbed overmuch. She was never a threat to other women, and consequently had quite a few girlfriends, men enjoyed her company without any of that macho need to make a pass and, all in all, life was calm and enjoyable.

Only Adam Palmer had ever made her acutely aware of her lack of looks.

Not that he was cruel or derisory. Maybe it was because his own life was so crammed with gorgeous women that she immediately felt, in his presence, as if she was being given the once-over and found wanting.

She waited gloomily on the sofa in the lounge for his appearance, perched on the edge of the chair like a patient waiting for the dentist to summon.

He wouldn’t be long, she knew that. They both lived in London, albeit in wildly different areas. Her flat was a modest two-bedroomed place in Clapham. His house was a massive affair in north London, in an area where the profusion of trees could actually make you forget that you weren’t in suburbia.

He had inherited it on his parents’ death seven years previously, and he had lived there ever since with Fiona, looking after his sister with a fierce protectiveness which had often made Christina smile, but which Fiona, admittedly, had sometimes found stifling and exasperating.

She heard his car before the doorbell went. There was a squeal of tyres, then three sharp buzzes on the doorbell.

Christina resignedly pressed the button to open the main door in the lobby, and unlocked her own front door.

Then she waited on the sofa, hearing his footsteps mounting the stairs, and the rap on the front door, which was pushed open before she had finished telling him to come in.

He brought the cold air of winter with him. It clung to the black coat and the temperature in the room seemed to drop a few degrees. Christina reluctantly found her eyes drawn to him, looking at him and feeling as overawed and as taken aback as if she had never seen him in her life before.

Because every time she saw him she realised that she had forgotten just how tall and commanding his presence was. It filled the flat, giving off a vibrating, impatient energy that made you think of some caged jungle animal.

‘Would you like some coffee?’ she asked, standing up and watching him as he removed his coat and then sank on to one of the chairs, for all the world as though he were an invited guest.

‘Have you got anything stronger?’ he asked, fixing her with those amazing blue eyes of his. ‘Whisky? Gin?’

Christina’s lips tightened a fraction. Trust him, she thought. In a minute he’ll be mentioning that he feels a bit peckish and could I fix him a little something to eat.

‘There might be some wine in the fridge,’ she said with an edge to her voice that she hoped would leave him in no doubt that he was unwanted in her flat. ‘I don’t normally keep a supply of hard liquor in the flat.’

‘Very pointed,’ Adam observed, running his eyes over her in a way that made her think that he probably did that automatically every time he was with a woman, whatever her age or appearance. ‘No, forget the wine. I’ll have a cup of coffee, please, black and very sweet.’ He rubbed his fingers over his eyes. ‘God, I’m exhausted,’ he said. ‘Up at six this morning, back home at two-thirty, only to be confronted with some damn note from that sister of mine informing me that she’s gone, God knows where.’

‘What a stressful life you lead,’ Christina said without sympathy.

Back at two-thirty in the morning? Her heart was not bleeding. Chances were high that he had been out enjoying himself in the company of one of his entourage of glamorous adorers. Tired he might be, but only because he had no doubt been burning the candle at both ends.

She stalked into the kitchen and banged about in the cupboards, hoping that all the noise would end up giving him a thumping headache, and finally emerged ten minutes later with two mugs of coffee.

‘You knew about this, didn’t you?’ he asked as soon as she had handed him his coffee.

Christina didn’t reply immediately. She walked across to the sofa and sat down, tucking her long legs under her and taking a tentative sip from her mug.

Adam gave an impatient click of his tongue. ‘Well?’ he demanded, raking his fingers through his black hair in a frustrated, angry gesture. ‘Don’t just sit there. Answer me! You knew all about my sister and her hare-brained plans, didn’t you?’

Christina felt some of her calm evaporating. It had always been the same with him. She could remember being roused to rage in her early teens, stamping her feet, while he looked on, quite satisfied with his achievement, thinking that he could pour oil on troubled waters with the offer of tea in a café somewhere.

She couldn’t stamp her feet now, but she still felt like doing it.

‘You’re in my flat now,’ she said defensively, ‘and I would appreciate it if you don’t try to bully me into answering your questions.’

Adam frowned. ‘Me? Bully? I have no idea what you’re talking about. You always were a little over-sensitive, Tina.’

With remarkable restraint, she let that one go.

‘I don’t know why you bothered to come over here,’ she said, fighting to hang on to her self-control. ‘I’m not going to tell you anything more than I already have.’

‘Dammit, Tina! Why are you protecting her? I only want to find out her whereabouts so that I know she’s safe.’

‘She’s safe. Trust me.’

‘I’d rather not. Where is she?’

He had sat forward a little and she could feel his personality enfolding her so that it was a struggle to think clearly.

The man was hypnotic. Those eyes could prise out the most guarded of secrets. He would look you straight in the face, forcing you to fall under the spell of his powerful, persuasive personality, and slowly but surely he would end up finding out exactly what he wanted.

Little wonder women were forever tripping over themselves in their haste to grab a little bit of him, to try their luck at netting the biggest fish in the sea.

But she wasn’t one of his women. She had also known him long enough to see right through those tactics.

She stared back at him and repeated that her friend’s whereabouts were strictly confidential.

‘If she had wanted you to know, she would have told you in her note,’ Christina pointed out with irrefutable logic, and he glared at her furiously.

‘Stop trying to be clever with me! You know she wouldn’t let on to me what her plans were. For some reason she seems to think that I’m a bit over-protective.’ He transferred his glare to the mug of coffee, as if it had suddenly become responsible for his irritating situation, and Christina smiled.

Sometimes the set of his features reminded her of when he was much younger, and right now was one of those times. He had always been as stubborn as they came.

He looked up and caught her smiling and said angrily, ‘I’m glad you find the whole thing so amusing. You might not be quite so amused if Fiona lands herself in a spot of trouble. You know what she’s like just as well as I do. She has her head in the clouds. She goes through life thinking that nothing untoward could possibly happen to her, and one of these days that attitude is going to get her into a lot of trouble. The world isn’t ready to cope with my sister’s brand of naïveté.’

Christina knew that what he was saying was true. She also knew that trying to keep Fiona under lock and key was not the way to overcome any potential problems.

The truth of the matter was that Adam Palmer found his inability to restrain his sister frustrating. Unlike everything and everyone else in life, she refused to respond to his persuasion. Oh, she listened well enough, and nodded her head in all the right places, but then she proceeded to do just precisely as she wanted.

‘You can’t fight all her battles for her,’ Christina said eventually. ‘She has to learn from her own mistakes. Trying to run her life for her is just going to make her resent you.’

‘Is that what she told you? That she resents me?’

Christina sighed heavily. They were getting precisely nowhere and she was feeling very tired.

‘More or less,’ she hedged, and Adam stood up and walked across to her.

‘And I suppose you agree?’ He leant over her, gripping the back of the sofa on either side of her so that she was trapped by him.

She found her breath coming in small, quick gasps.

‘She has to make her own mistakes,’ she stammered, confused by his proximity and wishing that he would remove himself to some other, safer, part of the room. Or, better still, out of her flat altogether.

‘And you think that that includes marrying Simon West? That snivelling leech who’s only attracted to her because of her money? Should I stand back and watch her make that ultimate mistake without trying to do anything about it?’