Unwilling Surrender

He was still leaning over her, and she found that her thought processes seemed to have seized up.

The sensation brought back vivid and unwelcome memories of when she was a teenager, and hopelessly infatuated with him. Then, she had experienced that same dizzy, disorientated feeling whenever he was around. It would have faded away of its own accord, she was certain of that, despite the power that he had held over her, but time and adulthood had not been allowed to take their course. He had spotted the intensity of her private feelings with the shrewd perceptiveness of the born predator and he had laughed them off. Young and tactless, he had found her infatuation amusing, and that had left a sharp tang of bitterness in her mouth.

But that was a long time ago. She had recovered from that inconvenient passing fever. She had moved on with her life.

‘He may not be as bad as he seems,’ Christina muttered feebly, thinking of Fiona’s latest boyfriend with distaste. She had met him a few times, and each time some new feature of his personality had further reduced her impression of him. She could understand Adam’s concern.

He swung around from her and began prowling through the room, absent-mindedly looking at the pictures on the walls, the ornaments on the tables.

‘He’s as bad as he seems,’ he said finally, ‘and worse. How could you let her run off with him? You’re supposed to be her friend.’

Stung, Christina’s head snapped up.

‘I’m not her keeper!’ she bit out angrily. ‘Of course I didn’t encourage her in her plans to go to...in her plans. I tried to talk her out of it, but when Fiona decides to dig her heels in she does so with a vengeance. She wouldn’t listen to a word I was saying. And in the end, it’s her life.’

Adam stared at her as if she were some foreign species of animal. And she knew why. He was accustomed to having his orders obeyed. He had come to expect it. All this talk about freedom of choice was irritating for him, because he knew what was right for his sister and he could not understand why she failed to see his point of view.

What made matters worse, Christina thought, was that the damned man was always right.

‘Are you going to tell me where she’s gone?’ he asked softly, moving to sit alongside her on the sofa.

She shuffled inconspicuously away from him so that she was pressed against the armrest and eyed him drily. ‘You don’t give up, do you? You’re like a dog with a bone.’

For the first time since he had barged his way into her flat, his features relaxed into a smile, a coaxing, charming smile which she had observed on his face before—when he had been in the company of a beautiful woman. It had always amazed her that none of these women could see through it to the single-minded, relentless man underneath, the one who had taken his father’s ailing company and turned it around in a matter of months, the one with the reputation in business circles of being a force to be reckoned with.

He must be a very good actor, she decided, if he could sublimate all those characteristics in his relationships with women.

Was he hoping now that he could pull that smile on her and coax her around to his way of thinking?

Did he really think that she was as empty-headed and as eager to be pleased as the women he chose to be associated with?

‘You know me, Tina.’ He smiled again and she ignored it.

‘Unfortunately.’

‘You don’t mean that. Next to my sister, you’re my longest-standing female friend.’

Lucky old me, she thought. He makes me sound like a piece of furniture that’s stood in the same place for a thousand years.

‘I shouldn’t be too proud of that fact if I were you,’ she muttered, thinking that he would not hear her, but of course he had. His eyes narrowed, even though the smile was still playing on his lips.

‘Meaning?’

‘Why boast about the fact that you shed women with appalling regularity?’

‘Don’t you start preaching to me!’ He scowled at her and she smiled back at him.

Had Fiona been telling him the same thing? she wondered. Normally she did not stand up to him. Maybe she was developing a little bit of fighting spirit. Christina hoped so. The world, as far as she could see, was altogether too short of people who were prepared to give Adam Palmer a piece of their mind.

Money bred an unhealthy awe in people, and he was wealthy enough to have inspired this kind of awe for a number of years. Combine that wealth with a brilliant, restless intellect and good looks, and the combination was fatal.

‘Well, you do have a certain reputation,’ she murmured in a honeyed voice.

‘Not one that I’ve ever courted.’

‘You’ll have to excuse me if I don’t agree.’

‘Will I?’ He leaned back and surveyed her from under thick black lashes. ‘I don’t know how you can be an authority on my love-life when you’ve never been a part of it.’

Christina felt her cheeks go pink, but her composure remained firmly in place. She looked at him in silence, wondering how on earth she had ever had a crush on this man.

‘In fact,’ he said with a certain amount of lazy good humour, ‘have you ever been an authority on anyone’s love-life? I’ve known you all these years, yet you’ve never changed from being the cool little creature who always studied hard at school and always, always had her head screwed firmly on the right way.’

Christina could have thrown the lamp at him. Aiming straight for his head. Who did he think he was with his snide insinuations and thinly disguised insults?

‘There’s nothing wrong with that,’ she replied evenly, but some of the tranquillity of her expression had evaporated.

‘Not terribly exciting, though, is it?’

‘Please, spare me your observations on what makes an exciting life. If exciting means bed-hopping the way that you do, then you’re welcome to it.’

She heard her voice sounding acid and prim and she could have kicked herself.

His blue eyes had taken on a distinctly wicked gleam at that. Wasn’t he tired? He had said earlier on that he was, but there was nothing tired about the man sitting next to her now. He looked invigorated, ready for a few hours of discussion, probably on her love-life, or lack of it, which he seemed to find highly entertaining. Maybe this was his sly way of extracting his pound of flesh for her silence over Fiona’s whereabouts.

‘What a damning statement,’ he said. ‘Bed-hopping? You have a very vivid imagination. I may have slept with a few women in my time, but I certainly don’t make a habit of jumping in and out of beds on a routine basis. Any chance of another cup of coffee?’ He held out his mug and Christina looked at it scathingly.

‘No chance whatsoever. I’m tired and it’s time that you left. I have no intention of telling you where Fiona’s gone, so you might as well forget it, Adam.’

His lips thinned.

‘I’ll do nothing of the sort. If you don’t tell me what I want to know, I’ll personally make sure that Simon West pays for any mistakes that my sister’s made.’

‘How do you intend to do that?’ Christina asked apprehensively. She had no doubt that he could and would do precisely as he had threatened. He certainly pulled enough strings, had enough power in the right circles to ensure that his threats weren’t hollow ones.

‘He’s an actor, isn’t he?’

She nodded without saying anything.

‘A very precarious position, wouldn’t you agree?’

She nodded again and felt like a mouse that had strayed into a trap and was waiting for it to clamp shut.

‘I’ve been on the look-out for a theatre company to buy. There could be a lot of money in that. I’ve been meaning to broaden my interests in the field of the arts for quite some time now.’ He allowed a little silence to fall between them. ‘It’s a tight community, the artistic community. One word about someone can spread faster than a bush fire.’ He turned the mug over in his hands, inspecting it.

‘You wouldn’t ruin his career,’ Christina whispered, horrified. ‘You couldn’t.’

‘I’ll do what I can to protect my sister.’ He slammed the mug down on to the coffee-table, making her jump.