Unwilling Surrender

He had put her in an impossible situation. Keep quiet and risk watching Simon West’s career, such as it was, bite the dust. Tell all and betray her friend’s confidence.

Simon might be everything that Adam had said he was. Certainly, from what she had seen, he was vain, egotistic and irritatingly convinced that the world was somehow a better place with him in it. But she could not stand aside and let Adam do his worst.

‘All right,’ she said wearily. ‘They’re using that cottage in Scotland. The one your parents owned.’

‘That?’ Adam gave her a long, hard look and then began to laugh. ‘Well, I can’t see romance blossoming in that run-down place, can you? Especially in weather like this. West hardly strikes me as the sort of man who knows how to survive without central heating and all mod cons.’

‘Fiona said that they needed privacy.’

‘She gets privacy. In fact she has all the room she needs.’

‘Very little, when you’re under the same roof,’ Christina said under her breath, and he frowned.

‘Well, I shall have to go up there and try and talk some sense into her. Just in case she’s contemplating doing something crazy.’ He stood up and immediately the lounge seemed to shrink in size.

‘Like what?’ Christina asked, momentarily distracted by the sheer power of his presence.

‘Like marrying the half-wit.’ He snatched up his coat and began putting it on. Black and thick, it gave him the air of a raffish highwayman, not that he seemed aware of the impression he made. He was frowning, thinking.

‘Wouldn’t they need a licence or something?’ Christina asked, anxious now. ‘Besides, Fiona has more sense than that.’ But her voice was even more dubious.

‘Who knows how long they’ve been planning this little jaunt?’ He looked at her narrowly, and she shook her head in answer to his unspoken question.

‘I, for one, did not,’ she denied vehemently. ‘Fiona dropped this on me like a bombshell yesterday.’

He was staring at her, as if trying to work something out in his mind, and it made her uneasy. Nothing was ever straightforward with Adam Palmer. She rose to her feet and walked across to the door, her hand resting lightly on the handle.

He had got what he wanted, she thought. She could have saved herself a lot of trouble merely by recognising from the very start that he was going to get the information out of her, and by telling him what he wanted to know without bothering to beat about the bush.

But he had always brought out the argumentative side in her. Even when she had been madly infatuated with him, when she used to follow him with her eyes every time she saw him, she had still never been submissive enough to listen to what he had to say without responding.

He moved across to the door to stand by her, looking down at her with a calculating little gleam in his eyes.

‘Busy right now?’ he asked, and she stared into his blue eyes, surprised and taken aback by his sudden digression.

‘Quite busy, yes,’ she said warily. ‘Why?’

He shrugged. ‘Merely being polite. After all, we’ve hardly exchanged pleasantries since I got here.’

‘I don’t remember a time when that bothered you particularly,’ Christina commented matter-of-factly.

He raised one brow, but she knew that he really couldn’t care less what she thought of him. He liked her well enough; time, after all, did bring a certain unsought familiarity into any relationship. But as far as he was concerned she existed on his periphery. His sister’s friend. The plain little girl who had grown into a quite ordinary-looking young woman. He had never looked twice at her and he never would, and so he had nothing to prove with her. He didn’t even have to pretend to care what she thought about him.

‘What interesting jobs have you got lined up? Fiona keeps me well informed about your fascinating line of work.’

‘Does she?’ Christina asked politely, thinking that he sounded anything but fascinated.

‘What was your last project? Photographing a member of royalty for a magazine cover?’

Christina nodded and wondered where this line of questioning was leading.

‘Must be very convenient, freelancing,’ he murmured, looking at her sideways. ‘I sometimes wish I had that sort of luxury.’

‘What? And give up the stress of the concrete jungle?’ she asked sarcastically. ‘I don’t believe that for one minute, Adam.’

He laughed softly. ‘No, perhaps you’re right,’ he murmured. ‘Still, you work to your own timetable, don’t you?’

‘Not really.’

He ignored that. ‘Which is particularly convenient right at this moment, because I want you to come with me to Scotland to fetch my sister.’

CHAPTER TWO

‘YOU want what?’ Christina stared at him as though he had gone completely mad and he stared back at her with an insufferable look of patience on his face.

‘I want you to come with me to Scotland,’ he repeated, very slowly, ‘to fetch my sister. You’ve already agreed that she was crazy to have just vanished with that fool of a boy. Who knows where it will lead? And if she makes the mistake of marrying him, it’ll be over my dead body. So naturally I have to prevent that from happening at all costs.’

‘Oh, naturally,’ Christina spluttered angrily. ‘You go right ahead and do what you feel you have to do, but please don’t include me in your plans.’

She opened the front door and a cold blast of air wafted in.

Her flat did not lead directly out to the street, but rather on to a small landing shared by her neighbour’s adjacent flat. Even so, it was cold outside.

He pushed the door shut and leant against it, his arms folded.

‘You have to come, Tina, you’re her friend. Supposedly.’

She gave him a long, withering look. She hoped it spoke volumes, because she didn’t trust her vocabulary to cover precisely what she wanted to say on the subject, which was a good deal.

‘Don’t you dare use that sort of blackmail on me,’ she said emphatically. ‘You might be able to get your way with most people, over most things, but not with me and definitely not on this matter!’

There, she thought, take that.

But instead of moving out of her way, instead of acknowledging defeat, he continued to look at her, his face grim. He wasn’t playing any games when it came to this. She could see that. Ever since his parents had died, he had taken care of his sister zealously. Despite her age, he considered her his responsibility, probably until she settled down and married someone in whom he could safely entrust her well-being.

As far as he was concerned, Fiona was in danger of committing the biggest mistake of her short life and he was not going to stand around without doing something about it.

Christina could follow that line of thought, even though she wasn’t quite sure whether she agreed with it or not.

However, as far as she was concerned, coercing her into some kind of confrontation with his sister was out of the question.

She was not about to start taking sides with anyone, because she would have hated it if she had been in Fiona’s situation. Hardly likely, she acknowledged honestly, since highly unsuitable men weren’t attracted to her in the slightest, but that was not the point.

‘I’m not leaving here until you agree to accompany me,’ he said blandly enough, although his face was hard and determined. ‘You know my sister as well as I do. She’ll have a fit if I show up on the doorstep, playing big brother. But if she sees you, she might feel more inclined to listen to sense.’

‘Alternatively, she might just slam the door in both our faces and tell us to mind our own damn business!’

‘It’s a risk we’ll have to take.’