Unwilling Surrender

‘Correction; it’s a risk you’ll have to take.’

She glared at him and he reached out and gripped her by her arm, pulling her towards him so that their faces were only inches apart.

‘Now you listen to me,’ he said with razor sharpness. ‘You’re coming with me whether you like it or not. You can just get down from that “you’re entitled to do what you like in life” platform. This is Fiona and we’re not talking about some casual little fling here. She’s been seeing this boy for quite a while and she seems serious about him.’

‘It might be mutual,’ Christina interjected feebly, but she was on weak ground here, she knew that.

‘We both know that that’s not the case. God knows why my sister can’t see the obvious, but that’s irrelevant. The fact is, I don’t want her doing anything she’d live to regret.’ He took a deep breath and looked at her coldly. His fingers were still biting into her arm, and Christina gave a little tug, which he ignored. ‘Have I told you that he was throwing out feelers as to how much money she stands to acquire on her twenty-fifth birthday?’

Christina gasped, appalled. ‘No! Surely not!’

‘Yes, that’s right.’

‘Did you mention that to Fiona?’

He gave a short, cynical laugh. ‘Don’t be ridiculous. That would have had the opposite effect.’ He released her abruptly and she massaged her numb arm, trying to get the blood circulation back into action.

‘You’re probably right,’ she agreed.

‘Now do you still think that it’s all right to let her get on with her own mistakes?’

‘She’s a grown woman,’ Christina protested helplessly, but his revelation had taken the wind out of her sails and she knew that his sharp eyes had not missed that.

‘She’s got years of living to do before she can be called that,’ he said bluntly, though his eyes were indulgent. ‘She’s always been as flighty as a butterfly, and I’ve always accepted that. But not this time. This boy is a nasty piece of work. He could ruin her life.’

There was a little silence between them while Christina digested all this.

She had not banked on any of this happening. Oh, she had known that he would contact her as soon as he had read Fiona’s note, but she had been adamant that she would reveal nothing of her friend’s whereabouts.

Not only had she failed miserably in that decision, but here she was, teetering on the brink of agreeing with him that yes, maybe chasing her up to that cottage in Scotland wasn’t such a bad idea after all.

The man’s powers of persuasion were limitless.

‘Well?’ he pressed. ‘What’s your decision?’

‘I can’t just rush off and leave my work commitments,’ Christina said weakly, grasping at straws.

‘You’ll be gone two days at the outset. It’s hardly going to kill any potential jobs you might have.’

He had a point, she thought with an inward sigh of resignation. February was not a good time for her, for some reason. There was enough work to keep her going, but nothing like the demand which she normally had for the remainder of the year.

‘Not that that would stop you,’ she muttered gloomily, but he was relaxed now, smiling even, though with no real humour.

He had succeeded in getting her where he wanted her, and if she could have she would have wiped that look of satisfaction off his clever face, but she couldn’t.

‘Now, now,’ he soothed, ‘you make me sound like a tyrant.’

‘Do I?’ She raised her large brown eyes to his. ‘And that would be so far from the truth, wouldn’t it?’

He laughed, a low chuckle that somehow managed to addle her.

‘When you were much younger, I would have slapped you over your rear for that piece of cheek,’ he said, still with that crooked smile.

‘You always did have a way about you,’ she said with asperity, but her face had gone pink at the thought of Adam Palmer’s laying a hand on her, for whatever reason. ‘When do you propose to leave for Scotland?’ she asked, changing the subject, and he frowned, thinking about it.

‘As soon as possible. We can take the shuttle out of Heathrow Airport to Glasgow and then drive to the cottage. Arduous, but it’s the only way of getting there. I’ll give you a call as soon as I find out the details. We can meet at the airport.’

‘What about the weather?’ This consideration had only just occurred to her, but there was no way that she was going to find herself stranded in that cottage, which she knew from old was in the middle of nowhere, alone with him. That was the sort of stuff that bred nightmares.

‘What about it?’

‘Snow?’ she said patiently. ‘Impassable roads? Stuck miles away from civilisation?’

‘Dear me,’ he murmured with an aggravating note of mockery in his voice, ‘we can’t have that, can we?’

‘It’s not a joke!’ Christina snapped. ‘I have no intention of being stuck up there with only you for company.’ Her skin prickled at the mere thought of it.

No doubt there were hordes of women who would give their right arm to be in that situation. No doubt that was what was flashing through his mind even as he stood there, looking down at her with that annoying half-amused look on his face. But she was going to make it absolutely clear that she was not to be counted in that number.

She would listen to the weather reports and if there was any mention of snow—any mention of a passing flurry, for that matter—she would cancel that trip without giving it a second thought.

‘There was a time,’ he countered smoothly, ‘when you would have found that thought quite appealing.’

She met his eyes and looked away in sudden confusion.

‘And what is that supposed to mean?’ she heard herself asking.

‘Oh, you know what I mean, Tina. Remember that crush you had on me? You must have been all of what—fifteen? Sixteen? Sweet sixteen and never been kissed? I should have been flattered, but it was awkward, wasn’t it?’

Christina’s mouth went dry. She wanted the ground to open and swallow her up. Anything to spare her from this awful, nightmarish embarrassment washing over her.

‘You must have—’

‘Stop it!’ she interrupted in a high voice. She took a deep breath, counted to ten, and when she next spoke she was relieved to hear that some of her self-control had returned. ‘I was young. And stupid. Very stupid. Fortunately for me, I was cured of that little problem. So there’s no point in dragging it up, is there? The fact of the matter is I’m not going unless the weather reports are favourable, and that’s that.’

She couldn’t quite bring herself to meet his eyes, so she stared at her fingers instead. A thousand things were running through her head, but really they all amounted to the same awful, vicious circle of memories that she had tried to put to the back of her mind. She had been so naïve. She had literally thrown herself at him and he had laughed with that sickening mixture of surprise and genuine amusement. ‘You’re a child,’ he had told her but what he had meant was that she just didn’t possess the easy charm and bold beauty of the women to whom he was already drawn.

What a picture she must have made, with her mousy brown hair and brown eyes, next to those blondes and brunettes and redheads who had adorned his parents’ house with predictable regularity during the university holidays.

‘Of course,’ he said, ‘I have no intention of getting stuck in ten-foot snowdrifts either. Not that your honour isn’t safe with me, so you needn’t fear anything on that score. You’re Fiona’s friend and...’ He shrugged and the unspoken words hung in the air, their meaning crystal-clear. He found her physically unappealing, was what he was saying, so she could relax, but instead of reassuring her it brought tears of anger and humiliation to her eyes. It reminded her of how she had felt when her teenage crush had been ever so smilingly handed back to her.

‘I’ll call you.’

‘Fine,’ she said stiffly, looking at her watch. It was nearly five in the morning. He had been there much longer than she had thought. Hours. ‘Now do you mind? I want to catch up on some sleep. As you do too, no doubt.’ She hadn’t meant to, but her voice implied that he needed the rest since he had spent the night doing God only knew what, but it didn’t take a genius to imagine.

‘Oh, I think I’ll go to the office,’ he said casually, reaching down to turn the doorknob.

She removed her hand from it quickly, to avoid any contact between them, then immediately hoped that he had not noticed her reaction.