Unwilling Surrender

She tightened her lips and forced herself to push that unpleasant scene back into the shadows of her mind, where it belonged, as a silent warning to her.

You’re destined to be a career woman, she told herself. Not that she saw anything wrong with that at all.

She loved what she did, and she considered herself lucky. What had been a teenage hobby had blossomed into a fulfilling profession when, at the age of seventeen, she had entered a photography competition and won a fully paid photography course and some impressive equipment, most of which she still relied on. She enjoyed her work and, if Mr Right didn’t happen to bounce along on his white stallion, then it was hardly the end of the world.

Her mother would be disappointed, of course. She baked bread, made jam and had a desperately old-fashioned outlook on the role of women in society. But Christina could cope with that.

No, the closest she imagined she would get to ardour was watching Fiona’s antics from the sidelines.

She thought of Adam and frowned. Why had his image popped into her head just like that, without warning?

Because, she told herself, it was time to go. She gathered her belongings together, tried one last time to tune in to some weather news and failed, and edgily sat down to await the arrival of the taxi, which arrived promptly.

And Adam, she was heartened to see, was also waiting for her at the check-in counter. He had his back to her, chatting to the woman behind the desk, and she stopped for a few seconds to look at him.

He really was aggressively male, she thought with detachment. All broad-shouldered and slim-hipped, which made him look as though he spent hours working out. If she remembered correctly, though, he exercised very little.

Fate had seen fit to endow him with a body that somehow managed to stay perfectly tuned even if he did nothing about it.

She took a deep breath and walked up to the counter, noticing that the woman to whom he had been chatting, an attractive brunette, impeccably made up and with a hairstyle that looked as though each strand of hair had been individually glued into place, was not quite as warm when her attention was directed towards her as she was when it had been directed towards Adam.

‘I hope you haven’t been waiting too long,’ Christina said, turning to Adam with a polite smile.

‘Ten minutes,’ he replied, ‘but don’t worry about it. I haven’t been bored.’

Christina glanced at the brunette, now busily attending to some paperwork, and thought, I’ll bet you haven’t been bored. ‘I wasn’t worried about it,’ she said in a saccharin-sweet voice, ‘and I’m sure you haven’t been bored.’

There was a wicked little smile in his eyes at her tone, even though his face remained serious, and she ignored it.

‘Have you checked us in?’

He nodded and took her by the elbow, an instinctive gesture that made her body tense until she told herself that she was being silly. Again.

The brunette had looked up and was now pouting regretfully at him. She hoped he had a wonderful flight and an enjoyable stay in Scotland. When next he was around, he must promise to come to her counter; she would take some time off and treat him to a cup of coffee.

What a pretty sight, Christina thought, looking at the other woman. Was she as amenable towards all her passengers?

Then she looked at Adam, who was treating the brunette to some of that limitless charm of his, and she tapped her foot impatiently.

‘How subtle you are,’ he drawled as they moved away into the crowds. ‘I’m surprised you didn’t add looking at your watch and yawning to your little foot-tapping routine.’

He guided her effortlessly through the terminal, hardly looking around him at all. It was easy to see that he was a seasoned traveller, but that didn’t come as a surprise to her. He owned and virtually single-handedly ran a massive publishing network, and she knew that he travelled world-wide on business throughout the year.

They glanced up at the departures board and Christina saw with relief that they were due to board the shuttle. At least that would cut down on time spent at the airport terminal.

‘You looked,’ she said, following on from his sarcastic observation, ‘as though you were about to spend the rest of the day chatting to the brunette.’ If not the night, she added uncharitably to herself.

Adam threw her a sidelong glance, which she felt rather than saw, since she steadfastly kept her eyes averted.

‘I was merely killing time, waiting for you, and being polite in the process.’

‘Polite? Oh, so that’s your definition of being polite. Chatting up women.’

‘Don’t you get high-handed with me,’ he said in a hard voice. ‘You may drink your cocoa and go to bed by nine, but please don’t assume that the rest of the world follows suit and that if they don’t they’re somehow debauched.’

Christina reddened. How dared he tell her off as though she were a six-year-old child! She refrained from saying anything, though. She had to survive the next few hours in his company, undiluted, and there was no point in starting off with an argument.

‘How are we going to get from the airport in Glasgow to the cottage?’ she asked stiffly. He had released her arm and was walking in long strides so that she had to half run to keep pace with him.

‘I’ve arranged a car,’ he said tersely. ‘My subsidiary in Glasgow has a stock of company cars. Someone will drop it off and we can drive straight from the airport.’

‘Convenient,’ she murmured. ‘Are you going to be up to the drive? Did you actually go to the office after you left me?’

She was panting a little, which didn’t sound terribly dignified, especially as he was barely exerting himself, and was relieved when they finally reached their gate and slowed down to allow for control checks before they boarded the plane.

There were quite a few people on the flight. Ninety-nine per cent of them were businessmen, clutching their Financial Times and looking harassed.

‘Yes,’ Adam said, ‘in answer to both your questions.’

They passed through and made their way to the plane.

‘So you haven’t slept since...’

‘A while back,’ he finished drily. ‘But you needn’t fear that I’m going to fall asleep at the wheel. I’m quite accustomed to getting very little sleep and functioning adequately on it.’

She could believe that. He didn’t look in the least harassed. If anything, the thick cream jumper, the dark trousers and the jacket slung casually over his arm made him look in the peak of health and fighting fit. He looked, in fact, terrifically well rested. Christina knew that if she had gone for a day and a half without sleep she would resemble one of the living dead.

The flight was short. She sat next to the window, staring outside, and next to her Adam dozed. No doubt he would wake up as refreshed as if he had had eight hours’ sleep.

She wasn’t looking forward to the drive to the cottage. She remembered it from years back as being long and uncomfortable, a network of tiny roads that threatened to taper out into dead ends at any minute. She doubted they would have improved vastly in the intervening years. It was an isolated spot, and isolated spots were not normally earmarked for super road systems.

In fact the bumpy journey at the age of thirteen had been quite a highlight. Now, with just Adam and her own awkward feelings for company, she suspected that that would not be the case.

The company representative was waiting for them as soon as they emerged from the terminal. Christina eyed him drily as he bowed and scraped in front of Adam, showing them to a Range Rover which had been located specifically just in case the weather turned.

‘It won’t,’ Christina assured him. ‘Adam has given instructions that it’s to stay dry.’

The young boy blushed, unsure as to what response this remark called for, and Adam gave her an amused little grin.

‘Now you’ve sent the poor chap away confused as hell,’ he murmured to her as they settled into the car and glided smoothly out of the compound.

‘Have I?’ she responded in an innocent voice, staring through the window at the dreary, wind-blasted scenery flashing past and wishing she was back in London photographing Mrs Molton’s two temperamental corgis. ‘And I thought you really had had a word with higher powers and given instructions for the weather pattern over the next three days. You disappoint me, Adam.’

‘Do I? You don’t disappoint me. You still have the ability to make me laugh even when I’m cold and tired and on a trip which I’d rather not be doing.’

Christina looked at him, surprised. Did he really find her humorous? He had never given any indication of that before.

She didn’t know whether to be flattered or vaguely insulted. Do I really want to be seen as some kind of stand-up comic, she wondered, or would I rather be viewed as someone attractive and sexy?