The Trusting Game

She tensed as, without asking her, he edged through the door and into the hallway, affording her a sideways view of his very male profile and his tautly firm…Christa swallowed quickly. Trust him to catch her at such a disadvantage, wearing an old, comfortable top and a pair of leggings, her face free of make-up, her hair loose and all over the place. Where had he got her address from? she wondered as she studied him surreptitiously. He was a very good-looking man, a very virile-looking man, she had to give him that. She shivered slightly, hastily looking…‘What do you want?’ she demanded, trying to control the situation again as he paused to study a collage of fabrics she had made while she was at college and which her aunt had proudly insisted on hanging in the hallway.

She should have taken it down, Christa reflected as he withdrew his gaze from her collage and focused it on her.

‘What do I want?’ he repeated. ‘Well…’

Something in the way he was looking at her made Christa feel as though she had unexpectedly stepped on to a patch of sheet ice and found herself dangerously, physically, out of control because of it.

‘I meant, what are you doing here?’ she corrected herself swiftly.

‘Ah.’

A rueful smile curled his mouth. Determinedly, Christa hardened her heart. In any other man his apparent sense of humour would have delighted her, but with this man nothing could be taken at face value, as she already had good cause to know.

It was in his interests, after all, to win her over to his side—part of the softening-up process he undoubtedly intended to use on her to get her to change her mind about his precious centre.

‘I’ve come to collect you,’ Christa heard him saying in response to her question. ‘The centre isn’t that easy to find…”

‘To collect me? I’m not a parcel!’ she said, adding acidly, ‘And in view of the fact that I’ve so far managed to find my way to some extremely obscure parts of the world, I doubt very much that finding my way to Wales should prove too much of a problem.’

‘You do still intend to take the course, then?’

Christa shot him an angry look. Did he honestly think she was going to back out; that she could back out?

‘Of course I intend to take it,’ she confirmed fiercely.

‘Good.’

‘But the course doesn’t start until tomorrow morning at ten and I still have work to finish, so if you will excuse me—’ Christa began pointedly.

The dark eyebrows rose. ‘The last train from our nearest main-line station to our local one leaves at four in the afternoon. You’ll be cutting things pretty fine.’

Train? Christa stared at him.

‘I don’t intend…I’m not travelling by train; I’m taking my car.’

‘Ah…I’m afraid not. People attending our courses are not allowed to bring their own transport,’ he told her firmly.

‘What? I don’t believe it…you…’

‘It’s in our brochure,’ he told her unapologetically. ‘I did send you a copy.’

Yes, he had, and she had promptly thrown it away without bothering to read it, so angry had she been at the way she had allowed herself to be manipulated into such a time-wasting situation.

‘That’s why I thought you might appreciate a lift…’ Suspiciously Christa watched him through narrowed eyes. What was the real purpose of his visit? Not to do her any favours, she was sure of it. If she didn’t arrive on time for the commencement of her course, would he gloatingly proclaim that she had backed out of their arrangement and seize this as evidence that she was afraid of losing?

‘I can’t leave yet,’ she told him edgily. ‘I’m still working and I haven’t packed…’

‘That’s all right. I can wait…’

Wait…Where? Not here, Christa decided, but he seemed to have other ideas.

He was studying her collage again.

‘Nice…’ he told her. ‘You have an excellent eye for colour, but did you know that your choice of such rich colours, especially the red, denotes a very powerfully driven and ambitious personality?’

‘And you, of course, would know about such things,’ Christa agreed derisively. ‘It goes hand in hand…’

‘It is one of the subjects I have studied,’ he agreed, apparently not picking up on her contempt. At least not on the surface; whatever else might be fake about him, she was pretty sure that his intelligence was genuine enough. Which meant that he was more than likely suppressing what he really felt…because he wanted to lull her into a state of false security. Well, she would soon make him realise his mistake.

‘You’re wasting your time, you know,’ she told him curtly; ‘there’s absolutely no way that spending a month or even six months in the middle of the Welsh countryside is going to change anything about me or my outlook on life. And besides,’ she challenged him, her eyes narrowing watchfully, ‘surely I’m right in thinking that the normal duration of such courses would only be two weeks at the most?’

He looked, Christa recognised in swift triumph, almost uncomfortable—uncomfortable and rather caught off balance by her question, although he quickly hid it, turning his head slightly away from her so that she couldn’t see his full expression. Was that just discomposure she had seen in his eyes or had there been a hint of anger there as well? she wondered gleefully. If she had managed to get under his skin already, then so much the better. She was not afraid of his anger—she welcomed it. When people lost control of their emotions they betrayed themselves more easily.

‘Normally, yes,’ she heard him agreeing, ‘but in your case…’

‘You decided to balance the scales in your own favour and give yourself extra time,’ she suggested tauntingly.

To her surprise he didn’t try to deny her accusation or to defend himself, instead giving her a look that for some unaccountable reason made her pulse start to race frantically and her heart to execute a high-dive.

‘It’s no good,’ she repeated quickly, ‘I shan’t change my mind…

The long, level look he gave her rather surprised her. That he should acknowledge her antagonism was to be expected, but that he should allow her to see that it affected him wasn’t. Men like him were very much into control of their own emotions as well as those of the people around them. She would have expected him to want to give her the impression that he was above acknowledging her dislike, not to react to it with such a very male and challenging gleam in those cool, grey eyes…The kind of gleam that, if she was foolish enough to be vulnerable to his particular brand of male magnetism, could quite easily have made her heart beat just a little faster and her body…

‘You sound very sure about that.’

The gleam was gone now, replaced by a cool, distancing scrutiny. ‘I am,’ Christa confirmed firmly. ‘I know myself very well.’

‘Yourself, or the self you allow yourself to be? You do realise how stressful such rigid control of your personality is, don’t you?’

Christa glared angrily at him.

‘And you would know about such things, I take it. Tell me…what exactly did you do before you jumped on the modern bandwagon of the…the quasiprofessional soothsayer and reader of runes?’ Christa demanded insultingly.

She waited for the storm to break, for the grey eyes to darken and the sensually curved male mouth to utter retaliatory insults, but to her consternation he said simply instead, ‘I lectured in psychology at Oxford. I don’t want to rush you, but it would be a good idea if we could leave pretty soon. I don’t want to get back too much after dark. We haven’t had much wind recently, and if the power supply is low it might mean starting up our subsidiary generator…’

The speed with which he changed subjects, the apparent calmness in his manner after delivering a statement which had left her feeling as flattened as though she had been mown down by a boulder, left Christa floundering and impotently angry, not just with him but with herself as well.

A lecturer in psychology…

‘It was in the brochure, along with the qualifications of the other members of our staff.’

The quiet statement brought a surge of humiliated colour to Christa’s skin, despite her attempts to stop it.

‘A generator,’ she repeated, determinedly adopting his own tactics. ‘Does that mean you don’t have a proper reliable electricity supply?’

‘We aren’t on the national grid, no,’ he agreed. ‘Our electricity is generated by wind machines. We try at the centre to be as environmentally aware and as independent as possible. That includes generating our own electricity, growing our own fruit and vegetables. We even tried supplying our own meat, but that didn’t work out too well.

‘The sheep became too tame and no one wanted to send them to market,’ he explained. ‘Same with the hens; none of us could bring ourselves to wring their necks.’