The Trusting Game

‘It’s all right.’ She heard him laughing. ‘It’s only Clarence…he’s come to welcome us home…’

‘Clarence…’ Christa stared wildly at him. ‘Clarence,’ she repeated uncertainly. She couldn’t see anyone through the windows of the vehicle.

‘He’s a billy goat,’ Daniel told her, ‘who hasn’t yet learned that a head-butt is not always exactly an approved mode of welcome.’ He was laughing at her, Christa recognised indignantly as she saw the small creases fanning out around his eyes and the humour in the upward curl of his mouth. ‘I’m sorry if he frightened you. I should have warned you…’

‘I wasn’t frightened,’ Christa denied untruthfully.

She started to pull away from him and then tensed in shock as one of his hands covered hers, holding it trapped against his chest while his thumb stroked caressingly over the soft skin of her inner wrist.

She could feel herself starting to tremble slightly; the skin of his hands was slightly rough, as though he spent a good deal of time outside, and the small abrasion of it rubbing against her much softer flesh was causing odd shivers of sensation to quiver through her body.

‘Liar,’ she heard Daniel accusing her softly.

Shaking, she tried to focus on what he was saying to her instead of what was happening inside her.

‘Your pulse is fast,’ he told her in explanation. ‘And a fast pulse means…’

‘All right, so it was a shock,’ Christa admitted, anxious to bring an end to what was becoming an increasingly hazardous situation. Fear was one cause of a racing pulse, it was true, but there were others. She bit her lip, chagrined by the knowledge that what her body had idiotically interpreted as a small caress had, in fact, been nothing more than a clinical examination of her pulse-rate.

‘Whoops, hang on…’ The sensation of Daniel’s arms suddenly coming round her and holding her wrapped tightly against his chest choked the breath out of her lungs, leaving her totally unable to make any kind of verbal protest as Clarence sent the Land Rover rocking a second time.

‘I think he’s getting impatient,’ she heard Daniel saying somewhere above her head.

She was pressed so firmly against him that to make any comment would have meant risking her lips virtually touching the warm, bare skin of his throat as she tried to speak. In fact, if she opened her mouth at all, it would be almost as though she were doing so in order to kiss him.

‘Hey…you’re trembling…it’s all right, Clarence isn’t so fearsome. In fact he’s quite a softie once you get to know him…come on.’

Thank goodness he had started to release her and turn away from her to open his door before he could realise that the reason for that small, intense shudder had not been anything to do with Clarence at all, wary though she was of the animal.

What was the matter with her? There was obviously a very large communications gap between her body and her brain; her body was still locked into that first initial meeting between them and the instant attraction she had felt towards him.

It was time that her brain told it very clearly and firmly just what the real situation now was.

‘Come and meet Clarence,’ Daniel invited, holding open the passenger door for her.

Reluctantly Christa climbed out of the vehicle. It wasn’t just the goat that was making her feel on edge, with his impressive set of formidably sharp-looking horns, but the man standing beside him as well.

‘I bought him as a kid. Goat’s milk is extremely good for you and the plan was that his harem would contribute towards making us self-sufficient.

‘Unfortunately things didn’t turn out quite as I’d hoped. It’s cheaper and easier to buy our milk from the supermarket. It wasn’t so much Clarence’s and his wives’ predilection for breaking out of their pen that caused the trouble as their taste for clothes…

‘They ate them,’ he explained with a grin when Christa turned her head briefly away from the wary study of the billy goat to him. ‘I managed to find homes for his wives but Clarence unfortunately has proved hard to rehouse. Still, he makes a very good guard animal and, unlike a dog, he has to be neither licensed nor muzzled.’

Christa didn’t quite like the way the goat was watching her, or her clothes, but she was damned if she was going to admit as much to his owner.

When Daniel turned to walk away from her, calling over his shoulder to her, ‘Hang on a sec, I’ll just get your case,’ Christa had to suppress her desire to betray her weakness and protest.

Clarence returned her determined eye-contact with an unblinking stare that she could have sworn had a faintly taunting element to it. And when the animal suddenly started to move towards her, she had to fight to stop herself from scuttling behind Daniel’s protective bulk.

‘He’ll soon get to know you,’ Daniel told her as he reached out to scratch between the animal’s ears.

‘I can’t wait,’ Christa muttered sardonically, firmly keeping Daniel’s body between her and the goat as they walked towards the house. What on earth had she got herself into? she wondered bitterly as she waited for Daniel to unlock the door. A month cooped up virtually alone with a man who she already knew was a danger to her, and for what? Just so that she could prove a point?

She must be feeling more tired than she had realised, she decided as Daniel pushed open the door and motioned her inside. Her principles and her beliefs had always been very important to her. Her great-aunt had been the old-fashioned type, with very strict and strong values which she had passed on to Christa.

The door opened directly into a large, low-ceilinged kitchen. And as Christa glanced round the room, observing the bright red Aga and the solid cherrywood kitchen units, she reflected cynically that no expense had been spared in creating what, at first glance, might appear to be a plain and practically furnished room.

Christa, who was interested in all aspects of design and fashion, knew better.

But then, no doubt the fees he earned from his spurious ‘professional’ activities enabled him to enjoy such extravagance.

He had good taste, she had to admit that, Christa acknowledged grimly. The kitchen was actually what she would have chosen for herself had she been able to afford such a luxury. The cupboards might look plain and workmanlike but there was no mistaking the cherrywood’s expensive subtle gleam, nor the high quality of the furniture’s design.

It would be interesting to see how the rest of the house was furnished.

‘Hungry?’ she heard Daniel asking her.

‘Why?’ she asked him. ‘Do meals come extra?’

She made no attempt to hide her hostility, but his reaction to it brought a hot, shamed flush to her face as he told her quietly, ‘No, of course they don’t. As I’ve already said, there’ll be no charge for your stay here. This venture isn’t something I’ve taken on purely to make money, although I’d be lying if I said that my motives were completely altruistic. I do have to earn my living, but profit has never been my sole motivation—for anything.

‘You’re determined to think the worst of me, aren’t you?’ he accused her almost gently. ‘I wonder why.’

Angrily Christa turned her head away from him.

‘Stop trying to psychoanalyse me,’ she told him irritably. ‘And yes, I am hungry…’

‘Good, so am I, although I’m afraid it will have to be something simple: soup and a salad. I’ll take you up to your room first, though. It’s this way.’

‘This way’ turned out to be through a door which led into a spacious rectangular hallway.

‘The house was originally built by the youngest son of a Victorian industrialist who wanted to return to his family’s roots, hence its size. The fact that very little land goes with it makes it something of a white elephant to the local farming community, so I was able to buy it reasonably cheaply.’

Why was he being so informative? Christa wondered. As a means of trying to disarm her? Well, it wouldn’t work.

His unsubtle ploys might not impress her, but the house certainly did, she admitted, as she followed him upstairs. The Victorian younger son had obviously had money and a good architect. The house was solidly built, its style simple and plain.

Christa paused on the stairs to admire the proportions of the dado rail and skirting-board, her eye caught by a newer-looking piece of wood where the rail had obviously been repaired. Unable to resist, she reached out and stroked her fingertips along the wood; the join was so smooth that you couldn’t even feel it, and only the slight difference in colour gave the repair away.

‘I see you’ve spotted my repair work. Not many people do.’

Christa turned her head to look in astonishment at Daniel. ‘You did this?’ she demanded, unable to conceal her surprise.

‘Yes, joinery is my hobby…I made the units in the kitchen. My grandfather was a joiner, a true craftsman, justifiably proud of his skill and his work.

‘Your room’s this way.’

Silently Christa followed him. That easy, friendly manner of his—was it natural or was it merely assumed? Deceit had to be an integral part of his nature, surely, simply by virtue of the way he earned his living? The art of concealment, or of projecting a false image, so polished and perfected that it was easy for him to make others believe the illusions he created.