The Trusting Game

Now she had got under his skin, she realised triumphantly as she saw the way his mouth and eyes hardened.

‘Not perhaps in balance-sheet terms—either my own or anyone else’s—but I certainly believe in the benefits of what we are doing, and I can tell you this: if you were to undergo one of our courses yourself, I promise you it would completely change the way you view your life.’

His voice had dropped slightly as he spoke and for some reason Christa felt her face start to burn again, her thoughts winging back to that small, betraying moment that afternoon when he had looked at her, and yet she had been drawn towards him, the deepest feminine core of her instinctively responding to him and to the message he had seemed to be giving to her.

When her heartbeat accelerated now, though, it was with anger and not attraction, her eyes darkening as she challenged him. ‘Impossible.’

‘On the contrary, I can categorically promise you and everyone else here that after, say, a month at the centre, your views on life, the focus of your life will have changed—and I’ll go even further. I’ll add that you yourself will be happy to admit to those changes, to acknowledge them and want to share them with others…’

‘Never!’ Christa denied.

‘Let me prove it to you.’

Christa opened her mouth to vehemently refuse his challenge and then realised abruptly that she had backed herself into a very imprisoning corner.

‘I think that’s a very generous offer, and an excellent idea,’ the chairman was saying warmly to the audience, taking advantage of Christa’s momentary silence. ‘We shall all be most interested to see the results of Christa’s visit to your centre…’

‘No, I can’t,’ Christa started to protest breathlessly. ‘My business doesn’t generate the kind of profits for—’

‘There won’t be any charge.’

Christa gulped in air. What had she done? If she refused now, she would not only make herself look a complete idiot, she would also be allowing him to gain the advantage. To win. She could see already how impressed the others were by his confidence, his belief in himself.

‘You can’t back out now, Christa,’ the chairman was warning her jovially, but Christa could see his resentment of her in his eyes. ‘Otherwise we’ll begin to think that you’re the one who doesn’t have the courage of her convictions.’

‘I had no intention of backing out,’ Christa denied stiffly. ‘I shall need a week to organise my business affairs,’ she told her opponent without looking directly at him.

‘Yes, of course…’

How smooth he was…how assured…how confident of victory; but the war wasn’t over yet, and it would take more than charm and confidence to change her mind. Much, much more…In fact, Christa decided, recovering slightly from the shock of the way he had turned the tables on her, he was the one who would ultimately lose out, not her, because there was nothing, nothing that he could say or do that would convince her.

‘Our speaker outmanoeuvred you very neatly tonight, didn’t he?’

Christa frowned, increasing her speed as the man addressing her fell into step beside her. She had never particularly liked Paul Thompson. He had an unctuous, almost oily manner which did nothing to hide the blatant sexual curiosity Christa had seen in his eyes whenever he looked at a woman. She had had to rebuff the heavyhanded attempts at flirting with her on more than one occasion, and, although she had no doubt that he would be quite happy to go to bed with her, she knew that he also resented her, and she suspected that he was one of those men who secretly did not really like women at all.

She felt very sorry for his wife, and avoided him as much as she could.

‘You’ll have to be careful,’ he warned her, mock solicitously. ‘Our speaker is going to pull out all the stops now to make sure he gets you to back down. He can’t afford to do anything else. Not having gone so public, so to speak.’

‘I’m not the kind of person who is easily persuaded to change her mind once she’s made it up,’ Christa told him shortly. ‘You should know that, Paul.’

‘You’re a woman, though,’ he retorted, plainly nettled by her comment, ‘and by the looks of him he’s the kind of man who…’

‘Who what?’ Christa demanded acidly.

‘The kind of man who thinks he can persuade and seduce a woman into changing her mind…her principles.’

‘Well, if that’s the case, he’ll be wasting his time with me—I’m not so easily persuadable and certainly not seducible!’ Perhaps, a small inner voice warned her, but if she had not realised in time just who he was…But she had realised, she reassured herself firmly, and having done so—well, if Daniel Geshard was thinking for one moment along the lines that Paul was so mockingly suggesting, he was going to be in for one hell of a big surprise, she told herself with grim pleasure. Let him just dare to try it—let him just dare.

CHAPTER TWO

CHRISTA frowned as she heard her front doorbell ring. From her attic workroom it was three flights down to the front door of the large Victorian semi which had been her home ever since she had come to live here with her aunt, after her parents’ death.

Whoever was ringing her doorbell had no right to be doing so anyway; everyone knew that her working hours were sacrosanct and that she was not to be interrupted.

Her aunt had preferred to work in the small office attached to the warehouse where they stored their cloth, but Christa, with her training as a designer, loved the large north-lit attic-room, where she could work in peace without any interruptions.

Where she could normally work in peace without any interruptions, she corrected herself, as the doorbell continued to ring.

Well, she wasn’t going to answer it, so whoever was there would just have to go away. Before she left for Wales tonight she wanted to finish the project she was working on. People outside the business always expressed astonishment when they learned how far ahead she worked. The fabric samples she was studying now would not be on the market until the summer season after next, and the design council, along with the fashion industry, were even further ahead, working on the colours and styles that people would be wearing two winters from now.

Designers were obviously much taken with the theme of the new century and of the change in the stellar constellations which would bring in the new age of Aquarius. The samples she was studying now featured all manner of such symbols: stars, suns, moons, along with various interpretations of the sign of Aquarius and its link to water.

The colours, too, reflected that same watery element, blues and greens, highlighted with a range of sand colours from palest beige right through to glittering gold.

Thoughtfully she fingered a piece of deep blue damask, gazing at the neat piles of samples on the table in front of her until she found what she was looking for. The old-gold brocade looked good with the damaskgood but slightly dull, she acknowledged, thinking ahead to how the various combinations of the fabrics she would choose would feature in advertising displays. The aqua fabric with the gold suns on it, while not to everyone’s taste, provided a dramatic contrast to the two plainer fabrics.

The buyer from the designei shops had been flatteringly complimentary about her present range of fabrics, even if the order he had given her had been smaller than she could have hoped.

‘Nice, but very expensive,’ had been his comments about one of the damasks she had shown him in rich jewel colours.

‘Because of the quality of the fabric,’ Christa had told him. ‘In ten years’ time this fabric will just be starting to develop the elegant shabby patina you see in fabrics in old houses, where something cheaper will merely be wearing away.’

‘Mmm…In my business we don’t always encourage our clients to think long-term,’ he had responded drily.

The doorbell had stopped ringing. Christa smiled in satisfaction, and then frowned as it suddenly started to ring again.

Whoever it was was plainly not going to go away.

Thoroughly angry, she put down the samples she had been studying and headed for the stairs.

By the time she reached the front door Christa was not only out of temper, she was out of breath as well. Flipping her hair back off her face, she pushed it out of the way with one hand as she opened the door.

‘Look,’ she began irritably, ‘I’m working and…’

Her voice died away as she gazed in shock at her unexpected visitor.

Daniel Geshard. What was he doing here? Had he come perhaps to tell her that he had changed his mind, that he was withdrawing his challenge to her?

The amusement in his eyes as he studied her didn’t seem to suggest that he was a man who had come cap in hand seeking favours, and Christa flushed as she recognised that part of his amusement seemed to be caused by the fact that she was barefoot.

It was a habit of hers to spread her samples on the floor and kick off her shoes when she knelt down to study them. She had never in the past thought of her feet as a particularly provocative part of her body, but now, for some reason, she could feel her face starting to flush as she fought down the urge to curl her toes into the carpet in an effort to conceal them from him.

He looked so much taller than she had remembered, so much more…more male. He was wearing jeans, a warm-looking blue shirt tucked into the waistband, and Christa felt her hot colour deepen slightly as she remembered how she had fantasised about seeing him wearing just such clothing.

Her imagination had not done him justice, she acknowledged unwillingly. No man had any right to have such long legs, such powerful thighs.

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.’

Mentally, Christa contrasted what he was saying with the lives of some of the people in the villages she had visited in India and Pakistan. There they did not have the luxury of allowing their livestock to become tame pets.

As though he had read her mind, he said quietly, ‘Yes, I know what you’re thinking and you’re probably right, but would you have wanted to be the one to sign the death warrant?’

His perception was beginning to disconcert her.

‘It would depend whose name was on it,’ she told him pithily.

The sound of his laughter surprised and irked her. He was supposed to get offended, angry, to be betrayed by his pride and ego into revealing himself as he really was-not to be tolerantly amused.

Daniel Geshard was dangerous, Christa acknowledged uneasily. His claim that a month on one of his courses would change her entire outlook on life was one she still scathingly discounted. Her own claim to herself that, knowing who he was, or more importantly what he was, there was not the slightest risk of that initial tug of empathy and attraction she had felt towards him being rekindled—that claim was the truth, wasn’t it?

‘What’s wrong?’

Christa tensed against his choice of words—not the impersonal, ‘Is something wrong?’ but the much, much more personal, ‘What’s wrong?’ as though he already knew her so well that it was taken for granted that he knew that something was.

‘What’s wrong?’ She gave him a cold stare. ‘Nothing’s wrong,’ she told him bitingly, ‘apart from the fact that you’ve interrupted me in the middle of some important work, practically forced your way into my home, tried to take total control of my life…’

‘The decision to accept my offer was yours,’ he pointed out easily. ‘You could always have refused.’

Liar, Christa wanted to say. He knew damn well she could not have refused it without totally losing face. As she turned her back to walk away from him she heard him saying to her, ‘You’ll need to pack at least three changes of outdoor clothes, plus a warm weatherproof coat. When we get snow…’

‘Snow?’ Christa stopped and whirled round. ‘It’s October,’ she objected derisively. ‘We don’t get snow in this country in October…’

‘Maybe not, but Wales is a different country and we do get snow, and we’re up in the mountains, high enough to have bad snow as early as September in some years.

‘Did you manage to get walking boots, by the way?’ Daniel called after her.

‘Walking boots?’

‘It was on the list of required clothing,’ he told her.

And the list had no doubt been with the brochure which she had thrown away, Christa acknowledged hollowly. What else had she omitted to discover through that foolish piece of stiff-necked pride?

‘No, I did not manage to get walking boots,’ she enunciated grimly. ‘But then I shan’t need them as I shall not be doing any walking.’

If she had expected him to respond to her challenge by arguing with her she was disappointed…As though she simply hadn’t spoken, he continued easily, ‘Well, don’t worry about it too much. There’s an excellent sports and climbing equipment shop in our local market town. You’ll like visiting it—everyone does. It’s still very much a traditional market town, with a weekly cattle auction. You’ll enjoy it…’

Christa gave him a withering look.

‘I hardly think so,’ she told him dismissively. ‘I’m a city person, I’m afraid…’ It wasn’t really true, but she was beginning to feel not just resentful but, more worryingly, slightly afraid of the way he seemed to be continuously reading her mind, second-guessing her. ‘Watching some bucolic farmers haggling over the sale of a handful of ragged sheep is hardly my idea of pleasure…

‘No?’ The dark eyebrows rose. ‘That isn’t what I’ve heard. Apparently they’ve learned to be extremely wary of the English cloth-lady in the factories of India and Pakistan.’

Christa tensed warily. Where had he learned that?

‘Buying cloth is my job…watching other people buying sheep isn’t. Besides, I thought the ethos behind these courses was that one put aside all thoughts of work and learned, instead, to play,’ she commented mockingly.

‘Our ethos, as you call it, is to teach people, to help people to live well-balanced and fulfilling lives; to learn to acknowledge and accept that the human psyche has other needs besides the more material ones.’

‘Oh, the trauma of the poor stressed-out executive,’ Christa taunted disparagingly. ‘How great his need, how noble the role of the one who eases it for him. There’s a real world peopled by human beings who are starving…dying…’

‘Yes, I do know,’ he told her quietly.

There was a certain note in the quiet male voice which for some reason made Christa flush slightly and look away from him, as though she was the one in error…at fault.

‘I cannot alleviate the ills of the starving—would that I could—but I can help people to come to terms with themselves, to learn to live in harmony with others. If all the world lived in such harmony,’ he told her gently, ‘there would be no wars, or famine.

‘I’ll wait down here for you, shall I?’ he continued.

Christa looked at him blankly. His words had caused her to feel such emotion…He baffled and bewildered her, catching her so repeatedly off guard that she felt like a wooden doll on a string which he manipulated.

Careful, she warned herself as she hurried upstairs, you’re letting him get to you and you mustn’t. Remember what he is, not what he seems to be. He’s a psychologist; he knows how people behave, how they react, and he knows how to project a specific image, how to gain someone’s sympathy and admiration.