The Trusting Game

But he would soon learn that she wasn’t so easy to deceive, and before her month in Wales was over he would be bitterly regretting his foolish public claim to be able to change her whole outlook on life. God might have wrought such a transformation in St Paul on the road to Damascus, but Daniel Geshard was a mere human being.

A mere human being…She paused, just with one foot on the second flight of stairs, her heart suddenly missing a small beat. There was nothing ‘mere’ about the man, and she would do well to hang on grimly to that fact.

CHAPTER THREE

‘IS THIS it?’ Christa asked in dismay at the ramshackle collection of stone-built, low-roofed buildings beyond the closed farm gate.

‘This’ looked more like a small farmhouse surrounded by farm buildings than a study centre. For starters, from the size of the main building she doubted that it could house more than four or five people.

‘Not exactly,’ he returned calmly, bringing the Land Rover to a halt in front of the gate.

Christa had been startled at first when she had seen the Land Rover. Somehow she had expected him to drive something more…more expensive…more imagereinforcing…A four-wheel-drive vehicle, certainly, but a top-of-the-range model, not this battered vehicle which looked as though it was held together with bits of string.

As he had watched her studying it, Daniel had told her with visible pride that he had rescued and rebuilt the vehicle himself.

‘Yes, it looks like it,’ Christa had agreed grimly, and then had felt oddly mean as she saw the pleasure fade from his eyes. Men did have, somewhere within their make-up, that little-boy eagerness and enthusiasm for certain cherished things.

‘What do you mean, not exactly?’ she asked him suspiciously as he opened the Land Rover door

‘This isn’t the centre,’ he admitted. ‘This is my home…The centre closed down at the end of last month…to give the staff a chance to have a break and to enable the builders to finish work on a new extension.’

‘What…you mean you’ve brought me here under totally false pretences?’ Christa flashed. ‘Well, in that case you can just turn this…this collection of rusty metal and string around and take me back again.’

‘Impossible, I’m afraid,’ Daniel told her calmly. ‘For one thing, I’m almost out of petrol, and Dai won’t be here with a fresh supply for me until some time tomorrow, and for another…it’s too late, Christa,’ he told her quietly, looking at her, watching her. She recognised a small heart-stopping surge of confused emotion—anger because he had deceived her and relief because he was refusing to let her go?

‘You agreed to come here,’ he reminded her, repeating his earlier words to her.

‘I agreed to attend a course held at your centre, not to…what do you mean, all the staff are having a break?’ she questioned him uncertainly.

‘Just that,’ he told her. ‘But you needn’t be concerned; I’m quite happy to conduct your course personally,’ he assured her. ‘In fact,’ he told her, his voice taking on a disturbing husky timbre, ‘I’m positively looking forward to it…’

‘Well, I’m not,’ Christa snapped. ‘And in fact-What’s that?’ she demanded, her eyes rounding with shock as the Land Rover suddenly rocked startlingly from side to side. In her efforts to counteract the rocking effect she reached out instinctively to brace herself against it, one hand pressed against the doorframe, the other…

The other, she recognised, was pressed flat against something much more solid and warm than a doorframe. And that something was Daniel’s chest, his heartbeat a steady regular rhythm beneath her hand.

‘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.

Look at the way he had deceived her that first afternoon, the way she had been so certain that the warmth, the admiration in the look he was giving her had been real, until his companion had betrayed him.

What would have happened if he hadn’t done so, if she had never discovered his real identity, if for instance that afternoon he had been alone, if he had chosen to follow up on the promise of that exchanged look…?

How much damage could he have actually done to her emotions before she had realised the truth?

Her own vulnerability had come as a shock to her. She had thought herself so fireproof to men of his particular type.

There was only one reason that he had brought her here, virtually kidnapping her in order to do so. No man liked being challenged by a woman, especially when that woman won the challenge, and both professionally and financially he could not afford to be defeated.

It was going to be war between them, and he had some pretty devastating weapons in his arsenal, she acknowledged as he stopped outside one of the several doors off the broad corridor.

‘I’ve put you in here,’ he told her. ‘You’ve got your own private bathroom.’ He pushed open the bedroom door, allowing her to precede him inside it. The room was furnished plainly and simply, with an antique brass bed and a few pieces of highly polished, age-scarred oak furniture, including a desk.

‘I’ll leave you to settle in and then over supper we can discuss the structure of your course. One of the things we teach here is the importance of harmonious teamwork and its benefits. We find that many executives lose sight of the importance of working alongside others; our culture breeds a need to dominate, a desire for supposed superiority. We aim to redress the effects of that; to teach the benefits of co-existence, of valuing and supporting one another, of integrating with one’s colleagues and team-mates.’

‘I don’t have any team-mates,’ Christa told him drily. She was on safer ground here, and with every word he spoke she could feel her resistance to what he was saying growing. ‘You should try going out into the real world,’ she added cynically. ‘I promise you, it doesn’t work. One of the first things that would happen if I and my fellow importers started empathising supportively with one another is that our buyers would accuse us of setting up a cartel and of price-fixing.’

‘You don’t fool me, Christa,’ Daniel told her softly, by way of response. ‘You may think you sound hard and cynical, but that’s just a disguise, a form of protection.’

He had gone, closing the door quietly behind him before Christa could summon up a suitable retort.

Her need protection? Ridiculous. Protection from what—from who?

Christa hesitated in the hallway, the temptingly rich smell of soup coaxing her to go into the kitchen, the knowledge that Daniel was waiting inside it for her stopping her. But when the door opened and he appeared in front of her the decision was taken out of her hands.

‘Soup’s ready,’ he told her cheerfully, ‘although I can’t claim much credit. All I had to do was to reheat it in the microwave.’

Who had cooked it? Christa wondered curiously ten minutes later, seated at the kitchen table dipping her spoon into the thick rich broth. A comfortably middleaged local farmer’s wife, or someone else—younger-prettier? Daniel was a very attractive man, both sexually and in other ways, or at least he would have been, she amended hastily, if she didn’t have the intelligence to see through that very deceptive maleness and recognise what really lay behind it.

However, not all women were fortunate enough to have the benefit of her past experience and knowledge to protect them.

It would be all too easy, she suspected, fatally easy in fact, for a more vulnerable woman to be taken in by his apparent warmth and caring, his sense of humour and his pseudo-readiness to be open about himself, especially once they had looked into his eyes and seen the look she had thought she had seen when they first met!

Fiercely, she clamped down on the memory of how she had felt then, her body tensing.

‘What is it? What’s wrong?’ Daniel asked her solicitously. ‘Soup too hot?’

Thank God he couldn’t really read her mind, Christa reflected wryly as she avoided his eyes, shaking her head as she responded guardedly, ‘No, it’s fine. Very good, in fact. Who made it?’

‘I’m not really sure. Some of the local farmers’ wives are involved in their own small business, cooking and supplying home-made food,’ he explained. ‘They cater for functions, speciality events, weddings and the like, and run a stall on market day, and they also provide me with a rota of cooks and staff for the centre when it’s in operation.

‘This soup was part of a batch of food that was in the centre’s freezer. I brought it up here to save it being wasted. Normally I cook for myself or eat at the centre.

‘I’ve drawn up a basic programme outline for your course,’ he continued. ‘We normally follow a more specialised routine, but in your case…’

‘In my case, what?’ Christa pounced suspiciously as he opened the folder he was holding. ‘What makes my case different? Or can I guess?’ she challenged him cynically. ‘You’ve already altered the odds in your own favour by doubling the length of the course, but I can tell you now, it doesn’t matter what you say or do, I shan’t change my mind,’ she told him triumphantly.

Just for a second, the grey eyes hardened slightly as he focused on her. ‘The extended length of your course has nothing whatsoever to do with my trying to shorten the odds in my favour, as you put it,’ he told her curtly. ‘It’s simply that without any shared group interaction it will take longer to…’

‘To brainwash me,’ Christa supplied acidly. ‘Why don’t you just lock me in my room and starve me into submission?’

He was angry now, Christa recognised, a small thrill of apprehension running down her spine as she saw the way his eyes had darkened, his mouth hardening as he looked at her.

‘Don’t tempt me,’ he told her softly. But then his expression lightened, a brief smile touching his mouth as he said, ‘You, submissive…? Somehow I doubt it.’

There was something in the way he was looking at her…something in his smile…Thoroughly flustered, Christa dropped her head.

Damn the man! How had he managed to turn her angry challenge around so that suddenly it was filled with such subtle sexual innuendo that she could actually feel her body starting to grow hot?

‘So what exactly are you planning to do with me?’ she demanded quickly—too quickly, she realised, biting her lip in chagrin as she waited for him to use the verbal slip she had just made; but to her relief, and to her surprise as well, he didn’t do so, merely looking down at his file and telling her,

‘The course comprises a mixture of physical and mental exercises designed to promote trust in others and to foster an ability to share control through group activities and group discussions.

‘The group activities make use of our surroundings and include mountain-walking, where the walkers are paired together, and, similarly, canoeing…’

‘Canoeing…’ Christa stared at him. ‘No way, you can forget that,’ she told him, visions of the flimsy, frail craft he was talking about filling her horrified imagination. She could swim—just—preferably in a heated pool with no current and no waves, but if he expected her voluntarily to risk her life…

‘There’s nothing to be afraid of…’ she heard him telling her, as though he had read her mind. ‘The canoes are unsinkable; the worst that can happen is that they might roll over if badly handled, but you’ll be wearing a wetsuit and…’

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