Avoiding Mr Right

They did not get to the harbour area till ten. The night was clear but crisp this early in the season. A few of the fiercer stars shone through in spite of the competition from neon streetlighting and the smog bubble engendered by the city. The cafés were loud with talk and recorded music. The smell of barbecued meat, garlic, wine and humanity filled the dusty streets.

‘Mmm,’ said Christina with pleasure. ‘Costa’s first, I think. Lots of the captains hang out there. Aldo Marino may be looking for a crew, Jackie said.’

Christina was well-known in Costa’s busy little café. As they threaded their way between the wooden tables, several of the diners raised a hand in greeting. Costa himself interrupted his work to greet Christina with a smacking kiss.

‘Aldo? Don’t think so,’ Costa told them. He went back to shovelling Greek salad busily into individual bowls without stopping. ‘There’s always Demetrius.’ He nodded in the direction of a morose-looking man at a corner table. ‘If you’re desperate,’ he added frankly.

‘You’re not that desperate,’ Sue said firmly. ‘The man’s a cheapskate. Skimps on everything.’

At the back of the café a bouzouki player was looking at Christina with undisguised appreciation. He flashed her a brilliant smile and began to sing a love song with distinctly suggestive lyrics. Christina laughed at his bold eyes but she shook her head.

It was not like the way Luc Henri had looked at her, she thought involuntarily: that had turned her still and watchful, had caused some small, cold excitement to unfold. The bouzouki player was never going to be able to make her blush in a month of Sundays. Luc had done it with a word.

What’s happening to me? she thought, startled. Do I take the man with me everywhere I go?

Sue plucked at her arm. ‘Come on. Let’s try the Blue Taverna.’

Recalled to the present, Christina jumped. ‘Oh, OK.’

‘Good evening,’ said a soft voice.

Christina whirled, her heart pounding as if a deadly enemy had suddenly caught up with her. Luc Henri was standing there studying her. A small smile curled the handsome mouth. It was another of those smiles that did not reach his arrogant eyes.

Christina’s heart sank like an anchor in still water. She had not the slightest idea why. She straightened her shoulders and tried to pretend that she did not care.

‘Oh,’ she said. ‘You.’

He gave a little bow.

From the far side of the room, a cheerful Australian voice called, ‘Sue. Where’ve you been hiding? Over here, gorgeous.’

‘Geoff,’ said Sue. She hesitated, took in the quiet elegance of Luc Henri’s appearance, and decided that Christina did not need a chaperon with such an eminently respectable personage. ‘I’ll see you at the flat,’ she muttered, and disappeared among the crowded tables.

Christina, who had never in her life thought that she needed a chaperon, felt suddenly, alarmingly alone. The friendly crowd and the noise somehow made it worse. She swallowed.

Luc Henri was looking at her with a cynical expression that she did not like at all. He did not speak. Christina cleared her throat.

‘Time and place seem to have caught up with us, then,’ she said flippantly. ‘What are you doing at Costa’s?’

‘I could ask the same. Except that it’s obvious.’

His tone was pleasant enough. There was nothing she could take exception to in the words themselves. So how did she know that he was insulting her, and that he was coldly, furiously angry? Was it the cold glitter of his eyes? Christina glanced round. No one else showed any signs of noticing anything untoward. In fact, no one else was paying any attention to them at all.

‘I’m sorry, I don’t understand,’ she said.

He gave a bark of laughter. It did not sound amused.

‘Cruising. Isn’t that what they call it?’

Christina’s brows knitted. ‘What?’

He made an angry gesture with his hand, embracing the whole café-the bouzouki player, Costa’s beefy geniality and even the harassed waiters.

‘You make the most of your natural assets, I’ll say that for you. A smile, a lot of long, bare leg and the odd promise of a kiss. It’s a potent inducement, even if I can see that. Is that what you meant when you said you could look after yourself?’

For a moment Christina was so stunned that she did not think she was understanding him properly. When she realised that he meant exactly what she thought he meant, she went white with temper.

‘I think you’re calling me a tart.’

He gave that harsh laugh again. ‘Oh, no. I respect tarts. They’re honest working women in their way.’

‘What the hell do you mean by that?’

His eyes looked her up and down in a brief, insulting flick which considered and then dismissed her. She took a step backwards as if he had hit her. Her face flamed. He saw it and smiled.

‘I mean that they deliver what they contract for,’ he drawled. ‘Or so I’m told. Whereas you—’ He shook his head. ‘No, no, my dear.’

Christina took a hasty step towards him. His derisive smile grew.

‘Thinking of slapping my face? You couldn’t do it, you know. You’re much too nicely brought up.’

‘You know nothing at all about how I was brought up.’

‘Oh, I think you’re wrong there.’ He put his head on one side and pretended to consider. ‘I know the signs. I can’t think how I missed them this morning.’

She was trembling with anger. ‘What signs?’

‘Lovely manners. Minimal morals,’ he said succinctly.

They might have been alone. Christina was hardly aware of the crowded café. Neither of them had raised their voice but their argument was too intense to escape attention. They were beginning to attract the occasional sideways look, but she did not notice that either. She could not remember ever being so angry in her life.

‘What right have you got to talk about my morals?’

‘Right?’ He shrugged. ‘None.’

‘Or to sit in judgement on me on the basis of ten minutes’ spying? Or was it as much as that? I didn’t see you when we came in. Maybe you’ve only just arrived. Maybe we’re talking about ten seconds’ spying here.’

‘Call it five minutes,’ Luc Henri said negligently.

‘Well, then—’

‘Five memorable minutes.’

Christina stared.

‘I watched. Fascinating. You kissed the owner. Well, I suppose ownership of a waterfront café brings some perks.’

Christina gasped but Luc did not appear to notice. He swept on, itemising her actions with precision, and putting the worst possible gloss on them.

‘You swung what passes for a skirt at the group at the corner table. And it only took one bat of your eyelashes at the boy who plays that noisy substitute for a guitar to gain his devoted attention.’

She was so angry that she did not even think of defending herself. In fact, after a brief moment of blank outrage, she decided to prove to him that she was every bit as bad as he thought her—and worse. So she gave a careless laugh and shrugged. Her crocheted top slipped off one bare brown shoulder.

Christina felt rather than saw his eyes follow the falling fabric. He could not repress his reaction and it was not disapproval. She. registered it with a glow of something like triumph.

It was utterly unlike her. Anger must have made her reckless, she thought. Resisting the instinct to pull the top back into place, she shook back her hair and lifted her chin defiantly. She met his eyes with a look quite as contemptuous as his own.

‘So?’ she said softly. ‘What business is it of yours?’ For a moment he did not answer. Then he looked deliberately at the sagging top. ‘So you like to play with fire,’ he mused. ‘Now why didn’t I pick that up before?’

Her eyes narrowed to slits. ‘I said, What business is it of yours?’ Her voice rose.

‘Oh, come on, lady. You’re not that nicely brought up.’

She knew he was going to reach for her but she still did not quite believe it. Not now, not here, with a crowd of evening diners looking on. It was not the sort of thing that happened to her. It was not the sort of thing that ultra-civilised men like Luc Henri did.

There was nothing civilised in the way he jerked her off her feet to bring her hard against him. For a moment he held her breast to breast, looking down into her defiant eyes with a curious expression, almost as if behind the anger he was in pain. But the impression of pain was gone in an instant and he was laughing. ‘Burn, fire, burn,’ he said cynically.

And she was engulfed.

The thought flashed across Christina’s mind: well, he is certainly not treating me as if I were his sister now. It was her last coherent thought for some time.

For all the cynicism, he was not playing games. His hands were hard on her slim frame—mercilessly hard. And his mouth was hungry.

The crowded café, the smell of spiced meats and hot bread, the sounds of talk and laughter and wine being poured from rough glass carafes all receded as if they did not exist. Christina’s head fell back under the onslaught of his kiss. Her dazed eyes drifted shut. She felt as if her bones were melting. She had no strength in the powerful circle of his arms, no wish for strength, no resistance at all. All she knew was that her blood was pounding in her veins, driving her deeper and deeper into his embrace. And that she had never felt like this before.

Luc’s arms tightened.

He was giving no quarter, she realised dimly. He was so angry that neither the public place nor her blank astonishment was holding him back. In fact, she had a faint suspicion that they normally would have done and he knew it; so the fact that this uninhibited sexual demand was out of character was adding fuel to his anger. Of the anger there was no doubt at all. Nor of the demand.

His mouth ravaged the softness of hers until she could hardly breathe. She felt the blood beating frantically at his pulse points, battering at her. She felt his breath in her throat, her lungs. She smelled a faint, unfamiliar, woody scent which seemed to come from his light jacket. It failed entirely to mask the darker, stronger smell from his heated skin. It half repelled her, half fascinated her.

It was a wholly new sensation. It set her trembling even as it made her feel gloriously alive. The relentless kiss relaxed at last. Christina made a small animal noise and turned her head blindly to seek the hollow between his throat and shoulder with her lips.

Luc gave a sharp exclamation. He flinched as if he had burned himself. He pushed her to arm’s length almost savagely. Christina swayed and opened her eyes. She blinked. He looked murderous. She could feel the tremor in the hands clamped on her shoulders, holding her away from him. He looked as if he wanted to shake the life out of her.

‘That seems to answer your question.’ His voice was uneven. He was breathing hard but otherwise the iron self-control was back.

Christina shook her head. She did not recover so quickly.

‘Question?’ she echoed blankly.

‘What business it is of mine,’ Luc reminded her. There was an edge to his voice.

Christina stared at him in gathering disbelief. ‘Are you saying that makes me your business?’

‘Of course.’

‘You’re out of your mind,’ she said heatedly.

His mouth quirked. ‘Quite possibly.’

She ignored that. ‘Just because you have the gall to force yourself upon me...in front of everyone—’ She broke off, lost for words.

Instead she looked eloquently round the café. The diners seemed to be making too big a thing of being totally absorbed by their food. Christina was fairly sure that a minute earlier they had been mesmerized by the scene between the tall dark stranger and the English girl they had never seen behave like that before. It made her want to scream with rage.

He said softly, ‘I didn’t hear you calling for help.’

‘What?’

He repeated it. His voice was quiet but his eyes were dangerous.

Christina was not intimidated. She was shaking with justified temper. At least, she told herself it was temper. At his contemptuous words her rage hit boiling point. She stepped back out of his hands.

‘Then hear me now,’ she said grimly. She turned her head and shouted at the top of her voice, ‘Costa!’

Luc winced, but the dangerous glint went out of his eyes. It was replaced by surprise. Then, astoundingly, came amusement and even a hint of admiration. Or so Christina thought, viewing him from behind a red mist of fury.

The proprietor appeared so quickly that she suspected he had been waiting for such a summons. He did not look like a righteously vengeful protector of insulted innocence, however. He looked hugely amused and was not trying very hard to hide it.

‘Throw this jerk out,’ Christina said in a choked voice.

‘I can’t do that, Christina.’

She turned astounded eyes on Costa. ‘You saw what he did.’

Costa chuckled. ‘I’m not a policeman, Christina. As long as the clients pay their bill and don’t break the crockery, they can do what they like.’ He thought about it. ‘They can even break the crockery if they pay for it.’

‘What if they offend other clients?’ she flashed.

‘Don’t worry your head about it. They enjoyed it,’ Costa said soothingly.

Luc gave a choke of laughter. He suppressed it but not quickly enough.

Christina was outraged. She stamped her foot. She made a noise like Sue’s elderly kettle coming to the boil. ‘I didn’t enjoy it.’

‘Then I’m sorry, of course. But I don’t see what you expect me to do about it.’

‘Throw him out,’ she yelled.

The diners began to look interested again. She subsided, rather flushed.

Costa smiled at her paternally. ‘Look at it from my point of view. I can’t throw a man out just because you don’t think he kisses very well,’ he said in a reasonable tone. ‘Besides—’

Christina gave him a steely glare. ‘Besides?’ she prompted dangerously.

He shrugged his beefy shoulders. ‘To be honest, my dear, I’ve seen worse.’

This time Luc did not even try to disguise his laughter. ‘Poor Christina. I don’t think the US Marines are going to speed to the rescue this trip,’ he said when his mirth subsided. He nodded at a table. ‘Why don’t you sit down? Costa can bring us a bottle of his best ouzo and we’ll talk things over.’

Luc and Costa exchanged a look of pure masculine complacency. Christina saw it and recognised an unspoken conspiracy. They thought that she was beaten. She would show them.

Across the café tables Sue was already half out of her seat. Christina bit back her smile. Oh, she would certainly show them. She looked away quickly before Luc could follow her eyes. She had to buy time.

It went against the grain but she said meekly, ‘Oh, all right. I have to go to the cloakroom first, though.’

Neither of the men demurred. She met Sue’s eyes compellingly and turned deliberately. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Sue murmur an excuse to her companions and follow her.

In the poky little cloakroom Christina ran her wrists under cold water. She peered in the cracked mirror. Her eyes were wide and a little wild. Her skin felt cold and sensitised, as if someone had coated it with ice. Damn that man. Damn him. How dared he make her feel like this? The door opened.

‘Wow,’ said Sue. ‘That was really something. I take it he’s the “administrative hitch” from this morning?’

Christina glared at her unflattering reflection. ‘No, he isn’t. And he’s not going to be any sort of hitch at all,’ she said firmly. ‘I’m not having a stranger order me around.’

Sue blinked. ‘Have you told him that?’

‘Several times.’

Sue gave a gurgle of laughter. ‘I thought he didn’t look the type to give up easily.’

‘Well, he’s going to have to learn a new skill,’ said Christina with resolution. ‘He’s not pushing me about any more.’

Sue sighed. ‘He could push me about any time he liked.’

Christina turned away from the mirror. ‘You wouldn’t enjoy it,’ she assured her.

‘Oh, yes, I would. He’s gorgeous. If he looked at me the way he looked at you, I’d just lie down and die for him.’

Christina was startled. ‘How he looked at me?’

‘I know you usually ignore the effect you have on men but you must have noticed that,’ Sue said in disgust. ‘From the moment you came in, he couldn’t take his eyes off you. I thought he was going to eat you.’

Christina remembered that devouring kiss. She put up a hand to ease the sudden constriction in her throat.

‘So did I,’ she said in a low voice. She shivered. Instantly, Sue was all contrition. ‘Sorry. I’m a fool. No matter how gorgeous he looks, if he keeps after you when you’ve made it clear he doesn’t turn you on, he’s a heel.’ She patted her friend’s shoulder. ‘Count on me.’

It wasn’t that he did not turn her on, exactly... Christina dismissed it. It was too complicated to explain to Sue, especially when she didn’t entirely understand it herself. And she certainly wanted to escape from Luc Henri as far and as fast as she could.

‘I want to get out of here without him seeing me. And get away before he can follow.’

Sue was thoughtful. ‘Hmm. You can’t go through the kitchen because Costa’s on his side,’ she said shrewdly.

Christina looked surprised at her perception.

Sue nodded. ‘All that machismo. Costa just loves it. He’d tell. Unless he didn’t know.’ She paused. ‘Dustbins,’ she said suddenly.

Sue shot out of the door. Christina stared after her. In less than a minute she was back.

‘That yard is disgusting,’ she said with feeling. ‘No one would eat here if they saw it. Still, that means no one is going to search it too carefully. Go and lurk behind the cabbage stalks and I’ll go and get Geoff. We’ll get some transport from somewhere and come and pick you up. Just keep out of sight for ten minutes.’

Christina went. The yard was quite as foul as Sue had said. She held her breath for as long as she could. After that she breathed through her mouth.

There was a commotion in the kitchen behind her but she could not make out whether it was an irate Luc Henri turning the place upside down in search of her or just normal family give and take. She tensed and held her breath with even more resolution than before. Her heart beat faster. Someone opened the door to the yard, muttered a startled imprecation and shut it hurriedly. Christina breathed again.

Sue and Geoff turned up a few moments later. Geoff’s amused face appeared over the edge of the wooden fence that surrounded the yard and he reached out a hand.

‘Phew. That guy really scared you, didn’t he?’ he said, hauling her out into the road. ‘I wouldn’t have spent three minutes in there on a bet. You’ll probably start to go mouldy.’

‘I’ll watch out for it,’ Christina assured him solemnly. ‘And he did not scare me. I just chose not to argue in public any more. Thanks for the help,’ she added belatedly.

‘Any time. Any friend of Sue’s...’ he said largely. He sounded entertained. ‘What are you going to do now? Get out of town?’

‘Don’t be silly. He’s a civilised man.’ She paused and added with a certain amount of relief, ‘Anyway, he doesn’t know where I’m staying.’

‘He could find out. Looks the kind of guy who wouldn’t have trouble doing just that.’

Geoff had hired a rickety Citroën. It was parked on the corner of the dark lane, Sue hunched anxiously over the wheel. He opened the passenger door and pulled the front seat forward to let Christina scramble into the back.

‘Better crouch,’ he advised, still amused.

Christina disposed herself on the cramped back seat with dignity. ‘He’s not going to send out search parties—’ she began.

Sue said sharply. ‘Don’t be so sure of that. What’s that behind us?’

A stretched limousine had come into the driving mirror. They all looked over their shoulders. It had headlamps like searchlights. It was inching along the kerb as if it was looking for something. It looked horribly purposeful.

‘Duck,’ Geoff said.

Christina abandoned her dignity and flung herself on the floor. Not a moment too soon. Geoff grabbed Sue into a comprehensive embrace, so the headlights of the limousine only illuminated a courting couple totally absorbed in each other. It slowed briefly, then, seemingly satisfied, passed on without stopping. In the grateful darkness, Geoff released Sue.

‘Chris,’ Sue said in a shaken voice, ‘I take it back. You’re right. I wouldn’t enjoy it.’ Geoff hugged her comfortingly.

‘Changed your mind about getting out of town?’ he asked Christina with a hint of steel in his pleasant voice. ‘Bearing in mind you’re staying with Sue.’

‘As soon as I can,’ said Christina. The limousine had looked menacing. Suddenly, acting as a tour guide to the classical sites seemed immensely attractive.

‘Good,’ he said.

Sue did not say anything but her relief was none the less clear for being unspoken. She let the car into gear and began to back into the metalled road.

‘What I want to know,’ she burst out at last, ‘is who the hell is this man?’

‘Luc Henri,’ said Christina in a small voice.

‘I’ve never heard of him.’

‘No—well, nor have I.’

‘That limo did not belong to the sort of man we’ve never heard of,’ Geoff said.

Christina bit her lip. She remembered that challenging look Luc had given her when he told her his name. Should she have recognised him? Was it a false name? It was an oddly chilling thought.

‘What do you think?’ she asked Geoff.

‘Well, that car belongs to someone powerful. Or someone whose job takes him among the powerful. I got a good look at him in the café. I didn’t recognise him. So I’d say he’s either a security guard or a businessman.’

Sue said suddenly, ‘Whatever he is, he wants you. I wouldn’t be surprised if he was down at Costa’s looking for you tonight.’

‘Don’t be so dramatic,’ Christina protested. ‘He didn’t know I’d be at Costa’s.’

But I said I’d probably go to the waterfront cafés, she remembered. She shivered.

Sue said, ‘I don’t think he’s going to give up.’ She sounded scared.

Christina could not really blame her. She hoped that the tour left Athens soon.

‘I’ll go first thing tomorrow.’

CHAPTER THREE

SHE did. And for a week Christina’s mind was in two places at once.

One part of her brain was organising hotels and describing antiquities, the other was locked in a timeless embrace with a man she hardly knew—a man who had made sure she hardly knew him. A man who had given her a carefully edited account of himself which had left out all the essentials, possibly including his real name. A man who had said they would never meet again and then, for some unfathomable reason, had changed his mind.

Except that the reason was not unfathomable, however much Christina pretended to herself. It had all been there in the kiss—intensity, anger, need. Christina had never felt that she needed anyone before, not in that immediate, physical way. Nor had she felt the same driving need coming back at her, plucking her out of normality and onto a plane where all she could see or touch or taste was him.

‘Sex,’ she said to herself. ‘That’s all it is. Strong attraction, sure, but nothing more than a passing thing. Ignore it and it will go away.’

Only it didn’t. There were times when she barely noticed her pleasant church group from the American Midwest. They were in Europe for the first time and endearingly enthusiastic about the sights at Mycenae and Delphi. Christina tried hard to share their enthusiasm. She even succeeded sometimes. But the dark, magnetic figure of Luc was always there, always lurking. And all too often he just swamped the rest. It was not like any sexual attraction she had ever felt before.

It’s not real, she told herself.

But it felt reat—horribly real. More real than anything else she could remember. It was almost frightening. That stopped her dead in the shadow of a classic column. He had said that she was afraid of him, hadn’t he?