her with a groan. ‘I want to do this properly for you, Christa…I want to make it good for you…More than good,’ he told her thickly.
‘It will be,’ Christa assured him, her own apprehension soothed by his male vulnerability. It made her want to reach out to him, to hold him, to tell him that she already knew that what they were going to share together would be so special that it would change the whole focus of her life. A small smile curled her mouth. He had told her before she came here that that was what he would do, but neither of them had guessed then that it would be in this particular way.
‘Come and sit down,’ Daniel told her, pushing her gently towards one of the chairs. ‘I’m going to make us both a very special meal and then…’
‘A meal?’ Christa laughed. ‘But we’ve only just had lunch…’
‘A lunch which you didn’t eat,’ Daniel reminded her. ‘Besides, isn’t that what every woman wants: to be wined and dined before…?’
‘She’s seduced?’ Christa suggested wickedly. She was feeling more confident now—now with her awareness of his own vulnerability. ‘Is that what you’re planning to do, Daniel—seduce me?’
She was laughing as she said it, but the laughter died from her eyes as Daniel turned round to look at her, a sharp shock of excitement burning through her veins.
‘I don’t need wining or dining, Daniel,’ Christa told him tremulously. ‘Or seducing. All I need…and all I want is you.’
She could feel her throat starting to close up with emotion as she spoke. Did he know how out of character it was for her to express her feelings so openly? Normally she was far more guarded, far more self-protective, but the way she felt about him, the way she wanted him, overwhelmed her with its intensity.
He was already coming back towards her. She stood up shakily, holding on to the back of the chair for support, her gaze fixed on Daniel’s face, her heart pounding.
‘Christa, Christa…’ She trembled violently as he groaned her name between hungry kisses. He was holding her so tightly that she suspected she would be slightly bruised, but she didn’t care. She wanted him to hold her like that. To want her like that, with the same wild intensity that she wanted him.
He was kissing her as though he couldn’t get enough of her, his hands shaping her body, moulding it against his own.
‘Oh, God, I want you…I want you, Christa, I want you so much…’
His hands were on her hips. She could feel the hardness of his body as intimately as she could feel the eager swell of her own breasts, the sharp, intense ache low down in the pit of her stomach, the…
She could hear a noise somewhere outside the building. It sounded like…She tensed in shocked disbelief as she heard the sound of a car engine.
Daniel had obviously heard it too, because he was already releasing her, stepping back from her, his forehead drawn into a frown.
Through the kitchen window Christa could see a Land Rover nearly as battered as Daniel’s own. Its driver brought it to an abrupt, untidy halt, switching off the engine and then jumping out.
Christa recognised him immediately. It was the same man she had seen with Daniel that first evening outside the hotel.
Christa watched as he stumbled towards the door and banged urgently on it.
‘I’ll go…’ she began, but Daniel shook his head.
‘No, don’t…Stay here,’ he told her as he went to open the door.
Daniel’s visitor looked and smelled as though he had been drinking heavily, Christa recognised in distaste as the man stumbled into the kitchen, lurching from the door towards the table and leaning heavily on it as he stared frowningly at Christa, focusing on her face with evident difficulty.
That he hadn’t recognised her was obvious and Christa stiffened beneath the leering look he was giving her.
‘So you’re Daniel’s latest, are you?’ he commented drunkenly. ‘Always manages to get the pick of the bunch, does our Daniel. Perhaps I ought to trade places with you,’ he told Daniel, turning away from Christa. ‘Earn myself some nice fat fees and plenty of eager bedmates into the bargain. You’ve really got a set-up here, Daniel, my friend. As much sex as you want, when you want, and you’re getting paid into the bargain…God, it’s got to be an improvement on what I’m getting. No sex, and an ex-wife who’s doing her damnedest to screw me into the ground financially. Do you know what that bitch has done now? She’s claiming that I’ve deliberately let the farm get run-down and she says that she’s going to claim for fifty per cent of what it was worth. That was ten years ago, for God’s sake. Things were different then. I got more in subsidies then than I can earn from every damn thing put together now—a hell of a lot more. She’s trying to bankrupt me, the bitch. That’s what she’s trying to do…’ He stopped speaking and turned round to peer blearily at Christa.
‘What happened to that redhead you had here? She looked a real hot number…Mind you, I thought that about Alison once. She was all over me when we first met. God, she certainly had me fooled.
‘You’ve certainly got the right idea, Daniel. Keep it short and sweet and very, very temporary…Once they get their claws into you…They threw me out of the pub, do you know that? Said I’d had too much to drink. Liars…Anyway, I thought I’d drive over here and have a drink with you. You’ve always been a good friend to me, Daniel…Had some rare old times together, haven’t we?’
He swayed dangerously from side to side as he let go of the table and lurched across the room to where Daniel was standing.
Christa watched him with a mixture of shock and distaste, distaste for his drunken, out-of-control state, and shock because of his drunken revelations about Daniel.
Tears burned the backs of her eyes, hot and destructive as raw acid, but their pain was nothing to the pain she could feel in her heart.
It was no solace to know that she had learned the truth just in time to stop her from committing the ultimate folly, a folly which, by the sounds of it, countless numbers of other women must obviously have committed before her.
Her stomach churned nauseously as she remembered all the lies Daniel had told her, and she had been fool enough to believe him. She of all people…After all she had learned, or should have learned, from Laura’s relationship with Piers.
That kind of man always ran true to type, she told herself savagely. There were no exceptions.
‘I don’t want to go home, dammit,’ she heard the other man swearing angrily. ‘Damn place isn’t home any more…Not since that bitch left and took half the furniture with her. I want a drink…’
He was lurching towards the inner doorway, but Daniel caught hold of him and propelled him firmly towards the back door.
‘I’m sorry about this,’ he told Christa. ‘But it looks as though our plans will have to be put on hold—temporarily…very temporarily,’ he added meaningfully.
Oh, my God, how could he be so arrogantly blasé…? Didn’t he realise that this friend had given the game away completely? He must have heard what the other man had been saying—or did he believe that she was so deeply in love with him, so desperately, physically in need of him that she would just simply ignore what she had heard?
The nauseous feeling within her stomach increased. She wanted to scream and rage at him, to cry out her pain and anguish, but pride kept her silent.
‘Come on, Dai,’ Daniel was saying. ‘I’m going to drive you home…’
‘Don’t want to go home,’ the other man was repeating, but Daniel was already opening the back door and almost physically manhandling him out into the yard.
Christa waited stiff and motionless until she heard the Land Rover’s engine start. Even when the headlights had circled the yard then disappeared as Daniel drove away, she still didn’t move.
She now knew what it meant when someone said they had been turned to stone…No, not stone, icy cold marble, her whole body heavy and old, a terrible weight that burdened and overwhelmed her—like her pain and grief.
Why, oh, why hadn’t she listened to
her logic…to her instincts? Why had she so stupidly given in to her emotions? The same emotions which cried out to her now to leave before they had to suffer any more pain.
Her emotions—she had made the mistake of listening to them once; she wasn’t going to do so again, and besides, her pride wouldn’t allow her to go. Not now.
‘You wouldn’t believe how long I’ve been celibate,’ he had told her, and she, like a fool, had believed him-because she’d wanted to believe him. Now his words, like her love, tasted sour and bitter.
How he must have been laughing at her, mocking her. She should have known, she derided herself angrily.
And he hadn’t even had the grace to look ashamed or embarrassed when his drunken friend had revealed the truth.
How long would he be gone? she wondered miserably as she glanced at the clock. Not that she cared, of course, she assured herself hastily. As far as she was concerned it would be a good thing if he never came back.
Angrily, she paced the kitchen, reliving the things he had said to her, marvelling at his skilled deceit. A person would actively have to enjoy lying and causing pain to be so good at it, she decided. And in her case, Daniel had really stood to score a ‘double whammy’, firstly in making her fall in love with him, and secondly…Because he no doubt expected that once he had her in bed, in his arms, her brain would turn to such complete mush that she would be willing to agree with anything he had to say, be it the fact that the moon was made of green cheese, or that she would be willing to publicly retract everything she had said about the centre and the business he ran.
When the tears she had tried to suppress filled her eyes, flooding them as they poured down her face, she clenched her hands into small fists and told herself to stop being even more of a fool than she already was.
The man she was crying for simply did not exist, and instead of crying she ought to be down on her knees giving thanks for Daniel’s drunken friend’s timely intervention, instead of…
Instead of what? she asked herself with bitter scorn. Instead of learning the truth tomorrow, or the day after… instead of having a few worthless hours of continued make-believe to taunt and torment her for the rest of her life?