Avoiding Mr Right (6 page)

‘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

S
HE 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?

‘Ridiculous,’ she said aloud.

But on the long, hot coach journey back to their hotel Christina was remembering all too vividly every word he had said. It was nonsense that she was afraid of him. Of course it was. She was self-possessed and independent and she was not afraid of anyone.

But, if she admitted the truth, there was something in that dark, demanding presence that sent little chills through her. Not fear, naturally, but something uneasy that told her she had no defences against him. Or anyway, none that seemed to work.

The unwelcome truth was that Luc Henri overwhelmed her. He had.only to look—let alone touch—and she started to vibrate like a musical instrument played by a master. And she did not even know who he was!

He might be a villain, she thought grimly, remembering the long dark car that had seemed to be looking for her. Or merely a businessman, as Geoff had suggested. She just had no idea. She could not even begin to guess. He had given her no clues at all.

‘And that’s the problem,’ she told the spotty mirror in her hotel room. ‘He told me nothing. Deliberately told me nothing. He might just as well have been wearing a long cloak and mask for all I know about him. And yet he makes me feel like this. I must be going out of my mind!’

She applied moisturiser to her heated skin and tried to bring her renowned common sense back into play.

Maybe he didn’t own that black limo at all. Maybe he wasn’t looking for her. Maybe the meeting at Costa’s was pure chance and the limo was crawling along because it had engine problems. Maybe this was all in her imagination. Somehow that was not comforting.

She called Sue from the hotel.

‘He’s been back to Costa’s,’ Sue said at once. She did not specify who. She did not need to.

Christina’s whole body lurched, as if she were in a lift in free fall.

‘What did Costa tell him?’ she said, her voice jumping.

‘Nothing. You know Costa. A customer is a customer but he doesn’t like being pushed around.’

‘Oh. What did he tell Costa, then?’

‘Not much. He left a telephone number, though. Do you want it?’

She found she did, very much. It was so unlike her. Was she falling in love for the first time in her life?

‘No,’ said Christina in a kind of horror.

There was a little silence.

‘You fancy him,’ Sue said slowly. She didn’t sound anything like as triumphant as she would have done a week ago. ‘It’s happened at last.’

Christina did not like the sound of that. Especially in the light of what she had just been thinking herself.

‘Nonsense,’ she said robustly.

‘I saw him kiss you,’ Sue reminded her. ‘And the way you looked afterwards. Are you seriously telling me he didn’t get to you?’

Christina suppressed a little, sensuous shiver at the picture her friend’s words conjured up. She repressed it at once.

‘A kiss is just a kiss,’ she said flippantly.

‘So what are you going to do about him?’

The very thought of doing anything about Luc Henri made Christina’s head swim. She swallowed, hoping Sue would not detect her confusion.

‘I’m not going to do anything about him. I don’t know him. What I do know I don’t like. He’s just too damned sure of himself.’ Yes, that was better. Indignation might just get that dark image back to manageable proportions. She added virtuously, He’s got to learn that he can’t go around manhandling people like that in public.’

Sue chuckled unexpectedly. ‘What about in private?’

It was a thought that Christina had been trying very hard not to let into her consciousness.

‘That is not going to happen,’ she said firmly.

She found that her fingers were crossed hard when she put the phone down.

She returned to Athens thoroughly unsettled. There was no sign of Luc Henri. She was not sure if she was relieved or piqued. Either way, it did not help her get the man out of her head.

The next job—crewing for a group of scuba-divers—had been in her schedule for weeks.

‘You’re getting famous, Christina,’ the captain greeted her when she went on board. She had worked for him before and they got on well. He looked amused.

She was startled. ‘What?’

‘You’ve set the wires humming,’ he told her. ‘I must have had three requests for references for you in the last week. What have you been doing?’

She frowned, oddly perturbed.

‘I ran out of cash and had to hustle a bit for the next job,’ she said slowly.

‘Oh, that will be it, then. If the brokers think you’re running into problems with money they won’t want to put you on a boat stuffed with cash and Rolexes,’ he said indifferently. ‘Moral: never really
need
a job.’ He gave a hearty laugh and slapped her between the shoulderblades. Christina smiled, but absently.

Was this Luc Henri’s master-hand again? Or was she flattering herself? She half wished that she had taken that phone number so she could ring him up and tell him to stop intruding in her life. Except, of course, she acknowledged ruefully, the intrusion might all be in her own imagination. If only she
knew
.

So it was with turbulently mixed feelings that the night they got back to port she went to Costa’s for dinner with the rest of the crew. As soon as he saw her, the proprietor finished his conversation and came over.

‘Don’t tell me,’ Christina said with forboding. ‘You’ve been having enquiries about me.’

He looked surprised. ‘That’s a problem? I thought you wanted a job?’

‘Oh, I do,’ she said. ‘Maybe I’m getting paranoid. What have you got for me, Costa?’

He grinned and flung his arms wide. ‘The job of a lifetime,’ he said.

Three weeks later Christina toiled up the harbour steps, puffing under the burden of an enormous dustbin bag, and thought hard thoughts about Costa. Job of a lifetime, indeed. Well, she was working for royalty, or supposed to be. That must have been what Costa meant.

All Christina could see was that the yacht was under-provided and seriously ill equipped. Well, she could have lived with that. She had done so before on other jobs. What she couldn’t bear was the poisonous atmosphere. It affected everyone, from the ragamuffin crew to the principal passenger’s seven-year-old daughter, Pru. Nobody helped anyone and they all threatened to tell tales to the Prince, who had chartered the boat.

The Prince himself, perhaps wisely, had not so far put in an appearance. Instead he had installed his sister and her children and kept promising to join the boat at the next port. He was expected again today in this small Italian harbour but neither the children nor Christina thought he would turn up. The children minded. The Prince of Kholkhastan joined Costa and the cheapskate Captain Demetrius in Christina’s bad books.

Christina heaved the garbage bag onto the top step. ‘I’m never going to let it get this heavy again before I dump it,’ she promised herself. She straightened, panting, and wiped her forehead before stooping to haul the thing along the dock.

‘What the hell do you think you are doing?’ rapped out a voice.

Christina stopped dead. She did not believe it. This was fantasy, brought on by heat, exhaustion and sheer temper. Her heart thundered in her ears. She was so startled that if she had not still been holding onto the lumpish bag of rubbish she would probably have fallen back down the stone steps.

She knew that voice. In spite of her best resolutions, she had been sleeping with it for weeks. Cautiously, she looked up.

It was not heatstroke. It was not a hallucination.

‘
You!
’

In some ways, heatstroke or hallucinations would have been easier to deal with.

‘What are you doing here?’ she gasped.

She stood looking up at him, weeks of studied forgetfulness wiped out by the sheer physical shock of his presence. She had told herself that it had all been an illusion brought on by anger and brief panic when the bank had refused to let her have her money. She had told herself he was no different from anyone else: not a frightening, encompassing presence but an ordinary man, perfectly easy to deal with if you kept your head. And the intensity she had felt beating at her like a flame must have been her imagination. He was probably perfectly indifferent to her.

Luc Henri smiled. His eyes were almost black. He looked tough, powerful and deeply sardonic. Not, thought Christina, recovering herself too late, in the least bit easy to deal with. Or indifferent.

‘What are you doing here?’ she said again, this time with something like accusation.

Luc reached down. His fingers closed over hers, brooking no resistance.

‘At the moment it looks like dustbin duty,’ he said drily. It was the suave voice she remembered. This time it hovered on the edge of mockery. It made no difference. That voice had haunted her dreams.

‘I can manage,’ she muttered, horrified. This was no time to remember dreams that embarrassed her even when she was on her own. Now that she was face to face with the other participant, they were frankly appalling.

Luc seemed unaware of her discomfort. He snorted. ‘Don’t be ridiculous. That thing is obviously far too heavy for you. What on earth are you thinking of, hauling it around on your own?’

Christina stood very still. A feeling swept over her that made her capable little hands suddenly lose all their usual strength. Shaken, she looked down at his long fingers locked round her own.

No one had made her feel like that,
ever
: as if she was all blood and fire, with no strength or will or ability to do anything but mould herself to him. Mould herself with passion. It was not just the dreams, after all.

‘Oh, good grief,’ she said, truly horrified.

She surrendered the bag to him, sliding her fingers out from under his without resistance.

He misunderstood the cause of her dismay.

‘And it’s a great pleasure to see you too,’ Luc Henri said, amused.

The heavy bag was no burden to him at all. He swung it up over his shoulder like a sack of coals and turned away. She looked after him, trying to steady herself.

This was no cool, suited sophisticate today. He was wearing jeans and a casual T-shirt which showed powerful muscles. Christina remembered how she had sensed that strength under the smart jacket in Athens. It made something clench in her stomach. She hoped desperately that Luc was not aware of her turmoil.

Her face burned. The hand which pushed her sunglasses back up her nose shook a little. With his back turned to her, she flexed her shoulders and the fingers that he had made feel so frail. Sternly she told herself to pull herself together.

Luc bore the rubbish off to the prominently placed bin and returned. He was looking deeply satisfied, as if something he had planned had fallen out better than he had expected. It was a very private look. In spite of her disorientation, it put Christina’s hackles up.