Читать книгу Unwilling Surrender - Кэтти Уильямс, CATHY WILLIAMS, Cathy Williams - Страница 5

‘YOU want what?’ Christina stared at him as though he had gone completely mad and he stared back at her with an insufferable look of patience on his face.

‘I want you to come with me to Scotland,’ he repeated, very slowly, ‘to fetch my sister. You’ve already agreed that she was crazy to have just vanished with that fool of a boy. Who knows where it will lead? And if she makes the mistake of marrying him, it’ll be over my dead body. So naturally I have to prevent that from happening at all costs.’

‘Oh, naturally,’ Christina spluttered angrily. ‘You go right ahead and do what you feel you have to do, but please don’t include me in your plans.’

She opened the front door and a cold blast of air wafted in.

Her flat did not lead directly out to the street, but rather on to a small landing shared by her neighbour’s adjacent flat. Even so, it was cold outside.

He pushed the door shut and leant against it, his arms folded.

‘You have to come, Tina, you’re her friend. Supposedly.’

She gave him a long, withering look. She hoped it spoke volumes, because she didn’t trust her vocabulary to cover precisely what she wanted to say on the subject, which was a good deal.

‘Don’t you dare use that sort of blackmail on me,’ she said emphatically. ‘You might be able to get your way with most people, over most things, but not with me and definitely not on this matter!’

There, she thought, take that.

But instead of moving out of her way, instead of acknowledging defeat, he continued to look at her, his face grim. He wasn’t playing any games when it came to this. She could see that. Ever since his parents had died, he had taken care of his sister zealously. Despite her age, he considered her his responsibility, probably until she settled down and married someone in whom he could safely entrust her well-being.

As far as he was concerned, Fiona was in danger of committing the biggest mistake of her short life and he was not going to stand around without doing something about it.

Christina could follow that line of thought, even though she wasn’t quite sure whether she agreed with it or not.

However, as far as she was concerned, coercing her into some kind of confrontation with his sister was out of the question.

She was not about to start taking sides with anyone, because she would have hated it if she had been in Fiona’s situation. Hardly likely, she acknowledged honestly, since highly unsuitable men weren’t attracted to her in the slightest, but that was not the point.

‘I’m not leaving here until you agree to accompany me,’ he said blandly enough, although his face was hard and determined. ‘You know my sister as well as I do. She’ll have a fit if I show up on the doorstep, playing big brother. But if she sees you, she might feel more inclined to listen to sense.’

‘Alternatively, she might just slam the door in both our faces and tell us to mind our own damn business!’

‘It’s a risk we’ll have to take.’

‘Correction; it’s a risk you’ll have to take.’

She glared at him and he reached out and gripped her by her arm, pulling her towards him so that their faces were only inches apart.

‘Now you listen to me,’ he said with razor sharpness. ‘You’re coming with me whether you like it or not. You can just get down from that “you’re entitled to do what you like in life” platform. This is Fiona and we’re not talking about some casual little fling here. She’s been seeing this boy for quite a while and she seems serious about him.’

‘It might be mutual,’ Christina interjected feebly, but she was on weak ground here, she knew that.

‘We both know that that’s not the case. God knows why my sister can’t see the obvious, but that’s irrelevant. The fact is, I don’t want her doing anything she’d live to regret.’ He took a deep breath and looked at her coldly. His fingers were still biting into her arm, and Christina gave a little tug, which he ignored. ‘Have I told you that he was throwing out feelers as to how much money she stands to acquire on her twenty-fifth birthday?’

Christina gasped, appalled. ‘No! Surely not!’

‘Yes, that’s right.’

‘Did you mention that to Fiona?’

He gave a short, cynical laugh. ‘Don’t be ridiculous. That would have had the opposite effect.’ He released her abruptly and she massaged her numb arm, trying to get the blood circulation back into action.

‘You’re probably right,’ she agreed.

‘Now do you still think that it’s all right to let her get on with her own mistakes?’

‘She’s a grown woman,’ Christina protested helplessly, but his revelation had taken the wind out of her sails and she knew that his sharp eyes had not missed that.

‘She’s got years of living to do before she can be called that,’ he said bluntly, though his eyes were indulgent. ‘She’s always been as flighty as a butterfly, and I’ve always accepted that. But not this time. This boy is a nasty piece of work. He could ruin her life.’

There was a little silence between them while Christina digested all this.

She had not banked on any of this happening. Oh, she had known that he would contact her as soon as he had read Fiona’s note, but she had been adamant that she would reveal nothing of her friend’s whereabouts.

Not only had she failed miserably in that decision, but here she was, teetering on the brink of agreeing with him that yes, maybe chasing her up to that cottage in Scotland wasn’t such a bad idea after all.

The man’s powers of persuasion were limitless.

‘Well?’ he pressed. ‘What’s your decision?’

‘I can’t just rush off and leave my work commitments,’ Christina said weakly, grasping at straws.

‘You’ll be gone two days at the outset. It’s hardly going to kill any potential jobs you might have.’

He had a point, she thought with an inward sigh of resignation. February was not a good time for her, for some reason. There was enough work to keep her going, but nothing like the demand which she normally had for the remainder of the year.

‘Not that that would stop you,’ she muttered gloomily, but he was relaxed now, smiling even, though with no real humour.

He had succeeded in getting her where he wanted her, and if she could have she would have wiped that look of satisfaction off his clever face, but she couldn’t.

‘Now, now,’ he soothed, ‘you make me sound like a tyrant.’

‘Do I?’ She raised her large brown eyes to his. ‘And that would be so far from the truth, wouldn’t it?’

He laughed, a low chuckle that somehow managed to addle her.

‘When you were much younger, I would have slapped you over your rear for that piece of cheek,’ he said, still with that crooked smile.

‘You always did have a way about you,’ she said with asperity, but her face had gone pink at the thought of Adam Palmer’s laying a hand on her, for whatever reason. ‘When do you propose to leave for Scotland?’ she asked, changing the subject, and he frowned, thinking about it.

‘As soon as possible. We can take the shuttle out of Heathrow Airport to Glasgow and then drive to the cottage. Arduous, but it’s the only way of getting there. I’ll give you a call as soon as I find out the details. We can meet at the airport.’

‘What about the weather?’ This consideration had only just occurred to her, but there was no way that she was going to find herself stranded in that cottage, which she knew from old was in the middle of nowhere, alone with him. That was the sort of stuff that bred nightmares.

‘What about it?’

‘Snow?’ she said patiently. ‘Impassable roads? Stuck miles away from civilisation?’

‘Dear me,’ he murmured with an aggravating note of mockery in his voice, ‘we can’t have that, can we?’

‘It’s not a joke!’ Christina snapped. ‘I have no intention of being stuck up there with only you for company.’ Her skin prickled at the mere thought of it.

No doubt there were hordes of women who would give their right arm to be in that situation. No doubt that was what was flashing through his mind even as he stood there, looking down at her with that annoying half-amused look on his face. But she was going to make it absolutely clear that she was not to be counted in that number.

She would listen to the weather reports and if there was any mention of snow—any mention of a passing flurry, for that matter—she would cancel that trip without giving it a second thought.

‘There was a time,’ he countered smoothly, ‘when you would have found that thought quite appealing.’

She met his eyes and looked away in sudden confusion.

‘And what is that supposed to mean?’ she heard herself asking.

‘Oh, you know what I mean, Tina. Remember that crush you had on me? You must have been all of what—fifteen? Sixteen? Sweet sixteen and never been kissed? I should have been flattered, but it was awkward, wasn’t it?’

Christina’s mouth went dry. She wanted the ground to open and swallow her up. Anything to spare her from this awful, nightmarish embarrassment washing over her.

‘You must have—’

‘Stop it!’ she interrupted in a high voice. She took a deep breath, counted to ten, and when she next spoke she was relieved to hear that some of her self-control had returned. ‘I was young. And stupid. Very stupid. Fortunately for me, I was cured of that little problem. So there’s no point in dragging it up, is there? The fact of the matter is I’m not going unless the weather reports are favourable, and that’s that.’

She couldn’t quite bring herself to meet his eyes, so she stared at her fingers instead. A thousand things were running through her head, but really they all amounted to the same awful, vicious circle of memories that she had tried to put to the back of her mind. She had been so naïve. She had literally thrown herself at him and he had laughed with that sickening mixture of surprise and genuine amusement. ‘You’re a child,’ he had told her but what he had meant was that she just didn’t possess the easy charm and bold beauty of the women to whom he was already drawn.

What a picture she must have made, with her mousy brown hair and brown eyes, next to those blondes and brunettes and redheads who had adorned his parents’ house with predictable regularity during the university holidays.

‘Of course,’ he said, ‘I have no intention of getting stuck in ten-foot snowdrifts either. Not that your honour isn’t safe with me, so you needn’t fear anything on that score. You’re Fiona’s friend and...’ He shrugged and the unspoken words hung in the air, their meaning crystal-clear. He found her physically unappealing, was what he was saying, so she could relax, but instead of reassuring her it brought tears of anger and humiliation to her eyes. It reminded her of how she had felt when her teenage crush had been ever so smilingly handed back to her.

‘I’ll call you.’

‘Fine,’ she said stiffly, looking at her watch. It was nearly five in the morning. He had been there much longer than she had thought. Hours. ‘Now do you mind? I want to catch up on some sleep. As you do too, no doubt.’ She hadn’t meant to, but her voice implied that he needed the rest since he had spent the night doing God only knew what, but it didn’t take a genius to imagine.

‘Oh, I think I’ll go to the office,’ he said casually, reaching down to turn the doorknob.

She removed her hand from it quickly, to avoid any contact between them, then immediately hoped that he had not noticed her reaction.

‘At this hour?’

‘I have a lot of paperwork to clear before I can go anywhere. You aren’t, believe it or not, the only one whose tidy little schedule has been interrupted.’

‘I never said that I was,’ she muttered.

‘You don’t have to. The implication was there in your voice. You always did have a way of saying much more with your silences than with your words.’

That piece of insight startled her. Had he noticed that? It was a trait which she herself was aware of. She thought of it as tact, because she knew that if she relentlessly said what was on her mind there would be quite a few people who would be unnecessarily offended by her remarks. So she often kept silent, allowing her thoughts to supply the missing bits in her conversations.

But no one had ever been aware of this ploy. He must, she now thought, be incredibly perceptive to have picked that up from their numerous but casual encounters over the years.

Perception along those lines made her uneasy. It made her think that he could read her mind, and she didn’t like that sensation.

‘Really?’ she said blankly. ‘I’ll expect to hear from you a little later, then. If I’m not in, you can always leave a message on my answer machine.’

‘Fine. But make sure you’re around from this afternoon. I’ll probably try and get us on the earliest flight after lunch.’

It wasn’t a suggestion, it was a command. Be home after twelve or else.

She shut the door on him after he had gone and retired to her bedroom, where she spent the next hour trying to court sleep.

But it was difficult. She felt as though she had been abruptly swept up in a whirlwind and, now that she had been let down from it, she still couldn’t quite manage to find her feet. One minute she was in control of things, her diary all planned out with her various jobs, her social life, if not buzzing, then ticking over. The next, everything had been turned upside-down and she was off on some foolish rescue mission with a man who, after all these years, could still succeed in making her feel acutely uncomfortable with herself.

And that made her cross. Why did he arouse that reaction in her? Was it because, in the enforced intimacy of her flat, the power of his personality had seeped into her and made her over-conscious of herself?

That had to be the explanation, she decided. In the past, she had seen Adam frequently enough, but always in the company of other people. When they had been alone, she had been usually waiting for Fiona to put in an appearance. She had been able to step back and view him with detachment, never putting herself in a situation where his presence could overwhelm her.

Tonight, though, it had been different. There had been no one else around to dilute the sheer force of his masculinity. She had been obliged to face him, one to one, and she had found her composure wanting.

All the more pathetic, she told herself with disgust, when he had made it clear that he found her quite unappealing as a member of the opposite sex. I don’t care, she told herself philosophically, I’m no longer addicted to him. But she would have to watch herself. She had no intention of being tripped up by that stupid charm of his. That wouldn’t do at all. She now had a plane trip and a car ride alone with him to contend with and, if she was going to sit through the whole thing in a state of nervous tension, then she would end up in need of medical treatment at the end of it all.

She finally drifted off to sleep and when she next opened her eyes it was after nine o’clock.

She had appointments. Two to cancel. She sprang out of bed, bustled into the lounge for her diary, and rang them both.

Mrs Rafferty, her first appointment, who wanted photographs of the interior of her house taken for inclusion in a book she was writing on stately homes, was easy enough to pacify. She had been working on her book for two years. A short delay in the photographs was not a matter of life or death.

Her second client, however, was somewhat harder to placate.

Mrs Molton was an irascible woman at the best of times. Now she listened while Christina made her excuses, then she bellowed down the line, ‘This isn’t good enough!’

‘I’m sorry, Mrs Molton,’ she said, ‘but I’m afraid it’s unavoidable.’

‘Unavoidable? The word doesn’t exist in my vocabulary!’

Christina could well believe that, thinking of her now. Thin, wiry, with a voice that could shatter glass.

‘And what about the dogs? My little poopsies? Don’t you think that it isn’t stressful for them, having to pose for photographs? They’re beautifully groomed. Today you would have got it right, I know it.’

Christina thought of her subjects, two corgis as irascible as their owner. Was it any wonder that this shoot was taking twice as long as it should have?

‘I can rearrange you for next Tuesday,’ she murmured, not wanting to stray on to the subject of the two infernal hounds.

‘And I can always rearrange you, young lady!’ Mrs Molton informed her testily down the line. ‘You’re not the only photographer in the world, you know. My niece may well have recommended you, but that doesn’t mean that I have to employ you. The world,’ she continued in a booming voice that belied her stature, ‘is full of talented photographers. I’ll allow myself and my poopsies to be rearranged just this once, but not again!’

Christina released a long sigh as she replaced the receiver.

Thank you, Adam Palmer, she thought. Now if I lose this job, however unchallenging it may be, I blame you entirely.

She spent a desultory morning throwing things into an overnight bag and lethargically reviewing some negatives for a job which she had undertaken a fortnight previously and which were due for submission to a magazine in a week’s time, but her mind was working overtime.

She kept thinking of Adam. She thought of the way his body moved, the way his eyes were somehow fierce yet coolly mocking at the same time. Had she forgotten all that, she wondered, or had she shoved it to the back of her mind?

These were irritating questions. She was acting like the silly teenager she had been all those years ago. She was no longer a teenager and she liked to think of herself as too clever to let herself be swayed by a man’s appearance. She might not be beautiful, but she was smart enough, and she wasn’t about to abandon her good sense by letting him get under her skin.

She glared at the jumper in her hand and then threw it into the bag.

Weather report or no weather report, she was going to make sure that she travelled with an ample supply of thick clothing.

The man on the radio had self-confidently assured her that there would be no snow in Scotland, although conditions would be freezing, but weathermen had a talent for getting it wrong.

At three in the afternoon Adam called to inform her that they would be leaving in an hour and a half.

‘Meet me at the airport,’ he said in the quick tone of voice which implied that he had better things to do than converse with her over the phone. ‘Take a taxi and charge it to my company.’

‘Yes, my day’s going just fine, thank you for asking,’ Christina said sweetly. ‘Usual sort of problems when one has to postpone commitments, but I won’t bore you with the details. Thank you for asking, though. And yes, I can meet you at the airport for four-thirty. Any specific place, or shall I just aimlessly meander around in the hope that I spot you somewhere?’

She heard the impatient click of his tongue and grinned wickedly down the line. Poor Adam. Not much time for her now that he had got what he wanted. She wondered whether he was looking at his watch and wishing that this silly woman would get off the line. He always did have a restless streak in him that spared little time for what he considered frivolities.

Unless, of course, those frivolities concerned getting a woman into bed. Then he had all the time in the world to play his elaborate games of seduction. Or at least that was what she had gleaned from what she had seen of him in the company of women and from what Fiona had told her. Confidentially.

‘I’m busy,’ he told her bluntly. ‘I don’t have time to waste chatting. I’ll meet you at the check-in counter.’

He promptly hung up with that and she glared at the telephone in her hand.

What manners. He was busy, was he? And what about her? She would have been busy if it weren’t for him. Had he considered that? Fat chance.

She wondered how many of his lady friends were informed by him that he was busy and couldn’t waste time chatting with them, and decided that she preferred his honesty after all. It was always nice knowing where you stood.

She dressed warmly for the trip up: jeans, boots, a jumper with another one in her holdall, and a duffel coat which zipped up the front. The entire outfit made her appear ten pounds heavier than she was and she grimaced at the reflection that stared back at her in the mirror.

There goes one of your few assets, she told the reflection—your figure. No one would guess that you had one under all of this.

But that really didn’t bother her very much. She had become quite accustomed to her appearance and to the fact that she seldom if ever attracted second glances from members of the opposite sex.

Her boyfriends had all been men who had got to know her well before becoming interested in her physically, and frankly she would have preferred their friendship to remain on a platonic basis only most of the time. She disliked fighting off prospective suitors who did nothing to send her blood-pressure soaring.

No one will ever send your blood-pressure soaring, she informed the reflection. She thought about Greg, dashing Greg, who had come the closest to doing something to her blood-pressure. He was the image that she had resolutely shoved to the back of her mind for the past year. Not that she had been in love with him, but she could still taste the ashes in her mouth at his scathing comment when they broke up. Frigid, he had informed her, plain and frigid, a woman who should be grateful to be looked at twice. He had been turned on by her intellect and by the contacts she had had in her job, but, he had told her, stripped of those, she was nothing but a plain Jane without the wherewithal to hold a man’s interest. If she had slept with him, or had introduced him to some useful people, or preferably both, then he might have consented to continue seeing her for a while longer, but in the absence of both these prerequisites she was, he had made it clear, not a very desirable option.

She tightened her lips and forced herself to push that unpleasant scene back into the shadows of her mind, where it belonged, as a silent warning to her.

You’re destined to be a career woman, she told herself. Not that she saw anything wrong with that at all.

She loved what she did, and she considered herself lucky. What had been a teenage hobby had blossomed into a fulfilling profession when, at the age of seventeen, she had entered a photography competition and won a fully paid photography course and some impressive equipment, most of which she still relied on. She enjoyed her work and, if Mr Right didn’t happen to bounce along on his white stallion, then it was hardly the end of the world.

Her mother would be disappointed, of course. She baked bread, made jam and had a desperately old-fashioned outlook on the role of women in society. But Christina could cope with that.

No, the closest she imagined she would get to ardour was watching Fiona’s antics from the sidelines.

She thought of Adam and frowned. Why had his image popped into her head just like that, without warning?

Because, she told herself, it was time to go. She gathered her belongings together, tried one last time to tune in to some weather news and failed, and edgily sat down to await the arrival of the taxi, which arrived promptly.

And Adam, she was heartened to see, was also waiting for her at the check-in counter. He had his back to her, chatting to the woman behind the desk, and she stopped for a few seconds to look at him.

He really was aggressively male, she thought with detachment. All broad-shouldered and slim-hipped, which made him look as though he spent hours working out. If she remembered correctly, though, he exercised very little.

Fate had seen fit to endow him with a body that somehow managed to stay perfectly tuned even if he did nothing about it.

She took a deep breath and walked up to the counter, noticing that the woman to whom he had been chatting, an attractive brunette, impeccably made up and with a hairstyle that looked as though each strand of hair had been individually glued into place, was not quite as warm when her attention was directed towards her as she was when it had been directed towards Adam.

‘I hope you haven’t been waiting too long,’ Christina said, turning to Adam with a polite smile.

‘Ten minutes,’ he replied, ‘but don’t worry about it. I haven’t been bored.’

Christina glanced at the brunette, now busily attending to some paperwork, and thought, I’ll bet you haven’t been bored. ‘I wasn’t worried about it,’ she said in a saccharin-sweet voice, ‘and I’m sure you haven’t been bored.’

There was a wicked little smile in his eyes at her tone, even though his face remained serious, and she ignored it.

‘Have you checked us in?’

He nodded and took her by the elbow, an instinctive gesture that made her body tense until she told herself that she was being silly. Again.

The brunette had looked up and was now pouting regretfully at him. She hoped he had a wonderful flight and an enjoyable stay in Scotland. When next he was around, he must promise to come to her counter; she would take some time off and treat him to a cup of coffee.

What a pretty sight, Christina thought, looking at the other woman. Was she as amenable towards all her passengers?

Then she looked at Adam, who was treating the brunette to some of that limitless charm of his, and she tapped her foot impatiently.

‘How subtle you are,’ he drawled as they moved away into the crowds. ‘I’m surprised you didn’t add looking at your watch and yawning to your little foot-tapping routine.’

He guided her effortlessly through the terminal, hardly looking around him at all. It was easy to see that he was a seasoned traveller, but that didn’t come as a surprise to her. He owned and virtually single-handedly ran a massive publishing network, and she knew that he travelled world-wide on business throughout the year.

They glanced up at the departures board and Christina saw with relief that they were due to board the shuttle. At least that would cut down on time spent at the airport terminal.

‘You looked,’ she said, following on from his sarcastic observation, ‘as though you were about to spend the rest of the day chatting to the brunette.’ If not the night, she added uncharitably to herself.

Adam threw her a sidelong glance, which she felt rather than saw, since she steadfastly kept her eyes averted.

‘I was merely killing time, waiting for you, and being polite in the process.’

‘Polite? Oh, so that’s your definition of being polite. Chatting up women.’

‘Don’t you get high-handed with me,’ he said in a hard voice. ‘You may drink your cocoa and go to bed by nine, but please don’t assume that the rest of the world follows suit and that if they don’t they’re somehow debauched.’

Christina reddened. How dared he tell her off as though she were a six-year-old child! She refrained from saying anything, though. She had to survive the next few hours in his company, undiluted, and there was no point in starting off with an argument.

‘How are we going to get from the airport in Glasgow to the cottage?’ she asked stiffly. He had released her arm and was walking in long strides so that she had to half run to keep pace with him.

‘I’ve arranged a car,’ he said tersely. ‘My subsidiary in Glasgow has a stock of company cars. Someone will drop it off and we can drive straight from the airport.’

‘Convenient,’ she murmured. ‘Are you going to be up to the drive? Did you actually go to the office after you left me?’

She was panting a little, which didn’t sound terribly dignified, especially as he was barely exerting himself, and was relieved when they finally reached their gate and slowed down to allow for control checks before they boarded the plane.

There were quite a few people on the flight. Ninety-nine per cent of them were businessmen, clutching their Financial Times and looking harassed.

‘Yes,’ Adam said, ‘in answer to both your questions.’

They passed through and made their way to the plane.

‘So you haven’t slept since...’

‘A while back,’ he finished drily. ‘But you needn’t fear that I’m going to fall asleep at the wheel. I’m quite accustomed to getting very little sleep and functioning adequately on it.’

She could believe that. He didn’t look in the least harassed. If anything, the thick cream jumper, the dark trousers and the jacket slung casually over his arm made him look in the peak of health and fighting fit. He looked, in fact, terrifically well rested. Christina knew that if she had gone for a day and a half without sleep she would resemble one of the living dead.

The flight was short. She sat next to the window, staring outside, and next to her Adam dozed. No doubt he would wake up as refreshed as if he had had eight hours’ sleep.

She wasn’t looking forward to the drive to the cottage. She remembered it from years back as being long and uncomfortable, a network of tiny roads that threatened to taper out into dead ends at any minute. She doubted they would have improved vastly in the intervening years. It was an isolated spot, and isolated spots were not normally earmarked for super road systems.

In fact the bumpy journey at the age of thirteen had been quite a highlight. Now, with just Adam and her own awkward feelings for company, she suspected that that would not be the case.

The company representative was waiting for them as soon as they emerged from the terminal. Christina eyed him drily as he bowed and scraped in front of Adam, showing them to a Range Rover which had been located specifically just in case the weather turned.

‘It won’t,’ Christina assured him. ‘Adam has given instructions that it’s to stay dry.’

The young boy blushed, unsure as to what response this remark called for, and Adam gave her an amused little grin.

‘Now you’ve sent the poor chap away confused as hell,’ he murmured to her as they settled into the car and glided smoothly out of the compound.

‘Have I?’ she responded in an innocent voice, staring through the window at the dreary, wind-blasted scenery flashing past and wishing she was back in London photographing Mrs Molton’s two temperamental corgis. ‘And I thought you really had had a word with higher powers and given instructions for the weather pattern over the next three days. You disappoint me, Adam.’

‘Do I? You don’t disappoint me. You still have the ability to make me laugh even when I’m cold and tired and on a trip which I’d rather not be doing.’

Christina looked at him, surprised. Did he really find her humorous? He had never given any indication of that before.

She didn’t know whether to be flattered or vaguely insulted. Do I really want to be seen as some kind of stand-up comic, she wondered, or would I rather be viewed as someone attractive and sexy?

She frowned, confused that she should even be thinking about Adam Palmer considering her sexy. Sexy, of all things. There was about as much chance of that as of Mrs Molton giving her corgis up for adoption.

Besides, she didn’t care one way or another what he thought of her. Once upon a time she had, but she had since learnt that fairy-tales and reality were poles apart, and that a girl with her lack of looks was destined to forge a career and leave the posing to other, more beautiful models.

‘Let’s hope it’s worth it,’ she replied impassively, ignoring his personal remark and concentrating on getting the conversation on to a safer topic. ‘Fiona can be stubborn and she isn’t going to like being followed around by her big brother.’

‘Which is why you’re here. She values your opinion.’

‘Oh, great,’ Christina muttered with a sigh, ‘as if I’m any authority on relationships.’

‘Aren’t you?’ He gave her a swift sidelong glance. ‘I gathered from my sister that in between the cups of cocoa and the early nights your love-life wasn’t exactly non-existent.’

‘I beg your pardon?’ she gagged, going bright red and swearing to throttle Fiona as soon as she could lay her hands on her. ‘No, don’t repeat your remark. I heard it perfectly well, and I can only say that it’s none of your business.’

‘True,’ he agreed. ‘Call it natural curiosity.’

‘There’s nothing natural about wanting to pry into my private life just for the sake of small talk. And it’s not curiosity, it’s nosiness. I don’t ask you about what you do with those women of yours.’

‘No, you make lots of generalisations instead.’

This was getting out of hand. She reached down and fiddled with the dials on the radio until she tuned in to one of the local channels.

‘Is that a hint?’

‘No,’ she said with heavy sarcasm, ‘I’m genuinely interested in the farming news.’

She pursed her lips and looked out of the window, and next to her she could feel him grinning like a damned Cheshire cat and she wanted to hit him. Hard.

Two more hours, she thought with a groan, two more hours before we get there.