The Trusting Game (Presents Plus)

by Penny Jordan

  ‘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…’

  ‘No. No way,’ Christa reiterated with angry vehemence.

  ‘I promise you, there really is nothing to fear,’ Daniel repeated. ‘I am a fully qualified instructor and…’

  ‘I don’t damn well care how qualified you are,’ Christa told him fiercely. ‘I am not going canoeing.’

  ‘It’s an important part of the course; without it…However, if you’ve changed your mind and you no longer want to go through with the course…’

  Wild-eyed with fury, Christa glared at him. She didn’t trust herself to speak. If she did…He was trying to trick her, to trap her into giving up, backing down and letting him win by default.

  ‘I hope for your sake you’re well insured,’ she told him through gritted teeth.

  ‘Very,’ he confirmed. ‘But, if it’s any comfort to you, we haven’t drowned a pupil yet.’

  ‘One bruise… just one bruise…’ Christa threatened him, ignoring the laughter she could see gleaming in his eyes.

  ‘If canoeing is really a problem for you…’ she heard Daniel saying, the laughter gone, his voice once again holding that deep male note of concern which made her feel as though somehow her heart had a huge bruise against it.

  ‘You’re my problem,’ she told him bitterly. ‘You and this whole money-making charade you’re running here.’

  ‘Charade!’ Now he was angry, Christa recognised, willing herself not to cringe back into her chair as he got up and came towards her, his expression mirroring the anger she could see in his eyes. ‘This is no charade. On the contrary, it’s something I take extremely seriously.’

  ‘Seriously?’ Christa interrupted him scathingly. ‘You call sitting round in a circle empathising with one another serious…climbing mountains and paddling canoes…? Oh, and by the way, when exactly does it take place, this trial by water?’

  ‘Most people find it a rather enjoyable experience; however, if you really are afraid, we could…’

  ‘I am not afraid,’ Christa denied through gritted teeth. ‘I simply don’t see the point.’

  ‘You’re lying, Christa, you are afraid,’ Daniel told her quietly.

  ‘Not of the canoeing,’ she shot back fiercely.

  ‘No. Then, what? I wonder. Being proved wrong, perhaps?’ He was angry, Christa recognised, despite that quiet voice and his apparent calm. ‘No,’ she told him spiritedly, ‘because I shan’t be proved wrong. There’s no way you can make me change my mind about what you claim you’re achieving here.’ Or about you, she could have added, but the words stuck in her throat, the triumph of having goaded him into anger for some reason tasting sour on her tongue instead of sweet.

  ‘This whole thing…these…these discussions…these walks, this canoeing,’ she told him fiercely. ‘They’re all just a waste of time…’

  ‘No,’ he corrected her, walking away from her to stand by the chair he had just vacated. ‘They’re not. They are, in fact, an excellent way of fostering trust and mutual reliance.’

  ‘Fostering.’ Christa stopped him, her eyebrows rising tauntingly. ‘Trust is something that either exists between people or doesn’t.’

  ‘Yes, I agree, but sometimes for one reason or another we lose, or even deliberately block out, our ability to trust others, and when that happens it needs to be encouraged to grow and thrive, to be fostered…’

  ‘Or forced?’ Christa suggested mock-sweetly, adding with a small shrug, ‘Anyway, since I’m here on my own, there doesn’t seem to be any point in focusing on that particular aspect of your course, does there? There isn’t anyone here for me to learn to trust…’

  ‘Yes, there is,’ Daniel told her. ‘There’s me…’

  ‘You?’ Abruptly Christa pushed her soup bowl away. ‘You expect me to learn to trust you? Never…That would take a miracle…’

  ‘They have been known to happen,’ he reminded her mildly, after a small
silence.

  ‘Not this time,’ Christa assured him vehemently. ‘Wait and see!’

  ‘Besides, learning to trust and to be trusted is an integral part of our course. To know that we can put trust in others and to know that they feel they can trust us increases people’s self-esteem—and in a far more positive and valuable way than the often very lonely self-esteem that comes from professional or financial success.

  ‘It’s good to know that our work is valued and well rewarded, but it’s even better to know that we ourselves are valued for ourselves.’

  Christa listened to his speech with wary cynicism. He was good, she had to give him that; that earnest expression, the way he sat slightly forward towards her, the enthusiasm and conviction in his voice. Oh, yes, he was very good, and she could well understand the appeal such a speech would have to battle-scarred careerists.

  ‘I’m sorry, I’m getting carried away with my own enthusiasm,’ he apologised, giving her a rueful smile. ‘That’s the worst of being a convert to your own beliefs.’

  ‘It sounds almost idyllic,’ Christa told him coolly. ‘But man cannot live by self-esteem alone.’

  ‘Maybe not, but he certainly can’t live without it,’ Daniel shot back. ‘That’s been proved over and over again by any number of studies. Take away a human being’s self-esteem and you turn life into what is merely existence.’

  ‘You make it sound as though boosting people’s self-esteem is some kind of instant “cure-all” for all their ills,’ Christa told him.

  She made her comment mockingly sarcastic, but to her surprise, instead of retaliating to her taunt, Daniel merely said quietly, ‘In many ways I believe it is.

  ‘When I was fifteen my father was made redundant; three months later he killed himself. He was forty-three and he couldn’t bear the shame of losing his job. The fact that we loved him, that he was a valued and valuable part of our local community, the fact that we needed him, simply wasn’t enough.’