by Penny Jordan
‘I can’t let you leave,’ Daniel had protested the previous night after supper as she lay curled up on the settee beside him watching a television documentary. ‘I want you here with me for always, Christa…’
‘I have to go,’ she had told him. ‘There’s my work…and the house…’
‘You can work from here,’ Daniel had told her, shaking his head as he saw her expression. ‘All right, I know. You need time. Perhaps I shouldn’t have been so careful about ensuring that you didn’t conceive these last few nights and instead…’
‘Oh, Daniel,’ Christa had protested, ‘it isn’t that I don’t want to stay with you!’
‘Just that you aren’t ready to commit yourself to marriage with me yet,’ he had suggested.
‘It’s such a big step to take. I know I love you…but the life you lead here…your work…’ She paused, shaking her head, not wanting to hurt him but compelled to be honest. ‘I know how deeply you feel about what you’re doing here, Daniel. But I’m not sure I can feel the same way…be so committed…’
‘I’m not asking you to be,’ had been his surprising response. ‘After all, you don’t expect me to get excited over a new fabric pattern, do you? I don’t want to change you, Chnsta. That isn’t what loving someone is all about…’
‘But when I came here you said you would change the way I felt,’ Christa reminded him. ‘I do feel different, Daniel, in that I accept that your belief in what you’re doing is genuine and heartfelt, but…’
‘But part of you still doesn’t wholly trust me,’ Daniel had concluded for her sadly.
‘No. It isn’t that,’ Christa had denied. ‘Of course I trust you…How could I not, after what you did…after the way we’ve been together? No, it isn’t you I don’t trust, Daniel…it’s just that I can’t…’
‘You can’t quite let go of the past,’ Daniel finished for her. ‘You can’t quite let go of your fear that I might turn out to be like your friend’s husband. Christa, dishonesty is something that comes from within the person themselves; it isn’t a product of the way they earn their living.’
‘No. But—’
‘But what? There are certain stereotypes that must always be true…?’
Christa had shaken her head, unable to say anything. They hadn’t actively quarrelled, but that night the shadow of what had been said had lain between them in bed, and even though Daniel had made love to her with his normal passion and intensity, she had been conscious of a slight withdrawal in him, and within herself a small painful sense of something having been lost.
‘I’ve got to go,’ she reiterated now. ‘I’m due to fly out to Pakistan the day I go back. I’ve got meetings planned that I can’t cancel…’ She closed her eyes and told him achingly, ‘Oh, Daniel, I’m going to miss you so much. I want to be here with you, I want it more than anything else in the world…’
‘But… he finished for her. Sadly Christa watched him.
‘We don’t have to rush things,’ she told him, half pleadingly.
‘No, we don’t have to,’ Daniel agreed, ‘and yes, there are a hundred or more good reasons why we should be sensible and take things slowly, but that isn’t what all this is about, is it?
‘You’re still holding back from me, Christa. From us…’
‘No, that isn’t true,’ she denied, but she knew that it was.
It wasn’t that she didn’t love him—far from it. It wasn’t even, any more, that she didn’t trust him, not, at least, in the sense of knowing that he would never hurt her, that he would always put her emotional and physical safety first.
But there was still, deep within her, a sense of wariness about the centre and about his work. If she was honest with herself, if he had still been working as a lecturer…But it was the man she loved, she told herself insistently, not what he did.
When Daniel talked with passion and enthusiasm about his future plans, about the benefits of what he was trying to do, all she could see was the other side of the coin, the false hopes and vain, glorious boasts Piers had made, the people he had hurt.
It wasn’t that she didn’t want to be with Daniel. She did, desperately so, but at the same time she was afraid; afraid that it just wasn’t possible for him to be as wonderful as he seemed; that he must have a hidden flaw which would destroy her happiness.
She was still afraid, she acknowledged, afraid of committing herself to him, afraid of being hurt.
‘I wish I weren’t going to Pakistan,’ she said contradictorily now. ‘I’m going to miss you so much…’
Daniel smiled gently at her as he kissed her, but he didn’t suggest that she cancel her trip.
‘It will only be for three weeks,’ he said instead.
Three weeks. Christa closed her eyes. Right now, if he was out of her sight for three hours she started suffering from withdrawal symptoms.
When she and Daniel were together like this, locked in the intimate privacy of their own special world, nothing else seemed to matter. It seemed impossible for anything to come between them.
‘Loving one another doesn’t mean that we have to feel exactly the same about every single issue, you know,’ Daniel told her gently now. ‘We’re human beings. There are bound to be times when we think and feel differently about things.’
‘Some things,’ Christa agreed. ‘I just wish…’
She stopped. What did she wish? That things were different? That Daniel were different? No, never that.
‘I just need time, Daniel,’ she told him. ‘Everything’s happened so quickly.’ But she couldn’t quite bring herself to meet his eyes, and when he kissed her she could sense the pain she was causing him.
In three days’ time her course would be over and she would be going back to her own life; by this time next week she would be in Pakistan negotiating with her suppliers, bartering with them over the cost and terms of next year’s fabrics.
At some point before she left, Daniel was going to ask her if her time here with him had wrought the lifetransforming miracle he had promised. What could she say to him? That her love for him had certainly transformed her, but that she remained as unconvinced as ever that his courses offered anything more than some escapist game-playing for those involved in them?
As she blinked back hot tears she turned to him, wrapping her arms around him as tightly as she could while she closed her eyes on her pain.
The skin of his back felt silky-warm against her palms, its texture, like the shape of his body, the smell of his skin, the sounds he made when he loved her, the way he moved, everything about him, having become heartwrenchingly familiar to her during this last precious week.
Familiarity, far from decreasing the intensity of her love and desire, had only fed it, so that now merely the act of running her fingertips caressingly down his spine was enough to stir her body into quick arousal.
When she kissed him, tracing the hard line of his collarbone, she heard him moan softly under his breath, his hands sliding up over her body, cupping her breasts gently, caressing her already hard nipples. When he gathered her up against him, slowly drawing her nipple into his mouth, bathing it in the moist caressing heat that instantaneously turned her bones to liquid, his hands slid to her thighs, stroking the shaping of the firm outer flesh and then more urgently stroking her soft inner skin.
Her body was already eager and waiting for him, her quick moans of pleasure joining the other sounds of their lovemaking; the silken stroke of skin against skin, the slow suckle of Daniel’s mouth, the urgency of the low groan of pleasure he gave when she touched him intimately, closing her fingers around his flesh and caressing him, not just with desire, but with tenderness and love as well. He was so vulnerable to her when he was like this, so much in need, the words he whispered to her, as well as the movement of his body, openly showing the depth and intensity of his love for her.
The feel and sight of his maleness fascinated her. This degree of intimacy with a man was unfamiliar to her, and something about the way he
watched her when she looked at him and touched him made her feel a soft, aching tenderness for him that deepened her love.
Now, as she lifted her head to caress him lovingly with her lips, it wasn’t just desire that motivated her but a need to show him how much he meant to her. The fulfilment of every male fantasy, she acknowledged drily: woman worshipping at the fount of man’s most essential maleness; only she knew that Daniel would never misinterpret so insensitively what she was doing. He simply wasn’t that sort of man. Fresh tears filled her eyes. Why couldn’t she banish that small, final shadow of doubt? Why couldn’t she simply accept his choice of the way he earned his living instead of—?
As her tears dampened his thigh, Daniel reached down for her, lifting her against his body, cupping her face as he looked down into her sad eyes.
‘Oh, Christa,’ he groaned. ‘You don’t know how tempted I am to make it impossible for you ever to leave me. To keep you here…’
‘How?’ Christa asked him. ‘Barefoot and pregnant…’ She tried to smile, to make the words light and teasing, but her voice wobbled dangerously and she saw from Daniel’s expression that he was not deceived.
‘Don’t tempt me,’ he warned her rawly. ‘Don’t tempt me…’
And perhaps the saddest thing of all, Christa acknowledged an hour later as she lay drowsily in his arms, was that a part of her almost wished that he would take the initiative from her and make her stay; that he would make for her the decision which she could not make for herself.
* * *
Christa frowned as she heard someone ringing her front doorbell. She had only returned home a couple of hours ago, and after dropping her off and seeing her safely inside Daniel had announced that he had a business appointment with the head of the town’s Chamber of Commerce.
‘But I’ll be back as soon as I can,’ he had told her. ‘We still have to say goodbye properly…’
Christa had flushed a little, wondering how both of them were going to fit in her small single bed and at the same time wishing that it were possible for Daniel to stay the night with her, and that she didn’t have to leave so quickly for her early evening flight to Pakistan.
‘You’ll get in touch with me…when I come back…?’ she had asked him shakily, dreading now the moment of parting.
‘I’ll be waiting on the doorstep for you,’ Daniel had told her.
Her pulse-rate quickened expectantly as she rushed to open the door, but it wasn’t Daniel who was standing outside, it was Paul Thompson.
As Christa stared at him, he smiled his wide shark’s smile at her, his small eyes flickering over her body. He really was loathsome, Christa decided; how he managed to be able to claim so many sexual conquests she really had no idea.
‘I heard you were back,’ he told her, walking into the hallway before she could stop him. ‘Your new friend is down at the Town Hall now.’ He shook his head in mock sadness. ‘I really am disappointed in you, Christa. You’ve never struck me as the kind of woman who’d be stupid enough to fall for a man like that. He’s already telling everyone that your retraction is as good as in the bag. Good in bed, was he? He must have been, I suppose…Pity. If I’d known what you were looking for, I would have obliged myself,’ he added insultingly. ‘He’s made a real fool of you, you know, Christa,’ he told her tauntingly. ‘They’ll be sniggering over your downfall at the next chamber meeting once they find out how easily he conned you into his bed. It’s the oldest trick in the book, you know.’
Paul Thompson had left the front door open and out of the corner of her eye Christa saw the Land Rover pull up outside and Daniel get out.
Relief flooded through her, melting the icy coldness of the shock which had paralysed her as she listened to Paul Thompson’s venomous comments.
‘He’s made it obvious to everyone that you and he were lovers,’ Paul continued sneeringly, ‘and so it’s no secret how he got you to change your mind. You do know why he did it, don’t you? There’s a nice fat contract in it for him—profit along with pleasure…now that’s what I call an astute businessman.
‘You should have questioned him a bit more closely, Christa, instead of being stupid enough to trust him,’ Paul was telling her tauntingly, oblivious to Daniel’s silent presence behind him.
‘I don’t…’ Christa began angrily, and then stopped as Paul sensed Daniel’s presence behind him and turned round.
He had enjoyed bullying and tormenting her, but he was nothing like so brave when confronted with Daniel, Christa recognised as she watched him gaping at Daniel before scuttling and half running past him in his urgency to escape.
‘He came to tell me…’ Christa began, but Daniel cut her off, saying curtly,
‘I heard what he came to tell you.’
Reaction was beginning to set in, Christa recognised, as her body started to shake. Her lips were trembling so much she had to clamp them shut, but along with her shock and disgust at what Paul Thompson had been saying there was also a heady, almost buoyant sense of relief…of release. Because when she had been listening to the venom and spite spewing from Paul Thompson’s mouth, she had suddenly known, indubitably and unequivocally, that there was no way that Daniel would ever have said any of the things Paul had taken such enjoyment in repeating to her.
How Paul knew about their relationship she had no idea, but what she did know was that Daniel, her Daniel, would never, in any circumstances, -boast about using any kind of underhand means to achieve any kind of objective—not with her…not with anyone, because he simply wasn’t capable of that kind of behaviour.
I don’t believe you—that was what she had been about to tell him, that was what she had known and felt.
‘Daniel…’
She turned towards him to tell him what she had discovered, how she had felt, but he ignored her, his mouth hard and compressed as he told her bitterly, ‘Nothing’s really changed, has it? You still won’t let go of those barriers of yours. You still, deep down inside that cold little heart of yours, want to reject me. Well, for your information, everything he told you was a pack of lies. I did tell the head of the Chamber of Commerce about our…relationship, but purely because I felt I owed it to him to explain why I had to withdraw from the promise I had made him with regard to changing your mind about the centre’s work; but that was all I told him.
‘But you needn’t worry, Christa. I understand how important this need of yours to distrust me is…How very, very much more important than…anything I can give you.
‘When I told you that for me trust is one of the most important cornerstones of any worthwhile relationship, that was exactly what I meant. You don’t trust me, Christa, and I doubt that you ever will.’
He turned away from her and walked back through the still open door.
‘Daniel,’ Christa protested when she realised that he was actually going to walk away from her…that he was leaving her. But it was too late, he was already halfway to the Land Rover, quickly outstripping her as she ran to catch up with him, firing the vehicle’s engine and driving off without even giving her a backward glance. Leaving her standing alone on the pavement, too shocked to cry. She was beyond that…beyond everything, blessedly anaesthetised from the pain she knew was to come by the enormity of what had happened.
She tried to find him, ringing round every hotel in town and finally, in desperation, the head of the Chamber of Commerce at home. But no one knew where he was.
Three hours later, white-faced with pain and grief, she rang the farmhouse from the airport, clinging desperately to the receiver as she prayed for him to answer.
They were already calling her flight. She ached not to have to go, but the discipline instilled in her by her aunt was too strong for her to ignore.
She would ring him from Karachi. Talk to him…Explain…
CHAPTER NINE
CHRISTA’S flight arrived late in Karachi and the monsoon had arrived early. She had to fight her way past other travellers, porters and baggage, and then wait twent
y minutes in a queue to use the phone—all in vain; there was no reply from Daniel’s number.
Fighting back the tears threatening to overwhelm her, she went outside to hail a cab.
The hotel was the one she always used when she visited Karachi, but, despite the fact that she had confirmation of her booking, she discovered that they did not have a room for her.
‘I am so sorry,’ the pretty receptionist apologised sincerely, ‘but we have a big party here from one of the Gulf states and they have taken over the whole floor. I can ring round and see if I can get you a room elsewhere, if you wish.’
Wearily, Christa nodded her head. Half an hour later the girl confirmed that she had found her a room—at a hotel she had never heard of on the other side of the city.
When she finally reached it she discovered that the hotel was considerably older than the one she had originally booked into, with no fax facilities and no telephone in her room.
Hyped up on emotional stress and jet-lag, Christa paced her bedroom floor, mentally composing a letter to send to Daniel, closing her eyes on a small sob of anguish when she acknowledged that all she wanted to say to him needed to be said in person.
She couldn’t blame him for reacting the way he had, but if only he had stopped and let her explain that he had jumped to the wrong conclusion and that, far from giving any credence to what Paul Thompson had told her, she had been about to tell the other man that she knew that there was no way that Daniel would ever have behaved in such a way.
Her rejection of Paul’s allegations had been instinctive and immediate; it hadn’t required thought or consideration.
So why, oh, why, when she had known so immediately and instinctively that Paul Thompson was lying, had she not been able to give Daniel the complete trust she knew he had wanted before?
Why had she held on so tightly to her stubborn dislike of his chosen way of life? Dislike—or jealousy?
She stopped her pacing and stared unseeingly at the wall.
When she had originally lost her parents and been given a home with her great-aunt, the latter had explained to her that she had a business to run and that Christa must understand how important that business was.
