From a distance she could hear Daniel telling her curtly, ‘Has it occurred to you that those same adjectives could quite easily be used to describe you, Christa? Christa!’
She could hear the way his voice changed, concern replacing contempt, but the sound seemed to reach her from a long way away, and the feeling of being scooped up in his arms, instead of arousing fresh anger, rather oddly filled her with a delicious sense of warmth and comfort.
Her dunking in the lake had obviously affected her far more than she had realised, she acknowledged five minutes later, as she stood unprotesting and unfamiliarly docile beneath the blessedly warm spray of one of the boat-house showers, while Daniel stood there with her, quickly peeling off her wetsuit.
‘It’s all right, Christa, you’re going to be fine. You’re in shock that’s all,’ she heard him telling her as he turned off the warm water and wrapped her in a big towel. But it had been his eyes that had darkened before he’d looked firmly away from her naked body, his hands that had trembled briefly when he had touched her.
And, beneath the shock that was still making her teeth chatter and her body tremble, Christa was aware of a small surge of feminine triumph in the knowledge that the sight of her naked body had affected him—so much so that, as a man, he had been almost afraid to look at her or touch her, that she was not the only one to feel unawakened desire, even if he’d very quickly cloaked his desire in clinical detachment.
Just as soon as he had assured himself that she was not in any real danger from her shock, he had left her to dress herself while he too got changed. But if, instead of going, he had looked at her a second time, touched her…It had shocked her to feel that very betraying shock of sensation that ran through her body, especially when, mentally and emotionally, she was still so furiously angry with him.
Half an hour later, as she sat beside him while he drove the Land Rover back to the farm, she was still just as angry—with herself as well as with him. Why had she panicked like that, giving him the opportunity to…to what? To make her feel even more wary of the physical effect he had on her?
‘How are you feeling now?’
‘Fine—no thanks to you,’ she told him pithily, adding furiously as her anger overwhelmed her, ‘God knows what you were trying to prove, but…’
‘I wasn’t trying to prove anything,’ he cut in tersely.
Christa could see the anger in his eyes as well as hear it in his voice, but instead of feeling pleased that she had breached his professional detachment there was an oddly painful lump in her throat.
‘I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone so stubbornly determined to hang on to their prejudices as you, Christa. What is it that you’re really afraid of?’
‘The fact that you can’t make me change my mind or my opinions doesn’t mean I’m afraid. Far from it,’ Christa told him fiercely, but she knew that she wasn’t being entirely honest, and she couldn’t sustain the long, level eye-contact he was making with her.
As she turned her head away from him she could feel her colour starting to rise slightly.
‘What were you expecting, anyway?’ she demanded aggressively, to cover her vulnerability. ‘That that little sermon you delivered out there on the lake would make me fling myself into your arms and declare my undying trust in you?’
Even as she spoke she knew she had gone too far, betrayed far more than was wise with that foolish comment about flinging herself into his arms, taken the situation into intensely personal realms which Daniel, as a professional, couldn’t fail to interpret correctly, despite the scorn she had injected into her voice.
‘Nothing quite so theatrical,’ she heard him telling her grittily. ‘A simple open-minded willingness to listen without pre-judging, that was all I wanted from you, Christa, but of course I might just as well have asked for the moon, mightn’t I?’ he concluded bitterly, braking with such force as he swung the Land Rover round a tight bend that Christa was thrown heavily against him.
The scent of his skin, clean and faintly soapy, made her stomach lurch with such intensity that she had to dig her nails into the palms of her hands to prevent herself from crying out in shock.
How could she be so physically and sensuously responsive to him?
It was a question that continued to torment her for the rest of the day, and her secret, silent worrying at it caused Daniel to frown as he watched her.
Her dunking in the lake had not been planned, but theoretically, once over the initial shock of it, she was physically and mentally strong enough to throw off the effects very quickly, her recovery aided by the intensity of her fury against him. But, instead of verbally castigating him now, as he had expected, she had become very quiet and withdrawn.
‘Christa…Are you sure you’re feeling OK…?’
‘What’s wrong?’ she asked him sourly. ‘Afraid that I might die of pneumonia or something?’
Her speedy verbal retaliation reassured him, causing his eyes to gleam slightly with amusement as he told her dulcetly, ‘I know how determined you are to discredit the work I’m doing here, but somehow I doubt that even you would want to go to quite those lengths…’
‘Don’t bet on it,’ Christa told him childishly, darkly. ‘It might almost be worth it.’
* * *
‘What is it—what’s wrong?’
Christa tensed as Daniel broke off in the middle of explaining his theories and teaching methods to her to pose the concerned question.
They were in his study, a warm, cheerful room decorated in rich terracottas and soft greens; bookshelves crammed with books covering a fascinatingly wide range of subjects filled the walls; a fire burned warmly in the grate, and everything about the room and its decor encouraged relaxation. But relaxing was the last thing Christa felt able to do. Not when Daniel had just returned from feeding the fire not to his chair but to her side, as she sat at the desk, studying the papers he had given her.
Now as he leaned over her, one hand on the back of her chair, the other on the desk only inches away from her own, she was conscious of the heat rising up through her body, and with it the panic that sent her heartbeat into overdrive and made the blood roar dizzily in her ears.
She was so acutely conscious of him that she could actually smell him—not the faint sharp tang of the cold mountain air he had brought in with him when he went out for some logs, but him.
The knowledge that she was conscious of him so intimately made the flush burning her skin deepen and her body start to tremble.
Not even then was the runaway panic of her denial strong enough to suppress the jumble of rapid-fire mental images flashing across her brain: Daniel holding her in his arms, Daniel, his body naked as he touched her and caressed her. Daniel filmed slightly with sweat, the totally male scent of his desire and arousal flooding her responsive senses with messages her body ached to reciprocate.
‘Christa, what is it? Your face is burning up…’
Christa wasn’t sure which of them was the more shocked at the way she cried out and visibly cringed away from his touch as he reached out to touch her skin.
‘I’m all right…It’s nothing. It’s just hot in here,’ she fibbed. ‘I…I was standing by the fire while you were out,’ she added equally untruthfully, holding her breath nervously in case he challenged her lie, but fortunately he seemed to accept it, although he was still frowning.
‘For a woman who has made her views on what we’re trying to do here extremely plain, so far you’ve been surprisingly unargumentative,’ he told her wryly.
‘Not because I’ve changed my mind,’ Christa assured him; she was on safer ground here…much safer. ‘In theory what you’re saying sounds good,’ she acknowledged, adding with a slightly cynical twist to her lips, ‘Very high-minded and altruistic.’
‘But you don’t accept that they are,’ Daniel replied for her.
He was watching her intently—too intently, Christa acknowledged. She waited for her answer, but there was no sign that anything she
had said had disturbed him, she admitted—far from it.
‘Why?’ he challenged her.
‘Why?’ Christa repeated almost stupidly, her thoughts wandering from the subject under discussion to her own vulnerability towards him and the problems it was causing her. Not the least of which was the funny ache in the region of her heart and the awful compulsion to reach out and touch him which seemed to have gripped her.
Was it possible for something to happen to a person so that their behaviour and emotions were completely the opposite of what they wanted them to be?
Yes, and it was called insanity, she told herself starkly, hastily collecting her thoughts as she realised that Daniel was still waiting for her response.
‘Yes, why don’t you accept that my motives are altruistic?’
‘Well, there are the fees you charge to attend your courses for a start,’ Christa told him drily. ‘They are hardly altruistic, are they?’
‘Perhaps not, but they are a fair reflection of what it costs to run a venture like this, to provide the highly skilled and professional tuition that is necessary.’