‘Because that isn’t the way things are done around here,’ Daniel told her. ‘People round here are self-sufficient and proud of it. They’ve had to be, but in Meg’s case…Well, the vegetables she grows don’t bring her in much of an income and she’s the kind who’s too proud to ask anyone else for help.’
‘But she could have been killed,’ Christa protested as she tried to imagine herself even thinking of attempting to do a similar repair on her own roof.
‘We’ll park here,’ Daniel told her, turning into a side street. ‘The sports shop is only a few yards away…’
‘I’m not completely helpless,’ Christa told him acerbically. ‘I can manage to walk the length of a couple of streets.’
‘It’s a cold day, and the wind is very sharp. You aren’t dressed for that kind of weather,’ Daniel told her. ‘Not that you don’t look good,’ he added softly. ‘Very good. That colour suits you…Armani, is it?’ he added, indicating her suit.
Christa was surprised. The pale biscuit-coloured trouser suit was one of her favourites and it suited her, she knew, but somehow she hadn’t expected Daniel to recognise its source.
‘Yes, it is,’ she admitted ruefully.
She was tempted to quiz him about how he was able to recognise and name the designer, but something held her back.
Why? Because she suspected…feared that it was the kind of knowledge which could only have come to him via an intimate relationship with another woman?
Piers had been very well up on all the current top designers; when he and Laura had first met he had insisted on her completely changing her image.
‘He says I should only wear natural fabrics, silk and cashmere,’ she had told Christa, pink-cheeked as she confessed, ‘He says there’s nothing more sensual than the touch of silk against a woman’s skin.’
He had also been responsible for Laura having her untidy, mousy hair restyled and streaked at a top London hairdressers, and for the make-up lessons which had followed.
But none of that had apparently been enough to turn her into the woman he wanted, and it certainly hadn’t stopped him from having affairs once they were married.
‘Come back,’ Daniel commanded quietly. ‘No, I’m not going to ask,’ he added, when she looked warily at him. ‘When you want me to know, you’ll tell me…I hope. You see, Christa, I’m not like you. I do have faith…and trust…’
Christa opened her mouth to deny his comment and then closed it again.
If only it were so easy, she reflected forlornly as Daniel climbed out of the Land Rover and came round to open her door for her, helping her out into the street.
The sports shop was a large, cheerful place, full of brightly coloured equipment and healthy-looking, smiling individuals. One of them, a girl, was demonstrating a step exercise to a slightly nervous-looking woman with two young children. Another, a young man whose muscles rippled impressively beneath his T-shirt, was walking towards them.
Christa listened silently as Daniel explained what she wanted. She was half expecting to be loaded down with thick, heavy clothing in dull colours, but the lightweight weatherproof jacket the young man produced was zingingly bright, a sharp acid yellow.
‘It’s a colour which can be picked out easily from the sky—a big help when it comes to mountain rescue,’ Daniel told her.
Christa grimaced, thankful that that was one consideration she did not need to worry about.
Half an hour later, when they left the shop, she had bought the jacket, a pair of surprisingly fashionable protective leggings, socks, clothes, thermal underwear and, of course, boots.
‘Right, now that we’ve got you kitted out, first thing tomorrow morning you and I are going for a walk…’
Daniel grinned at her when Christa groaned.
‘Ah, there you are, Daniel…’
Both of them stopped as the old woman they had seen earlier walked towards them.
‘Just wanted to thank you for what you did,’ she said with a gruff shyness, ignoring Christa. ‘Not that there was any need, mind. I could have managed that roof by myself…Alan Jones said there was to be no bill,’ she added, giving Daniel a sharp look. ‘I don’t like being indebted to people…’
‘One good turn deserves another, Meg,’ Daniel replied easily.
‘Maybe, but I haven’t done you any good turns…’
‘Not yet,’ Daniel agreed. ‘But I’m hoping that you will. It’s that billy of mine; he’s getting lonely. You keep goats…’
‘You want me to take him off your hands? Well, I could do, I suppose…’ Meg agreed. ‘But I don’t want charity…not even from you. I don’t want others paying my way for me. I can’t take him until the end of the month and you’ll have to bring him over.’
‘Done,’ Daniel agreed with a smile. ‘The end of the month it is.’
‘You’re getting rid of Clarence?’ Christa asked him when Meg had gone. As she waited for his response she was still digesting the content of their dialogue. It was plain that Daniel had paid for Meg’s roof to be repaired.
There was just no way that Piers, or indeed Daniel himself, if he had been the kind of man she had suspected him of being, would ever have undertaken such a generous act.
She could feel an odd sensation of warmth growing inside her body, an easing, a relaxing, a melting almost of some icy coldness which had previously gripped it; a feeling of relief, glorious, heady, empowering… freeing…spread through her, making her want to smile, making her want to laugh and sing, to run, to—
’I think it’s perhaps time he had a new home,’ Daniel was saying in response to her question. ‘He needs the company, and besides…’
‘Besides what?’ Christa teased him boldly, her eyes suddenly sparkling, warmth colouring her face.
‘Besides, I can’t have him frightening you half to death and getting you in such a state that you throw yourself into my arms,’ Daniel told her softly. His eyes, she noticed breathlessly, seemed to develop an almost luminescent quality when he was happy—and aroused.
‘I did not throw myself into your arms…’ she told him in mock indignation.
‘Maybe not,’ he murmured. ‘But that’s exactly where you’re going to end up any second now if you keep on looking at me like that. You do know what you’re doing to me, don’t you?’
‘Yes,’ Christa told him shakily, suddenly filled with reckless happiness.
She reached out and touched his arm, marvelling at the way even her lightest touch could affect him.
‘Let’s not wait, Daniel,’ she told him huskily. ‘I don’t want to…not any more, a
nd…and I don’t think I can,’ she admitted honestly.
He went so still that for a moment she thought she had said the wrong thing. The brilliance and clarity of her joy started to dim, her face flushing as she looked away from him, her voice taut with misery as she told him, ‘I’m sorry…I shouldn’t…’
‘What? Tell me that you want me? Is that what you really think?’
She tensed as he took hold of her, swinging her round into the protection of a boarded-up doorway.
‘Do you know what what you’ve just said has done to me? Do you know how it makes me feel to hear you saying something like that? Do you know how much I’m aching for you right now…how easily I could push you up against this door and…?’
The small shocked sound she made stopped him.
‘I’m sorry,’ he apologised, shaking his head. ‘It’s just…Well, last night I felt that I was the one doing all the wanting, all the feeling, all the needing. You seemed to have put up a barrier against me which I just couldn’t get through.’
‘I was afraid,’ Christa admitted. She had started to tremble so much that it was impossible for Daniel not to know…not the way he was holding her.
‘Oh, God,’ he groaned. ‘If you and I were alone right now…Perhaps it’s just as well we aren’t,’ he added rawly as he looked at her mouth and then into her eyes. ‘They serve a pretty good lunch at the Bell. Why don’t I take you there and then you can order lunch for both of us while I go and do some shopping?’
Christa couldn’t help it. Despite the fact that she was an adult woman who was well travelled and reasonably sophisticated, reasonably mature, she could feel her whole body flushing.