‘Christa…’
‘I’ll go and get my stuff on,’ she told him stonily, ignoring him.
Half an hour later, when she came back downstairs, her heart felt even heavier than the boots on her feet. Much, much heavier.
Alongside her anger and bitterness ran a frightening thread of panic and pain. Despite what she now knew about him, a part of her was terrified that she might not be strong enough to do what she knew she had to do; that her emotions, her love, might defeat and betray her. She couldn’t look at Daniel without remembering how it had felt to be held in his arms, without a part of her still achingly wanting to be there, to ignore the truth and make believe that he hadn’t lied to her, had meant all those things he had said to her.
She was afraid of her own vulnerability, she recognised, as she turned away to avoid meeting the questioning, frowning scrutiny Daniel was giving her.
‘Come over here and sit down,’ he commanded, catching her off guard and gently pushing her down into a chair before she could resist.
When he knelt on the floor at her feet, for one heart-stopping moment she thought he was actually going to throw himself on her mercy and beg for her forgiveness, and, as she looked down at his dark, downbent head and the unexpected vulnerability of his exposed nape, she ached with love and longing for him.
His hands were encircling her ankle, moving her foot within her new boot.
‘These laces aren’t fastened quite tightly enough,’ he told her.
Her boots…He was checking up to see if she had fastened her boots properly. A semi-hysterical bubble of mock laughter forced its way into her throat at the contrast between the prosaic reality of his intentions and her fantasy imaginings.
‘And you mustn’t leave the laces trailing like that,’ he added, deftly untying them and tightening them before quickly re-tying them for her. ‘You could trip over them and fall.’
‘Thank you.’ Christa spat the words out as though they were grit. As Daniel lifted his head to look at her she could see the questioning scrutiny in his eyes, but she refused to respond to it. Why the hell didn’t he take his damned hands away from her body?
If he kept on holding her ankle in that ridiculously theatrical pseudo-loverlike grip, stroking his thumb against the inside of her ankle as though he just couldn’t resist the need to touch her, she was going to have to tell him exactly what she thought of him. Either that, or…She just managed to suppress her small betraying gasp as her body responded treacherously to him, quivering shocks of pleasure making her tremble so openly that she had to jerk herself free of his constraining grip.
* * *
As they left the farm and headed for the track which led up into the mountains, Christa tried not to think about how things might have been if only they had not been interrupted. Would they have still been doing this this morning, or would they still be in bed together, their bodies entwined in sensual warmth?
‘Are you sure you’re all right?’ Daniel asked her, turning round to wait for her to catch up with him. ‘Earlier you looked pale; now you look very flushed.’
‘I’m fine,’ Christa lied for the second time.
* * *
To the untrained eye—her eye, Christa admitted unwillingly—the path Daniel had taken climbed slowly and easily up the lower slopes of the mountainside, but her body, and in particular her legs, had a different opinion. She was not a fitness fanatic but she had always enjoyed walking and did so regularly, often choosing to do so in preference to using her car. Her kind of walking, though, bore no resemblance to what she was doing now. It wasn’t just her anger and pain that were responsible for her monosyllabic responses to Daniel’s easy conversation.
Not only were her legs aching; her lungs were beginning to feel the strain as well.
A surreptitious glance at her watch told her that they had only been walking for a couple of hours and that it was barely eleven o’clock. Daniel had said they would rest for lunch at twelve-thirty and then start to make their way back.
‘You’re doing very well,’ she heard Daniel tell her warmly. ‘Most of our first-timers protest that they’ve had enough at this stage.’
Did they, indeed? Stoically Christa gritted her teeth, firmly trying to ignore the agonised messages from her protesting calf muscles.
‘If you do want a rest, there’s a good place to stop a few yards on, where you can get an excellent view of the farm and…’
‘I don’t want to stop,’ Christa told him fiercely. ‘I just want to get this whole charade over and done with…’
She bit angrily into her lip as Daniel stopped walking and stood in front of her, forcibly stopping her as well.
‘Look, something is wrong,’ he told her quietly. ‘Don’t, please don’t deny it…If it’s because of last night…’
‘If…’ Christa exploded, unable to hold back her anger any longer. ‘If…How could there be any “if” about it?’ she blazed furiously. ‘How could…?’
‘Look, I understand…I was…disappointed as well…’ Daniel interrupted her.
‘Disappointed…’ Christa stared at his face, her whole body flushing with mortified colour as she realised what he was implying. ‘My God, your arrogance is just unbelievable,’ she told him. She laughed with bitter wildness. ‘Disappointed about what, Daniel…? Disappointed about missing out on going to bed with you? And what a wonderful experience that would have been for me, wouldn’t it? Wonderful but, of course, hardly unique…Not for me. And not for all the other gullible fools who’ve been deceived and lured into your bed before me…’
‘Christa, what…?’
She could hear the shock and bewilderment in his voice, see them in his face, and with them too she could see his pain…His pain…
‘The game’s over, Daniel,’ she warned him. ‘There isn’t any point in bothering to lie to me any more. Not now that Dai has given the game away. No wonder his wife left him if he’s been trying to model himself on you. What was it he said about you? Oh, yes, I remember now, he said he envied you your string of conquests and the opportunities your business gave you to add to them—and to add to your bank balance at the same time.’ Christa’s voice dripped sarcasm as she threw the words at him, pride and anger driving her on through the pain which had buried its cruel talons in her heart.
‘Christa, no…’ she heard Daniel protesting. ‘Please listen to me. You misunderstood—’
‘Misun
derstood?’ Christa interrupted him acidly. ‘Oh, no, Daniel. You’re the one who’s done that. Not that you’re the only one to blame…’ Her mouth curled in a bitter humourless smile. ‘After all, it wasn’t as though I didn’t know what type you were, how little you could be trusted…I should have listened to what my brain was telling me instead of—’
‘How little I could be trusted?’ Daniel questioned her sadly. ‘Or how little you wanted to trust me. Christa, what Dai said has no bearing whatsoever on the reality of my life; it’s simply his interpretation, his fantasy if you like, of the way he believes he would live were he in my shoes—a means of asserting his manhood, of restoring his faith in his masculinity.’
Christa’s mouth had suddenly gone very dry, her voice an angry whisper as she demanded, ‘If that’s the truth, then why didn’t you say something at the time; why did you let him…?’
‘Because it simply never occurred to me that you’d give the slightest credence to what he was saying. Because I assumed that you’d see his comments for what they were—the pathetic and sad ramblings of a drunken man suffering from the hurt of losing his wife. What Dai was saying has so little resemblance to the reality of us that it never even crossed my mind that you’d take him seriously,’ he told her quietly.
Christa felt sick and dizzy from the wild chaos of her thoughts. He was lying. He had to be.
‘I can’t make you believe me, Christa… just as I can’t make you trust me, and that’s what all this boils down to, isn’t it? Trust…’ As he spoke, he took a step towards her, and immediately Christa panicked. Another few steps and he would be touching her, holding her, and once he did…
‘No, don’t,’ she told him, quickly stepping back from him. ‘Don’t come any closer, don’t touch me…’
‘Christa, keep still…don’t move…’
As she heard his sharp warning Christa panicked-she had already taken another step backwards…into nothing, falling so heavily down the concave shalecovered slope where the mountainside fell away sharply from the path that she was too shocked even to cry out, falling, sliding, rolling in the avalanche of shale-dust and noise which had overwhelmed her, bruising her, choking her.