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.