‘Put it in the bank,’ Sue had said, refusing to take any more than half the food bills. ‘Friends don’t pay rent. You’ll need that money in the winter.’
So Friday morning saw her once more at the cashier’s desk in the bank. The clerk blenched when he saw her and ducked down behind the counter. In spite of her general despondent conviction that her life was over, Christina could not help being amused.
‘It’s all right,’ she told him. ‘This time I’m paying money in. No more scenes.’
But in that she was wrong, even though she made no complaint about the inordinate time he seemed to take processing her simple transaction. As she reached the swing door, a hand fell on her shoulder. It was the security guard.
‘Miss Howard?’
‘Yes,’ she agreed, bewildered.
‘Will you come with me, please?’
She looked round at the interested eyes of the other customers and felt a quiver of alarm. What had she done? The security guard was not forthcoming. Instead he took her to a large, empty room with a large oval table in the middle of it and left her there. No explanation, no company, just walls full of photographs of directors and that great official table. Christina prowled round it, alarm giving way to anger.
When the door opened she swung round in a fury.
‘What the
hell
is—?’
She was struck dumb. It was Luc.
‘Thank you, Vassili,’ he said to the bowing bank manager.
Christina closed her eyes. To think she had once thought that knowing a bank manager would solve all her troubles, she mused savagely. When she opened them, the bank manager had gone and Luc was standing in front of her. He was in his immaculate suit again and looking supremely handsome and unapproachable.
‘Shall we go?’
‘I won’t go anywhere with you,’ said Christina, refusing to be intimidated.
He sent her an unsmiling look.
‘I’m afraid you’ll have to,’ he said coolly. ‘I have no intention of making love to you on the boardroom floor. Or even this handsome table.’
Christina’s jaw dropped. ‘Make—? How dare you?’ she said faintly.
He did smile then but it did not reach his eyes. ‘When a man is desperate he will dare anything, Christina. You didn’t leave me much alternative.’
Christina stared. Desperate?
‘After all, you wouldn’t have got in touch with me, would you? I left my private telephone number with that café owner, but you never picked it up.’
Clever, lying Luc
desperate
?
She cleared her throat. ‘How do you know I didn’t pick it up?’ It came out as a croak.
‘It was the first thing on my agent’s agenda. Hotly followed by your address in Italy. Like I told you, he drew a blank on that too.’
She could not believe it.
He took a hasty step towards her. ‘Do you know how many rules I broke for you, Christina? Have you any idea?’
She shook her head dumbly.
He shook his head too, his expression infinitely tired. ‘No, you haven’t, have you?’ He paused, seeming to debate with himself. Then, making up his mind, he said deliberately, ‘All my staff have been sending me memos about it for two months. The officials, the protocol people, the negotiators, the bodyguards.’ He sent her a quick look. ‘Did you realise we had company that first day we had coffee?’
She cast her mind back to the café.
‘The man at the next table?’ she asked slowly. ‘The one who was pretending to read a newspaper? I knew he was looking at us. I thought it must be because you were famous. Was he secret service or something?’
‘Something,’ Luc said drily. ‘And he wasn’t supposed to be that obvious. You rather shocked him out of his professional cool, I’m afraid. Especially when you flung my money all over him.’
For the first time in days Christina grinned. It was a good memory. ‘Did he go around the café picking it up?’
Luc was wry. ‘He didn’t know what to do. He was supposed to be undercover, so he ought not to have had any contact with me. On the other hand he was also supposed to make sure I wasn’t robbed or insulted or otherwise done a violence to.’ His eyes glinted. ‘And you’d managed the hat trick. So you presented him with an unsolvable dilemma. It seems to be your speciality.’
‘I didn’t do you a violence,’ Christina protested.
He looked at her consideringly. ‘Didn’t you?’
‘A few bank notes—’
‘I wasn’t,’ he said quietly, ‘talking about the bank notes.’
And suddenly neither of them was laughing any more.
He said roughly, ‘I shouldn’t have taken you on as crew, you know that? You weren’t cleared and none of the usual agencies could get a lead on you. I should never have had you tracked down and offered that job. They all thought I was mad.’
Christina was chilled. ‘The officials and the bodyguards?’
‘Particularly the officials. Goraev was so worried that he cancelled everything. That was why he joined us at the villa.’
Christina flinched, remembering that final interview with Sir Goraev all too vividly. ‘I can imagine.’
‘Yes.’ Luc met her eyes. ‘I didn’t realise. I was a fool. You see, Goraev has a daughter and he was hoping we might make a match of it. I don’t know the girl very well. It never crossed my mind.’ He looked suddenly haunted. ‘So it never occurred to me he would get rid of you like that. What can I say?’
Christina hid her hurt. She said in a light, hard voice, ‘Think nothing of it. Though I don’t see why he bothered. I imagine he’s used to it.’
Luc’s head came up. ‘What do you mean by that?’ he said grimly.
Christina thought of Sir Goraev’s casual dismissal of the gorgeous Juliette. She took an angry step forward.
‘Are you telling me he hasn’t got rid of ladies for you before? When they were surplus to requirements, I mean.’
Luc whitened. There was a little silence.
‘What did I ever do?’ he said at last. He sounded stunned, as if he was in real pain—as if he could hardly believe it.
Christina swallowed. ‘I got the impression he’d got rid of the actress,’ she said, not entirely lucidly.
She could feel Luc’s eyes boring into her. She refused to look at him. If she did he would see her whole heart in her eyes. She could not afford that. He was too clever. And her heart was too unguarded.
After a pause he said in a level voice, ‘Then he misled you.’
That startled her. She looked up quickly. A muscle was working just below the prominent cheekbone. His expression was unreadable.
‘I know, of course, the lady to whom you refer,’ he said precisely. ‘She is—a friend. For a while she was perhaps more than that. She is gorgeous and clever and—well, you have seen her.’
Gorgeous, amazingly poised, amazingly sexy. Everything that a student-cum-ship’s cook was not. It hurt like an ice burn.
Christina could have sworn that she did not make a move, but his voice sharpened into urgency suddenly. ‘I swear it was no more than that. For either of us.’
She shrugged, quite as if she did not care. Luc was not deceived.
‘Believe me. I don’t know what Goraev said—or what you thought you saw at that party—but it is all history.’ He smote one hand down on another suddenly. ‘Christina, please. You cannot reject me for nonsense like this.
Listen
to me.’
Reject him? What was he talking about?
But he misread her bewilderment. ‘If you walk out on me now, I will follow,’ he said fiercely. ‘I’ll never let you alone until you’ve given me a fair hearing.’
She was shaking. She pressed her hands together so that he wouldn’t see.
‘I’m listening.’ It did not sound encouraging. It was not meant to.
Luc gave her a baffled look. ‘Juliette and I—well, we were in the same boat. Both famous. Both followed by the paparazzi. She had her life and I had mine and we were both serious about our careers. They get lonely—careers. For a while—well, what can I say?—we salved each other’s loneliness. It was not for ever and neither of us thought it was. She knows how I feel about you. I told her at that damned party. She wishes us both well. One day maybe she’ll find the same thing.’
Christina looked away. She resisted the impulse to demand what exactly he hoped Juliette would find.
He said with abrupt anger, ‘And, if Goraev told you he’d warned her off, he was lying. He has no right to speak for me in my private life. I never discussed Juliette with him or anyone else.’ He paused. ‘How can you think I would? I didn’t even discuss her with you, for God’s sake.’
‘Even me?’
‘If anyone had a right to know, you did.’
Christina said nothing.
After a moment he went on. ‘My sister tells me she told you Juliette and I were lovers. Is that true?’
‘She mentioned it, yes.’
‘And you didn’t ask me about it?’
‘What chance did I get?’ Christina said on a flash of temper. ‘The only night we spent together, I don’t remember us exchanging the stories of our lives.’
It might have been her imagination but she thought that the elegantly suited shoulders flinched.
Luc said quietly, ‘You have a right to be angry.’
‘Oh, I’m not angry,’ Christina said lightly. ‘Why should I be? I had the job of a lifetime. And a truly enriching personal experience to go with it.’
‘Stop that,’ he said, slapping his hand down flat on the polished table.
It sounded like a pistol shot. Christina jumped. ‘You have every reason to be hurt. I accept it. I will deal with it. But I will not put up with cheap shots like that. I haven’t deserved it and they aren’t worthy of you.’
‘Oh, aren’t they?’ said Christina, roused to combat at last. ‘Not what you’re used to, Your Highness? Am I supposed to bow politely and say thank you for turning my life upside down?’
His eyes gleamed. ‘Did I?’
‘Yes, you—’ She recovered herself. ‘You just might have done if I hadn’t…’ She met his eyes and looked quickly away. ‘That is, if Sir Goraev hadn’t explained the situation to me.’
‘As I have just been saying, he did not understand the situation.’ Luc sounded exasperated. ‘So he certainly couldn’t have explained anything.’
‘Oh, I think he had a pretty fair idea,’ Christina said with an irony that did nothing at all to conceal her hurt.
He took an impatient stride towards her. ‘He is an old man. He just doesn’t live in the present. His fantasy world is one part of the nineteen-twenties, three parts Strauss opera. He nearly ruined my sister’s chances of putting her marriage back together with his nonsense. You can’t let him do the same to us.’
Christina stared. All of a sudden her heart seemed to be beating so loudly that she could almost believe Luc could hear it. She said carefully, ‘How could he have any effect on your sister’s marriage?’
Luc looked irritated, but he answered patiently enough. ‘My brother-in-law is a workaholic. When he is busy he forgets to spend time with her and the children. She complained. Sir Goraev told Richard to take no notice, she’d always been like that, she would forget it. As a result, Richard has been ignoring the problem and my poor sister has been playing with fire.’
Christina shook her head. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘I think you understand very well,’ Luc said shrewdly. ‘From what Simon says, you saw her flirting with Stuart Define. You never mentioned it to me. Impressive discretion, that.’
Christina was not sure whether she was being laughed at. She said haughtily, ‘I thought you were a grubby reporter.’
‘A
grubby
reporter?’ He sounded stunned.
‘Extremely grubby,’ she said with relish. ‘I was trying to protect everyone from you.’ She sent him a darkling look. ‘By the time I realised the only one who needed protection was me, I didn’t feel like telling you anything.’
Unexpectedly, his mouth quirked. ‘I remember.’
‘Anyway, I wouldn’t have discussed the Princess’s business.’
‘Very right and proper.’ Luc’s tone was dry. ‘The trouble is, if no one discussed it, how was my brother-in-law going to find out that his marriage was on the line? He wasn’t there enough to see it for himself. And I was too full of my own affairs to notice.’
He looked at her broodingly. The hammer blows of her heart became deafening.
Christina said with constraint, ‘I take it they have sorted out their differences now?’
‘They’re beginning to. Mainly thanks to Simon’s bolt for freedom. They’ve talked it through and realised that neither of them wants the sort of polite, semi-detached marriage that Goraev thinks people like us ought to have.’
‘Oh,’ said Christina.
The all-perceptive retainer was beginning to shrink to human size. Inexplicably, her spirits rose comparably.
‘You make him sound like a complete busybody.’
‘That’s right,’ said Luc.
‘But—I thought you took his advice. I thought he knew
everything.’
‘So did he.’
He sounded so impatient that Christina’s heart lifted a couple of notches further.
‘But you did tell him to get reports on me?’
He spread his hands. ‘Security checks, I said. They’re not just specific to you. Everyone that works for us has had them.’
She nodded. ‘I see.’
Luc’s eyes flickered. ‘When we went to the villa, it was the first time I’d had the chance to talk to Goraev for a month. I told him I already knew everything about you I needed to know,’ he said quietly. ‘And I didn’t get it from a secret-service report.’
Christina began to feel breathless all of a sudden. Her eyes fell.
‘But Sir Goraev didn’t agree?’
Luc showed his teeth. ‘Apparently not. We—er—discussed it. After you’d gone. It was rather an unpleasant interview. In the end Goraev agreed that the reports showed enough to satisfy him that you weren’t going to blow us all up or kidnap the children.’
He paused, not taking his eyes off her.
‘But, you see, the trouble was that that hadn’t been what he’d been afraid of once he had seen you.’ He reached out and touched her face, making her look at him. He held her eyes. His own were unfathomably dark. ‘And seen me.’
Quite suddenly Christina began to tremble. All her laminated nonchalance melted as if touched by a flame.
‘I don’t know what you mean,’ she said, almost voiceless.