Avoiding Mr Right Read online

  ‘You’d better get out. He’s got a nasty temper, especially after a day like today.’

  He sent her a quick, unsmiling look. ‘What happened today?’ he said sharply.

  Christina winced. ‘Look, Luc, can you forget you’re a reporter just for a few minutes? Just long enough to get off this boat? Please?’

  He went very still. ‘A reporter?’

  ‘I told you, I saw you,’ she said impatiently. ‘That’s not important. What is important is that they don’t find you here. I don’t imagine the Prince would be very keen on journalists snooping round his boat. It’s probably trespass or something. And he doesn’t sound like the sort of man who would forgive and forget.’

  He was staring at her in the darkness. ‘A reporter?’

  There was a definite flurry of footsteps on the planks over their heads. Christina was in an agony. She shook his arm impatiently, indicating the gangway with its pretty awning bleached grey in the moonlight.

  ‘Go on.’

  Luc must have heard the footsteps too. He ignored them.

  ‘But if I’m a reporter shouldn’t you be hanging onto me, giving me up to the proper authorities?’

  She was pushing at him now. He was immovable. It was maddening.

  ‘Well, yes, in theory, I suppose. But—’

  ‘So why don’t you?’ he asked softly.

  ‘And why don’t you stop interrogating me and just take your chance before I change my mind?’ Christina urged, exasperated.

  ‘Yes, why don’t I?’ He sounded really curious.

  His hand slid round her waist, whipped her close to him. His fingers slid under the thin fabric of her top, making a mockery of its careful readjustment.

  ‘For heaven’s sake, go,’ Christina urged.

  ‘Call out and have me thrown off,’ he invited.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

  ‘Now, why is that ridiculous?’

  ‘Because...’ But she was not sure of the reason. She just knew it was.

  ‘After all, you don’t trust me. You’ve told me that at least three times today.’ His voice was suddenly hard. ‘You kiss me like a woman in love but you won’t spend the night with me. You keep telling me to go away. So why not just call for help and get the whole thing over with?’

  A woman in love? Oh, Lord, no, prayed Christina silently.

  She arched as far out of his hold as she could get. ‘I don’t want to stir up trouble for the sake of it,’ she muttered, distracted.

  Even to her own ears it sounded feeble. Luc looked down at her scornfully. ‘Why not, if you seriously want to get rid of me?’

  ‘I—’

  But she couldn’t answer him. There wasn’t an answer. He had found out what she had been hiding even from herself. She did not seriously want to get rid of him. She did not trust his motives, she did not believe a word he said, she knew that he was clever and resourceful and probably ruthless, but when he held her in his arms she took a step into another dimension.

  She forgot the Princess to whom she owed loyalty, or the children to whom her heart had gone out. Most of all she forgot what she owed to herself: a decent self-respect, protection for her vulnerabilities, defiance of her dignity. All she remembered was Luc.

  ‘Oh, God,’ Christina said on a sob.

  ‘My darling—’ His voice was suddenly urgent, but there was a new flurry of footsteps, this time ones which could not be ignored. They pounded down the companion-way, light and fast and no longer furtive. The beam of a powerful torch came on abruptly, raking them from head to toe.

  Luc put her quickly behind him, but not soon enough to prevent the light dazzling her. Christina flung up a hand to shield her fractured sight.

  Luc rapped out, ‘Turn that thing off.’

  To her astonishment he was obeyed at once. She fell back against the railing, her eyes screwed tight and watering.

  So it was with particular clarity that she heard Simon’s young voice say, ‘Uncle Kay?’ and then with huge relief and pleasure, ‘Uncle Kay.’

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHRISTlNA’S eyes flew open. As they adjusted to the dark, she saw Simon Aston clinging to Luc Henri’s tall body as if he had known him all his life. A horrid suspicion began to dawn that he was not a journalist after all. She shrank back against the railing until it bruised her spine. She barely noticed.

  Uncle Kay?

  Luc had put his arms round the boy instinctively. As she watched, he touched Simon’s head. It looked like a gesture he had made many times before. Uncle Kay! Christina turned cold as she took in the implications.

  ‘You didn’t say when you were coming,’ said the boy in muffled accents.

  Luc said calmly, ‘It’s all right. I’m here now.’

  It sounded as if he had said that many times before, too. If there had been any doubt who he was, that automatic tone of comforting reassurance would have dispelled it. But there wasn’t. None at all.

  Christina struggled to assimilate it. Luc Henri was not a reporter. He had followed the Princess here all right but not to reveal her indiscretions in the international press, and certainly not to woo an itinerant ship’s cook. She would only have ever been incidental to the Prince of Khotkhastan—an amusement or an annoyance, depending on how co-operative she was, but essentially unimportant. And for a while she had even suspected that he was following her!

  The night was suddenly very cold. She clasped her arms round herself and felt goose-flesh under her fingers.

  God knew why he had decided to travel incognito. No doubt he had his reasons for it—probably international security. Making a fool of her had been purely a side-benefit, Christina thought in gathering wrath.

  But it was not just wrath. It was pain as well—pain and a horrible, wincing humiliation. Try as she would, she could not get out of her head his mocking words of just a few minutes ago: ‘You kiss me like a woman in love.’

  It couldn’t be true. Now more than ever it must not be true. She had thought that he could turn her world upside down. She had thought that he could make her say black was white. She had thought that he had the power to hurt her. She had not dreamed by how much—or how foolish and alone she would feel.

  I wouldn’t spent the night with you if you were the Emperor of China, she had said. Well, to all intents and purposes he might just as well have been. Thank God I didn’t, thought Christina fervently. How much worse would the humiliation have been if I had? How much worse the loneliness?

  Luc was talking to Simon in a low voice. Christina might not have been there, for all the notice he was taking of her. It was chilling in one way. In another, she was thankful. She did not know what she could say—to either of them. She had never felt so completely at a loss in her life.

  Fortunately Simon did not seem to have noticed her behind his uncle. Or perhaps he had forgotten that his torch had illuminated them deep in a passionate embrace. Christina shivered involuntarily, remembering that passion. It had vanished now as if it had never been. Clever, lying Luc was not going to waste his time when there were important family matters to be dealt with, she realised. Cold clutched at her heart.

  ‘Mummy hasn’t come back,’ Simon said in a high, agitated voice. Then he seemed to recollect himself and detached himself from his uncle’s embrace a little self-consciously. ‘Daddy rang and I went to look.’

  Luc ruffled the boy’s hair. Christina saw it with an odd little clutch of the heart. It somehow made him even more remote from her.

  ‘Well, if he rings again you can tell him I’m here.’ Luc paused. ‘Anyway, you were hardly on your own with Miss Howard on board, were you?’

  The clutch of the heart was suddenly savage. So that was what she was to Luc now. Miss Howard! Except, of course, that he was not Luc Henri. He was the autocratic and unfeeling Prince of Kholkhastan. And he had lied to her from the beginning to the end of their acquaintance. He had made an almighty fool of her. He had teased her, pursued her, all but seduced her—and all of it witho
ut a glimmer of compunction.

  Hell, thought Christina, righteous anger beginning to assert itself at last, he had even been prepared to take her to bed with him without telling her who he was. How deep could treachery go?

  Treachery goes with indifference, a small, cold voice said in her ear. If he cared he wouldn’t have treated you like that. If he cared even the least little bit, he would have told you who he was. He would have trusted you, no matter who else he had to hide his identity from.

  Unseen, Christina shook her head. She was bemused by how much it hurt. She had known that he was lying to her, after all. Or at least that he was not telling her the whole truth. But the depth of those lies!

  She could have flung herself on the deck and wept. Fortunately the anger kept her upright and dry-eyed.

  Simon shuffled his feet. ‘I didn’t know Christina was still here,’ he muttered.

  ‘And that was why you called me?’ asked his uncle. ‘Were you scared on the boat on your own?’ He sounded sceptical.

  Simon hesitated for a moment. Then he shook his head. ‘I wanted you to bring Mummy back,’ he blurted out.

  Luc sighed. ‘Simon, you’re too old for this. I told you last time—’

  ‘She listens to you,’ his nephew interrupted.

  ‘Then she’s the only one on this boat who does,’ Luc said wryly. He turned his head and said over his shoulder, ‘Come here, Miss Howard. My nephew appears to have cried wolf for no reason.’ His voice was bleakly and absolutely indifferent.

  Even as she winced, Christina understood that he wanted to defuse the intensity of the situation for the boy. All right, she could not wipe out what had just happened, but she could pretend that she was as indifferent as Luc was. If she was careful, she might even still salvage her dignity. She stepped forward.

  ‘I didn’t realise you were worried, Simon,’ she said, constraint and remorse at war in her voice.

  She did not look at Luc. She felt him stir restively beside her but he did not attempt to touch her—not so much as her hand.

  No doubt the Prince of Kholkhastan had a well-tried set of rules when it came to conducting his illicit affairs. They would not include holding hands with the lady of his choice in front of the children. Or, presumably, in front of anyone likely to realise who he was and what he was doing, Christina realised, raging inwardly.

  That must have been why he’d taken her off to that deserted cove. She had thought that he wanted to be alone with her, whereas all he’d wanted was to be out of sight of people who would recognise him. Her whole body burned with indignation.

  Simon said in a small voice, ‘I’m sorry, Christina.’

  Christina did not know what he was apologising for, but his uncle clearly did.

  ‘We’ll say no more about it,’ Luc said sternly before she could answer. ‘But it’s got to stop, Simon. Do you hear me? I can’t jump every time your mother goes out for the evening. And you’re old enough to know it.’ He sounded weary all of a sudden. ‘Now go to bed. It’s late.’

  The boy did not move. ‘Will you be here in the morning?’

  Christina thought that Luc sent her a quick look but in the shadows cast by the moonlight she could not be sure.

  ‘I’ll be here,’ he said. ‘Go to bed.’

  But still Simon was not satisfied. ‘And the secret...?’

  ‘The secret is out now,’ Luc said grimly. ‘Go on.’

  Reassured at last, Simon turned and ran up the companion-way. Halfway up he remembered his manners. He paused, looking down at them in the darkness.

  ‘Goodnight, Christina. Goodnight, Uncle Kay.’

  ‘Goodnight,’ said Christina, wondering if this were a delaying tactic to postpone bedtime. If so she had no objection to assisting him. She had not the slightest idea what she was going to say to his uncle when Simon left them alone.

  His uncle, however, had no such reservations. Before she could say anything he had stepped forward, looking up at his nephew with determination. ‘Bed,’ he said firmly.

  Simon laughed. And went.

  The silence he left behind him was loaded.

  ‘Damn,’ Luc Henri said softly.

  No, not Luc. The Prince of Kholkhastan. Christina moved away from him.

  ‘If you’ll excuse me, I will say goodnight as well,’ she said. She paused before adding with bite, ‘Your Highness.’

  He seized her by the shoulder and brought her sharply round to face him.

  ‘Don’t play games,’ he said roughly.

  Christina was rigid with anger—anger and hurt—but she decided not to look at the hurt for the moment. Her head went back. She glared up at him in the darkness.

  ‘Games? How dare you accuse me of playing games? I’ve never told you a lie,’ she mimicked savagely. ‘I dare say you didn’t. You’re very good at deception, aren’t you? Did you tape the evidence to prove that everything you told me was strictly accurate? Accurate and as untrue as hell because you never told me the important thing.’

  ‘Is my title so important?’ he said coldly.

  ‘Who you are is important,’ she flung at him. ‘You know it is, or you wouldn’t have bothered to hide it. And you have the gall to tell me not to play games!’

  His angry breath was audible. ‘It wasn’t a game,’ he said, very soft.

  He kissed her. It was savage.

  For a moment Christina was nearly lost. Even in his anger, he was who he was and she responded to him, heart and mind and body.

  Then she remembered that he was not a prying and secretive journalist; he was worse. He was a powerful man who had played with her as if she’d been a puppet from the first time he’d borne her off for coffee. Shame flung itself over her like a suffocating blanket. She choked and pushed him away.

  ‘How dare you? Is this the way you usually treat your employees?’

  He drew back. ‘All right. I should have told you. I admit I was wrong. I’m sorry. OK?’ He sounded goaded and not in the least apologetic.

  Christina gave a scornful laugh.

  ‘You don’t understand. A man in my position has to be careful.’

  The humiliation was like a scorching flame. It choked her. ‘I’m sure you’re fighting off predatory females all the time,’ she agreed, when she could speak.

  ‘Not—’

  ‘Only, if you remember, I wasn’t the one doing the pursuing. You were the one in the damned great car, tracking me through the backstreets of Athens. In fact, you were the one who chased me to that café in the first place.’ A thought occurred to her. ‘I didn’t have a chance of getting away, did I? You could do anything you wanted, couldn’t you? A man in your position.’ She mimicked his tone bitterly. ‘You were the one who was making enquiries about me all round Athens. You got me this job, didn’t you?’

  His fingers tightened till they bit to the bone, but when he spoke it was with his arrogant drawl, as lazy as it was indifferent.

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘God, I hate you,’ Christina said, meaning it. She could feel his eyes on her in the dark, as if he could pierce the shadows by sheer force of will alone.

  ‘Aren’t you overreacting a little, darling?’

  ‘I am not,’ said Christina with cold fury, ‘overreacting. And if you call me “darling” again I will push you over the side.’

  His eyes gleamed. ‘Try it,’ he invited. His voice was full of amusement—and a sort of lazy promise that she recognised even in her anger.

  Her heart leaped. She stepped back. ‘I’m going to bed. With or without your permission.’

  ‘Running away?’

  ‘Only from the irresistible urge to kick you,’ Christina assured him. ‘I don’t relish being lied to.’

  ‘Then let me explain,’ he said reasonably.

  She feared that reasonable voice. It could persuade her of anything. She backed away. ‘No explanation could cover it—not lies on this scale.’

  ‘Very dramatic!’ he said drily. ‘Christina, don’t be an idio
t.’

  ‘I wasn’t, until you made a fool of me,’ she said with bitterness. ‘Did you enjoy it? You really are very clever at lies. No, sorry, not lies—evasions. I suppose you’ve had a lot of practice.’

  ‘No, I haven’t, as it happens,’ he said furiously. ‘I’ve never been in such a damnable situation in my life.’

  Christina’s lip curled. ‘Poor Luc.’ She paused. ‘Or should I call you Your Highness all the time? I wouldn’t like to presume.’

  ‘If you call me Your Highness again, I won’t be answerable for the consequences.’

  Christina found that she believed him. She refused to let it intimidate her.

  ‘So is Luc your real name?’ she flung at him.

  He hesitated.

  ‘See,’ she taunted. ‘Titles are safer, aren’t they?’

  He took a furious step towards her. She backed again. It brought her up against the bulkhead with nowhere else to go. Luc kept coming. He curved over her to lean against the wall, one arm on either side of her shoulders, effectively trapping her.

  ‘I have a number of names,’ he said evenly. ‘Luc is one. Henri is another. So is Alexander. After assorted grandfathers, ancestors and well-wishers. One day I’ll be happy to give you the full roll-call. Now I just want you to listen to me for two minutes.’

  Christina decided that in the circumstances it would be prudent to do so. She lifted her chin, though.

  ‘I’m listening.’ Her tone was not conciliatory.

  Luc sighed. ‘You’re not making this easy.’

  ‘Good.’

  He said suddenly, harshly, ‘It was necessary. I was responsible for my family’s security. A man like me is always a target. That makes anyone close to me vulnerable as well. I had to be sure you were who you said you were before I could let you join the Lady Elaine.’

  Christina’s chin did not come down a millimetre. ‘So you asked everyone I’d ever worked for?’

  ‘Not quite. There were gaps.’

  None of the captains she had worked for had ever been interested in what she did in the winter months, so they could not have told his snoops. Christina was fiercely glad that she had managed to keep something of herself private from his probing. Even though it was by accident.