Read the book: «Unwilling Surrender»

CHAPTER ONE

IT WAS two-thirty in the morning and the telephone was ringing. Right next to her bed. Sharp, insistent rings that demanded answering, and her immediate groggy thought was that some catastrophe had occurred. Something awful that couldn’t wait until a more civilised hour. After all, what voice at the end of a telephone at two-thirty in the morning was going to be the bearer of good tidings?

For a split-second she was tempted to let the damn thing ring, to let the bad news wait until morning, but she couldn’t. It wasn’t in her nature. She had never had much success in dodging reality and she wasn’t about to achieve it now.

She reluctantly lifted the receiver and waited for the person on the other end to speak. Which he did.

‘I knew you were there.’ That dark, velvety voice which could charm the birds off the trees was cold and abrupt and Christina felt her head thicken with a sudden, overwhelming tension, even though she told herself that that was silly. She was a grown woman of twenty-three and she had nothing to fear from Adam Palmer.

But old habits died hard. Ever since she was a child, he had been able to fill her with a similar sickening nervousness.

‘What do you want?’ she asked, knowing immediately why he had called and forestalling his inevitable question. ‘Have you any idea what time it is?’ Her head felt as clear as a bell, her mind alert and already in a position of self-defence.

‘I know exactly what the time is,’ he returned dismissively, ‘and, just in case you’re waiting for an apology for my phoning you at this hour, there won’t be one forthcoming. So don’t hold your breath.’

Oh, charming, she thought angrily. Has it occurred to you that I might not exactly relish being dragged out of sleep at this ungodly hour?

She had a mental image of him. Tall, strikingly handsome and frighteningly clever. A man who had probably never suffered even the most fleeting attack of self-consciousness in his entire life. She doubted that he had even given a second’s thought to the hour of his phone call.

She sat up straighter in her bed, her body stiff even though she was alone in the bedroom.

‘You could have waited until morning,’ she began on an indrawn breath, hanging on to some semblance of politeness while her mind conjured up satisfying pictures of him falling down a couple of flights of stairs, or finding himself lost in the middle of a desert somewhere with no help in sight. ‘You may think nothing of being up at this hour, but some of us happen to lead more orthodox lives.’

‘Cocoa at nine and then bed by nine-thirty, Tina?’ There was lazy mockery in his voice, and it sent the blood rushing to her head.

How wonderful to have been able to think of some bitingly acid retort, but as usual on these occasions her mind went blank.

She made a little strangled sound down the line and then took a deep breath, counting to ten. It was unwise to enter into any sort of argument with Adam Palmer, because he invariably won. In fact, it was unwise to let yourself become in the slightest bit ruffled by anything he had to say.

‘Yes,’ she said calmly, ‘and very enjoyable it is too, except when I get bothered by phone calls at this hour in the morning.’

‘What an exciting little girl you are,’ he remarked, in the same mocking voice, and she could have screamed. ‘But fascinating though your personal life is, you know my reason for calling you. Where the hell is my sister?’

‘I have no idea.’

‘And now that you’ve got that little lie off your chest, why don’t you tell me the truth? Where is she?’

She should have prepared some suitable lie. She had known as soon as Fiona flew the nest that her brother would come barging along for a few answers. After all, she was Fiona’s closest friend. But lying didn’t come easy to Christina. She was a placid, self-controlled girl who found that the wheels of life moved far more smoothly without intrigue.

‘I can’t tell you that,’ she said into the waiting silence, and she heard the furious intake of breath down the other end. ‘Fiona made me promise not to reveal her whereabouts.’

‘Oh, she did, did she?’

‘She’s not a child any longer, Adam,’ she continued hastily, because it didn’t take a genius to realise that his rage was climbing a few degrees higher with every word she spoke. ‘She’s twenty-two now. She can vote, she can go to pubs, she can even get married if she wants to.’

‘So that’s what she’s up to, is it?’ he bellowed down the line, and Christina held the phone a little way back from her ear. ‘Marriage? To that...that...’

‘You’ll get high blood-pressure if you don’t relax,’ she said with a weak attempt to defuse the situation, which was utterly futile.

‘You’ll damn well get high blood-pressure in a minute,’ he roared. ‘I’m on my way over.’

She heard the slam of the receiver and then that dead dialling tone and she looked at the phone with mounting horror.

On his way over? To her flat? Now? The prospect of Adam swooping down at her in a thunderous rage and demanding answers out of her made her tremble with apprehension. It had been bad enough merely hearing his voice down the receiver.

She thought of him in his Jaguar screeching over and her body was galvanised into action. Very quickly, she washed her face, combed her hair sensibly away from her face, and stuck on a pair of jeans and a jumper, feeling very odd being suddenly fully clothed when less than half an hour ago she was cocooned under a layer of blankets, sound asleep.

Fiona, she thought, this is all your fault. Why did you have to involve me in your wretched schemes?

But she really wasn’t cross with her friend. She had known her as long as she had known Adam, which was getting on for fifteen years, and she had long ago accepted her for what she was—an adorable, impulsive creature, who sailed through life blithely ignoring anything that remotely resembled cares or worries.

That, perhaps, had been the essence of their friendship, the reason why it had survived intact for so long. Opposites attracted, and Christina knew that she was exactly the opposite of her friend: composed where Fiona was apt to dramatise, controlled, level-headed, practical.

They even looked completely different. Fiona was small and intensely pretty, with raven-black hair like her brother, and the same vivid blue eyes. She had spent her life captivating men. It was the thing, she often told Christina, that she did best.

She, Christina, on the other hand, was tall and slender, without the curves that men seemed to go for. Her hair was an unremarkable brown, falling straight to her shoulders. She had long ago abandoned any attempt to make it appear more interesting than in fact it was. Her eyes, also brown, were usually serene. Only close observation revealed them to be what she in fact herself was, namely astute and humorous.

She glimpsed her reflection in the mirror and grimaced. She was plain. There was no denying that. It was one of those inescapable facts of life, like the sun rising every morning. She accepted it and in fact she was often thankful for it, because great beauty often brought great problems, whereas she could continue, for the most part, on her merry way, without her life being disturbed overmuch. She was never a threat to other women, and consequently had quite a few girlfriends, men enjoyed her company without any of that macho need to make a pass and, all in all, life was calm and enjoyable.

Only Adam Palmer had ever made her acutely aware of her lack of looks.

Not that he was cruel or derisory. Maybe it was because his own life was so crammed with gorgeous women that she immediately felt, in his presence, as if she was being given the once-over and found wanting.

She waited gloomily on the sofa in the lounge for his appearance, perched on the edge of the chair like a patient waiting for the dentist to summon.

He wouldn’t be long, she knew that. They both lived in London, albeit in wildly different areas. Her flat was a modest two-bedroomed place in Clapham. His house was a massive affair in north London, in an area where the profusion of trees could actually make you forget that you weren’t in suburbia.

He had inherited it on his parents’ death seven years previously, and he had lived there ever since with Fiona, looking after his sister with a fierce protectiveness which had often made Christina smile, but which Fiona, admittedly, had sometimes found stifling and exasperating.

She heard his car before the doorbell went. There was a squeal of tyres, then three sharp buzzes on the doorbell.

Christina resignedly pressed the button to open the main door in the lobby, and unlocked her own front door.

Then she waited on the sofa, hearing his footsteps mounting the stairs, and the rap on the front door, which was pushed open before she had finished telling him to come in.

He brought the cold air of winter with him. It clung to the black coat and the temperature in the room seemed to drop a few degrees. Christina reluctantly found her eyes drawn to him, looking at him and feeling as overawed and as taken aback as if she had never seen him in her life before.

Because every time she saw him she realised that she had forgotten just how tall and commanding his presence was. It filled the flat, giving off a vibrating, impatient energy that made you think of some caged jungle animal.

‘Would you like some coffee?’ she asked, standing up and watching him as he removed his coat and then sank on to one of the chairs, for all the world as though he were an invited guest.

‘Have you got anything stronger?’ he asked, fixing her with those amazing blue eyes of his. ‘Whisky? Gin?’

Christina’s lips tightened a fraction. Trust him, she thought. In a minute he’ll be mentioning that he feels a bit peckish and could I fix him a little something to eat.

‘There might be some wine in the fridge,’ she said with an edge to her voice that she hoped would leave him in no doubt that he was unwanted in her flat. ‘I don’t normally keep a supply of hard liquor in the flat.’

‘Very pointed,’ Adam observed, running his eyes over her in a way that made her think that he probably did that automatically every time he was with a woman, whatever her age or appearance. ‘No, forget the wine. I’ll have a cup of coffee, please, black and very sweet.’ He rubbed his fingers over his eyes. ‘God, I’m exhausted,’ he said. ‘Up at six this morning, back home at two-thirty, only to be confronted with some damn note from that sister of mine informing me that she’s gone, God knows where.’

‘What a stressful life you lead,’ Christina said without sympathy.

Back at two-thirty in the morning? Her heart was not bleeding. Chances were high that he had been out enjoying himself in the company of one of his entourage of glamorous adorers. Tired he might be, but only because he had no doubt been burning the candle at both ends.

She stalked into the kitchen and banged about in the cupboards, hoping that all the noise would end up giving him a thumping headache, and finally emerged ten minutes later with two mugs of coffee.

‘You knew about this, didn’t you?’ he asked as soon as she had handed him his coffee.

Christina didn’t reply immediately. She walked across to the sofa and sat down, tucking her long legs under her and taking a tentative sip from her mug.

Adam gave an impatient click of his tongue. ‘Well?’ he demanded, raking his fingers through his black hair in a frustrated, angry gesture. ‘Don’t just sit there. Answer me! You knew all about my sister and her hare-brained plans, didn’t you?’

Christina felt some of her calm evaporating. It had always been the same with him. She could remember being roused to rage in her early teens, stamping her feet, while he looked on, quite satisfied with his achievement, thinking that he could pour oil on troubled waters with the offer of tea in a café somewhere.

She couldn’t stamp her feet now, but she still felt like doing it.

‘You’re in my flat now,’ she said defensively, ‘and I would appreciate it if you don’t try to bully me into answering your questions.’

Adam frowned. ‘Me? Bully? I have no idea what you’re talking about. You always were a little over-sensitive, Tina.’

With remarkable restraint, she let that one go.

‘I don’t know why you bothered to come over here,’ she said, fighting to hang on to her self-control. ‘I’m not going to tell you anything more than I already have.’

‘Dammit, Tina! Why are you protecting her? I only want to find out her whereabouts so that I know she’s safe.’

‘She’s safe. Trust me.’

‘I’d rather not. Where is she?’

He had sat forward a little and she could feel his personality enfolding her so that it was a struggle to think clearly.

The man was hypnotic. Those eyes could prise out the most guarded of secrets. He would look you straight in the face, forcing you to fall under the spell of his powerful, persuasive personality, and slowly but surely he would end up finding out exactly what he wanted.

Little wonder women were forever tripping over themselves in their haste to grab a little bit of him, to try their luck at netting the biggest fish in the sea.

But she wasn’t one of his women. She had also known him long enough to see right through those tactics.

She stared back at him and repeated that her friend’s whereabouts were strictly confidential.

‘If she had wanted you to know, she would have told you in her note,’ Christina pointed out with irrefutable logic, and he glared at her furiously.

‘Stop trying to be clever with me! You know she wouldn’t let on to me what her plans were. For some reason she seems to think that I’m a bit over-protective.’ He transferred his glare to the mug of coffee, as if it had suddenly become responsible for his irritating situation, and Christina smiled.

Sometimes the set of his features reminded her of when he was much younger, and right now was one of those times. He had always been as stubborn as they came.

He looked up and caught her smiling and said angrily, ‘I’m glad you find the whole thing so amusing. You might not be quite so amused if Fiona lands herself in a spot of trouble. You know what she’s like just as well as I do. She has her head in the clouds. She goes through life thinking that nothing untoward could possibly happen to her, and one of these days that attitude is going to get her into a lot of trouble. The world isn’t ready to cope with my sister’s brand of naïveté.’

Christina knew that what he was saying was true. She also knew that trying to keep Fiona under lock and key was not the way to overcome any potential problems.

The truth of the matter was that Adam Palmer found his inability to restrain his sister frustrating. Unlike everything and everyone else in life, she refused to respond to his persuasion. Oh, she listened well enough, and nodded her head in all the right places, but then she proceeded to do just precisely as she wanted.

‘You can’t fight all her battles for her,’ Christina said eventually. ‘She has to learn from her own mistakes. Trying to run her life for her is just going to make her resent you.’

‘Is that what she told you? That she resents me?’

Christina sighed heavily. They were getting precisely nowhere and she was feeling very tired.

‘More or less,’ she hedged, and Adam stood up and walked across to her.

‘And I suppose you agree?’ He leant over her, gripping the back of the sofa on either side of her so that she was trapped by him.

She found her breath coming in small, quick gasps.

‘She has to make her own mistakes,’ she stammered, confused by his proximity and wishing that he would remove himself to some other, safer, part of the room. Or, better still, out of her flat altogether.

‘And you think that that includes marrying Simon West? That snivelling leech who’s only attracted to her because of her money? Should I stand back and watch her make that ultimate mistake without trying to do anything about it?’

He was still leaning over her, and she found that her thought processes seemed to have seized up.

The sensation brought back vivid and unwelcome memories of when she was a teenager, and hopelessly infatuated with him. Then, she had experienced that same dizzy, disorientated feeling whenever he was around. It would have faded away of its own accord, she was certain of that, despite the power that he had held over her, but time and adulthood had not been allowed to take their course. He had spotted the intensity of her private feelings with the shrewd perceptiveness of the born predator and he had laughed them off. Young and tactless, he had found her infatuation amusing, and that had left a sharp tang of bitterness in her mouth.

But that was a long time ago. She had recovered from that inconvenient passing fever. She had moved on with her life.

‘He may not be as bad as he seems,’ Christina muttered feebly, thinking of Fiona’s latest boyfriend with distaste. She had met him a few times, and each time some new feature of his personality had further reduced her impression of him. She could understand Adam’s concern.

He swung around from her and began prowling through the room, absent-mindedly looking at the pictures on the walls, the ornaments on the tables.

‘He’s as bad as he seems,’ he said finally, ‘and worse. How could you let her run off with him? You’re supposed to be her friend.’

Stung, Christina’s head snapped up.

‘I’m not her keeper!’ she bit out angrily. ‘Of course I didn’t encourage her in her plans to go to...in her plans. I tried to talk her out of it, but when Fiona decides to dig her heels in she does so with a vengeance. She wouldn’t listen to a word I was saying. And in the end, it’s her life.’

Adam stared at her as if she were some foreign species of animal. And she knew why. He was accustomed to having his orders obeyed. He had come to expect it. All this talk about freedom of choice was irritating for him, because he knew what was right for his sister and he could not understand why she failed to see his point of view.

What made matters worse, Christina thought, was that the damned man was always right.

‘Are you going to tell me where she’s gone?’ he asked softly, moving to sit alongside her on the sofa.

She shuffled inconspicuously away from him so that she was pressed against the armrest and eyed him drily. ‘You don’t give up, do you? You’re like a dog with a bone.’

For the first time since he had barged his way into her flat, his features relaxed into a smile, a coaxing, charming smile which she had observed on his face before—when he had been in the company of a beautiful woman. It had always amazed her that none of these women could see through it to the single-minded, relentless man underneath, the one who had taken his father’s ailing company and turned it around in a matter of months, the one with the reputation in business circles of being a force to be reckoned with.

He must be a very good actor, she decided, if he could sublimate all those characteristics in his relationships with women.

Was he hoping now that he could pull that smile on her and coax her around to his way of thinking?

Did he really think that she was as empty-headed and as eager to be pleased as the women he chose to be associated with?

‘You know me, Tina.’ He smiled again and she ignored it.

‘Unfortunately.’

‘You don’t mean that. Next to my sister, you’re my longest-standing female friend.’

Lucky old me, she thought. He makes me sound like a piece of furniture that’s stood in the same place for a thousand years.

‘I shouldn’t be too proud of that fact if I were you,’ she muttered, thinking that he would not hear her, but of course he had. His eyes narrowed, even though the smile was still playing on his lips.

‘Meaning?’

‘Why boast about the fact that you shed women with appalling regularity?’

‘Don’t you start preaching to me!’ He scowled at her and she smiled back at him.

Had Fiona been telling him the same thing? she wondered. Normally she did not stand up to him. Maybe she was developing a little bit of fighting spirit. Christina hoped so. The world, as far as she could see, was altogether too short of people who were prepared to give Adam Palmer a piece of their mind.

Money bred an unhealthy awe in people, and he was wealthy enough to have inspired this kind of awe for a number of years. Combine that wealth with a brilliant, restless intellect and good looks, and the combination was fatal.

‘Well, you do have a certain reputation,’ she murmured in a honeyed voice.

‘Not one that I’ve ever courted.’

‘You’ll have to excuse me if I don’t agree.’

‘Will I?’ He leaned back and surveyed her from under thick black lashes. ‘I don’t know how you can be an authority on my love-life when you’ve never been a part of it.’

Christina felt her cheeks go pink, but her composure remained firmly in place. She looked at him in silence, wondering how on earth she had ever had a crush on this man.

‘In fact,’ he said with a certain amount of lazy good humour, ‘have you ever been an authority on anyone’s love-life? I’ve known you all these years, yet you’ve never changed from being the cool little creature who always studied hard at school and always, always had her head screwed firmly on the right way.’

Christina could have thrown the lamp at him. Aiming straight for his head. Who did he think he was with his snide insinuations and thinly disguised insults?

‘There’s nothing wrong with that,’ she replied evenly, but some of the tranquillity of her expression had evaporated.

‘Not terribly exciting, though, is it?’

‘Please, spare me your observations on what makes an exciting life. If exciting means bed-hopping the way that you do, then you’re welcome to it.’

She heard her voice sounding acid and prim and she could have kicked herself.

His blue eyes had taken on a distinctly wicked gleam at that. Wasn’t he tired? He had said earlier on that he was, but there was nothing tired about the man sitting next to her now. He looked invigorated, ready for a few hours of discussion, probably on her love-life, or lack of it, which he seemed to find highly entertaining. Maybe this was his sly way of extracting his pound of flesh for her silence over Fiona’s whereabouts.

‘What a damning statement,’ he said. ‘Bed-hopping? You have a very vivid imagination. I may have slept with a few women in my time, but I certainly don’t make a habit of jumping in and out of beds on a routine basis. Any chance of another cup of coffee?’ He held out his mug and Christina looked at it scathingly.

‘No chance whatsoever. I’m tired and it’s time that you left. I have no intention of telling you where Fiona’s gone, so you might as well forget it, Adam.’

His lips thinned.

‘I’ll do nothing of the sort. If you don’t tell me what I want to know, I’ll personally make sure that Simon West pays for any mistakes that my sister’s made.’

‘How do you intend to do that?’ Christina asked apprehensively. She had no doubt that he could and would do precisely as he had threatened. He certainly pulled enough strings, had enough power in the right circles to ensure that his threats weren’t hollow ones.

‘He’s an actor, isn’t he?’

She nodded without saying anything.

‘A very precarious position, wouldn’t you agree?’

She nodded again and felt like a mouse that had strayed into a trap and was waiting for it to clamp shut.

‘I’ve been on the look-out for a theatre company to buy. There could be a lot of money in that. I’ve been meaning to broaden my interests in the field of the arts for quite some time now.’ He allowed a little silence to fall between them. ‘It’s a tight community, the artistic community. One word about someone can spread faster than a bush fire.’ He turned the mug over in his hands, inspecting it.

‘You wouldn’t ruin his career,’ Christina whispered, horrified. ‘You couldn’t.’

‘I’ll do what I can to protect my sister.’ He slammed the mug down on to the coffee-table, making her jump.

He had put her in an impossible situation. Keep quiet and risk watching Simon West’s career, such as it was, bite the dust. Tell all and betray her friend’s confidence.

Simon might be everything that Adam had said he was. Certainly, from what she had seen, he was vain, egotistic and irritatingly convinced that the world was somehow a better place with him in it. But she could not stand aside and let Adam do his worst.

‘All right,’ she said wearily. ‘They’re using that cottage in Scotland. The one your parents owned.’

‘That?’ Adam gave her a long, hard look and then began to laugh. ‘Well, I can’t see romance blossoming in that run-down place, can you? Especially in weather like this. West hardly strikes me as the sort of man who knows how to survive without central heating and all mod cons.’

‘Fiona said that they needed privacy.’

‘She gets privacy. In fact she has all the room she needs.’

‘Very little, when you’re under the same roof,’ Christina said under her breath, and he frowned.

‘Well, I shall have to go up there and try and talk some sense into her. Just in case she’s contemplating doing something crazy.’ He stood up and immediately the lounge seemed to shrink in size.

‘Like what?’ Christina asked, momentarily distracted by the sheer power of his presence.

‘Like marrying the half-wit.’ He snatched up his coat and began putting it on. Black and thick, it gave him the air of a raffish highwayman, not that he seemed aware of the impression he made. He was frowning, thinking.

‘Wouldn’t they need a licence or something?’ Christina asked, anxious now. ‘Besides, Fiona has more sense than that.’ But her voice was even more dubious.

‘Who knows how long they’ve been planning this little jaunt?’ He looked at her narrowly, and she shook her head in answer to his unspoken question.

‘I, for one, did not,’ she denied vehemently. ‘Fiona dropped this on me like a bombshell yesterday.’

He was staring at her, as if trying to work something out in his mind, and it made her uneasy. Nothing was ever straightforward with Adam Palmer. She rose to her feet and walked across to the door, her hand resting lightly on the handle.

He had got what he wanted, she thought. She could have saved herself a lot of trouble merely by recognising from the very start that he was going to get the information out of her, and by telling him what he wanted to know without bothering to beat about the bush.

But he had always brought out the argumentative side in her. Even when she had been madly infatuated with him, when she used to follow him with her eyes every time she saw him, she had still never been submissive enough to listen to what he had to say without responding.

He moved across to the door to stand by her, looking down at her with a calculating little gleam in his eyes.

‘Busy right now?’ he asked, and she stared into his blue eyes, surprised and taken aback by his sudden digression.

‘Quite busy, yes,’ she said warily. ‘Why?’

He shrugged. ‘Merely being polite. After all, we’ve hardly exchanged pleasantries since I got here.’

‘I don’t remember a time when that bothered you particularly,’ Christina commented matter-of-factly.

He raised one brow, but she knew that he really couldn’t care less what she thought of him. He liked her well enough; time, after all, did bring a certain unsought familiarity into any relationship. But as far as he was concerned she existed on his periphery. His sister’s friend. The plain little girl who had grown into a quite ordinary-looking young woman. He had never looked twice at her and he never would, and so he had nothing to prove with her. He didn’t even have to pretend to care what she thought about him.

‘What interesting jobs have you got lined up? Fiona keeps me well informed about your fascinating line of work.’

‘Does she?’ Christina asked politely, thinking that he sounded anything but fascinated.

‘What was your last project? Photographing a member of royalty for a magazine cover?’

Christina nodded and wondered where this line of questioning was leading.

‘Must be very convenient, freelancing,’ he murmured, looking at her sideways. ‘I sometimes wish I had that sort of luxury.’

‘What? And give up the stress of the concrete jungle?’ she asked sarcastically. ‘I don’t believe that for one minute, Adam.’

He laughed softly. ‘No, perhaps you’re right,’ he murmured. ‘Still, you work to your own timetable, don’t you?’

‘Not really.’

He ignored that. ‘Which is particularly convenient right at this moment, because I want you to come with me to Scotland to fetch my sister.’