Avoiding Mr Right

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‘He could find out. Looks the kind of guy who wouldn’t have trouble doing just that.’

Geoff had hired a rickety Citroën. It was parked on the corner of the dark lane, Sue hunched anxiously over the wheel. He opened the passenger door and pulled the front seat forward to let Christina scramble into the back.

‘Better crouch,’ he advised, still amused.

Christina disposed herself on the cramped back seat with dignity. ‘He’s not going to send out search parties—’ she began.

Sue said sharply. ‘Don’t be so sure of that. What’s that behind us?’

A stretched limousine had come into the driving mirror. They all looked over their shoulders. It had headlamps like searchlights. It was inching along the kerb as if it was looking for something. It looked horribly purposeful.

‘Duck,’ Geoff said.

Christina abandoned her dignity and flung herself on the floor. Not a moment too soon. Geoff grabbed Sue into a comprehensive embrace, so the headlights of the limousine only illuminated a courting couple totally absorbed in each other. It slowed briefly, then, seemingly satisfied, passed on without stopping. In the grateful darkness, Geoff released Sue.

‘Chris,’ Sue said in a shaken voice, ‘I take it back. You’re right. I wouldn’t enjoy it.’ Geoff hugged her comfortingly.

‘Changed your mind about getting out of town?’ he asked Christina with a hint of steel in his pleasant voice. ‘Bearing in mind you’re staying with Sue.’

‘As soon as I can,’ said Christina. The limousine had looked menacing. Suddenly, acting as a tour guide to the classical sites seemed immensely attractive.

‘Good,’ he said.

Sue did not say anything but her relief was none the less clear for being unspoken. She let the car into gear and began to back into the metalled road.

‘What I want to know,’ she burst out at last, ‘is who the hell is this man?’

‘Luc Henri,’ said Christina in a small voice.

‘I’ve never heard of him.’

‘No—well, nor have I.’

‘That limo did not belong to the sort of man we’ve never heard of,’ Geoff said.

Christina bit her lip. She remembered that challenging look Luc had given her when he told her his name. Should she have recognised him? Was it a false name? It was an oddly chilling thought.

‘What do you think?’ she asked Geoff.

‘Well, that car belongs to someone powerful. Or someone whose job takes him among the powerful. I got a good look at him in the café. I didn’t recognise him. So I’d say he’s either a security guard or a businessman.’

Sue said suddenly, ‘Whatever he is, he wants you. I wouldn’t be surprised if he was down at Costa’s looking for you tonight.’

‘Don’t be so dramatic,’ Christina protested. ‘He didn’t know I’d be at Costa’s.’

But I said I’d probably go to the waterfront cafés, she remembered. She shivered.

Sue said, ‘I don’t think he’s going to give up.’ She sounded scared.

Christina could not really blame her. She hoped that the tour left Athens soon.

‘I’ll go first thing tomorrow.’

CHAPTER THREE

SHE did. And for a week Christina’s mind was in two places at once.

One part of her brain was organising hotels and describing antiquities, the other was locked in a timeless embrace with a man she hardly knew—a man who had made sure she hardly knew him. A man who had given her a carefully edited account of himself which had left out all the essentials, possibly including his real name. A man who had said they would never meet again and then, for some unfathomable reason, had changed his mind.

Except that the reason was not unfathomable, however much Christina pretended to herself. It had all been there in the kiss—intensity, anger, need. Christina had never felt that she needed anyone before, not in that immediate, physical way. Nor had she felt the same driving need coming back at her, plucking her out of normality and onto a plane where all she could see or touch or taste was him.

‘Sex,’ she said to herself. ‘That’s all it is. Strong attraction, sure, but nothing more than a passing thing. Ignore it and it will go away.’

Only it didn’t. There were times when she barely noticed her pleasant church group from the American Midwest. They were in Europe for the first time and endearingly enthusiastic about the sights at Mycenae and Delphi. Christina tried hard to share their enthusiasm. She even succeeded sometimes. But the dark, magnetic figure of Luc was always there, always lurking. And all too often he just swamped the rest. It was not like any sexual attraction she had ever felt before.

It’s not real, she told herself.

But it felt reat—horribly real. More real than anything else she could remember. It was almost frightening. That stopped her dead in the shadow of a classic column. He had said that she was afraid of him, hadn’t he?

‘Ridiculous,’ she said aloud.

But on the long, hot coach journey back to their hotel Christina was remembering all too vividly every word he had said. It was nonsense that she was afraid of him. Of course it was. She was self-possessed and independent and she was not afraid of anyone.

But, if she admitted the truth, there was something in that dark, demanding presence that sent little chills through her. Not fear, naturally, but something uneasy that told her she had no defences against him. Or anyway, none that seemed to work.

The unwelcome truth was that Luc Henri overwhelmed her. He had.only to look—let alone touch—and she started to vibrate like a musical instrument played by a master. And she did not even know who he was!