The Trusting Game. PENNY JORDAN

after this talk of yours is over and done with. You’ll be ready for a bit of light relief by then, and besides, I need a drink…’

      ‘I’ll be with you in a second, Dai.’

      Daniel…Christa felt her whole body turn to ice as she stared at the man in front of her in sick disbelief.

      ‘What is it—what’s wrong?’ he was asking her in apparent concern, taking that small step towards her himself now and, in doing so, narrowing the distance between them to one of close intimacy, the distance of lovers…of seducers.

      Daniel. Christa’s throat felt as though it had been scraped raw with sandpaper and then doused with acid.

      ‘That wouldn’t be Daniel Geshard, would it?’ she asked him gnttily, her hands balling into small, tight fists.

      He was frowning now, his expression puzzled. ‘Yes, as a matter of fact it would. But…’

      Christa didn’t wait to hear any more. Her face flushing with anger and mortification, she immediately stepped away from him, ignoring the hand he was reaching out to detain her, her voice icy with distaste and harsh with angry disgust.

      ‘Is that normally how you see your business meetings, Mr Geshard…as a boring preliminary to the real enjoyment? Hadn’t you better go?’ she added pointedly. ‘Your friend appears to be getting impatient.’

      Before he could say anything to her, she turned on her heel and left. John would have to wait for his samples and his quotes. If she followed Daniel Geshard into the hotel foyer now, there was no way she could trust herself not to tell him exactly what she thought of him and all men of his type.

      But as she hurried back to her car it wasn’t just anger she could feel. So much for her belief in her ability to judge someone’s character! How could she have been so stupid? Why hadn’t she guessed who he was…what type he was? How could she have been so gullible…she of all people?

      Seething inwardly, she got into her car and drove home. She had just enough time to change out of her now damp clothes before the Chamber of Commerce meeting began. There was no way she was going to miss attending it now…no way she intended not to make quite plain her views, her views on the subject of Daniel Geshard’s speech…And on the speaker himself?

      As soon as she got home, Christa dialled the number of the hotel and explained to the manager that she had been unable to call with his samples but that she would drop them off another time. Then she hurried into her bedroom, where she stripped off her clothes, grimacing in distaste at their clamminess; then she quickly dried and rebrushed her long, thick chestnut hair, confining it with a simple headband after she had put on fresh clothes.

      Small and curvaceous, with widely spaced, almost aquamarine-coloured eyes in a pretty heart-shaped face, Christa had had to work hard to banish other people’s image of her as a pretty woman with no real head for business. Firmly refusing to compromise or alter the way she looked, or make herself conform to a stereotypical and often male idea of what a businesswoman should look like, hadn’t always been easy, especially in the early days when she had taken over the business from her great-aunt. She knew that there were still those locally who thought she had fallen on her feet in inheriting her aunt’s textile import business, but in the years before her death her great-aunt had let the business become very run-down.

      Christa had been brought up by her great-aunt after her own parents’ deaths, and before going to university and training as a designer she had frequently travelled abroad with her relative, visiting the various suppliers from whom she bought her cloth.

      It had been cheaper and more practical for the older woman to take her great-niece with her during the school holidays, rather than try to find someone else to look after her, and out of loyalty and love for her great-aunt Christa had kept silent about the way in which she had lost her grip on the business.

      It had saddened Christa to discover how much her great-aunt had lost her old skills of running ahead of the market and picking the right fabrics, and to see how some of her suppliers had started to fob her off with inferior cloths.

      Christa had had to work hard to reverse all that. Sometimes she had had to behave more ruthlessly than was really in her nature to do, but at least the business was beginning to pick up again. Her training and flair as a designer had helped her, of course, and the bank manager was just beginning to stop frowning every time he saw her.

      ‘You’re so damned self-possessed,’ a would-be boyfriend had once complained to her. ‘Sometimes I wonder just what the hell it would take to break down that barrier of yours. Whatever it is, whoever it is, it isn’t me…What is it you’re waiting for, Christa?’ he had demanded angrily. ‘A prince?’

      ‘I’m not waiting for anyone…any man,’ Christa had told him truthfully.

      And yet earlier this evening, just for a moment…Angrily she picked up her jacket.

      Thank God she had realised just who Daniel Geshard was before…before what?

      Nothing would really have happened. She just mustn’t allow her feelings, her emotions, however powerful they might be, to control her. She had seen all too clearly the disastrous consequences that could result from a woman believing she was in love and loved in turn by the kind of man who earned his living through deceit…Like Piers Philips.

      Quickly she closed her eyes. Even now, after all these years, it still hurt her to think of Laura. To remember…

      She and Laura had been at university together, and they had both been in their final year when Laura had met and fallen for Piers Philips, a New Age selfacclaimed philosopher and guru with whom Laura had become so besotted that she had dropped out of the course before taking her finals and married him.

      Laura’s father was an extremely wealthy industrialist, and Laura herself had inherited a considerable amount of money from her grandmother. She and Piers intended to use this, she told Christa enthusiastically, to buy a large country house where Piers would open a counselling and stress clinic.

      Christa had to admit that even she had been taken in by Piers’ enthusiasm and ideals. She had been so very gullible and innocent then, even half envying Laura her charismatic husband and the wonderful life they were going to build together.

      But, once Laura and Piers were married, things very quickly started to go wrong. Laura complained then that she suspected that Piers was being unfaithful to her; that he neglected her.

      Christa would never forgive herself for the fact that she had allowed Piers to convince her Laura was suffering from some kind of hormonal depression brought on by her pregnancy, and that the affair she was accusing him of was completely imaginary, so that, instead of supporting Laura, she had urged her to put aside her doubts and concentrate on the future, to think of her marriage and her coming baby.

      Piers had taken her out to dinner to thank her for her support. ‘Laura couldn’t have a better friend,’ he had told her.

      A better friend…Christa’s throat tightened in remembered grief and pain.

      The only excuse she could give herself was that she had been young and naive and that, even then, Piers had been an arch manipulator, enjoying the game he was playing with both of them, enjoying deceiving them.

      Three months after their baby, a little girl, was born, Piers had left Laura amid a storm of gossip. The girl he had left Laura for came from an aristocratic and very rich family. Laura’s money, the money she had inherited from her grandmother, had all gone; all she had had left was the mountain of debts Piers had run out on.

      ‘Some of his clients have even threatened to sue for malpractice,’ Laura had sobbed when Christa had tried to comfort her.

      ‘You’ll get over him,’ Christa had told her comfortingly.

      ‘No, I won’t…I’ll never get over him,’ Laura had told her bleakly. ‘How can I?’

      Six weeks later she was dead. An overdose taken while she was in the grip of post-natal depression had been the