Avoiding Mr Right (2 page)

Christina raised her shoulders in an impatient shrug. ‘Yes, I suppose so. Doesn’t help me, though. The bank will make damn sure that the whole beastly, bureaucratic process takes as long as possible now. I could see it in that clerk’s eyes.’

The man smiled again. It packed a charge, that smile, Christina thought, startled. She blinked.

‘Maybe he just wanted to make sure you keep coming back,’ he suggested. ‘You certainly brighten the place up.’

Christina shook her head. She was feeling a little dazed.

She said in some confusion. ‘Oh, I don’t think so. He just thought I was being unreasonable.’

‘You were,’ he told her with brutal frankness. ‘The clerk behind the counter doesn’t make the rules, you know.’

Christina sniffed. ‘He didn’t have to gloat over hitting me with them.’

The stranger looked amused. ‘How do you know he was gloating? Perhaps he was just embarrassed.’

‘He didn’t look embarrassed.’

He raised his brows. ‘No, maybe not. He has his dignity to consider. But, believe me—’ his voice was full of irony ‘—the last thing a man wants to do is to say no to a beautiful woman. It goes against nature.’

Christina blinked. Beautiful? The compliment was faintly challenging. She met his eyes, bewildered, and saw that they were dancing.

Hurriedly she said, ‘I needn’t have shouted, I suppose. Anyway I’ve paid for my bad temper. It means I now have twenty dollars to last me the week.’

This time the man’s brows hit his hairline. ‘Good grief.’

Christina gave a sudden laugh. It was a warm, bubbly laugh and it was infectious. A woman passing with a small child sent her a harassed smile in response. But the stranger did not smile. Instead his eyes narrowed. For a moment the handsome face was completely blank.

‘Can you survive on that?’ he asked, shooting the question at her like an accusation.

Christina shrugged. ‘I don’t know,’ she said frankly.

He seemed to take a decision.

‘I want to know more about this. I will buy you a coffee while we discuss it.’

Christina did hesitate at that. She looked at him assessingly. In spite of his invitation, in spite of the blazing charm of his smile, she had the sense that he was behaving out of character, and that he was, at some level, almost angry with himself.

It was oddly reassuring. Not that the stranger looked like a cruising Romeo. If he had, thought Christina, she would not have wasted a minute on him. Even if appearances proved deceptive, she could handle it. She was a modern girl and she could keep the masculine desire for flirtation well under control. Still, desire for coffee warred with her habitual dislike of doing what someone else ordered her to do. Coffee won, but only just.

‘Thank you,’ she said. She could not disguise her faint annoyance.

He had observed her debate.

‘Although you don’t usually take coffee with perfect strangers?’ His lips twitched suddenly. ‘I feel I should thank
you
,’ he remarked. ‘A salutary experience, believe me. This way, I think.’

He took her by the elbow. It was a light hold, barely more than the touch of his fingertips on her bare arm, but Christina was conscious of it through her whole body. She looked at him sideways, startled. The man seemed unaware of the effect he was having on her. Perhaps it was the effect he had on every woman and he was used to it. That tingle certainly did not seem to be mutual, Christina thought wryly. He looked completely unmoved.

He took her to one of the fashionable cafés that Christina would never normally have gone to on her own. Even when she had plenty of cash in her money belt, she restricted herself to the places where students and young, footloose travellers went. But the man looked as if he had never strayed off the wide boulevards in his life. He had the air of one to whom luxury was commonplace.

Watching him from under her eyelashes, Christina realised how right she had been about his elegance. The light-coloured, lightweight suit was virtually creaseless, in spite of the city battering it must have taken this morning. His shirt looked crisp and fresh and the tie he wore was, from its stained-glass colours, real silk.

Final confirmation, if it were needed, was provided by the waiter. The cafe was full of smartly dressed women with shiny, exclusive carrier bags and besuited men in groups, clattering sugar spoons and worry beads with equal vigour.

Nevertheless, Christina and her unknown companion were led immediately to the best table under the striped awning. It was close to a small orange tree in a pot, whose perfumed flowers almost succeeded in masking the fumes of combustion engines.

At first Christina thought that this was simply the waiter’s professional recognition of a wealthy man. But when he addressed her companion as
‘Monsieur’
she realised that he did, indeed, know him.

Her companion seated her, before sitting himself in the comfortable basketwork chair at right angles to her.

He looked up at the waiter and spoke in quick, idiomatic Greek. He did not speak it like a Frenchman. Christina, whose command of the language was still imperfect even after five years of summer jobs in the country, listened with mixed admiration and dudgeon.

The waiter wrote down the order and left with a small bow. She noted it particularly. Waiters at pavement cafés, even on the fashionable boulevards, seldom bowed to their customers. She would have demanded an explanation but there was another matter to be dealt with first.

‘How did you know I wanted coffee and croissants?’ she demanded as soon as the waiter had gone. ‘You didn’t ask. I am old enough to do my own ordering, you know.’

The man leaned back in his chair, very much at his ease, one arm resting negligently along the curved basketwork arm. Oh, yes, this was a man to whom comfort was an automatic expectation, unworthy of comment. He looked amused at her belligerence.

‘But why should you? It was my pleasure.’ His tone was suave. ‘You had already said yes to coffee. And I assume, if funds are low, that any sustenance will be welcome.’ He flicked a glance at his heavy wrist-watch. ‘At this time you will not get a full English breakfast, I’m afraid, even here. And it is too soon for lunch. I thought croissants and pastries would fill the gap acceptably while we discuss what to do next.’

She had to admit that she could not fault his reasoning, or withstand that look of wicked amusement which invited her to share it. But Christina went down fighting.

‘If they bring me Greek coffee as sweet as barley sugar, I’ll get up and leave,’ she threatened.

He laughed aloud then. ‘It’s a deal.’

But when it came the coffee was filtered Colombian with an aroma that was a sensual experience all on its own. Christina closed her eyes and inhaled a scent of wood smoke, she tasted walnuts and heard the chink of brandy glasses at the end of a cordon bleu meal—and all from the warm fumes that wafted up from the cup between her palms.

She sighed in pure, sensuous appreciation. She opened her eyes and met his glance across the table. The brown eyes were dancing.

‘Leaving?’ he asked softly.

Christina sighed. ‘Coffee is possibly my greatest weakness,’ she said in resignation.

His mouth slanted. ‘I wish I enjoyed my weaknesses with such abandon.’

For no reason she could think of, Christina found her eyes falling away from his. ‘I’ll stay,’ she said hurriedly.

She thanked the waiter in careful Greek. It made him smile as he placed iced water at her elbow and put a basket of freshly baked croissants wrapped in a linen napkin in the middle of the table. It also, she saw out of the corner of her eyes with some satisfaction, raised her companion’s eyebrows.

‘So coffee’s your greatest weakness. That seems a waste.’ He pushed an elegant cream jug and sugar bowl across the table towards her. ‘It doesn’t leave much opportunity for sin,’ he observed softly.

Christina decided that she did not want to explore the implications of that. She pushed the hair back from her brow, running her fingers through the newly washed softness absently.

‘Enough,’ she said, eyeing him warily.

His smile grew, but he did not answer. It left her feeling slightly uneasy.

She helped herself to cream. He took his own coffee black, she saw, with several spoonfuls of sugar. She raised her brows as the third spoonful went in. He chuckled.

‘An old Latin American habit,’ he murmured. ‘My Brazilian uncle used to say coffee should be black as night, hot as hell and sweet as love.’

‘Oh,’ said Christina taken aback.

She pushed the sugar bowl away from her hurriedly. Without knowing why it did, she felt the warm blood rising under her tan. She was not normally given to blushing and it annoyed her. She took a cooling sip of the ice-cold water that the waiter had brought with her coffee and struggled to appear unmoved.

‘Is that where you come from? Latin America? I thought you were French,’ she said, determined to shift him out of dangerous territory into polite conversation.

She suspected that he detected her ploy. His eyes crinkled a little at the corners with what might have been secret laughter, but she could not be sure.

He said gravely, ‘Oh, I’ve got French uncles as well. My ancestry is a complete cocktail. It’s a long story. I won’t bore you with it.’

So it was not a subject open for conversation. That made Christina even more uneasy, for some reason. She allowed her dissatisfaction to appear.

He hesitated briefly she thought, before adding, ‘I suppose I should introduce myself. I am Luc Henri.’

There was an odd, loaded pause. He looked at her expectantly, even challengingly. Christina was surprised. Was she supposed to know his name? It meant nothing to her—except that it was obviously French.

She wondered suddenly if any of the other people in the busy café knew him. She looked round. There had been several covert glances in their direction from the elegantly dressed women shoppers.

They were envious glances, Christina realised now. So she was not the only one to rock back on her heels under the impact of that electric attraction. It was a small comfort.

She considered him anew. With a little shock, it was borne in on her that her companion had to be the most attractive man she had ever seen. Certainly he was the most attractive man in the café by a fair margin.

She said slowly. ‘Luc Henri? Should that mean something to me?’

The sleepy eyes laughed at her. ‘I hope not.’

That startled her. ‘What? Why?’

He leaned back in the chair, the morning light glinting on the blue-black hair, turning it into the sleek pelt of a jaguar. It also glinted, Christina saw wryly, on the heavy watch, which was probably gold, and the discreet cuff-links which certainly were. His mouth curved as he looked at her.

‘It is a rare experience to talk to a woman whose greatest weakness is coffee,’ he said smoothly. ‘I think we should keep this encounter of ours out of space and time. Then it can retain its rarity.’

Christina put her head on one side.

‘You mean we won’t meet again so we can afford to be honest with each other?’ she interpreted.

He looked startled. ‘You’re very acute.’

She gave a bubbling laugh. It made his lips twitch responsively.

‘I just like to know where I stand.’ She put her elbows on the table and steepled her hands, propping her chin on them while she considered him. ‘Of course, I could tell you a complete fantasy. You would never know.’

Luc Henri looked entertained. ‘Are you going to?’

Christina looked mischievous. ‘It’s a temptation,’ she admitted. She let her blue eyes go dreamy. ‘I could be—oh, a coffee planter’s daughter.’

He put back his head and laughed aloud at that. It was a deep, warm sound, like a cello. It seemed to set up some deep echo in Christina. She tingled with it. It was not unpleasant but it gave her an unexpected sense of danger, as if she had walked round an ordinary corner and found herself standing on a precipice.

Startled, she sat upright and stopped playing a game she did not understand.

‘On second thoughts, it’s probably better not to get carried away,’ she said wryly. ‘I’m Christina Howard.’

She extended her hand briskly across the table. Luc Henri took it and, to her astonishment, turned it over and inspected its ringless state. His fingers were long and cool. Christina gave a little private shiver at his touch.

Fortunately he did not seem to notice. He shook her hand equally briskly and returned it to her.

‘And what are you doing in Greece, Miss Howard? Apart from waiting for funds, of course.’

She acknowledged the dry comment with a smile. She sipped her coffee.

‘A tourist?’ he prompted.

Christina was affronted. Her Greek was not that bad. ‘Of course not. I work.’

There was a small pause while he surveyed her. An odd little smile played about his mouth. ‘I see I have offended you. Should I apologise?’

He did not look as if he often apologised, Christina thought. She did not say it. She did not have to. Luc Henri laughed softly.

‘There are so many of the young, beautiful and indigent in Athens. All students who think they can live on air and the classics while they see the sights of Ancient Greece. You seemed to qualify.’

Their eyes met. Christina had the sudden sensation that the precipice had begun to fall away under her feet. And he had called her beautiful again!

She said breathlessly, ‘I’m not such a fool.’

He looked sceptical.

She insisted, ‘I’m not. I’m short of money because my bank has messed things up, nothing more. I’m not a student. I’m a practical woman. I’ve never tried to live on air and—and whatever it was in my life.’

‘The classics,’ he murmured.

His eyes were crinkling up at the corners most decidedly now. He looked as if he was enjoying himself. ‘I apologise. What do you—er—work at?’

Christina grinned suddenly. ‘I’m a deckhand.’

That shook him as it was intended to do. He blinked.

‘A—?’ He shook his head and took a mouthful of his coffee. Then he shook his head again. ‘It’s no good. I thought you said a deckhand.’

‘I did.’