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
