AllFreeNovel
Share Us
‘And you have sufficient influence to ensure that success or failure?’ Daniel asked her silkily.
It was a justifiable taunt, Christa knew, but even so it still surprised her. She was the one who made the nasty snide comments, not Daniel.
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, let’s just get the whole thing over and done with,’ she demanded sourly.
It was a cold, grey day, the sky threatening rain, the wind whipping the surface of the lake into angry, choppy little waves.
Christa shivered as she looked at them and then looked back at the brightly painted canoe. But she wasn’t going to reveal her apprehension, to back down and have Daniel taunt her.
Taking a deep breath, she walked to the end of the jetty.
‘I’ll go down first,’ Daniel told her.
There was nothing uncertain or lacking in confidence about the way he headed down the wooden ladder and eased himself easily into one of the canoe’s two small spaces, Christa acknowledged grudgingly, watching as he manoeuvred the small craft close to the bottom of the ladder and then told her to come down.
Far less confidently Christa did so, shivering a little as she reached the last rung of the ladder.
‘It’s all right, you’re doing fine,’ she heard Daniel telling her. ‘Now, just step over here and ease yourself into the canoe.’
For a moment she was tempted to refuse. Her mouth had gone uncomfortably dry, her body tensing as she clung to the ladder. Daniel was holding the canoe stable, one hand on the ladder, the other reaching out to help her, but if he let go…
‘It’s all right, Christa…’
Chagrined that he had so easily seen her fear, Christa gritted her teeth and stepped forward.
She had a wild moment of panic as she let go of the ladder and eased herself down into the canoe, but she fought it down, willing herself not to betray her feelings in front of Daniel, and then blessedly she was neatly tucked inside the small craft and Daniel was reaching for the paddle, sending them skimming across the grey surface of the lake at a speed that made Christa catch her breath. Even through the thickness of his wetsuit she could see the powerful strength of his shoulder muscles.
No need to wonder now, with that perverse feminine curiosity, where a man who was primarily an academic had come by them.
‘Normally in this exercise we send a group of four students out with one instructor in one of our larger canoes, initially.
‘Once he has demonstrated all the safety techniques and he is satisfied that they know the basics of handling the craft, he then removes all but two of the paddles, which are given to separate members of the group. They, then, between them, have to make their way back to the jetty by co-ordinating their paddling and directions in a group effort where they are all mutually dependent on one another.’
‘Sounds like a recipe for mass murder,’ Christa told him sardonically. ‘If something like that happened in real life, one of them would try to gain control of both paddles and then…’
‘And then what? They wouldn’t be able to keep control of them and manoeuvre the craft while holding the others at bay, would they?’ Daniel reasoned.
‘They could dispose of the others, kill them with the paddle, push them overboard…’
‘Mmm…they could, but wouldn’t it make much more sense for them to work together, to share the task of reaching dry land?’
‘In a perfect world, perhaps, but this isn’t a perfect world,’ Christa pointed out irritably.
‘No. Then maybe we should try harder to make it one…’
He couldn’t really think she was gullible enough to believe he actually thought such idealism could workcould he? Christa wondered derisively.
They were well out into the middle of the lake now and the small waves had become much higher and stronger.
‘What would you do now, Christa, if we were to lose both our paddles?’
‘Sue?’ Christa suggested sweetly.
Daniel laughed.
‘You’d have to get back to dry land first,’ he pointed out to her.
‘I can swim,’ Christa told him.
‘It’s a long way and the water’s very cold. Try thinking a little more laterally,’ he coaxed her. ‘Hands can make very good paddles, especially with the two of us working together, but first one of us would have to get up and turn round.’
‘There’s no way I’d turn my back on you…’ Christa answered immediately. ‘No way!’
‘So you’d prefer to stay out here rather than risk giving me your trust? Fine,’ Daniel told her calmly, but there was a glint in his eyes that warned her he was losing patience with her, and then, to her horror, he let go of the paddles, and while Christa was staring at them in disbelief, watching them float away, he stood up in one easy motion and lowered himself into the water.
‘Daniel, what are you doing? You can’t leave me here like this,’ Christa protested in panic as he released the canoe and started to swim towards the shore.
He paused, treading water as he turned to look at her.
‘It was your choice, Christa,’ he told her.
Her choice. Her choice to be abandoned here in the middle of a lake that was God alone knew how deep and filled with icy cold water.
Daniel was several yards away now and quite obviously had no intention of turning back.
Panic filled her, but her pride wouldn’t let her call o
ut to him. One of the paddles was still floating tantalisingly close by. Using her hands, she steered towards it and then reached out to grab hold of it, only she wasn’t quite close enough and she had reached over too far.
The feeling that hit her as she felt the canoe capsize and the cold lake-water drench her made the panic Clarence had induced in her fade to a mere nothing.
She did everything she knew logically she ought not to do, from crying out and gulping in mouthfuls of water to thrashing around in the lake instead of keeping still, convinced that her last moment had come and that she was about to drown.
The realisation that the canoe had righted itself; that she was no longer lying in the water and that, moreover, Daniel had turned back and was deftly manoeuvring himself back into the craft in front of her, instead of bringing her relief caused her to feel an intense and overwhelming surge of furious anger spiked with chagrin. So intense, in fact, that her whole body trembled under the grip of it as it rendered her totally speechless.
But not for long.
The moment Daniel brought the canoe alongside the jetty she scrambled up the ladder, waiting for him to join her, her stance as militant as the glitter in her eyes as she accused.
‘You did that deliberately, didn’t you? You tried to drown me…’ she accused furiously.
‘No, Christa…You panicked and capsized the canoe, but I promise you, you were never in any danger of drowning…’
‘So you say…Just what the hell were you trying to do?’
‘I was trying to show you the benefits of allowing yourself to trust.’
‘And punishing me when I refused to do so by half terrifying me to death…’
‘You were the one who punished yourself. There wasn’t anything for you to fear.’
‘I’ve only got your word for that—oh, I can see what you’re up to,’ Christa told him, refusing to listen. ‘If you can’t get people to agree with you voluntarily, you force them into it by terrifying them. Well, it won’t work with me, Daniel. In my view you’re nothing but an arrogant, irresponsible…’
To her consternation she couldn’t go on. Her teeth had started to chatter and, even more ominously, her legs had gone so weak that the only thing keeping her upright was her willpower.
