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‘I can’t let you leave,’ Daniel had protested the previous night after supper as she lay curled up on the settee beside him watching a television documentary. ‘I want you here with me for always, Christa…’
‘I have to go,’ she had told him. ‘There’s my work…and the house…’
‘You can work from here,’ Daniel had told her, shaking his head as he saw her expression. ‘All right, I know. You need time. Perhaps I shouldn’t have been so careful about ensuring that you didn’t conceive these last few nights and instead…’
‘Oh, Daniel,’ Christa had protested, ‘it isn’t that I don’t want to stay with you!’
‘Just that you aren’t ready to commit yourself to marriage with me yet,’ he had suggested.
‘It’s such a big step to take. I know I love you…but the life you lead here…your work…’ She paused, shaking her head, not wanting to hurt him but compelled to be honest. ‘I know how deeply you feel about what you’re doing here, Daniel. But I’m not sure I can feel the same way…be so committed…’
‘I’m not asking you to be,’ had been his surprising response. ‘After all, you don’t expect me to get excited over a new fabric pattern, do you? I don’t want to change you, Chnsta. That isn’t what loving someone is all about…’
‘But when I came here you said you would change the way I felt,’ Christa reminded him. ‘I do feel different, Daniel, in that I accept that your belief in what you’re doing is genuine and heartfelt, but…’
‘But part of you still doesn’t wholly trust me,’ Daniel had concluded for her sadly.
‘No. It isn’t that,’ Christa had denied. ‘Of course I trust you…How could I not, after what you did…after the way we’ve been together? No, it isn’t you I don’t trust, Daniel…it’s just that I can’t…’
‘You can’t quite let go of the past,’ Daniel finished for her. ‘You can’t quite let go of your fear that I might turn out to be like your friend’s husband. Christa, dishonesty is something that comes from within the person themselves; it isn’t a product of the way they earn their living.’
‘No. But—’
‘But what? There are certain stereotypes that must always be true…?’
Christa had shaken her head, unable to say anything. They hadn’t actively quarrelled, but that night the shadow of what had been said had lain between them in bed, and even though Daniel had made love to her with his normal passion and intensity, she had been conscious of a slight withdrawal in him, and within herself a small painful sense of something having been lost.
‘I’ve got to go,’ she reiterated now. ‘I’m due to fly out to Pakistan the day I go back. I’ve got meetings planned that I can’t cancel…’ She closed her eyes and told him achingly, ‘Oh, Daniel, I’m going to miss you so much. I want to be here with you, I want it more than anything else in the world…’
‘But… he finished for her. Sadly Christa watched him.
‘We don’t have to rush things,’ she told him, half pleadingly.
‘No, we don’t have to,’ Daniel agreed, ‘and yes, there are a hundred or more good reasons why we should be sensible and take things slowly, but that isn’t what all this is about, is it?
‘You’re still holding back from me, Christa. From us…’
‘No, that isn’t true,’ she denied, but she knew that it was.
It wasn’t that she didn’t love him—far from it. It wasn’t even, any more, that she didn’t trust him, not, at least, in the sense of knowing that he would never hurt her, that he would always put her emotional and physical safety first.
But there was still, deep within her, a sense of wariness about the centre and about his work. If she was honest with herself, if he had still been working as a lecturer…But it was the man she loved, she told herself insistently, not what he did.
When Daniel talked with passion and enthusiasm about his future plans, about the benefits of what he was trying to do, all she could see was the other side of the coin, the false hopes and vain, glorious boasts Piers had made, the people he had hurt.
It wasn’t that she didn’t want to be with Daniel. She did, desperately so, but at the same time she was afraid; afraid that it just wasn’t possible for him to be as wonderful as he seemed; that he must have a hidden flaw which would destroy her happiness.
She was still afraid, she acknowledged, afraid of committing herself to him, afraid of being hurt.
‘I wish I weren’t going to Pakistan,’ she said contradictorily now. ‘I’m going to miss you so much…’
Daniel smiled gently at her as he kissed her, but he didn’t suggest that she cancel her trip.
‘It will only be for three weeks,’ he said instead.
Three weeks. Christa closed her eyes. Right now, if he was out of her sight for three hours she started suffering from withdrawal symptoms.
When she and Daniel were together like this, locked in the intimate privacy of their own special world, nothing else seemed to matter. It seemed impossible for anything to come between them.
‘Loving one another doesn’t mean that we have to feel exactly the same about every single issue, you know,’ Daniel told her gently now. ‘We’re human beings. There are bound to be times when we think and feel differently about things.’
‘Some things,’ Christa agreed. ‘I just wish…’
She stopped. What did she wish? That things were different? That Daniel were different? No, never that.
‘I just need time, Daniel,’ she told him. ‘Everything’s happened so quickly.’ But she couldn’t quite bring herself to meet his eyes, and when he kissed her she could sense the pain she was causing him.
In three days’ time her course would be over and she would be going back to her own life; by this time next week she would be in Pakistan negotiating with her suppliers, bartering with them over the cost and terms of next year’s fabrics.
At some point before she left, Daniel was going to ask her if her time here with him had wrought the lifetransforming miracle he had promised. What could she say to him? That her love for him had certainly transformed her, but that she remained as unconvinced as ever that his courses offered anything more than some escapist game-playing for those involved in them?
As she blinked back hot tears she turned to him, wrapping her arms around him as tightly as she could while she closed her eyes on her pain.
The skin of his back felt silky-warm against her palms, its texture, like the shape of his body, the smell of his skin, the sounds he made when he loved her, the way he moved, everything about him, having become heartwrenchingly familiar to her during this last precious week.
Familiarity, far from decreasing the intensity of her love and desire, had only fed it, so that now merely the act of running her fingertips caressingly down his spine was enough to stir her body into quick arousal.
When she kissed him, tracing the hard line of his collarbone, she heard him moan softly under his breath, his hands sliding up over her body, cupping her breasts gently, caressing her already hard nipples. When he gathered her up against him, slowly drawing her nipple into his mouth, bathing it in the moist caressing heat that instantaneously turned her bones to liquid, his hands slid to her thighs, stroking the shaping of the firm outer flesh and then more urgently stroking her soft inner skin.
Her body was already eager and waiting for him, her quick moans of pleasure joining the other sounds of their lovemaking; the silken stroke of skin against skin, the slow suckle of Daniel’s mouth, the urgency of the low groan of pleasure he gave when she touched him intimately, closing her fingers around his flesh and caressing him, not just with desire, but with tenderness and love as well. He was so vulnerable to her when he was like this, so much in need, the words he whispered to her, as well as the movement of his body, openly showing the depth and intensity of his love for her.
The feel and sight of his maleness fascinated her. This degree of intimacy with a man was unfamiliar to her, and something about the way he
watched her when she looked at him and touched him made her feel a soft, aching tenderness for him that deepened her love.
Now, as she lifted her head to caress him lovingly with her lips, it wasn’t just desire that motivated her but a need to show him how much he meant to her. The fulfilment of every male fantasy, she acknowledged drily: woman worshipping at the fount of man’s most essential maleness; only she knew that Daniel would never misinterpret so insensitively what she was doing. He simply wasn’t that sort of man. Fresh tears filled her eyes. Why couldn’t she banish that small, final shadow of doubt? Why couldn’t she simply accept his choice of the way he earned his living instead of—?
As her tears dampened his thigh, Daniel reached down for her, lifting her against his body, cupping her face as he looked down into her sad eyes.
‘Oh, Christa,’ he groaned. ‘You don’t know how tempted I am to make it impossible for you ever to leave me. To keep you here…’
‘How?’ Christa asked him. ‘Barefoot and pregnant…’ She tried to smile, to make the words light and teasing, but her voice wobbled dangerously and she saw from Daniel’s expression that he was not deceived.
‘Don’t tempt me,’ he warned her rawly. ‘Don’t tempt me…’
