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e robe even more tightly around her body. But as Alex set up the table Beth was treacherously aware of how glad she was that he hadn’t arrived before she had had time to wash her hair and do her face; after all, why should she mind whether or not Alex saw her at her best or her worst?
She was simply reacting in a totally normal female way, she defended herself mentally. There was nothing personal in her reaction; she would have felt the same no matter who had arrived with the tray.
Would she?
Beth fought to suppress the knowledge that only yesterday, when the room service waiter had arrived, it hadn’t concerned her in the least that she had had to let him in with her hair uncombed and her face still pale from sleep.
‘I thought we could discuss what we are going to do today over breakfast,’ Alex replied cheerfully as he pulled up a chair for her with a very professional flourish and waved her into it.
Too caught off guard to refuse, Beth automatically sat down.
‘We are not going to do anything,’ she informed him firmly. ‘Didn’t you get my message?’
‘You don’t intend to visit any more factories. Yes, I know,’ Alex agreed. ‘However, there is far, far more to Prague and the Republic than glass factories.’
‘I’m sure there is, and I’m looking forward to discovering it and them—on my own,’ Beth told him pointedly.
‘I thought we’d start with a walk round the city,’ Alex continued, expertly pouring Beth’s coffee and then sitting down opposite her and offering her a piece of toast.
‘You have no right to do this, nor to be here,’ Beth told him furiously. ‘I could report you to the hotel manager...’
She could, but Beth knew that she wouldn’t. Someone, whether her official waiter or someone else, must have known what Alex was doing, and to report them might be to get them into trouble. Beth was far too soft-hearted to do that, and she suspected that Alex knew it.
‘Why don’t you want to visit any more factories?’ Alex was asking her, ignoring her patently weak threat.
‘Because I don’t need to,’ Beth told him promptly, adding, ‘Not that it’s any of your business...’ But instead of looking suitably chastised Alex was actually looking quite stern.
‘Beth, you aren’t still thinking of following up that contact you made in the Square, are you? Because if you are...’
‘If I am, then it’s my business and no one else’s,’ Beth told him furiously. How dared he try to tell her what she could and could not do, and, even worse, how dared he try to make her feel as though she was a gullible little fool, incapable of making a rational or informed business decision?
‘And despite what you seem to think I actually do know my own business and my own customers,’ she continued hotly. ‘I know what will and won’t sell in my shop, and at what price, and if you think—’
‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry,’ Alex apologised remorsefully. ‘I wasn’t trying to imply that you don’t know your own business, Beth, or your own market, but buying goods here in the Republic isn’t quite like going on a buying trip at home. The Czech people themselves couldn’t be more honest, but there are other forces at work here, other...problems...which have to be taken into account.
‘If you really feel that this gypsy contact you’ve made is genuine, then at least allow me to come with you when you go to visit the factory...’
‘Why? So that you can get the opportunity to undercut their prices and point me in the direction of your cousins’ factory instead?’ Beth demanded sharply, adding scornfully, ‘You see, Alex, I’m not quite so naive as you seem to think. I’m perfectly well aware of what you’re trying to do. No doubt the reason you’re here today is really to try to persuade me to visit your precious cousins’ business...’
Beth saw from the look on his face that her guess was right, but instead of feeling triumphant she discovered that the tiny needle-sharp sensation knowing she was right gave her actually physically hurt.
‘I had intended to suggest that it might be worthwhile your visiting the factory, yes,’ Alex agreed, his voice suddenly unfamiliarly harsh. ‘But not for the less than altruistic reasons you’re trying to suggest. If you must have the truth, the glass my cousins—’ He stopped.
‘What is it about you, Beth? Why is it you’re so determined to suspect my motives?’
Beth pushed away her toast uneaten.
‘You’re a man,’ she told him acidly, ‘and my experience of men is that...’
There was a small, tight silence, and then Alex said harshly, ‘Do go on. Your experience of men is what?’
Beth looked away from him. Something about the tight white line around his mouth was hurting her. Without knowing how it had happened she had strayed onto some very treacherous and uncertain ground indeed. What on earth had possessed her to raise a subject both so intimately personal and so volatilely dangerous?
‘So, I’m to be condemned without a hearing, is that it? Sentenced for a crime I haven’t even committed simply because I’m a man... Who was he, Beth?’ he asked her grimly. ‘A friend? A lover?’
Beth discovered that she was finding it hard to swallow. Completely unexpectedly and totally unwontedly she found that her eyes had filled with tears.
‘Actually he was neither,’ she told Alex shakily, and then, before she could stop herself, she was adding emotionally, ‘If you must know he was the man who told me he loved me but didn’t—the man who betrayed me and...’
