Reckless Engagement. Daphne Clair
‘I’m not unwell. But I think I’ll stick to the easy run after this.’
A chair arrived and she stepped forward. ‘If that satisfies you,’ he taunted quietly, standing aside as she took her seat and the safety bar came down in front of her.
Katrien stared straight ahead, refusing to look at him, and the chair lifted her into the air and carried her away from him.
She was in the hotel lounge bar, having a brandy after dinner and chatting with two American girls, when she saw Zachary come in, dressed in cords and a chunky natural wool sweater. He looked around the room, found her and gave her a nod, then approached the bar.
Katrien forced her attention back to her companions, but was aware of Zachary getting his drink and then crossing the room to them.
When he stopped before their table she had to look up and acknowledge his presence.
‘Hello, Katrien.’ He pulled her woollen hat from a back pocket and dropped it on the table. ‘I thought you might be missing this.’
‘Thank you,’ she said, staring at it.
‘May I?’ he asked politely, including the two Americans in his enquiring glance.
‘Oh, sure!’ One of them moved her chair over to make room for him to take the empty fourth at the table.
Katrien introduced him, and watched him charm the girls with his smile and stories of the mountains. But when she had finished her brandy and made to go he put down his glass and stood up. ‘Nice meeting you,’ he told the American girls, and followed Katrien from the room.
In the foyer he said, ‘I hoped to talk to you.’
‘What for?’
Taking her arm, he drew her over to where a couple of armchairs were placed at either side of a low table.
Reluctantly she sat down, and he took the other chair, leaning forward with his hands clasped between his knees. ‘To apologise,’ he said, ‘for imagining you were deliberately putting yourself in my way. And for the kiss…though it’s hard to say I’m sorry about that. I enjoyed it too much.’
He wasn’t the only one, she thought guiltily. ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘Apology accepted. I guess…you couldn’t be blamed for wondering if I was pursuing you. I suppose women do.’
His mouth twitched in a half smile. ‘Not often enough. I was going to buy you a drink, but—’
They couldn’t return to the bar now. ‘I’ll take a rain-check on that,’ she offered.
‘Right. I’ll hold you to it.’ He leaned back, smiling at her in a relaxed fashion. ‘You’re a model, aren’t you? That’ll be why I thought I recognised you at the dinner when…we met.’
Was that why he’d stared at her, as she’d stared at him? She was used to people knowing who she was, or not knowing but being aware they’d seen her face somewhere. And yet she’d thought there was something different, some special awareness about the way he’d kept looking at her. Maybe she had simply imagined it because of her own sense of recognition, her conviction that he was the man who haunted her sleep.
‘You’ve probably seen some of my magazine work,’ she suggested. ‘Or maybe a TV ad.’
‘I think I’d remember if I’d seen you on TV. I don’t watch much, and the last few years I’ve been out of the country most of the time.’
‘Climbing.’
‘Yes. In India, South America…wherever there are mountains.’ Perhaps he saw something in her face. ‘You don’t approve?’
Katrien shrugged. ‘I don’t understand the compulsion. When you talked about it that night I could see you were in love with the mountains. But it seems so…’
‘Pointless?’ Zachary laughed. ‘Only those who do it truly understand. It’s a matter of pitting yourself against the elements, experiencing the worst that nature can throw at you, and coming out on top. Of proving yourself to yourself.’
‘Over and over? Until you die? Like your friend Ben?’
His face went smooth and expressionless, and she said swiftly, ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to remind you.’
Zachary shook his head. ‘It’s okay.’ He was silent for a moment, gazing down at his brown leather boots. ‘I’m used to losing my friends to the mountains. Not many of us live to a ripe old age.’
Inexplicably angry, she said, ‘So it’s acceptable? You can just shrug your shoulders and say, “Poor old Ben”—or poor old Dick or Tom or Harry?’
‘It’s not like that. But on the mountains you realise how little one human life really matters in the scale of things. And Ben died doing—’
‘What he wanted to do. I know.’ Her voice was decidedly tart. ‘And he left a wife and family behind while he went off to do it.’
‘Wendy knew what she was taking on when she married him. They used to climb together before the children came along.’
‘And then she gave it up, but he didn’t?’
Zachary spread his hands. ‘Climbing was his life.’
‘And yours?’
There was a moment’s silence. ‘I’m not married.’
He would be about thirty, Katrien guessed, a few years older than herself. ‘Have you ever been married?’ she asked.
He was looking at her, his eyes dark. ‘A couple of near-misses. They wanted me to give up climbing.’ He gave her a crooked smile.
‘I rest my case.’ She stood up and he followed. ‘I’ll see you around, Mr Ballantine.’
She made to pass him on the way to the stairs, but he reached out and caught at her arm. ‘Tomorrow?’ he urged. ‘On the top ski field? I wouldn’t like to think you were staying away from the upper level because of me.’
There was no need for her to stay away. He’d apologised, they both understood the situation, and nothing more was likely to happen. What could happen on a popular ski slope with dozens of people about?
Temptation warred with common sense. She temporised, knowing it was weak and stupid. ‘Maybe.’
CHAPTER THREE
WHEN Katrien arrived next day at the upper field Zachary was coming out of the café. As she saw him pick up his skis she told herself it was coincidence, that he hadn’t been sitting and watching the chairlift, waiting for her.
He smiled at her lazily and, without speaking at all, tramped to her side at the top of the slope, let her push off before him, and followed, swooping past her in a series of sashaying curves, wide sweeps leaving parabolic lines in the snow.
She began to copy him, watching how he used his body, feeling her own muscles respond as she mimicked his movements.
She finished the run faultlessly and came to a swerving halt beside Zachary, flushed and proud of herself and meeting his eyes unafraid, responding to their laughing approval.
‘I never thought I was that good!’ she said involuntarily.
‘We none of us know what we can do until we try.’ He smiled at her, and suggested, ‘I’ll buy you a drink before we do it again.’
She let him, but the next time she bought the drinks and he just raised a dark eyebrow at her and allowed her to pay.
They skied together every day, and had coffee or drinks afterwards. One afternoon he asked her if it had always been her ambition to become a model, and she laughed and told him the only career she’d seriously considered was librarianship, which made him laugh in turn. ‘I was in my last