Avoiding Mr Right. Sophie Weston
but only just.
‘Thank you,’ she said. She could not disguise her faint annoyance.
He had observed her debate.
‘Although you don’t usually take coffee with perfect strangers?’ His lips twitched suddenly. ‘I feel I should thank you,’ he remarked. ‘A salutary experience, believe me. This way, I think.’
He took her by the elbow. It was a light hold, barely more than the touch of his fingertips on her bare arm, but Christina was conscious of it through her whole body. She looked at him sideways, startled. The man seemed unaware of the effect he was having on her. Perhaps it was the effect he had on every woman and he was used to it. That tingle certainly did not seem to be mutual, Christina thought wryly. He looked completely unmoved.
He took her to one of the fashionable cafés that Christina would never normally have gone to on her own. Even when she had plenty of cash in her money belt, she restricted herself to the places where students and young, footloose travellers went. But the man looked as if he had never strayed off the wide boulevards in his life. He had the air of one to whom luxury was commonplace.
Watching him from under her eyelashes, Christina realised how right she had been about his elegance. The light-coloured, lightweight suit was virtually creaseless, in spite of the city battering it must have taken this morning. His shirt looked crisp and fresh and the tie he wore was, from its stained-glass colours, real silk.
Final confirmation, if it were needed, was provided by the waiter. The cafe was full of smartly dressed women with shiny, exclusive carrier bags and besuited men in groups, clattering sugar spoons and worry beads with equal vigour.
Nevertheless, Christina and her unknown companion were led immediately to the best table under the striped awning. It was close to a small orange tree in a pot, whose perfumed flowers almost succeeded in masking the fumes of combustion engines.
At first Christina thought that this was simply the waiter’s professional recognition of a wealthy man. But when he addressed her companion as ‘Monsieur’ she realised that he did, indeed, know him.
Her companion seated her, before sitting himself in the comfortable basketwork chair at right angles to her.
He looked up at the waiter and spoke in quick, idiomatic Greek. He did not speak it like a Frenchman. Christina, whose command of the language was still imperfect even after five years of summer jobs in the country, listened with mixed admiration and dudgeon.
The waiter wrote down the order and left with a small bow. She noted it particularly. Waiters at pavement cafés, even on the fashionable boulevards, seldom bowed to their customers. She would have demanded an explanation but there was another matter to be dealt with first.
‘How did you know I wanted coffee and croissants?’ she demanded as soon as the waiter had gone. ‘You didn’t ask. I am old enough to do my own ordering, you know.’
The man leaned back in his chair, very much at his ease, one arm resting negligently along the curved basketwork arm. Oh, yes, this was a man to whom comfort was an automatic expectation, unworthy of comment. He looked amused at her belligerence.
‘But why should you? It was my pleasure.’ His tone was suave. ‘You had already said yes to coffee. And I assume, if funds are low, that any sustenance will be welcome.’ He flicked a glance at his heavy wrist-watch. ‘At this time you will not get a full English breakfast, I’m afraid, even here. And it is too soon for lunch. I thought croissants and pastries would fill the gap acceptably while we discuss what to do next.’
She had to admit that she could not fault his reasoning, or withstand that look of wicked amusement which invited her to share it. But Christina went down fighting.
‘If they bring me Greek coffee as sweet as barley sugar, I’ll get up and leave,’ she threatened.
He laughed aloud then. ‘It’s a deal.’
But when it came the coffee was filtered Colombian with an aroma that was a sensual experience all on its own. Christina closed her eyes and inhaled a scent of wood smoke, she tasted walnuts and heard the chink of brandy glasses at the end of a cordon bleu meal—and all from the warm fumes that wafted up from the cup between her palms.
She sighed in pure, sensuous appreciation. She opened her eyes and met his glance across the table. The brown eyes were dancing.
‘Leaving?’ he asked softly.
Christina sighed. ‘Coffee is possibly my greatest weakness,’ she said in resignation.
His mouth slanted. ‘I wish I enjoyed my weaknesses with such abandon.’
For no reason she could think of, Christina found her eyes falling away from his. ‘I’ll stay,’ she said hurriedly.
She thanked the waiter in careful Greek. It made him smile as he placed iced water at her elbow and put a basket of freshly baked croissants wrapped in a linen napkin in the middle of the table. It also, she saw out of the corner of her eyes with some satisfaction, raised her companion’s eyebrows.
‘So coffee’s your greatest weakness. That seems a waste.’ He pushed an elegant cream jug and sugar bowl across the table towards her. ‘It doesn’t leave much opportunity for sin,’ he observed softly.
Christina decided that she did not want to explore the implications of that. She pushed the hair back from her brow, running her fingers through the newly washed softness absently.
‘Enough,’ she said, eyeing him warily.
His smile grew, but he did not answer. It left her feeling slightly uneasy.
She helped herself to cream. He took his own coffee black, she saw, with several spoonfuls of sugar. She raised her brows as the third spoonful went in. He chuckled.
‘An old Latin American habit,’ he murmured. ‘My Brazilian uncle used to say coffee should be black as night, hot as hell and sweet as love.’
‘Oh,’ said Christina taken aback.
She pushed the sugar bowl away from her hurriedly. Without knowing why it did, she felt the warm blood rising under her tan. She was not normally given to blushing and it annoyed her. She took a cooling sip of the ice-cold water that the waiter had brought with her coffee and struggled to appear unmoved.
‘Is that where you come from? Latin America? I thought you were French,’ she said, determined to shift him out of dangerous territory into polite conversation.
She suspected that he detected her ploy. His eyes crinkled a little at the corners with what might have been secret laughter, but she could not be sure.
He said gravely, ‘Oh, I’ve got French uncles as well. My ancestry is a complete cocktail. It’s a long story. I won’t bore you with it.’
So it was not a subject open for conversation. That made Christina even more uneasy, for some reason. She allowed her dissatisfaction to appear.
He hesitated briefly she thought, before adding, ‘I suppose I should introduce myself. I am Luc Henri.’
There was an odd, loaded pause. He looked at her expectantly, even challengingly. Christina was surprised. Was she supposed to know his name? It meant nothing to her—except that it was obviously French.
She wondered suddenly if any of the other people in the busy café knew him. She looked round. There had been several covert glances in their direction from the elegantly dressed women shoppers.
They were envious glances, Christina realised now. So she was not the only one to rock back on her heels under the impact of that electric attraction. It was a small comfort.
She considered him anew. With a little shock, it was borne in on her that her companion had to be the most attractive man she had ever seen. Certainly he was the most attractive man in the café by a fair margin.
She said slowly. ‘Luc Henri? Should that mean something to me?’
The