Avoiding Mr Right by Sophie Weston Page A

earth are you thinking of, hauling it around on your own?’
    Christina stood very still. A feeling swept over her that made her capable little hands suddenly lose all their usual strength. Shaken, she looked down at his long fingers locked round her own.
    No one had made her feel like that, ever : as if she was all blood and fire, with no strength or will or ability to do anything but mould herself to him. Mould herself with passion. It was not just the dreams, after all.
    ‘Oh, good grief,’ she said, truly horrified.
    She surrendered the bag to him, sliding her fingers out from under his without resistance.
    He misunderstood the cause of her dismay.
    ‘And it’s a great pleasure to see you too,’ Luc Henri said, amused.
    The heavy bag was no burden to him at all. He swung it up over his shoulder like a sack of coals and turned away. She looked after him, trying to steady herself.
    This was no cool, suited sophisticate today. He was wearing jeans and a casual T-shirt which showed powerful muscles. Christina remembered how she had sensed that strength under the smart jacket in Athens. It made something clench in her stomach. She hoped desperately that Luc was not aware of her turmoil.
    Her face burned. The hand which pushed her sunglasses back up her nose shook a little. With his back turned to her, she flexed her shoulders and the fingers that he had made feel so frail. Sternly she told herself to pull herself together.
    Luc bore the rubbish off to the prominently placed bin and returned. He was looking deeply satisfied, as if something he had planned had fallen out better than he had expected. It was a very private look. In spite of her disorientation, it put Christina’s hackles up.
    ‘There. Don’t try carrying it on your own again,’ he instructed her.
    So he was still high-handed. Christina’s hackles went higher. She tried to dredge up the words to tell him exactly what he could do with his orders. But there was something in the intent dark eyes which stopped the words in her throat.
    She strove for normality.
    ‘Perhaps you’d better discuss the matter with the man I work for,’ she said in a practical voice.
    For no reason that she could think of that seemed to entertain him. The look of private amusement intensified.
    ‘Good idea. I might just do that.’
    Christina sent a look over her shoulder. She had had a sharp little argument with the first officer after lunch. It had culminated in a rude instruction from Captain Demetrius for her to take the garbage ashore and come straight back. When she’d set off the captain and the first officer, who was also his cousin, had been leaning on the rail, watching her. She was almost certain that that had been the object of the order in the first place. Conscious of their eyes on her long, tanned legs, she had found herself wishing passionately that she had been wearing anything but the standard shipboard garb of shorts and cut-away cotton vest.
    Luc followed her eyes. There were no figures at the rail now, but he seemed to read her mind.
    ‘Watching you, were they? No one offered to help?’
    Christina shrugged. ‘It’s my job,’ she said levelly. ‘Ship’s cook gets rid of galley refuse.’
    His mouth tightened. ‘Not by the tonne.’
    ‘We—er—haven’t had the opportunity to unload garbage for a couple of days.’
    That was an understatement. Captain Demetrius, seriously out of his depth in charge of a boat all on his own for the first time, had failed to book moorings ahead of their arrival in port. With the early season now well under way, the harbour-masters had turned the Lady Elaine away. The captain’s new arrogance, presumably acquired by association with his princely employer, had not helped. As a result, so far they had docked in one extremely smelly fishing village, a container port and now this unfashionable harbour.
    Luc raised his brows. ‘Explain,’ he ordered.
    Christina sighed. ‘Put it this way—it’s not the best organised