Antigua Kiss Read Online Free PDF Page A

scampered out of the kitchen Ash turned to open the refrigerator. He took from it a dark green glass bottle, the top sealed with dull gold foil.
    'I hope you like champagne.'
    'I've never had it.'
    'Never? Not even at your wedding?'
    'It wasn't that sort of wedding.'
    He shot a swift, narrowed glance at her, but he said only, 'Any glasses will do if you haven't flutes.'
    Christie turned to a cupboard containing lemonade goblets. 'What did you mean—I won't be here?' she repeated.
    John came back with a large white envelope. Wide-eyed with interest, he watched his half-uncle ease the cork out of the bottle and fill two glasses with pale golden, bubbling wine. His long, square-tipped fingers had the deftness of much practice.
    'You wouldn't like this stuff, my lad,' Ash's free hand .ruffled the child's hair.
    It was clear that in less than twelve hours he had become an established member of John's small world.
    Ash handed one of the glasses to Christie. He raised the other. 'To the future.'
    'To the future,' she echoed uncertainly.
    He drank, then handed her the envelope, his eyes amused by her hesitance.

    Christie set down her glass, and tipped out the contents of the envelope. When, having examined the tickets, she looked up at him, he said, 'I think you'll find Christmas in the sun just as enjoyable as a white Christmas over here—and maybe it won't snow this year.'
    Her beautiful teeth—only noticeable when she was laughing—bit into her soft lower lip. How could she rage at a man who had paid a great deal of money for her to cross the Atlantic? Yet what intolerable arrogance to assume she had no other plans; to dictate her actions in this high-handed manner.

TWO
    'I THINK this is something we should discuss later this evening,'
    Christie said, in a carefully controlled voice.
    He said, 'As you wish.' But she could see he was confident that his wishes would override hers.
    'By the way, I invited your friend Mrs Kelly to join us for supper,' he said casually.
    'Margaret? Where did you run into her? At the shops?'
    'No„ I called on her at her flat.'
    'Really? Why?' she asked, thinking—To pump her about me, I suppose.
    'I needed to know the name of the school where you teach, so that I could ring up and check the dates when this term ends and the next one begins before booking your flight. Mrs Kelly is a nice woman.
    You're lucky to have her to help you.'
    'I know. Very lucky,' she agreed.
    'You don't like this champagne?' he asked, reminding her that she had taken only one small sip of it.
    Christie drank a little more. 'It's delicious, but I'm not used to drinking. It may go to my head if I drink it too fast. Is it true that champagne is the only drink which doesn't give people hangovers?'
    'I wouldn't know, never having had an excess of it.I suspect that a split of champagne would do most people more good—and cost the Health Service less—than all the tranquillisers and sleeping pills which Mrs Kelly tells me are prescribed far too freely over here. Do you take them?'
    'I did for a while after my husband died. I don't any more. Why do you ask? Do I strike you as being a neurotic?' she asked, somewhat indignantly.
    'Not neurotic. A little tense, maybe. But that's understandable in the circumstances, and three or four weeks in Antigua will relax you. It does everyone; even businessmen with ulcers and high blood pressure.'
    His cool assumption that she would fall in with his plans had an anything but relaxing effect on her. But she said only, 'What time were you planning to have dinner? I usually bath John about six, and give him his supper at half past. Then he plays in bed till he's sleepy.'
    'So Mrs Kelly told me. I suggested she joined us at seven, to eat about eight.'
    Ash watched her bath John that night. The bathroom seemed even smaller than it was with the tall, dark man as an audience while she knelt on the bathmat and lathered the child's rosy body as he played with his fleet of plastic boats.
    Having