Книга - The Dark Side of Desire

The Dark Side of Desire
Julia James


Step into a world of sophistication and glamour, where sinfully seductive heroes await you in luxurious international locations.Offered by her father…English rose Flavia Lassiter has never been comfortable in her father’s glitzy world. Summoned to yet another of his ostentatiously lavish parties, she has one order: to be ‘nice’ to a wealthy investor. Her body may be on offer, but she shields her heart behind an icy shell.Taken by the billionaire!Leon Maranz emanates a dark power that sends shivers through her body – threatening to shatter her frosty façade. To let the self-made billionaire bed her would be to do her unscrupulous father’s bidding. But to turn Leon down would be to deny her body’s deepest desires…














‘Your father made it clear you were supposed to be “nice” to me—’

‘Yes.’

‘And so, without him, you’d never have had an affair with me? You would have been totally, totally indifferent to me?’

‘Yes—’

‘Liar,’ Leon said softly. ‘If you had met me, with no connection to your father, I’ll tell you what you would have done, Flavia.’ He stepped towards her, cupped his hands around her face, and she could feel her skin flush with heat. ‘This …’ he said.

His kiss was soft. As soft as velvet. His lips caressed hers and she could feel her limbs dissolve, feel her heart leap, her mouth open to his, her arms wind around him, clinging to his strong, hard body.




About the Author


JULIA JAMES lives in England with her family. Harlequin Mills & Boon


were the first ‘grown-up’ books she read as a teenager, alongside Georgette Heyer and Daphne du Maurier, and she’s been reading them ever since. Julia adores the English and Celtic countryside, in all its seasons, and is fascinated by all things historical, from castles to cottages. She also has a special love for the Mediterranean—’The most perfect landscape after England!’—and considers both ideal settings for romance stories. In between writing she enjoys walking, gardening, needlework, baking extremely gooey cakes and trying to stay fit!

Recent titles by the same author:

FROM DIRT TO DIAMONDS

FORBIDDEN OR FOR BEDDING?



Did you know these are also available as eBooks?Visit www.millsandboon.co.uk


The Dark Side

of Desire





Julia James


















www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)




CHAPTER ONE


LEON MARANZ lifted a glass of champagne from the server standing just inside the entrance to the large, crowded first floor salon of the exclusive Regent’s Park apartment that he’d just been shown into by one of the household staff and surveyed the scene before him. It was the type of social gathering he was very familiar with. A cocktail party in one of London’s premier residences, ITS guests, however disparate, unified by one common factor.

Wealth.

A great deal of it.

A casual flick of Leon’s opaque eyes could tell him that, simply by seeing the unbroken sea of designer outfits the women were wearing, let alone the glint of precious gems at their throats, ears and wrists. The women uniformly had a look about them of pampered, sleek felines, and the men were also uniformly alike in their projection of self-assurance and self-worth in the eyes of the world.

Leon’s mouth tightened infinitesimally. That projection was not always a guarantee of the solidity of the worth behind it. Probingly, his dark eyes lanced through the throng, seeking its target. Alistair Lassiter’s back was turned to the entrance of the salon, but Leon recognised him instantly. Recognised, too, what he wanted to see. Probably invisible to the rest of the guests, but not to him: a discernible tension in his stance. For a moment longer he held his gaze. Then, his assessing surveillance done, he lifted his glass of champagne to his mouth. But even as he did so he stilled.

A woman was looking at him.

She was nowhere near Alistair Lassiter, but Leon could see her at the periphery of his vision. Every finely tuned antenna told him she was levelling a stare at him that had an intensity about it that demonstrated she had no idea he was aware of her scrutiny. But Leon had been on the receiving end of female interest for close on two decades—even long before he had made the fortune which he knew, cynically, was high prime attraction for women these days. Far and away more attractive to them than the six-foot frame and strong, saturnine looks that had been his appeal when young and impoverished. Years of enjoying all that beautiful females had to offer meant he knew when a woman was looking at him.

And this one was most definitely looking at him.

He took a mouthful of champagne, turning his head slightly as he did so, to move the woman into the central frame of his vision.

She was in the English style, with a fine-boned face, oval, contoured with a delicate, narrow nose and wide, clear eyes. Her chestnut hair was drawn off her face into a chignon that would have looked severe on any woman less beautiful, just as her indigo raw silk cocktail dress would have looked plain on a woman with a less than perfect body. But this woman’s body was indeed perfect: slender waist, gently rounded hips and, Leon could see, despite the modest décolletage, generous breasts. The bracelet sleeves of her cocktail frock showed the length of her forearms, and her elegant hands were cupping a glass of mineral water. The hem of her dress skimmed a little way above knee length, displaying long, slender legs lengthened by high heels.

The total impact was, despite the severity of her style—or perhaps because of it—stunning, making every other woman present appear overdressed and flawed. Leon felt anticipation fizz through him. Against all his expectations, the evening ahead was clearly not going to be only about business after all …

He narrowed his eyes and let his gaze rest on her, acknowledging what she made him feel. The flare of desire …

His gaze swept back up to her face, intercepting her scrutiny, ready to make eye contact and register his interest in her, to start to move towards her.

And immediately the shutters came down over her face.

It was like a mask forming over her features. An icy mask that froze her expression.

Froze him out. Blanked him completely. She was looking straight through him as if he were not there, as if he did not exist … as if he were not even the barest part of her universe.

Abruptly, she moved away, turning her back on him. Emotion spiked through him—one he had not felt for a long, long time. For one more moment his gaze continued to hold. Then he moved purposefully forward into the throng.

Flavia forced a polite smile to her lips, as if paying attention to whatever it was that was being discussed. She had more on her mind than making polite conversation to her father’s guests here tonight. A lot more.

She didn’t want to be here, in her father’s opulent Regent’s Park apartment. The hypocrisy of it nauseated her—playing the pampered daughter of a lavishly indulgent millionaire when both she and her father knew that that was bitterly far from the truth.

What did she care for this stupid cocktail party? For standing around looking expensively ornamental in this over-decorated apartment, designed only to impress and show off her father’s wealth? It was awash with glass and chrome and the ostentatious, tasteless extravagance of gold fittings and showy furniture, conspicuous statement pieces, and she could never feel anything but a total alien here.

She wanted to be home! Home in the heart of rural Dorset, deep in the countryside. Home in the grey-stoned Georgian house that she loved so much, with its square frontage and sash windows, filled with furniture that had aged with the house where she had grown up, roaming the fields and the woods all around, cycling the narrow hedged lanes, rambling far and wide—but always, always, coming home. Home to the grandparents she’d adored, who had raised her after the tragically early death of her mother, to be enveloped in their loving arms.

But Harford Hall was a world away from her father’s glitteringly deluxe apartment and she was not free to flee, however much she longed to do so.

She shifted her weight from one unfamiliar high heel to the other, sipping at her mineral water and trying to pay attention to the conversation. She had no idea who the couple speaking to her were, but presumably the husband was some kind of businessman who was useful to her father, for her father, Flavia knew, only ever invited people who could be beneficial to him. That was the way he divided up the population of the world—people he could use, and people he could toss aside. She, his daughter, counted as both.

For most of her life it had been the latter—someone to be tossed aside. Ignored and discarded. The way he’d done her mother. Oh, he’d gone to the trouble of marrying her, once she’d found herself pregnant. But that had only, Flavia now knew, been because her grandparents had gifted him a substantial sum of money. Ostensibly it had been to start their married life together, but in reality, Flavia was grimly aware, it had been a bribe and an inducement to marry their pregnant daughter.

Her father had done well out of her mother financially, and the money he’d got had helped provide the capital he had needed to build his business empire. What he had not needed was a wife and child, and barely six months after Flavia had been born her father had packed them both off back to Dorset and taken up with another woman. A wealthy divorcee, as it happened. She had not lasted long, however. Once she’d provided more investment capital he’d moved on yet again.

It was a pattern he’d continued to repeat as he progressively amassed his business fortune. A cynical light glinted sourly in Flavia’s eyes. Although these days the women were getting younger and younger, and her father was the one providing the money they wanted to keep themselves looking alluring for him. Her father had got used to having the best, and his wealth had provided it lavishly.

She glanced around. This Regent’s Park apartment was worth at least a few million pounds, given its premier location and the glittering lavishness of its décor. It was only one of his properties, however. There was also a house in Surrey’s stockbroker belt, an apartment in Paris in one of the best arrondissements, a villa in Marbella’s Puerto Banus, and another on the beachfront on Barbados.

Flavia had been to none of them, and wouldn’t have wanted to. Nor did she want to be here. But three years ago her now-widowed grandmother had needed a hip replacement operation, and her father had been ruthlessly blunt.

‘The old bat can have her operation privately, but the money for it will be a loan—and you’ll repay it by turning up when I want you to chat and smile graciously at my guests. Everyone will say how charming and delightful and well-bred you are, and anyone who thought I was too nouveau bloody riche to swallow will think again!’

She’d longed to tell him to get lost, but how could she have done when the National Health Service waiting list had been so long, and her grandmother, not only in severe pain had also been frustrated by her growing incapacity. And her increasing poverty. Harford Hall, the greystone Georgian house Flavia had been brought up in, was a money pit, like all large, old houses, and maintenance and repairs swallowed her widowed grandmother’s dwindling income from stocks and shares. There were no spare thousands left over to pay for a private operation.

So, despite her deep reluctance to be indebted to her father, Flavia had succumbed to his offer, and now, three years later, she was still paying him off in the way he had demanded.

Summoned to London to play the complaisant daughter, dressed to the nines, and chit-chatting, exchanging social nothings with people she couldn’t care less about but whom her father either wanted to impress or wanted to do lucrative business with. She was playing a role just as much as if she had been an actress on a stage. A role she hated for its falseness and hypocrisy, with her father treating her in public as if she were the apple of his eye, doting and devoted, when the truth was completely different.

Now, though, it was even more of an ordeal than ever. Since her hip operation, though successful, her grandmother had started to deteriorate mentally, and for the last two years her dementia had been remorselessly worsening. It meant that leaving her even for a few days, as she was doing now, made Flavia even more anxious about her. Although one of her grandmother’s carers, who came in regularly to help relieve Flavia for an hour or two so that she could drive into the local market town to get the shopping and other essentials done, was staying with her, it didn’t stop the anxiety nagging at her. But her father had been particularly insistent she come up to London this week.

‘No bloody excuses!’ he’d fumed. ‘I don’t give a toss about the old bat. You get yourself on the next train. I’ve got people coming over tomorrow evening, and it’s got to look good!’

Flavia had frowned—and not just at the summons. There had been an edge to her father’s voice that was new. A note of strain. Cynically, Flavia had put it down to discord between her father and his latest girlfriend, Anita, whom Flavia could see across the room, wearing a fortune around her neck. She was a demanding mistress, and maybe her avarice was beginning to grate.

The impression of her father being under new tension had been intensified when Flavia had arrived at the apartment. He’d been shorter with her than ever, and clearly preoccupied.

But not so much that he had not gripped her elbow as the guests started to arrive.

‘I’ve got someone particularly important turning up tonight, and I want you to keep him smiling—got it?’ Her father’s cold eyes had flickered over her. ‘You should be able to hold his interest—he likes his women, and he likes them to be lookers. And that’s one thing you’re good for! But lose all the damn barbed wire around you—why the hell you can’t be more approachable, I don’t know!’

It was a familiar accusation, and one that Flavia always ignored. She was polite, she was civil, and she was sociable to her father’s guests, whoever they were—but never more than that. There were limits to how much of a hypocrite she would be …

‘Approachable like Anita?’ Flavia had suggested sweetly, knowing how much her father hated his girlfriend’s predilection for openly flirting with other men.

Annoyance had flared in his face, but he’d snapped back, ‘Women like her get results! They know how to make up to a man and get what they want. You don’t make the slightest effort. Well, tonight you’d better. Like I said, it’s important.’

The edge had been back in his voice, and Flavia had wondered at it. Not that it took too much wondering. Obviously one of this evening’s guests was to be someone her father intended to do some highly lucrative deal with, and when money was at stake, increasing his wealth, her father, she thought cynically, put the highest priority on it. And if that meant wanting his own daughter to smarm over some fat, ageing businessmen, it didn’t bother him in the least.

Filled with distaste at her father’s unsavoury tactics, Flavia had pulled away from him and gone forward to greet the first arrivals, a polite but remote smile on her face. She knew she came across as stand-offish, but there was no way she was going to ape the likes of Anita, and pout her lips and flutter her eyelashes at the influential businessmen her father wanted her to charm!

She glanced unenthusiastically over the chattering guests, and as she did so, she stilled. Something had caught her attention. Correction—someone had caught her attention …

He must have just arrived, for he was standing by the double doors that led out into the wide entrance hall of the huge apartment, a glass of champagne in his hand. He was looking into the crowded room, his eyes resting on someone she couldn’t see from this angle. She found she was glad of it, because what she wanted to do, she realised with some dim part of her mind, was look at him.

He drew her eye, drew her focus—made it impossible for her to look away. Impossible …

Impressions stormed in her mind.

Tall—broad-shouldered—dark-haired—strong features starkly defined.

He made her want to stare, and that sent a hollowing arrow through her, stilling the breath in her throat.

There was an air about him as he stood there, one hand thrust into his trouser pocket, the other holding his champagne glass, looking tall and lean and very, very assured.

He was a rich man. She could see that easily. Not just because of his bespoke suit and clearly expensively cut sable hair, but because of the aura he projected, the air of supreme control.

A man to draw eyes.

Especially female eyes.

And she could see why—helplessly acknowledged the effortless power of his frame, the strongly defined features that comprised a blade of a nose, a planed jawline, a wide, mobile mouth and, above all, the dark, opaque, hooded eyes that were resting, focussed and targeted, on whoever it was he was looking at.

Who is he?

The question formed itself in her head, though the moment it did so she tried to erase it. What did it matter who he was? There were any number of people at her father’s parties, and one more or less made no difference. But even as she thought it she knew it was not true. Not for this man. This man was different …

She swallowed, freeing the breath that had been stuck in her throat, and as she did she realized with a start that her pulse had quickened. Realised, too, with more than a start, with a hollowing, knifing dawning, that somehow—and she didn’t know how, couldn’t know how—the man’s gaze had shifted, pulled away from whoever it was in the room he’d been looking at and he was now looking at her …

Right at her.

Instantly, instinctively, she veiled her eyes, shutting him out of her vision as if he were some kind of threatening presence—disturbing and disruptive—making herself invisible to him.

Tautly, she returned her gaze to the people she was with, and haltingly resumed her conversation. But her mind was in tumult, and when, some indeterminate time later, she heard her father’s voice directed at her, she welcomed the interruption to her mental consternation.

‘Flavia, my darling, over here a moment!’ he called in the doting, caressing voice he always used to her in public.

Dutifully she made her way towards him, trying to put out of her head the image engraved on her retinas of the darkly disturbing man who had so riveted her. She could feel agitation increasing her heart-rate.

As she approached her father the shifting pattern of guests moved, showing that there was someone standing beside him. Her agitation spiked erratically and her eyes flared involuntarily.

It was the man who had drawn her eye—more than her eye—a moment ago. Numbly, she walked up to her father, who was smiling with a benign air. ‘Darling.’ Her father’s hand reached for her arm and closed over it. ‘I’d like to introduce you—’

Flavia let herself be pulled forward. Her mouth had gone dry again. She could hear her father saying something, but it was like a buzz in her ears. All she could focus on was the man standing with her father. The same tall, broad-shouldered, confident-stanced man she’d seen in the doorway.

‘Leon Maranz. And this is my daughter, Flavia.’

Her father’s voice was affectionate and indulgent, but Flavia didn’t care. All she could do right now was gather her composure, which had no reason—no reason, she echoed vehemently—to go all to pieces like this.

With palpable effort she made herself speak, forcing herself to say what was socially required. ‘How do you do, Mr Maranz?’ she said. Her tone was clipped, distant. Her acknowledging glance at him was the merest flicker, the barest minimum that social courtesy demanded.

She wanted urgently to take a step back, to move away, keep her distance. Up close like this, the impression he’d made on her that she’d found so disturbing even from halfway across the room was a hundred times stronger. Just as before she took in height, easily topping six feet, and shoulders sheathed, like the rest of his lean body, with the material of a bespoke handmade suit that, like the pristine white shirt he wore, stretched across a torso that was honed and taut. He might scream ‘filthy rich’, but fat cat he was not …

More like a sleek-coated jaguar …

That strange, disturbing, subliminal shiver seemed to go through her again as the thought passed across the surface of her mind.

‘Ms Lassiter …’

The voice acknowledging her clipped greeting was deep, almost a drawl. There was an accent to it, but not an identifiable one. She didn’t need a foreign name, or a foreign accent, to know that the last thing this lean, powerful, disturbing man was British. The natural olive hue of his tanned skin, the sloe-darkness of his eyes, the sable of his hair and the strong, striking features all told her that—had told her so right from the moment she’d set eyes on him.

Her eyes flickered over him again, trying not to see him, trying to shut him out. She saw something glint briefly, swiftly gone, in his dark, black-lashed eyes—something that exacerbated the strange shiver that was still going through her.

She fought for control. Self-control. This was ridiculous! Absurd to be so affected by a complete stranger—some rich, foreign business acquaintance of her father that she neither knew nor cared about, nor had any reason at all to be so … so … reactive to!

Her spine stiffened and she could feel the motion drawing her body slightly away from Leon Maranz’s powerful orbit. Withdrawing a fraction—an essential fraction. Again, just for a barest moment, she thought she saw that dark glint in his eyes come again, and vanish.

She took a breath, instinctively knowing she was being less than courteous but feeling an almost atavistic urge to get away from the impact he was having on her. She gave the barest nod of acknowledgement to his return of her greeting, then turned her head towards her father. The relief of being able to look away was palpable.

‘I must check with the caterers,’ she announced. ‘Do excuse me.’

She could see her father’s face darken, knew she was being borderline rude, but she couldn’t help it. Every instinct was telling her to go—get away—right away from the man she’d just been introduced to.

Her glance flickered back to him, as brief as she could make it. His expression was empty, closed. She knew she was being impolite, but she didn’t care. Couldn’t afford to allow herself to care about her rudeness, her glaringly obvious reluctance to engage in any kind of social exchange with him.

‘Mr Maranz.’ Again the barest nod towards him, and then she turned on her heel trying not to hurry, as she found herself wanting to do, to wave to the doors leading into the dining room, where a sumptuous buffet had been laid out by the hired caterers.

As she gained the sanctuary of the other room she felt her tension immediately ease. But not her heart-rate. That, she realised, was still elevated.

Why? Why was she reacting like this to that man?

She’d met any number of rich, foreign businessmen at her father’s social gatherings—so why was this one playing havoc with her nerves?

Because none of them had ever looked the way this one did!

None of them had had those dark, saturnine looks. None of them had had that packed, powerful frame. None of them had had that air about them that spoke not just of wealth but a lot more …

But what was that more …?

As she made herself walk the length of the buffet, pretending to inspect it, absently lifting a silver fork here and there to occupy herself, she knew exactly what that ‘more’ was. Whatever name you gave it, he had it—in spades.

She took an inward breath. It didn’t matter what he had, or that he had it, she told herself resolutely. And it certainly didn’t matter that she’d taken one look at him and felt its impact the way she had. Leon Maranz might be the most compellingly attractive man in the universe—it was nothing to her! Could be nothing to her.

Her face tightened grimly. She would never, never have anything to do with anyone she’d met through her father! Oh, he’d been keen enough on the idea of her socialising in that way—had actively encouraged it, despite her gritty resistance to any further manipulation by him for his own ends. Leon Maranz was part of her father’s world—and that meant she wanted nothing to do with him, whatever the impact he had on her!

Her expression changed. Bleakly she stared at the picture hanging on the wall above the buffet table. There was another overpowering reason why it was pointless for her to react in any way at all to Leon Maranz. Even if he’d been nothing to do with her father she still couldn’t have anything to do with him.

She wasn’t free to have anything to do with any man.

Sadness pierced her. Her life was not her own now—it was dedicated to her grandmother, dedicated to caring for her in this the twilight of her life. It was her grandmother who needed her, and after all her grandmother had done in raising her, caring for her and loving her, devoting her life to her, she would never, never abandon her!

Flavia’s eyes shadowed. Day by day the dementia was increasing, taking away more and more of the grandmother she loved so much, and whilst it broke her heart to see her declining, it was even worse to think of what must inevitably one day happen. But until that time came she would look after her grandmother—whatever it took. Including, she knew, dancing to her father’s tune like this.

Other than these brief, unwelcome periods away from home, she would confine her life entirely to the needs of her grandmother, stay constantly at her side. She would do nothing that wasn’t in her grandmother’s best interests. And if that meant denying herself the kind of life that she might have been leading as an independent solo woman of twenty-five—well, she would accept that.

So it really didn’t matter a jot that her father’s guest had had such a powerful impact on her—it was completely irrelevant! Leon Maranz was nothing to do with her, could be nothing to her, and would stay that way.

She gave a little shake of her head. For heaven’s sake—just because he’d had an impact on her, obviously it didn’t mean she’d had an impact on him. OK, so he’d seen her looking at him when he’d been standing near the doorway, but so what? With looks like his, a magnetically brooding presence like his, every other women here would have done the same—were doubtless doing it right now! All she had to do was get a grip, stop reacting to him in this ridiculous way, and avoid him for the rest of the evening. Simple.

‘Tell me, are you always so short with your guests?’

She spun round, dismay and shock etched in her face.

Leon Maranz was standing not a metre away from her in the empty room. His expression, she could see instantly, was forbidding. Equally instantly every resolution she’d just made about getting a grip on her composure and not reacting to him utterly vanished. She could feel herself go into urgent self-protective, defensive mode. She stiffened.

‘I beg your pardon?’

The words might be polite, might theoretically mean what they were saying, but her tone implied utterly the opposite. It was as freezing and as clipped as if she was cutting the words out of the air with a pair of the sharpest scissors.

His expression hardened at the icy tone. ‘You should,’ he said. ‘What reason did you have for snubbing me when your father introduced me?’

‘I didn’t snub you!’ She spoke shortly, aware with part of her mind that she was once again bordering on rudeness, even though she didn’t mean to be. But her nerves were on edge—yet again. His presence seemed to generate such an overpowering reaction in her she couldn’t cope well with it.

He raised a sardonic eyebrow. ‘What do you do when you do snub someone, then?’ There was a taunt in his voice, but beneath the taunt was another note. Something she could recognise because she knew there was justification for it.

Anger.

For a moment, just the briefest moment, she almost made a decision to do what she knew she must—apologise. Mollify him with a soft word. Defuse the situation. But even as she made that resolve, she made the fatal mistake of meeting his eyes.

And in them was an expression that she’d have recognised even if she’d been blind.

She’d have felt it on her skin—felt it in the sudden heat of her blood, the quickening of her pulse. Felt the wash of his eyes, the open message in them. Felt the breathless congestion in her chest.

He was looking her over … signalling his sexual interest in her … making it plain …

For one long, disastrous moment she was helpless, out of control, taking the full force of what was being directed at her. She could feel the hot, tumid breathlessness in her lungs, the flare of heat in her veins, and then—even worse—the betraying flush of her skin. A tautening all through her body, as if a flame were licking over her …

She couldn’t move. Couldn’t break away from the eyes holding hers.

Then slowly, deliberately, he smiled. Lines indented around his mouth, emphasising the strong blade of his nose, the sensual twist of his lips. Long lashes swept briefly down over his sloe-dark eyes.

‘Shall we start again, Ms Lassiter?’ he murmured, and the deep, faintly accented voice was rich with satisfaction.

And she knew why—because he now knew exactly the reason she’d been so short with him. Had found a reason for it that brought that sensual smile to his lips. The smile that was playing havoc with her resolve to be immune to him, to have nothing whatsoever to do with him!

For one endless moment her mind hung in the balance. All she had to do was smile back. Let the stiffness of her spine soften … let the rejection in her eyes dissolve. Accept her reaction to him … accept what he was so clearly offering her. The opportunity to share what was flaring between them so powerfully, so enticingly, to explore with him a new, sensual world that she had never before encountered but which was now drawing her like an enticing flame …

No!

It was impossible! Unthinkable. Leon Maranz moved in a world she didn’t want to have anything to do with. The slick, shallow, glossy, money-obsessed world her father inhabited, which was nothing to do with the reality of her life—a reality that had no room in it for any priority other than her grandmother. A life that could have no place for Leon Maranz or anything he offered.

No place!

Which meant it was time to stop this now. Right now.

Before it’s too late …

The disturbing words whispered in her head, and she knew she had to cut them out—decisively and sharply. Stop what must not start.

‘I don’t think so, Mr Maranz.’

Her voice was like a scalpel, severing the air between them. Severing the opportunity to negate the rudeness she knew he did not deserve, but which she was driven to deliver from a sense of urgent, primitive self-preservation.

Because if she didn’t—if she allowed him to get through to her, to smile at her … smile with her … get past her defences—then what would happen?

What would happen if she let him ‘start again’?

The question rang inside her head, demanding an answer. An answer she refused to give. Not now—not when the adrenaline was pumping in her veins and dominating her mind, urging her to do the only sensible, safe thing even if it meant being rude. She needed to minimise her exposure to this man by any means possible.

She gave a small smile, tight and insincere—dismissive. ‘Do please excuse me …’

She walked off, unbearable tension in her back, knowing with a cold burning in her body that she had behaved inexcusably rudely, but knowing she had had to do so. Because the alternative—the one that she’d thrust out of her head urgently, ruthlessly—was unthinkable.

Quite, quite unthinkable.

Behind her, as he watched her threading her way back into the crowded, opulent reception room, Leon Maranz stood, his face tight.

Anger was spiking in him. Yet again she’d blanked him! Cut him dead. Then walked off as if he didn’t exist!

His eyes, watching her stalk back into the main reception room, darkened to black slits. Emotion seethed in him as she disappeared from view. Her rudeness was breathtaking! Unbelievable!

Who the hell does she think she is to do that to me? To hand that out to me? Talk to me in that way?

Once again he felt that old, suffocating, burning sensation in his chest that he’d used to feel long years ago. He had thought it would never strike him again. Yet at Flavia Lassiter’s curt dismissiveness it had reared up in familiar, ugly fashion. Bringing with it memories he didn’t want. Memories he’d left far, far behind.

He fought it back, mastering the destructive, dark emotion, refusing to let it poison his mind. It was unnecessary to evoke it now—that burning sense of being looked down on, looked through, that had evoked his burst of anger at her. No, her rude rebuff of him was not for that reason. He forced control over his wayward reaction to her cutting rejection, subduing it. In its place he reached for an alternative—an explanation for her rudeness, her dismissal of him, that was far more palatable to him. One he could seize on.

Every masculine instinct told him there was another, quite different reason for her behaviour. One he should welcome, not resent. Her glacial attitude might have attempted to freeze him out, but all it had done was reinforce a quite different interpretation.

It was only a mask. A mask she had adopted in an attempt—however futile!—to conceal from him her true reaction to him. A reaction he had seen flare betrayingly in her eyes as he had smiled at her. It had told him exactly what he’d wanted to know, confirmed what he had felt with every masculine instinct, with all his years of experience in feminine response—a reaction that mirrored his to her.

Desire.

A simple, brief word, but it was the one he wanted—the only one he wanted. Nothing else. Because desire was the only emotion he wanted to associate with Flavia Lassiter. Everything else about her could be put aside as unnecessary for what he wanted. And pointless—and destructive.

The anger that had spiked in him as she’d stalked away ebbed away completely, the bunched tension in his muscles relaxing. There was no need for either anger or tension. No need at all. He was sure of it. Flavia Lassiter could be as dismissive of him as she liked, but it was only a mask—a futile attempt to deny what it was useless for her to deny. The fact that everything about her told him she was as responsive to him as he was to her.

Tension eased from his shoulders. His features lightened. He strolled back into the main reception room, a strategy forming rapidly in his mind. For now he would let her be. It was clear to him she was fighting his impact on her, and that she was resisting facing up to it. OK, it was sudden. He allowed that. And for a woman like her, clearly used to being in strict control of herself, adept at presenting an outwardly composed and indifferent front, that was understandable. For the moment, then, she could stay safely behind the crystalline shield she was holding him at bay with. When the time was right he would shatter it completely. And get from her exactly what he knew with complete certainty now he definitely wanted …

As did she …

It was just a matter of time before she accepted it. That was all. A slight smile started to play around Leon’s mouth. The prospect of persuading her was very, very enjoyable.




CHAPTER TWO


HOW Flavia got through the rest of the evening she didn’t know. It seemed to go on for ever. She kept a perpetual eye open for Leon Maranz, and was grateful he seemed to be keeping himself away from her. She could see her father with him and Anita sometimes—clearly more than happy to be so—but more often than that he was surrounded by any number of other guests. Especially female ones, she noticed without surprise and with a distinct tightening of her mouth. She avoided her father as well, because the last thing she wanted was to have him grill her on why she’d been so short to his favoured guest.

Her avoidance continued even when the endless party finally wound down, the guests all left, and her father and Anita headed off to a nightclub. Whether or not Leon Maranz had gone with them she didn’t know, and refused to care. She could feel only relief that he had gone, and that the ordeal of the evening was finally over.

The moment she could, Flavia disappeared into her bedroom. For the first time since her gaze had lighted on Leon Maranz that evening she started to feel the tension ebb out of her. Safe at last, she thought with relief.

But as she stood under the shower some minutes later she had cause to question that assumption. Leon Maranz might be out of the apartment but he was not out of her head. Far from it …

The water pouring over her naked body was not helping—running down her torso, between the valley of her breasts, down her flanks, her limbs … It was a sensuous experience that she was all too aware was the last thing she should be experiencing when trying to put out of her head the image of the man who had caught her attention, impacted upon her as no other man had.

As she massaged shower gel into her skin, its warm soapy suds laving her body, she could feel her breasts reacting, see in her mind’s eye those dark hooded eyes resting on her as if he were viewing her naked body …

No!

It was insane to let her mind conjure such things! Leon Maranz wasn’t going to see her again, let alone see her naked body, for heaven’s sake! Time to put him totally out of her mind.

With a sharp movement she switched the shower dial to cool and doused herself in chilly water, then snapped the flow off completely. Stepping out of the stall, she grabbed a bath-towel and rubbed herself dry with brisk, no-nonsense vigour. It was completely irrelevant that Leon Maranz had had the effect on her that he had! It was an effect every woman there had shared, so she was hardly unique. And even if—if, she instructed herself ruthlessly—he had made it clear in that brief, fraught exchange by the buffet that he was eyeing her up, that only made it more imperative that she put him completely out of her head!

Nothing can come of this and nothing is going to. That is that. End of.

She dropped her towel, donned her nightdress, and climbed into bed. Then she reached for her mobile. Time to check with Mrs Stephens on how her grandmother had been this evening.

Familiar anxiety stabbed in her mind, displacing her troubling thoughts about Leon Maranz and his disturbing impact on her with even more troubled thoughts. The constant worry she felt about her grandmother surfaced again through the layers of her ridiculous obsessing about a man who meant absolutely nothing to her, whom she’d only seen for a few hours, and exchanged only a few words with.

Angry with herself for the way she’d reacted that evening, when there were real worries and concerns for her to focus on about the one person she loved in this world, she settled herself into bed and phoned home. It was late, she knew, but Mrs Stephens would be awake, and these days her grandmother could be awake for hours into the night sometimes. It was one of the things that made it so wearing to care for her, Flavia admitted, labour of love though it was for her.

When she spoke to the carer Flavia was relieved to hear that her grandmother was quite soporific, and seemed not to have realised her granddaughter was not in the house. It was a blessing, Flavia knew, because it would have made these visits to London at her father’s behest even less endurable knowing that her grandmother was at home, fretting for her.

What did cause her grandmother unbearable distress, though, was being away from home herself. Flavia had discovered that when, some six months ago, her grandmother had had a fall and had had to spend a week in hospital being checked over and monitored. It had been dreadful to see how agitated and disturbed her grandmother had become, trying to get out of the hospital bed, her mental state anguished, tearful. Several times she’d been found wandering around the ward incoherent, visibly searching for something, distressed and flailing around.

Yet the moment she’d come back home to Harford the agitation had left her completely and she’d reverted to the much calmer, happier, and more contented person that her form of dementia allowed her to be. From then on Flavia had known that above all her grandmother had to remain in the familiar, reassuring surroundings where she had lived for over fifty years, since coming to Harford as a young bride. Whatever the dimness in her mind, she seemed to know that she was at home, and presumably it felt safe and familiar to her there, wandering happily around, or just sitting quietly, gazing out over the gardens she had once loved to tend.

Flavia gave a sad smile. It still pained her to see her beloved grandmother so mentally and physically frail, but she knew that at the end of a long life her grandmother was starting to take her leave of it. Just when that would happen no one could say, except that it was coming ever closer. Flavia was determined that, come what may, if it was at all medically possible her grandmother would die in her own home, with her granddaughter at her side.

Her gaze grew distant as she stared blankly at the far wall opposite the bed. Just what she would do once her grandmother died was still uncertain, but she knew she would do her very best to hang on to Harford. She loved it far too much to let it go. Her plan was to run it as an upmarket holiday let, though it would require modernising for the bathrooms and kitchen, plus general refurbishment—all of which would require some kind of upfront financing, on top of coping with the inevitable death duties. One thing was certain, though—her father wouldn’t offer her a penny to help.

Not that she would take it. It was bad enough owing him for her grandmother’s hip operation, let alone anything else. Her father, she thought bitterly, was not a good man to be in hock to … Who knew how he might wield such power over her head?

She reached out to turn off the bedside light. There was no point thinking about anything other than her current concerns. Her grandmother’s needs were her priority, and that was that. There was no room in her life for anything else.

Anyone else….

Yet as she slowly sank into slumber echoes seemed to be hazing in her memory—a deep, drawling voice, a strong-featured face, dark, unreadable eyes … holding hers …

Leon Maranz poured himself a brandy, swirling it absently in his hand. His face was shuttered.

He was alone in his apartment, though he might easily have had companionship. He knew enough women in London who would have rushed to his side at the merest hint of a request for their company. Even at Lassiter’s cocktail party he could have had his pick had he wanted to. Including—he gave an acid smile devoid of humour—Lassiter’s current inamorata, who had shown her interest and looked openly disappointed when he’d declined her pressing suggestion that he accompany them to a nightclub.

What would she have done, he thought cynically, had he decided to amuse himself by inviting her back here? Would she have played the affronted female and gone rushing back to her ageing lover’s side? Or would the temptation to gain a lover much, much richer than Lassiter—and so much closer to her in age have overcome whatever scruples she had left in life? And what would Lassiter himself have done? Tolerated the man he so badly wanted to do business with bedding his own mistress? His cynicism deepened.

Not that he would have put either of the pair to such a test. Anita’s bleached-blonde, over-made-up looks had no allure for him—nor the voluptuous figure so blatantly on display. When it came to women his tastes were far more selective compared to the likes of Lassiter.

An image flickered in his mind’s eye as he slowly swirled the brandy in its glass. Flavia Lassiter was cut from a quite different cloth than her father’s overdone mistress.

Contemplatively Leon let his mind delineate her figure, her fine-boned features that were of such exceptional quality. The very fact that she did not flaunt her beauty had only served to draw his eye to her the more. Did she not realise that? Did she not see that hers was a rare beauty that could not be concealed, could not be repressed or denied? Leon’s dark eyes glinted as he raised his brandy glass to his nose, savouring the heady bouquet. She could not repress or deny what she had betrayed when she’d met his gaze, what had been evident to him—blazingly so—in the flare of her pupils, the slight but revealing parting of her lips. She had responded to him just as he to her. That had told him everything he needed to know …

His expression hardened. The curt disdain she had handed out, dismissing him, burned like a brand in his mind. Had it indeed been nothing more than an attempt to deny her response to his interest in her—for reasons he could not fathom? Since he did not intend that denial to persist he could afford to ignore it. An expression entered his eyes that had not been there for many, many years. Or had it been the result of something quite different? Something he had not encountered for a long time, but which could still slide like a knife through the synapses of his memory.

Like clips from an old movie, memories shaded through his mind, taking him far, far away from where he was now. To a world … a universe away from where he was standing in this five-star hotel suite, wearing a hand-tailored suit costing thousands, enjoying the finest vintage brandy and everything else that his wealth could give him effortlessly, in as much abundance as he wanted.

His life had not always been like that …

It was the cold he could remember. The bitter, biting cold of Europe in winter. Icy wind cutting through the thin material of his shabby clothes. The crowded, anonymous streets of the city where he was just one more homeless, desperate denizen, pushed aside, ignored, resented.

Making his way slowly and painfully in that harsh, bleak world, grabbing what jobs he could, however menial, however hard, however badly paid—jobs that the citizens of the country he had come to did not want to do, that were beneath them, but not beneath the desperate immigrants and refugees grateful to get them.

He had become used to being looked down on, looked through as if he did not exist, as if those looking through him didn’t want him to exist. He had got used to it—but he had never, even in his poorest days, swallowed it easily. It had made him angry, had driven him ever onwards, helping to fire and fuel his determination to make something of himself, to ensure that one day no one would look through him, no one would think him invisible.

Yet even now, it seemed, his hand tightening unconsciously around the brandy glass, when he moved in a stratospheric world with ease and assurance, that anger, the cause of which was long, long gone, still possessed some power over him …

Why? That was the question that circled in his mind now, as he stood in his luxurious hotel suite, savouring the vintage brandy, enjoying the bountiful fruits of his hard work, his determination and drive. Why should that anger still come? Why should it have a power over him?

And who was she to have the ability to revive that anger? Who was she, that upper-crust daughter of Alistair Lassiter, to look through him as if he were as invisible as the impoverished immigrant he had once been? Someone to serve drinks, clear tables, to wait hand and foot on wealthy women like her? Who was she to blank him, snub him, consign him to the ranks of those whose existence was barely acknowledged?

He could feel his anger stab like the fiery heat of the brandy in his throat. Then, forcing himself to lessen his grip on the glass, he inhaled deeply, taking back control of his emotions, subduing that bite of anger. The anger was unnecessary. Because surely, he argued, his first explanation of Flavia Lassiter’s coldness was the correct one—she was fighting her own response to him, and it was that that had made her avoid meeting his eyes, made her so curt towards him. That was the explanation he must adhere to. For reasons he as yet found unfathomable, but would not for very much longer, she was trying to hold him at bay.

A cynical glint gleamed in his eye. Alistair Lassiter would be overjoyed by his interest in his daughter. He would see it, Leon thought cynically, as an opportune way of keeping him close—something Lassiter was extremely keen to do.

The cynical glint deepened. Right now Maranz Finance was Lassiter’s best hope of saving his sinking, profligate business empire from complete collapse …




CHAPTER THREE


FLAVIA was sitting, tight-lipped, in the back of her father’s limo. Her face was set. On the other side of her father, Anita leant forward.

‘You look so good, sweetie, with your hair down and some red lippy,’ she informed Flavia, sounding pleased with herself. ‘It really jazzes up that dress.’ As her false eyelashes swept up and down over Flavia, they cast a critical eye over the gown the younger woman was wearing. ‘Great style—just a shame about the draggy colour.’

Flavia’s expression changed minutely. She’d been despatched with Anita that afternoon by her father to buy herself ‘something glamorous for a change’ as he’d snapped at her, looking the worse for wear after his late night, his eyes bloodshot and his face puffy.

Flavia had objected, but her father had been adamant.

‘We’re going to a flash charity bash tonight, and just for a damn change I don’t want you dressing like a nun!’

Knowing Anita’s predilection for bling, Flavia had been on her guard, and when the other woman had picked out a clingy scarlet number she’d at least succeeded in swapping it for a pale aqua version at the counter, while Anita had been trying on the ruched and sequinned purple gown she was poured into now. Discovering the colour swap when Flavia had emerged from a bedroom before setting off had so annoyed Anita, however, that she’d managed to unpin Flavia’s tightly knotted chignon and flash her own bright red lipstick over her mouth just as Alistair Lassiter was hurrying them out of the apartment to the waiting limo.

He was visibly on edge, Flavia could tell—but then she was as well. The moment they arrived at the Park Lane hotel where the charity event was being held she would dive into the Ladies’ and wipe Anita’s vivid lipstick off her, and repin her hair.

But her intentions were foiled. As they made their way into the hotel Anita’s hand fastened around her wrist. ‘Don’t even think about it!’ she breathed, and her hand remained clamped where it was.

Stiffly, feeling self-conscious enough as it was in the bias-cut gown, let alone with her hair loose and heaven only knew how much garish lipstick, Flavia had no option but to let herself be swept forward into the banqueting hall. They were, as her father had complained, running late, and everyone except a few other latecomers like themselves had already taken their seats at the appointed tables.

Threading her way towards their table, flanked by her father and Anita, Flavia could only determine a sea of people and hear a wave of chatter and the clink of glasses and rustle of gowns. Her father was greeting people here and there, and Anita was waving conspicuously at people she knew, too, while Flavia looked neither to left or right. When they reached their table, with their three places waiting for them, she slipped into the seat on her father’s right hand side with a sense of relief.

The relief lasted less than a second.

‘Ms Lassiter …’

The deep, accented voice on her right made her head whip round.

Leon Maranz was seated beside her.

Emotion sliced through her. Shock and dismay were uppermost. But beneath both another emotion stabbed. Instantly she fought to subdue it, but the physical impact was too great, and she could feel that treacherous quickening of her blood. Feel, even more powerfully, the urge to get to her feet and bolt.

Why—why was she reacting like this to the man? It was absurd to be so … so …

So … what, exactly? She flailed around in her mind, trying to find the word she needed. Trying to blank out the way she was reacting. Trying to wipe the dismay and shock from her face. Trying to gather her composure and force herself to do what she had to do—which was simply to nod civilly, politely, courteously and nothing more than that. Nothing at all.

‘Mr … Maranz, isn’t it?’ She hesitated over his name, as if she had difficulty recalling it. Then she made a show of flicking open her linen napkin and spreading it over her knees. She was grateful, for once, for her father’s presence, as he leant across her.

‘Ah—Leon. Good to see you!’ he said effusively. ‘I’m so pleased you accepted my invitation to be my guest here tonight.’

At Flavia’s side Leon Maranz’s eyes glittered darkly, and he found himself reconsidering his decision to attend the function as Lassiter’s guest. Despite his attraction to Flavia Lassiter, should he have come this evening? Yes, she had made an immediate impact on him the moment he’d set eyes on her, but was it truly a good idea to pursue his interest in her? The glitter in his eyes intensified. Especially since it meant he would have to spend time in Alistair Lassiter’s over-attentive company this evening.

Even if he did decide to invest in his business, socialising with the man was not necessary—unless, of course, it was a means to an end in respect of his daughter …

On that note, it was clear from her frosty reception of his greeting that she was still very much on her guard with him. Was it truly worth his time and effort to thaw that freezing demeanour? Yet even as he considered it he knew, with a little stab of emotion, that seeing her again had in no way lessened his response to her. Indeed, it had been accentuated …

He had had time only for a moment’s appreciation, but that had been enough to confirm that the sinuous gown she was wearing, baring shoulders over which the shimmering fall of her loosened hair was cascading, not to mention the sensuous, vivid scarlet of her mouth, were a stunning enhancement of the beauty he’d seen last night. Tonight, he thought appreciatively, there was no question of her seeking to subdue her beauty with the severity of her dress or sedate maquillage. The effect was—stunning.

Decision raced through him. Yes, Flavia Lassiter, despite her father, was well worth pursuing.

As for her father—well, he would put up with him as best he could this evening, and for the moment reserve judgement on whether he would supply the bail-out that Lassiter was so desperately in need of.

Leon’s mouth pressed to a thin line. What kind of fool was Alistair Lassiter to have got himself into such an irretrievable mess? The global recession should have made him cautious, but instead Lassiter had taken unwarrantable risks—too many of them—and his spending had been lavish. Now he was teetering on the brink of complete collapse. Now he was going to have to rely on a turnaround specialist like Maranz Finance to rescue him.

Leon’s eyes were veiled. Would he bail out Lassiter? How much real value was there left in the company? And was it worth the trouble to secure it? Lassiter was walking on thin ice. Far too many of his assets, as Leon knew perfectly well from his own investigations, were paper-thin and his debt was punitive. For all the surface gloss he still reflected, Alistair Lassiter had precious little beneath. Even the Regent’s Park apartment was mortgaged up to the hilt, and his other personal properties had already been sold off.

While he decided whether to bail out Lassiter he would further his interest in his daughter. He levelled his veiled gaze on her as she reached for a bottle of sparkling water and poured some into her glass. Waiters were already circling with white wine, but she’d covered her glass with her palm, giving her head a slight shake. Did she eschew all alcohol? Leon wondered.

‘You don’t drink wine?’ he enquired.

She seemed to start at his words, and her head jerked around.

‘Very seldom,’ she answered, her voice clipped. She made to turn her head away again, as if that were all she were going to say on the subject.

‘Empty calories?’ Leon’s voice was bland.

‘Yes.’

She lifted her glass of water, aware of how stiffly she had spoken. But then her spine was as stiff as a poker right now. Why on earth had her father not told her he’d invited Leon Maranz this evening? The answer was obvious, of course. He hadn’t wanted her to know because he hadn’t wanted her to be warned beforehand. And now here she was, trapped between them, wearing a dress she didn’t want to be wearing, with her hair hanging down her back and her mouth covered in vivid lipstick.

She raised her napkin and made a show of dabbing her lips after drinking, covertly attempting to dab off some of the sticky red layer. Beside her she was aware—ultra-aware—of Leon Maranz’s eyes on her.

How on earth am I going to get through the evening?

The question was uppermost in her mind. Closely followed by its companion.

Why am I being like this?

She had met plenty of men her father wanted her to take an interest in for his sake, but she had never freaked out like this before! She had always managed to be indifferent, without being so ridiculously tongue-tied and affected. So why was she being like this with this man?

But then, she acknowledged, with a hollow sensation inside her, no one her father had tried to set her up with before had been anything like Leon Maranz.

No one could be …

The words formed in her mind, shaping themselves. No one could possibly have the kind of impact he had. It hadn’t lessened in the slightest in the twenty-four hours since she had first experienced it. Instead it had intensified. She could feel it like a kind of forcefield. She was far, far too close to him for a start—hyper-aware of him only a few inches away from her at the table, knowing she only had to tilt her head slightly to see him, instead of straining forward, apparently finding the floral arrangement in the middle of the table absolutely fascinating.

But she could still sense him there sitting beside her, his powerful frame set off by the tuxedo, see from the corner of her eye his large, tanned hand reaching for his wine. Nor was sight the only sense he impinged upon. The deep, accented drawl of his voice was resonating in her head as well. And there was another sense, too, more subtle, yet there all the same. His raw, male scent assaulted her, overlaid by the slightest hint of something citrus, musky, in his aftershave.

She tried to blank it out but it was impossible. Just as blanking out his presence beside her was impossible, however doggedly she stared ahead and toyed with her water. The only mercy was that, thankfully, he seemed to have accepted her reluctance to engage in any conversation with him, however trivial, and had turned his attention to the woman on the other side of him. Flavia could hear her light tinkle of laughter, though what they were talking about she neither knew nor cared.

‘Leon! I must have your opinion!’

Anita’s piercing voice cut across her, demanding his attention. Flavia could have slapped her for it.

He turned towards her again, away from the woman on his right.

‘On what?’ he replied. His voice seemed reserved.

Anita flapped a heavily beringed hand. ‘Don’t you think Flavia looks so much better with her hair loose rather than pinned up the way it was last night?’

Like two burning brands Flavia felt her cheeks flare. Anger and mortification warred within her. She wanted to snap viciously at Anita, but Leon Maranz was replying.

‘Very … uninhibited,’ he drawled, and Flavia could feel, like a physical touch, his eyes working over her.

The brands in her cheeks burnt fiercer.

‘You see?’ Anita’s voice was triumphant. ‘I told you, Flavia. You could look a knock-out if you tried more! I tell you, darling,’ she said, ‘if you can persuade Leon Maranz to admire you, you’ve got it made!’ She gave a gush of laughter as insincere as it was overdone.

Flavia’s expression iced over.

It remained like ice for the whole of the eternally long meal—it was the only way she could get through it.

She was given some mercy—Anita laid off her, and Leon Maranz, when he wasn’t talking to the woman on his right, or to the other guests across the table who seemed keen to engage his attention, talked to her father. Or rather, she realised, her father talked to Leon Maranz. The edginess he’d displayed earlier seemed to have vanished, and now he was in effusive mode, she could tell, mingling loud bonhomie with an eager attentiveness that told Flavia that, whatever potential use Leon Maranz was to him, it was considerable.

Was it reciprocated? she wondered as she steadily ate through the courses, despite a complete lack of appetite. Eating was easier than talking. So was being aware of what her father was doing.

But on what Leon Maranz was doing she was far less clear. There was no evidence of reciprocation, no evidence of anything except the fact that Leon Maranz seemed to prefer her father to do the talking. His laconic answers only seemed to drive her father onward. He was getting more and more exuberant—or, a sudden thought struck her, should that be more and more desperate?

She glanced sideways at her father. He’d loosened his bow tie slightly and his cheeks were reddening, his eyes becoming pouchy. His glass was frequently refilled, and Flavia wondered how much he’d had to drink. Distaste flickered in her face. Thank God she was going back home tomorrow. She couldn’t wait to get away from her father, away from the shallow, money-obsessed life he lived. However worthy the cause of this evening’s function, she didn’t want to be here in this vast ornate banqueting room, with the scent of wine and flowers and expensive perfume everywhere, the glint of jewellery on the women and the sleek, fat-cat look of the men.

She wanted to be at home, at Harford, deep in her beloved countryside. Back with her grandmother in the quiet, familiar world so very dear to her … so very precious …

But for now all she could do was tough it out—get through the evening however long it seemed.

After an interminable length of time the meal and the fund-raising presentations from the charity directors finally drew to a close, with coffeepots and petits-fours and an array of liqueurs being placed on the tables. At the far end of the huge room on a little stage a band had formed, and was starting to strike up.

Flavia closed her eyes, trying to shut it all out. She wanted out of here. Now. But it wasn’t going to happen. She knew that. And she also knew, with a heaviness that was tangible, that Anita and her father were going to head off to the dance floor, and she would be left with Leon Maranz. Unless—dear God, please, she found herself praying—he went off with someone else. But the woman on his other side had got up to dance as well, with her partner, and with a hollowing sensation Flavia realised that she was now sitting next to Leon Maranz with empty seats on either side of them.

Stiffly she reached for the coffeepot.

‘Allow me.’

His hand was before her, lifting the heavy pot as though it weighed nothing and pouring coffee into her empty cup.

‘Cream?’ The drawling voice was solicitous.

She gave a minute shake of her head.

‘Of course—more empty calories,’ he murmured.

She shot him a look. It was a mistake.

A mistake, a mistake, a mistake.

He lounged back in his chair, one hand cupping a brandy glass. There was an air of relaxation about him, and yet there was something else that told Flavia at some alien, atavistic, visceral level of her being that he was not relaxed at all. That he was merely giving the impression of being relaxed.

It was in his eyes. They were heavy-lidded, yet she could see that they were resting on her with an expression that was not in the least somnolent.

For a second, almost overpoweringly, she wanted to get to her feet and run—run far and fast, right out of the building. But she couldn’t. It was impossible. She couldn’t do something so obviously, outrageously socially unacceptable.

She could head for the Ladies’ Room, though.

She seized on the notion with relief. That would be OK—in fact it would be ideal, because then she could pin her hair up and make sure any trace of Anita’s lipstick was gone.

She steeled herself to stand up, but before her stiffened limbs could move Leon Maranz pushed back his chair and surveyed her. His eyes moved back to hers, holding them effortlessly, and in the space of time it took to lock eyes with him she became paralysed, unable to move, breathe, to do anything at all except read in his dark obsidian eyes the unmistakable glint of an unmissable message.

Desire.

It was as flagrant as his audacity in letting his long-lashed eyes rest on her like a physical caress.

Tangible. Intimate …

She thrust up from her chair, stood up, every muscle taut like a wire under impossible tension. She had to go—right now.

‘Do please excuse me. I really must …’

Her voice was high and clipped and breathless. Thoughts seared through her mind.

I can’t cope with this! It’s too flagrant, too overpowering, and it’s all far, far too impossible! Impossible to have anything to do with a man from my father’s world! Impossible to have anything to do with any man when my overwhelming responsibility is for my grandmother. So it doesn’t matter—doesn’t matter a jot what this ridiculous reaction to him is, I can’t let it go anywhere, and I have to stop it in its tracks now. Right now!

But he wasn’t to be evaded. Instead he matched her gesture, getting to his feet in a lithe, effortless movement, towering over her. Too close—much too close. She stepped back, trying not to bump into the empty chair beside her.

‘You know …’ he said, and his voice was a deep, dark drawl that set her nerve-endings vibrating at some weird, subliminal frequency. His eyes did not relinquish hers, did not allow her to tear her gaze away from his. ‘I don’t think I do excuse you, Ms Lassiter. Not two nights in a row.’ The dark glint in his eye was shot through with something that upped that strange subliminal frequency. ‘This time I think I will just do—this.’

He moved so fast she did not see it coming. His hand fastened around her wrist. Not tightly, not gripping it, but encircling it … imprisoning it.

He looked down at her, even taller somehow, his shoulders broader, his eyes darker.

‘I’d like to dance with you,’ he said.

He drew her hand into the crook of his arm so that her hand splayed involuntarily on the dark sleeve of his tuxedo jacket, her nails white against the smooth black cloth. She wanted to jerk free, tear herself away, but he was looking down at her still, a taunting smile playing on his lips.

‘You don’t want to make a scene, do you, Ms Lassiter?’ he said, and a saturnine eyebrow quirked. The dark eyes were glinting. Mocking.

Emotion flashed in her eyes. For a wild and impossible moment, she wanted to do exactly what he’d said she could not—tug her hand free of its imprisonment, push away from him, storm off in a swirl of skirts and leave him standing there.

But there were too many people around. This was a formal function, with people who knew him, knew her father, knew who she was. Too many eyes were coming their way. Heads were turning at other tables set too close by.

He saw her dilemma, mocked it, and started to draw her away, towards the dance floor beyond. He could feel the stiffness of her body, the anger in the set of her shoulders. Well, he had anger of his own. Anger because she had spent the entire meal as if he did not exist, blanking him out, doing her best to ignore him, refusing to see him, talk to him. Refusing to do anything except the one thing she could not refuse.

She could not refuse to react to him.

Satisfaction—shot with grimness—spiked through him. That was the one thing she could not do. She could not hide her body’s response to him. A response that shimmered from her just from his presence at her side, despite the tense straining of her body away from his.

They reached the dance floor. She resisted him every step of the way, but was helpless to do anything about it lest she break that unspoken code of her class—never make a scene, never draw attention to yourself, never break the rules of social engagement. And he would use that code ruthlessly for his own advantage—to get what he wanted. To draw her to him.

‘Shall we?’

The taunt was in his low voice even as he turned her towards him, slipping a hand around her waist. His other hand clasped hers and he started to move her into the dance.

Helpless, Flavia could do nothing—nothing at all—to stop him.

Inside her breast, emotions stormed.

It was like being in torment—a torment that was lacerating every nerve-ending in her body. Everything about her body seemed to be registering physical sensation at double—triple—the intensity. She could feel his hand at her waist as if it were a brand, her hand clasped in his as if it were encased in steel. Steel sheathed in smoothest velvet.

And he was too close to her! Far, far too close! He was holding her, guiding her, turning her into the movements of the dance so that his body was counterpoised to hers, and hers was encircling his. Around and around they moved to the lush rhythm of the music, weaving through the press of other dancers. He was bending her pliantly into the dance, though her body felt as stiff as wood, and she could feel every muscle in her body seeking to strain away from him. It was as if he was endlessly drawing her towards him and she was endlessly resisting him, yet pinioned at her waist by the heat and pressure of his hand against her spine, the velvet steel of his hand around hers.

He was holding her captive.

And there was nothing she could do about it! Unless she broke free by force, tore herself away from him and stormed from the dance floor. And she couldn’t do that. Couldn’t because it would make a fuss, make a scene, draw eyes to her …

Couldn’t because she didn’t want to …

For a second—one fatal moment as the knowledge knifed through her brain like the edge of a sword, cleaving through her consciousness—she felt the tension in her body dissolve. Felt her body become pliant, supple.

And he felt it, too. She knew that he felt it, too, by the sudden flaring of his eyes to which she had suddenly lifted hers instead of what she was supposed to be doing, which was to stare rigidly, stonily over his shoulder.

Shock was in her gaze, and then that too dissolved, and she could feel the weight of her body shift as his hand at her waist seemed to deepen its support of her suddenly relaxed body. His fingers splayed out and she could feel each one fanning across her back, the thin silky material of her dress no barrier at all. And now his dark eyes held hers as she gazed helplessly across at him, feeling the warmth of his hand at her back, the warmth of his clasp on her other hand.

‘You see …?’

His voice was low and intimate—disturbingly intimate, below the level of the music and the conversation all around them. There was a smile—knowing, satisfied—playing at his mouth as he spoke to her. He knew what she was doing, what she was feeling, how her body was reacting to his, how the rest of the world was disappearing, how there was nothing left except themselves, turning slowly together in each other’s arms.

Each other’s embrace.

Like a string jerking tight she strained away again, tensing all the lines of her body, maximising the distance between them, stiff and rigid once more. Her eyes cut away, gazed unseeingly out over the room; her lips compressed, hardening the contours of her face.

The music stopped, and she felt the tension racking her body lessen. Relief filled her that her torment was over. Impulsively she tugged her hand free, stepping away from him, not caring if the gesture was too abrupt for social usage. She couldn’t afford to care.

‘Do please excuse me.’ Her voice was clipped and she would not look at him. Would not do anything except escape from the dance floor.

She threaded her way as rapidly as she could towards the doors that led out to the foyer, where she knew the powder room was. The ballroom was a blur, her only focus on gaining the haven of the Ladies’. Inside, she collapsed down on a velvet-covered stool in the vanity section of the spacious facilities.

Her reflection dismayed her.

Even in demure aqua, the bias cut of the dress did its work—far too well! It sheathed her body with glistening watered silk, its narrow straps showing too much bare shoulder and arm and—for her—too much décolletage, modest though it was by Anita’s sultry standards.

But Anita’s damage was worse than the style of the dress. Letting down her hair had completely changed the image she habitually presented to the world. Instead of a neat, confining chignon, her loosened hair formed a long, slinky coil down her bare back, its unfastened tresses softening her face. As for the slash of scarlet lipstick Anita had applied—even after several hours and Flavia’s liberal use of her napkin over dinner—her lips still looked flushed and beestung.

Full and inviting …

She stared, transfixed. Oh, God—was that what Leon Maranz had been seeing all evening? All through dinner? And now—much worse—after that dreadful, disastrous dance her face had a hectic flush to it. Her pupils were distended, her breathing far too rapid.

This wasn’t her! It wasn’t! It wasn’t! What had happened to her? Where had she gone, that restrained, composed female she strove to be when she was summoned to her father’s side? Because one thing was glaringly, appallingly clear: she wasn’t here any more. She wasn’t sitting on this velvet stool, staring wide-eyed at the reflection gazing back at her. It was a different woman—a completely different woman! Alien and strange.

Sensual …

The word formed in her head and she instantly tried to shake it out, as she would a burr on her sleeve. But it wouldn’t go. It would only wind itself sinuously around her consciousness, whispering its poison in her ear.

Sensual …

Instantly she rejected the word. It didn’t matter. It didn’t matter a jot what Leon Maranz could make her feel! She was not going to have anything to do with him! He belonged to the world of her father—a world in which making ever more money was the most important thing, and spending it as flashily and extravagantly as possible the next most important thing. A shallow, empty, superficial world! She belonged somewhere quite different. In the country, at home at Harford, with her grandmother who loved her so much, needed her so much …

Nothing could alter that,

So it was definitely time to put a stop to whatever Leon Maranz had in mind! A complete full stop. Time to send him a quite different message from the one she’d so disastrously given him by dancing with him.

Squaring her shoulders, she scooped up her hair, twisting it fiercely around her fingers until it was pinioned against the nape of her neck. Then, helping herself to some of the complementary hairgrips laid on for guests at the vanity unit, she ruthlessly pinned it into place. A tissue scrubbed repeatedly over her lips dealt with the remnants of Anita’s wretched scarlet lipstick.





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