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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 …