The Dark Side of Desire (17 page)

Her face worked but she made herself go on. Forced herself.

‘I told myself I didn’t have a choice! That I
had
to do what he wanted because I knew how devastated and distressed my grandmother would be, in her frail mental condition, if she had to leave Harford. So I got back in touch with you and let you take me out on dates—let you … let you take me to bed! And I knew it was wrong—knew my father was pimping me out to you—but I went along with it! I used sex to get what I wanted!’ Her voice rasped bitterly. ‘And to think I used to despise Anita for doing that—I was doing exactly the same thing!’

He was looking at her strangely. ‘That’s what you think, is it? That you’re as bad as Anita?’

‘
Yes
! How could I be any different from her?’

‘How about,’ he said tautly, ‘because your motivations were somewhat different from hers? You wanted to save your home and you didn’t want your grandmother to lose hers! The home your own father had saddled with iniquitous debt just so that he could blackmail you into doing what he wanted!’

He stopped, his eyes resting on her. Implacable. Drilling into her. Giving her nowhere to hide.

‘And there’s another difference between you, isn’t there?
Isn’t there
, Flavia? Don’t try and deny it to me! Don’t try and pretend to me that what we had together from that first night, our whole time on Santera, was only because you wanted to save your home!’

She closed her eyes in anguish, unable to bear that merciless gaze drilling into her.

‘That made it
worse
,’ she whispered. ‘Agonisingly worse! To be so blissfully happy with you and yet to know that I was with you only in order to save Harford! I felt so guilty about it—but I couldn’t tell you. How could I? Because I wasn’t brave enough! I couldn’t bear to have you look at me and know what I’d done, what I’d stooped to! And it wasn’t only you I felt guilty about.’

Her voice dropped even more, became even more strained.
‘I felt so guilty about my grandmother! There I was, so blissfully happy with you on Santera. I’d just abandoned my grandmother! When I got that phone call from her carer, telling me she’d had a sudden deterioration and was sinking fast, it was like a knife in my heart! While I was with you my grandmother had given up the last of her will to live—I’d abandoned her when she was at her weakest! I was with you and my grandmother was dying! If I had stayed at home with her she might never have deteriorated like that—’

Her eyes flew open. ‘Guilt—guilt—guilt! It’s all I could feel! About you, about my grandmother—however I twisted and turned. Guilt, guilt,
guilt
!’ She gave a long, exhausted sigh. ‘When you arrived at Harford the day of her funeral, and threw in my face what my father had said to you, I couldn’t defend myself. I was exactly what you said I was. And there was no way out of it. No way.’

She inhaled heavily, lifting her head to look at him. ‘Except to try and make amends to you in the way I did. It had been trying to save Harford that had made me do what I did. So giving you Harford was the only way I could try and clear up the mess I’d made—salve my conscience. Absolve me from the guilt I felt.’

She fell silent, just staring at him. Drained. He went on standing, just looking at her.

‘Guilt,’ he said. ‘That’s a word you use so much. But I am amazed …’ He paused, then continued. ‘Amazed you even know what the word is. His eyes were resting on her, completely unreadable. ‘It’s a word that seems totally and completely unknown to your father!’

His eyes flashed suddenly, and Flavia felt herself reel at the fury in them.

‘My God, I always knew the man was unscrupulous—his business dealings showed me that! But to do what he did to his own daughter! And then—’ his voice twisted in disgust ‘—to prate to me and pretend he
doted
on you!’

She gave a painful shrug. ‘It was part of the act he always
put on when he got me to go up to London—he’d lent me money for a hip operation for my grandmother, and in return I had to go and stay with him sometimes, act as his hostess and all that. I hated it!’

‘That’s why you were so hostile and prickly all the time?’

She nodded. ‘Yes.’

‘Especially to me?’

‘Yes.’

‘Because your father had made it clear you were supposed to be “nice” to me?’

‘Yes.’

She was answering monosyllabically because it was all she could do. She could feel the tension ratcheting up in her. Feel his dark eyes resting on her. Unreadable—so unreadable. She wanted out of here. There was no purpose now—none at all—in being here any longer. She’d said everything to him—confessed everything to him. He was free to go now—
surely
he was free to go? There was nothing more to confess.

Nothing more?

She felt the accusation swirling inside her—whispering, dangerous.

Liar …

No! There was nothing more she was going to confess to him! Dear God, she’d laid bare
everything
—the sordid truth of her relationship with her father, what he had got her to do and how he’d got her to do it. Told him about how twisted up she’d felt about her grandmother—about the time she’d spent with him on Santera! There was nothing else to confess to him—
nothing
!

But still that voice inside her whispered
—liar …

He was speaking again, the words brushing like acid against her defenceless flesh.

‘And so had it not been for your father’s manipulation of you—had it not been for your concern over your grandmother—you’d never have had an affair with me? Even if your grandmother hadn’t been old and frail and dependent
on you, you’d never had had an affair with me? Would never have had anything to do with me? Would have been totally indifferent to me.’

‘Yes.’

‘Liar.’

Who had said the word? Him or her? She stared at him.

‘Liar,’
Leon said again softly. ‘If you had met me with no connection to your father, and if you had had no responsibilities towards your grandmother, what would you have done?’

His voice was changing, sending ripples of electricity trickling along the endings of her nerves. She could feel her pulse beating—insistent, strong.

‘I’ll tell you what you would have done, Flavia.’

He stepped towards her, cupped his hands around her face. 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 opened to his, her arms wound around him, clinging and clinging and clinging to his strong, hard body.

Oh, dear God, it was bliss—bliss to have him kiss her again. Leon—her own Leon—the way he had before—the way he was doing now.

He tore his mouth away, his fingertips pressing into her skull, holding her, gazing down at her. His eyes were lambent.

‘
This
is the truth, Flavia! This is what you could never deny—and this is what absolves you! Just as the fact that you did what you did
not
for yourself but out of love and care for your grandmother! You couldn’t hide the truth about this—what there is between us—whatever the foul machinations of your father, whatever your sense of guilt about yourself! When you left me, and when your father had fed me his poison about you, it gutted me to think that the time we’d had together had been based on nothing more than an attempt to use my desire for you for your own venal ends! I saw you then as what I’d feared you were when I first met you—a pampered,
idle female who was happy to live off her father’s wealth. On Santera I thought I’d got that completely wrong—because you truly seemed happy in such a simple place, happy only to be with me! Then afterwards I thought
that
was the lie—and it gutted me! Gutted me because I’d thought—’

His voice choked suddenly, and Flavia could feel her arms tightening around him instinctively, protectively.

‘I’d thought you were feeling about me what I had come to feel about you.’ His gaze, dark and glowing, poured into her. ‘But that time on Santera was true—wasn’t it?
Wasn’t it
? That was the true time between us—away from your father’s machinations, away from your concerns about your grandmother—just you and me together. Happy.
Blissful
.’ He used the word she’d used fondly, smilingly.

Lovingly.

That was what she could see in his face now. Impossible to deny—impossible to hide.

As impossible for him to hide it as it was for her …

‘I made such a mess of things,’ she whispered.

He shook his head. ‘It was an impossible situation.’ He took a heaving breath. ‘I only wish that you had told me on Santera about what your father was truly like, about how you were the carer for your grandmother, about the way he was holding that debt over your head—I just wish you had told me all that.’

‘I didn’t dare to. I was scared you might be so angry you would call off the deal with my father, and then in revenge at my spoiling things for him he’d foreclose on that debt anyway! And my grandmother would still have lost Harford! So I didn’t dare tell you—I didn’t dare!’ She took a shaking breath. ‘And I didn’t
want
to tell you—didn’t want you looking at me knowing I’d let my father pimp me out to you.’

He shook her—gently but angrily. ‘You did it for your grandmother! Did you think I would condemn you for that?’

‘I was scared you might! And I didn’t want to lose what we had because … because I knew it couldn’t last. I knew I had to
go back to my grandmother, that I wasn’t free to have a relationship with you. So I … I just blotted it all out, blanked it all out.’

He kissed her softly. ‘Never again. You understand me, Flavia?’ he said admonishingly. ‘From this moment on you trust me—you trust me with everything! I can’t go through again what I’ve been through—wanting you from the first moment I saw you, being endlessly rebuffed by you, then you bolting from me and leaving London the way you did, having to tread on eggshells to win you, and then—dear God—losing you again after Santera and all the hell that came afterwards. Missing you, mistrusting you, accusing you and hurting like hell every moment of that time!

‘And then the bombshell of the title deeds of your home landing on my desk! Telling me, once I’d found out from your solicitors, not just about the ruinous debt your father held over you, but about how you’d been your grandmother’s devoted carer and how recently she’d died—all that slamming into me like punches to my gut. I’d been totally, totally wrong about you, about my accusations! I set off to try and find you after you’d yet again disappeared off the map! Hell, Flavia—nothing but hell! Right up till today,’ he said feelingly, ‘when I phoned this place and finally tracked you down!’

He kissed her again. Devouringly, possessively. Wrapping her in a bear hug that enveloped her completely.

‘And now I’ve got you!’ he said. ‘And I am never,
never
letting you go again! So get your things and tell your boss you’re leaving. Tell her to hire as many agency staff as she needs to cover for you and send me the bill! Because I am taking you away with me
right now
.’

He straightened, holding her elbows, looking down at her. Then, abruptly, he frowned.

‘You’re crying,’ he said. His frown deepened. ‘Why are you crying?’

His answer was a convulsive sob, and Flavia threw herself into his arms again. He held her as she cried, weeping out the
tears inside her, weeping out all the guilt that had racked her for so, so long. Held her and soothed her, his strong, protective palms smoothing down her back, his lips brushing her eyelids. When all the tears were shed he kissed her again gently, so gently.

‘All done?’ he asked, his eyes as soft as his voice.

She nodded. All she was capable of doing.

‘Good,’ he said. ‘Let’s go.’

He led her towards the door, taking her hand. She would go with him to the ends of the earth now, and never leave him again.

Gratitude, wonder—love—filled her like light pouring through a window.

‘Where to?’ she asked, gazing lovingly up at him.

He smiled down at her. ‘Where do you think?’ He paused to kiss her nose. ‘I’ve recently become the extremely satisfied owner of an exceptionally beautifully country house.’ He paused again, this time to brush her lips with his. ‘I think you’ll like it,’ he said. ‘It’s a place filled with love—a place where a beautiful, brave girl once lived. She did the wrong thing for the right reason and then found it was the right thing after all. And as her reward—’ he smiled ‘—she got to live there happily ever after …’

He gazed into her eyes. ‘Does that sound good?’ he asked.

She lifted her mouth to his.

‘Blissful,’ she whispered. ‘Because it comes with the one thing I want more than anything in the whole world—the one thing I can’t live without.’ She kissed him softly, with all the love in the world in it. ‘You,’ she said.

‘H
OW
would you feel,’ Leon said, with a slightly tentative questioning note in his voice, his arm around Flavia’s shoulder as they stood on the terrace at Harford in the autumnal air, ‘about having a helipad here? It would mean I could commute to the City and so spend more time here.’

Flavia leant into his shoulder and smiled warmly up at him. ‘It’s a brilliant idea. The lawn really isn’t a good place to land.’

He gave a rueful laugh. ‘No, I can see that. Not good for your herbaceous borders.’

It was Flavia’s turn to sound tentatively questioning. ‘Are you sure you want to be based here, Leon? You’re not used to country living …’

‘Cities are overrated,’ he said dryly. ‘Even now that I can live in penthouses and not on the streets. But even though I would love to be based here at Harford, there will still be more times than I would like that I have to travel abroad. Especially when I’m checking up on my South American
pro bono
projects.’

Her eyes warmed. ‘Will you let me come with you?’ she asked. ‘I’ll learn Spanish, I promise, so I won’t be a total waste of space! I’d love to see all the good work you are doing.’

‘I would love to show it to you. My endless concern is how few the projects are, compared with the need for them.
So many lives need to be transformed to lift people out of poverty.’

She heard the frustration in his voice and kissed him softly on the cheek. ‘You’re a good man, Leon Maranz. A better man than so many who have made it in this world. Think of men like my father, who’s used people all his life for his own selfish ends, caring for no one but himself!’

Anger was etched into her voice. Leon looked down at her.

‘Maybe there is a cosmic karma after all. His Far Eastern bail out came to nothing, and after I’d made it crystal clear to him my offer was off the table because of the way he’s treated you and your mother’s family he lost everything. Including the lovely Anita, who wanted a more solvent protector.’

Leon’s voice changed from harsh to reassuring. ‘But you needn’t be afraid that he’ll try and contact you. I’ve done a deal with him. While he leaves you totally alone and stays out of the country I’ll pay him a modest monthly pension. He’s taken himself off to Spain, and the last I heard he was trying to set himself up as a property developer. Don’t worry,’ he said caustically, ‘I’ve got someone keeping tabs on him, and if his business ethics veer towards the dodgy I’ll be leaning on him painfully. He won’t intrude into your life any more.’ He paused. ‘
Our
lives,’ he amended.

He turned her towards him, gazing down at her uplifted face. Flavia felt her heart squeeze and melt with love, as she was bathed in the love-light in his dark, expressive eyes.

‘Our lives, my beautiful, adored Flavia. Our lives together from now onwards. Never to be parted again.’

Softly he lowered his mouth to hers, kissing her gently with sweet, possessing passion. He cupped her face with this hands.

‘I wish I could have met your grandparents to tell them how wonderful a granddaughter they raised. To tell them how grateful—how profoundly and eternally grateful I am to have found you. And to tell them—’ he glanced around at the autumn splendour, framing the house in a blaze of colour
‘—how beautiful their house is. How wonderful a home it will continue to be for you and me—’

‘And for our children?’ There was a wistful note in Flavia’s voice.

He gave a warm laugh. ‘Oh, yes, for our children. Definitely,
definitely
for our children. You were happy here when you were a child, and you know all the secret places in the house and in the grounds. Our children can roam wild here, be happy and carefree. And you and I—’ he kissed the tip of her nose, sliding his arm around her shoulder and strolling with her towards the open French windows leading into the drawing room ‘—will watch them grow well and strong, and safe and loved. All our days. All our years together.’

At the entrance to the drawing room he paused and looked out over the lawns. ‘We’ll make a happy home. A happy family.’ He drew her fast against his heart. ‘A blissful, perfect marriage. Wouldn’t you agree, Mrs Maranz?’

She clutched him close, radiant with happiness. ‘Absolutely,’ she breathed.

He laughed, happiness in his voice as in his heart. ‘Then let’s crack open that waiting bottle of champagne and drink to our marriage! And then …’

The expression in his eyes altered and Flavia felt a quickening of her pulse, a breathlessness in her lungs.

‘And then, my beautiful, beautiful bride, I’m going to carry you upstairs and remove you from that exquisite but really quite unnecessary bridal gown you look so breathtaking in. We shall have a wedding night that will melt the very stars in heaven!’

She frowned. ‘I don’t think stars can melt, can they?’ she queried.

‘Whatever,’ he said airily, and hefted the champagne bottle out of its ice-bucket. Then he paused. ‘On second thought …’

He scooped up two flutes, hooked his fingers around the neck of the champagne bottle, and then, with effortless
strength, scooped up Flavia as well. She cried out in laughing surprise and he grinned down at her.

‘The champagne can come with us,’ he said.

‘Whatever,’ she answered airily.

He grinned again, kissed her nose, and carried her and the champagne upstairs.

*  *  *  *  *