The Dark Side of Desire (9 page)

But it never was.

He’d hoped that leaving London would stop him being constantly on the alert for her, but here he was on the point
of heading back east across the Atlantic and he was just as frustrated by her silence as ever. He’d tried accepting that she just didn’t want to know, tried putting her out of his mind, even tried looking out for another woman to take his mind off Flavia Lassiter.

But even the famed beauty of South American womanhood had failed to beguile him. The more he’d tried to be beguiled, the less he had been. The more he’d kept seeing Flavia in his mind’s eye, feeling her lips beneath his in his memory, the pliant softness of her body in his embrace …

It was infuriating. It was exasperating. It was unnerving.

I’m becoming obsessed …

The unwelcome notion played in his head, disturbing and disquieting. He tried to rationalise it away, reminding himself that up till now he’d never had to face female rejection—that was why he was reacting so badly to Flavia doing it. But he could rationalise it all he wanted—what he couldn’t do was expunge her from his memory or cease to want her.

They’d reached the end of the proposals, and he realised he must make the appropriate answers. Forcing his mind to focus on the subject in hand, he found himself simply giving blanket approval to everything. And why not? he reasoned impatiently. His team were first class, reliable and hardworking, with excellent judgement—it was why he’d picked them in the first place. So their proposals would be fine. He need not check them. Instead he would do what he’d been itching to do all through the meeting. Check his incoming texts.

Dismissing his team with a smile and an expression of appreciation and encouragement, he slid out his phone and hungrily skimmed down the messages.

As he reached the last one he stilled completely. Not a muscle moved in him. For a moment the brief text blurred in his vision, then cleared again.

Sorry I was out of range—FL
.

That was all it said—but it was enough. More than enough.

For one long moment he simply stared, as if the message
might be a mirage. Then, tamping down the emotion that had sprung forcefully inside him, he texted back. A message just as simple—but all he needed to say.

Have dinner with me tomorrow night
.

As he hit ‘send’, his nerves felt strung out like wires. Then, with a total sense of all tension snapping, he saw the brief two-letter reply that told him everything he’d been waiting so long to hear.

OK

It was all he wanted.

Everything he wanted.

Without further hesitation he set off for the airport. He could not be back in London soon enough …

F
LAVIA
sat on the bed in her bedroom in her father’s Regent’s Park apartment. Once again she had left her grandmother in the care of Mrs Stephens. Once again she had made the train journey back to London.

A journey that had always been an ordeal for her.

But never like this …

Her hands were clenched in her lap and she felt cold all through her body, despite the warmth of the evening.

She hated her father with all her being for what he was forcing her to do.

Because there was no way she could defy him. That was what was so appalling. She had been over and over and over it in her head, round and round and round. It had occupied her like a hideous monster. She had phoned her grandmother’s solicitors the moment he had rung off but, as her father had sneeringly warned her, they knew nothing about the massive loan her grandmother had so rashly, dangerously accepted from her father. Any small hope that he might be bluffing—though really she had known from his air of triumph that he was not—had been swept away the next morning when, after a churning, sleepless night, a car had drawn up at Harford and a slick-looking estate agent from a non-local firm had emerged, primed to inspect the house and value it for ‘immediate sale’, as he’d oleaginously declared. He’d been closely followed by a courier who had delivered an ominous
packet with the name of her father’s city solicitor’s name on it. Filled with dread she’d opened it, and there it was—a foreclosure notice.

For twenty-four hours Flavia had wrestled with the nightmare, taking all the documents in to the local solicitors in a hope against hope that there might be something flawed about them. But, as her father had told her, there was nothing they could do. Nothing at all. He could take Harford from her and her grandmother any time he wanted.

Any time at all …

Unless she did what he was demanding of her …

Anguish filled her. Not just because she was having to face up to just how monstrously selfish her father truly was, how utterly uncaring of her, but because of more than that.

Into her head came the image she was trying not to let in. The lean, disturbing face of Leon Maranz, who had had such a dangerous, powerful impact on her. An impact she had had to deny, reject. Her stomach hollowed. But now she was being forced to accept it after all.

Her hands twisted in her lap. She hated herself for what she was doing.

But she was going to do it anyway. She was going to go out to dinner with Leon Maranz, accept the situation—accept anything and everything he wanted of her.

She swallowed heavily, then, a moment later jumped. It was the internal phone. The concierge was calling up to tell her that her car had arrived. For a long moment she did not move. Then, slowly, very slowly, she stood up and left the apartment.

Walking on leaden feet.

Leon had chosen the restaurant with care. He wanted Flavia to like it—to feel comfortable there. It was the antithesis of anywhere Alistair Lassiter and his flashy girlfriend would choose. They would want somewhere fashionable, where people went to see and be seen. This place was totally different.

He glanced around with a sense of having chosen well. The restaurant was an eighteenth-century town house in Mayfair that prided itself on retaining and recreating as much of the ambience of that period as possible. All the furniture was antique, and the panelled walls were hung with old paintings and portraits. The original sash windows were draped with Georgian-style floor-length curtains. The original room layouts had been preserved, so even on the first floor there were only half a dozen tables—if that—giving the impression of discretion and privacy. This evening several tables were still unoccupied, and he hoped Flavia would not feel crowded or under observation. He wanted her to feel at ease.

Restlessly, he glanced around, anticipation flickering within him. He’d waited so long for this—and now, finally, it was about to start. He had checked with the driver of the car he’d sent for her—she would be here any minute …

And there she was! Pausing in the doorway. One of the restaurant staff was ushering her in, indicating his table to her with an unobtrusive murmur. For a moment she was completely still, but Leon did not mind. He was drinking her in.

Seeing her again, in the flesh and not just in his memory, was confirming everything that had drawn his eye from the first. That perfect bone structure, the clear eyes, the oval frame of her face, the long, slender throat and her beautiful, graceful figure—all was just as he remembered. Yes—she was exactly what he wanted.

His eyes worked over her assessingly, the slightest twist tugging at his mouth.

She was dressed with an even greater austerity of style than she had been that first evening at the cocktail party at her father’s apartment. Not only was her hair tightly drawn back into a sleek chignon, and her make-up subtle to the point of being understated, but she was wearing a knee-length dress in dark grey, with a little stand-up collar and sleeves that reached almost to her elbows. All that brightened her was a single row of pearls, and pearl studs at her earlobes.

He got to his feet, and as if a switch had been turned on in her back she started to walk towards him. She looked very pale, but he thought that might be because of the low lighting from the wall sconces. As she took her place at their table, the candelabra to one side gave her pale flesh a warmer glow.

He sat down opposite her, letting his eyes rest on her in appreciation.

‘You came,’ he said.

She inclined her head, reaching for her linen napkin, which she flicked across her lap. The barest smile, the least that would pass muster in a social situation, fleeted across her mouth.

The mouth that opened to mine—that tasted of honey, and roses, and all the delights that she promised with that kiss …

His eyes flickered. Well, those delights would come now. It was impossible that they should not. Now she wanted them as much as he did. Her presence here was proof of that.

As he let her settle herself, let the waiter pour her water, proffer menus to them both and the wine list to himself, he contented himself with looking, not talking.

She was still not meeting his eyes, and for a moment there was a darkening glint in his. Then enlightenment dawned. It was obvious—the set of her shoulders, the ramrod-straightness of her back, the way she wouldn’t look at him, the briefness of her smile not just to him but to the waiter as well. All showed one thing only.

She was nervous.

It was as clear as a bell.
That
was what was constraining her. Nerves. And she was nervous, Leon knew with every male instinct, because she was doing exactly what he wanted her to do—being ultra-aware of him.

Ultra-aware of the fact that
he
knew, and
she
knew, and they
both
knew that they had shared an embrace that meant she could never—not for a moment—go back to the way she had been before that embrace: pretending to him, to herself, that she was not responsive to him.

But she didn’t know how to handle that—that was why she was sitting there so stiffly, so nervously. Well, she need not be nervous. This time he would not rush her, as he had so rashly before, overcome with wanting her. He would give her the time she needed to feel at ease with him.

To come with him on the journey he would take her on—deep, deep into the sensual heart of the passion that he knew with absolute certainty awaited them together.

But that was for later. Much later. For now, they were dining together. Getting to know each other. Starting their relationship.

He opened his menu and, slightly jerkily, she did likewise. He gave her time to peruse it, then made some passing observations and some suggestions. Stiltedly, she made her choice.

How she was going to manage to swallow, she didn’t know. Tension was racking through her, tightening her throat, churning her stomach. She seemed to be frozen inside, and for that she was abjectedly grateful. It was though she were watching the world from inside a glacier—a glacier that was keeping her safe inside its icy depths. Numbing her with its cold.

If only, she thought desperately, it could numb her other senses! If only she didn’t have to sit here looking at him, listening to him, hearing his voice—that dark, accented voice that seemed to resonate deep within her—her eyes trying to blank him out and failing utterly, totally.

The moment she’d walked into the room her eyes had gone to him instantly, as if drawn by some giant magnet. The image that had been burning on her retina since she’d flung herself out of his limo had leapt into life, imprinting itself on the flesh-and-blood man. Despite her frozen insides, she had felt her throat tighten as her body responded to him. And now, sitting so close to him, his presence was impinging on her so that she was ultra-aware of him. Of the strong, compelling features, the dark, expressive eyes, the breadth of his shoulders sheathed in the dark charcoal jacket, the sable hair that caught the light from the candelabra.

Deep within the frozen core of her body she could feel the layers of ice shift and fracture …

Hatred for what her father was making her do writhed within her. Her consciousness of the lie she was parading in front of Leon Maranz was like a snake in her mind—the lie of behaving as though she were here willingly, as if her hand had
not
been forced by her father in the most compelling way he could devise.

For a moment, as her eyes rested on the man opposite her, she felt a flaring impulse within her.

Tell him! Tell him the truth of why you are here with him tonight! Tell him what your father is threatening you with! You have no right to be here under such false pretences—no right to deceive him, pretend that you haven’t been forced into this!

But she couldn’t—didn’t dare. Cold ran in her veins. What if she did tell Leon Maranz the truth about what her father was making her do and he was so angry that he then walked away from bailing out her father? Let her father go down the tubes.

The cold intensified. If that happened she knew with absolute certainty that her father would revenge himself on her by foreclosing on Harford. Punish her for not saving him.

So there was nothing she could do—nothing at all. She had to live out this lie. Do what her father ordered. Continue with this tormenting ordeal that was tearing her apart …

The wine had been poured and Leon was raising his glass

‘To a new beginning for us.’

His voice was slightly husky, and Flavia could feel it resonate within her. Feel the pressure of his dark gaze on her. Her eyelashes dropped over her eyes, veiling them, as she took a tiny sip of her own wine.

Leon set down his glass. ‘I wanted to thank you for accepting my invitation this evening,’ he said, his voice low and measured.

Her fingers tightened around the stem of her glass. The lie of what she was doing—she had not accepted his invitation at all; she had been manipulated and forced into it by her father—
screamed silently in her head. But there was nothing she could say—nothing.

‘And I wanted to apologise to you. Apologise for the way I behaved when I was taking you home—and you felt you had to flee from me.’

There. He had said it. He’d known he’d have to—that it was the only way forward with her, to ease the strain between them. Now, though, two spots of colour flared in her cheeks, and he could see her expression blank completely.
Damn
. Maybe he shouldn’t have said anything at all! Maybe that infamous English reserve meant that even his apologising was embarrassing to her!

Or maybe—the thought sliced into his mind like an acid-tipped stiletto—maybe the reason for her tension was quite different …

Like sharp stabs, words darted through his mind.

Maybe her tension is because she does not want to be here at all. What if she is here only because she now realises I am likely to bail out her father?

His expression darkened. Was that the bald, blunt truth of it? He could feel his thoughts running on unstoppably, ineluctably.

Because if that’s so—if that’s the only reason she’s here, the only reason she’s putting up with me—then …

Then
what?
That was what he had to decide. But even as he thought it he knew what the answer had to be.

Then there could be no future for them. None.

If she is not here because she wants to be—of her own volition, because she is as drawn to me as I to—then we end this right now! Whatever the strength of my desire for her, I will not succumb to it
.

He could feel emotion roil within him as suspicion barbed him with poisonous darts. The ghosts of his past trailed their cold tendrils in his head. Who did she see as she sat there, the epitome of her class and her well-bred background, all pearl necklace and crystalline vowels? Did she see nobody but
some jumped-up foreigner, utterly alien to her, distasteful and beneath her? Someone to look down on—look through—because, however much money he had, he could never be someone to keep company with, to be intimate with …?

Was
that
the kind of woman Flavia Lassiter was?

He watched her toy with her knife, straightening it minutely, then drop her hand to her lap to pick up her linen napkin, dabbing it momentarily to her lips, dropping it again to her lap, smoothing it out. Her gaze was fixed on it, on anything that wasn’t him. Small, jerky, awkward movements, indicating glaringly how totally ill at ease she was.

Because she was embarrassed about desiring him or just embarrassed by his company?

The damnable thing was it was impossible to tell. Impossible to know what was going on inside her head. Was she essentially cut from the same cloth as her father, who had not troubled to hide his sense of superiority to those not from his privileged world? Did her outer beauty conceal an inner ugliness?

Or was there, as he so fervently hoped, more to her than that?

He
had
to find out.

Their waiter had approached, and was ready to set down their first course. Leon watched Flavia turn her head and smile at him as he carefully placed the plate in front of her, murmur thank you to him. That was a good sign, he realised. Not everyone bothered to acknowledge waiters. He felt reassurance go through him. Then it wavered again. It was easy for women like Flavia Lassiter to be gracious towards those who served them—it didn’t mean they regarded them as their social equals.