by Julia James
CHAPTER FIVE
LEON sat back impassively in the large leather chair in his London office. Alistair Lassiter was talking at him. He’d been talking at him for the last twenty minutes, and Leon had stopped listening after the first ten. He’d heard all he needed to know. The man was getting desperate. That much was screamingly obvious. Leon had been well aware of the financial precariousness of the Lassiter organisation, but now—whether he realised it or not, and Leon suspected he didn’t—Alistair Lassiter had shown him that there were no white knights in the offing to save his sorry, extravagant skin.
All that was left for Leon to decide was whether he would do so.
But that wasn’t what was currently occupying his mind.
It wasn’t Alistair Lassiter’s business affairs that were preoccupying him. It was his daughter. Thoughts about her were going round and round in succession.
Talk about conflicted …
After their final barbed exchange at the charity function, with Flavia Lassiter doing her damnedest to make him think her rude and stuck up to the point where he was almost ready to wash his hands of her, he’d then completely reversed his decision while taking her home! She’d only had to look at him the way she had, so close to him in the dim, closeted privacy of the car. When she’d met his gaze full-on, drowning in his eyes, every reservation about her had been submerged in an overwhelming desire to do just what he had—sweep her into his arms and kiss her….
And it had been a disaster! Oh, not the kiss—that had been a sensual white-out!—but the timing couldn’t have been worse.
I rushed her.
That was the accusation that was staring him in the face. He’d rushed her—and panicked her. And she’d bolted.
It was too much, too soon. She couldn’t handle it, couldn’t accept it—not so suddenly.
Her rudeness to him he could now see was obviously her attempt to fight their attraction to each other, which she just couldn’t cope with—at least not yet. Hence her precipitate reaction to him when he’d kissed her. Self-accusation stabbed again. He’d indulged his own desires at her expense, and the result had been she’d bolted.
He took a steadying breath—OK, so he’d mishandled the situation, acted like an impulsive teenager instead of an experienced man who should have read the situation more adroitly, but that kiss had been proof to both of them of just how powerfully attracted they were to each other. She would find that kiss as impossible to forget as he did.
Resolution replaced his berating of himself. All he had to do now was consider the best way of taking the situation forward to the conclusion that was, he knew with every atom in his body, as inevitable as day following night. All he had to do was find the right way to woo her.
Leon’s eyes refocussed on Lassiter, glinting in impatience—he would far rather be focussing on Lassiter’s daughter, undoing the damage his kiss had done, not listening to her father extol the wonderful ‘investment opportunity’ of saving his company. A frown creased Leon’s brow minutely. How would Flavia react if he decided not to bail out her father? Would she still want anything to do with him? A disquieting memory of their conversation last night about how she seemed content to accept her father’s financial support wormed its way into her head. Impatiently, he thrust it aside. To many women of her background acting as a social hostess was occupation enough. It was the way they’d been brought up.
What will she do if her father goes under?
The question hovered in his head, uncomfortable and troubling.
With sudden decision he shifted in his seat and flexed his shoulders. He wasn’t prepared to take the risk that Flavia Lassiter would want to have anything more to do with him at all if she knew he’d chosen to let her father go down the drain. So he’d bail out Lassiter—but on his own terms.
He held up a hand, interrupting Alistair Lassiter’s self-justifying peroration.
‘You’ve made your case. I’m interested. But there are conditions. I’ll want equity, executive control, and my own finance man in place to authorise future spending. And you’ll have to pull out of some of your African deals—the ones in Luranda—I don’t do business with dictators, however much they lavish their country’s foreign aid revenues and natural resources on me.’
Lassiter’s face reddened. ‘Equity? I was looking more at lines of credit—’
Leon shook his head. ‘I always insist on equity,’ he spelt out.
Lassiter promptly took another tack instead. ‘You can’t be serious about pulling out of Luranda? The profit margins are massive!’
‘At the expense of the country’s benighted people,’ Leon retorted.
‘Lurandans are notoriously lazy and feckless—like all too many in the Third World,’ Lassiter blustered.
Leon levelled a cold gaze on him. ‘Desperate and exploited,’ he said.
‘Yes, well … as long as they stay in the Third World and don’t keep trying to get here and leech off us—’ started Lassiter, then stopped abruptly.
‘You were saying?’ Leon queried. The coldness in his eyes was sending a message even Lassiter could read.
‘Well, obviously the enterprising ones can make a go of things—just like you have.’ Lassiter was back to blustering again.
‘But those like me,’ Leon pursued, ‘would far prefer to be able to make a go of things in their own countries. Which is seldom possible when outside money is propping up their corrupt, exploitative and grossly economically inefficient government for its own benefit. Which is why,’ he spelt out, ‘Maranz Finance only ever makes investments in such countries direct at ground level, and retains control over them to ensure middlemen and government officials can’t take the profit away from those who do the actual work.’
He got to his feet. He wasn’t about to debate the issue. Those were the terms of his involvement, and if Alistair Lassiter didn’t like them he could walk. But he wouldn’t, Leon knew. He had no choice. There were no other white knights in the offing, and if Lassiter wanted to save his company and, more importantly for him, Leon thought cynically, his fortune, then he’d have to swallow his self-importance and accept the deal on the table.
However, there was no point rubbing the guy’s nose in it—Lassiter might prove a pain to work with if he felt too put down by Leon. Maybe it was time to back off and lighten the atmosphere.
It was obvious that Lassiter liked to do business via socialising, and although Leon had had quite enough of his company, the reverse was true of his daughter. Knowing he was keen on his daughter would definitely sweeten the atmosphere.
‘Now,’ he said, his voice warming as he walked around the desk, ‘with our business discussion out of the way, I wanted to thank you for a most enjoyable evening last night. However, I don’t believe I have the phone number of your London apartment. I’d like to ask your daughter out to dinner tonight.’
A quiet dinner—a chance to make amends for his behaviour the night before, a chance to get to know Flavia properly, woo her properly. That was what he was after now.
He paused expectantly by Alistair Lassiter, who got to his feet. But to his surprise, instead of being immediately and eagerly forthcoming with the number, the man looked discomfited.
‘Ah, yes, Flavia—of course,’ the man floundered. ‘Yes, yes—the thing is she’s gone out of town—left this morning—prior engagement, so she told me.’
Leon stilled. ‘She’s not in London?’
‘Er … as it happens, no,’ corroborated Lassiter.
‘When is she planning to return?’ Leon asked.
His voice was even, unemotional. But inside his emotions were streaming through him. He’d thought, when she’d jumped ship into that taxi, it had only been the spur of the moment, that she’d just panicked, been overwhelmed by what had happened between them, and had needed some space to come to terms with it. But actually leaving town?
‘And,’ he went on, keeping his voice deliberately cool through the emotion spiking in him, ‘where has she g
one?’
‘The thing is, I’m not really sure.’ Lassiter attempted to sound nonchalant, and failed. ‘You know these days they’re so independent.’
‘Any ideas?’ Leon wasn’t about to let him off the hook. ‘Where do her friends live?’
‘Oh—all over, really. I couldn’t say. Could be anywhere.’
Leon decided to cut to the chase. ‘OK, give me her mobile number and I’ll find her myself.’
‘Er—yes, of course. The thing is though … um … she may not answer it.’
‘I’ll take my chances,’ said Leon implacably.
Wherever she’d run to, he would find her. He’d screwed up with her and he had to fix it.
He wanted her too much not to.
Far, far too much.
‘Hello, Gran, darling.’ Flavia leant over her grandmother’s bed and kissed her cheek tenderly. She’d only just arrived from the station, but there was no point telling her grandmother that. It would not register. ‘Mrs S says you’ve had a very good lunch,’ she said encouragingly. ‘Mashed potatoes, peas and plaice.’
Her grandmother looked at her uncertainly, and her thin fingers picked at the turned-down sheet across her torso. Pain shafted through Flavia. It hurt so much to see her once vibrant grandmother so frail, so lost in the mist of her own mind.
‘Plaice is your favourite type of fish,’ she said.
But her grandmother’s gaze had drifted away, settling on some indeterminate point ahead of her. Flavia lifted her veined hand, and squeezed it gently, looking down at her grandmother, lying there in her double bed—the same bed she’d slept in for over fifty years, since coming to Harford as a young bride. Her heart contracted as she felt the pity of it all. Yet there was a kind of mercy in it, too, she knew. It had been the death of Flavia’s grandfather that had first set her off on this journey into a darkening land. Had she lost the will to take part in life once the man she had lived with and loved for so long, had gone?
Flavia smiled sadly as she left the room. What would it be like to love a man so much that you no longer wanted to live once he was not at your side any more? To her it was unimaginable. She’d never been in love, fond though she’d been of former boyfriends. There had never been any great depth of feeling for them, and whilst she’d found them attractive there had never been anyone to arouse a storm of passion in her breast.
Of desire.
Her expression changed, and the memory she’d been banning since getting back home leapt vividly in her head. Instantly, helplessly, she was back in Leon Maranz’s arms …
Passion and soft, sensual arousal that teased and laved and melted, so that the breath quickened, the pulse surged, and the body arched and yearned towards the source of it. His mouth warm on hers, pliant and tasting, taking hers with his, and heat starting to beat up through her body, like a dissolving glow …
No! With sheer effort, she dragged her mind away. It was madness to let herself remember. She had spent the whole train journey down to Dorset trying to shut it out, trying not to let it play over and over again in her mind like some impossible video loop she could not turn off.
But now, safely back at Harford, with her grandmother again—back in her real life, a cosmos away from her father’s world and the darkly dangerous man who moved therein—surely she was safe from that disastrous memory? If she could just put it completely behind her, write it off as some appalling, unforgivable misjudgement, a lapse that she must never think of again.
This—here, now—was her real life.
As she walked downstairs, heading for the kitchen, she made herself look about her, see the safe, familiar walls enclosing her, the safe, familiar paintings, the safe, familiar furniture and décor, the same now as it had been all through her childhood. Her home, her grandmother’s home—her safe place to be.
She went through into the large stone-flagged kitchen with its huge, ancient Aga and massive scrubbed wooden table centre stage, and repeated the reassuring litany of familiarity and safety. Everything here was as it had always been, and that was what she wanted.
She busied herself making her grandmother’s supper—just something light: soup and scrambled eggs on toast and a mashed banana. She would eat the same, in her grandmother’s bedroom, once she’d bade goodbye and thanks to the stalwart Mrs S, and paid her for her extra time. Then, when her grandmother had settled for the night and slipped over into sleep, she would settle down in the armchair by the table by the window, with a low-lit lamp for light, and read. The only sound would be that of her grandmother’s gentle breaths and the occasional hooting of an owl outside, sweeping soundlessly over the gardens. Later she would make herself a cup of tea, read a little longer, then head for bed herself, leaving the door to the landing open so she would hear if her grandmother proved restless in the night.
It was a long-familiar routine. Just as the routines of the daytime were. Getting her grandmother up, helping her downstairs, settling her in the sunny drawing room while she got on with the housework, and then, after lunch, if the weather were clement, opening the French windows to the gardens and getting some gardening done while keeping an eye on her grandmother at the same time.
Sometimes the occasional visitor would come and pay a call on her grandmother, though the conversation was always with Flavia herself, and one of the district nurses or healthcare workers would make a daily phone call to check on things. Twice a week they would come and look after her grandmother while Flavia drove into the nearby market town to buy groceries and any other necessary shopping.
A familiar, routine way of life. Quiet, safe, and very dear to her.
Too safe, too quiet …?
The disquieting thought flickered through her synapses. Restlessly she pushed it aside. Yes, of course anyone might tell her that living quietly in the country as she did, looking after an elderly, frail grandparent, with nothing else in her life at all but that and housework and gardening, was no life for a woman in her twenties! But there was nothing she could do about it. Nothing she wanted to do about it.
Even as she formed the thought memory licked again, and it was as if she could feel the pressure of his mouth on hers, feel the surging of her body, her breast straining against the sensuous palm of his hand shaping her. Involuntarily she felt her breasts tightening.
No! It was no good—no good at all letting herself think about that kiss, that embrace. It had been a terrible mistake, a disastrous weakening of her resolve, yielding to an impulse that was impossible—impossible! She’d gone through all the reasons why it had been impossible—what was the point of reiterating them? She was home now. Home and safe …
Gratitude filled her that she was safely back here again, where she loved to be, and where the only person in the world who loved her was. The only person she loved.
Her heart tightened. Seeing her grandmother again after a space of several days had brought home to her just how much frailer she was, how her body was steadily giving up the will to stay alive, how she was drifting ever deeper into the mists that were calling her.
How long would it be before she slipped away entirely? Body as well as mind? The doctor, on his regular visits to check her over, always said that it was impossible to know for sure, but Flavia knew that now it really could not be that long. Months, perhaps? If that? Or would she still be here this time next year?
Resolutely she put aside such pointless speculation. All that was important—essential—was that her grandmother would live out her days here, at Harford, with her beloved granddaughter, and that was that. Nothing could change that, and Flavia would allow nothing to endanger it.
Her thoughts moved on, becoming more troubled. Here in the familiar surroundings of Harford’s comfortably old-fashioned kitchen, as she cracked eggs into a bowl and set the soup to heat, it was as if she had never been away. But she had—and this latest compulsory visit to London had been incredibly disturbing. She could use all the mental discipline she liked to try and shut out what had happened, but it
could not shut out that it had happened. That she had encountered such a man as Leon Maranz—and that he had had such a devastating impact on her.
And she had fallen into his arms …
But I ran! I ran just in time! Got back here.
Apprehension webbed about her. What if she had to encounter him again, when her father next summoned her? If her father were going to do business with him she might well have to see him again.
I can’t! I can’t risk seeing him again—I just can’t!
That disastrous, debilitating embrace in his limo had shown her just how terrifyingly vulnerable she was to the man. If she had to socialise with him again, and if he still wanted to amuse himself with her, would she find the strength to resist his advances?
Bitterly, she knew the truth.
It would be impossible.
Even now, two hundred miles away from him, she could feel his power dominating her memory if she for a single moment allowed him in. He would overwhelm her, invade her sanctuary here. And she couldn’t allow it—she just couldn’t! She could never allow herself to become involved with Leon Maranz—however much he drew her with his dark, disturbing sensuality.
Resolve filled her. There was a way to avoid it—a way to ensure that she never had to go into that world again, a way to ensure that her father had no power to summon her like a puppet whose strings he could jerk whenever she wanted. Her face shadowed. It was an option she had considered before and turned down. Harford was not hers, and nor were any of its contents. Yet she had power of attorney for her grandmother, so legally she was free to do what she wanted with her grandmother’s possessions.
Up till now she had always refused to do anything other than sell the barest minimum to keep them both here at Harford. But to pay off the thousands of pounds of debt her father kept dangling over her head in order to ensure her compliance with his determination to use her when it suited him she would, she knew with a heavy heart, have to sell some of the more valuable antiques that were left, deeply reluctant though she was to do so.