The Dark Side of Desire (5 page)

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.

She got to her feet. Lifted her chin. She had the rest of the evening to get through somehow, but get through it she would—she must. She would refuse point-blank to dance with Leon Maranz again—refuse to do anything other than offer him the barest civility.

She stared at herself. With her hair up, her lips pale once more, she looked almost her normal self. Only the faint, betraying flush of the skin on her cheeks told of her discomfiture.

Unconsciously she felt the unseen pressure of his hand at her waist, hers on his shoulder. For one lingering moment she could
feel
Leon Maranz’s touch …

Then, with a sharp little rasp in her throat, she got to her feet and walked out of the powder room.

L
EON
levered his broad shoulders away from the wall that he’d been propping up while Flavia Lassiter hid from him in the Ladies’ Room. Now, finally, she had emerged, as he’d known she would have to eventually, and was walking briskly forward. She’d managed to put her hair up again, and the last remnants of the stunning lipstick that had turned her mouth into a tempting curve had disappeared, but nothing could hide the sinuous beauty of her body in the elegant, figure-skimming evening dress.

As he straightened she saw him, and stopped dead. Colour flared in her cheeks and her eyes flashed. Satisfaction knifed through Leon. She could play the chilly ice-maiden all she liked, but she could not hide that physical, visceral response to him. The one she revealed every time he broke through her guard—every time she stopped holding him at bay the way she was so rigidly trying to do.

‘There you are,’ he said smoothly, reaching for her arm and tucking it into his with a proprietorial air.

Flavia clenched her teeth. How had he done it? How had he gone and helped himself to her like that? Yet again, just as before, she had the choice of either going along with him or tugging away and making a fool of herself in doing so in front of other people. Stiffly, she let him lead her back into the ballroom, back towards their table. Her hopes that her father
and Anita—anyone at all!—might be there, were dashed. The table was deserted.

Courteously, Leon Maranz relinquished her in order to pull out her chair, and stiffly Flavia lowered herself onto it. Dear God, would this evening never end? Surely her father and Anita would get off the damn dance floor and come back? Even the sight of her father fawning over Leon Maranz and Anita flirting with him would be preferable to having to sit here like a sour lemon beside him, while he beckoned to one of the passing waiters to serve fresh coffee and refill his brandy glass.

Then he relaxed back in his chair, hooking one arm over the back and crossing one long leg over the other, and turned his face towards her. Long lashes dipped down over his glinting eyes.

‘Your father’s girlfriend was wrong,’ he informed her. ‘You look as beautiful with your hair up as down. But then—’ his eyes washed over her consideringly, as if he were scrutinising an Old Master ‘—you are, of course, quite exceptional. As you must know.’ He reached for his brandy glass and swirled the contents slowly. Even more slowly, almost contemplatively, he said, his tone inviting, ‘But I am sure there is a great deal more to you than your exceptional beauty. Tell me about yourself. What do you do when you are not gracing events like this evening’s? Do you have a career?’ he enquired.

His gaze levelled on her and she looked away. She did not want to talk about her grandmother, or her life in Dorset. It was completely separate from these unwelcome sojourns in London with her father. Besides, caring for a grandmother with dementia and single-handedly looking after an eight-bedroom house and its gardens was hardly a career.

‘No,’ she said baldly.

Leon frowned slightly. For all her chilly reserve, Flavia Lassiter had not struck him as unintelligent, and it was unusual these days for a woman like her to have no life of her own. Most society women made a pretence, at least, of having
an occupation of sorts—even if it were little more than a stab at something they considered light and easy, such as interior design. Many, of course, were high-powered businesswomen and career professionals in their own right.

‘No?’ he echoed.

‘No,’ Flavia repeated, looking back at him coolly. Let him think what he would of her. She hardly cared, after all. After this evening she would have nothing more to do with him.

Leon’s frown deepened. ‘You are content, then, merely to be your father’s pampered daughter?’ he posed.

Flavia could feel her face freezing at the implication.

‘Evidently,’ she clipped out.

Leon studied her expression. She hadn’t liked the imputation, but then, he mused, perhaps few men had actually put it to her that living off her indulgent father’s wealth at her age was not something that could be admired. A thought flickered across his mind. If Flavia Lassiter was indeed entirely reliant on her father’s wealth for her comfortable lifestyle—her gown, however lacking in ‘bling’, was clearly a designer number, for instance, and those were definitely high-carat diamonds in her earlobes and in the slender bracelet snaking around her wrist—how would she cope if that wealth were to evaporate? He knew all too well that if he—or another turnaround expert—did not rescue her father it was the very likely outcome of Lassiter’s disastrously fragile financial situation.

Does she know how close to the wind her father is?
he speculated. If she truly were a pampered princess then it was unlikely she did. Females like that did not trouble themselves over the source of their funding. They took it for granted that the largesse would not stop. Besides … His eyes narrowed infinitesimally. Unlike Lassiter’s mistress, she had made no effort to fawn on him. Just the reverse! Had she any realisation of just how essential he was to her father’s continued affluence—and therefore her own—she would surely not be so chilly and rejecting of him!

But her frigid demeanour was because she was trying
to deny the effect he was having on her, he reminded himself. She was trying to resist him. That was why she was so determined to give him the cold shoulder. His dark eyes glinted briefly. Did she really not realise that her attitude would merely spur him on?

Her tension now was visible in the stiffness of her spine. Clearly she was wishing him to perdition—but in that he was not going to oblige her. He took a contemplative mouthful of his drink, enjoying the fine bouquet and fiery resonance of the vintage cognac.

‘Perhaps you occupy yourself in charity work?’ He trailed the suggestion in front of her.

His reward was a daggered glance. ‘Of course,’ she agreed. ‘Attending essential functions like this one. Which as you can see—’ her voice was viciously sweet ‘—I am
so
enjoying.’

Even as she spoke she knew she’d been unacceptably rude. But it was too late to take her unpleasantly sarcastic riposte back now. Too late, she thought with a hollow grip inside her, to do anything at all about Leon Maranz’s disastrous, unwanted impact on her except hold him as far at bay as she possibly could! Even if that meant crossing every boundary of social courtesy.

A desperate thought crossed her haunted mind. Perhaps if she were sufficiently rude to him he’d at least back off and leave her alone. Go off and seek a more willing, complaisant woman—goodness knew there were enough of them here tonight! He could have his pick if he wanted. So why,
why
did he have to focus on
her
, for heaven’s sake!

I can’t cope with this! I can’t cope with having this happening to me here, and now. He’s part of my father’s world, and I have every reason to reject that world—reject anything to do with it! I’ve got responsibilities and duties that are two hundred miles away which I cannot abandon even if I were to want to—which I don’t. So I just don’t want this—I don’t want this man paying me attention, trying to pull me, trying to get me into bed. Because that, obviously, is what he wants …

Like a guillotine slicing down, she cut off her train of thought. It was far too dangerous. Emotion writhed in her. All she wanted to do was get to her feet and bolt—just get away from the man invading her presence, disquieting and disturbing her, making his impact felt so powerfully and overwhelmingly.

The sudden tightening of his expression showed her that he had not appreciated her sarcasm, and for a moment she felt an impulse to apologise to him. Then she hardened. Making him dislike her was as good a way as any to keep him at a distance. Besides, a resentful voice said in her head, she didn’t
want
to be so affected by him. She didn’t
want
to have this fluttery quickening of the pulse, this perpetual shimmer of awareness of him. She wanted to be immune to him, to be unaffected by him, completely indifferent to him.

This time tomorrow I’ll be back at home—safe
.

She made the thought hang in her head, clinging to it. All she had to do was get through the remainder of this wretched evening and she’d be done. Done with Leon Maranz for good!

She reached for her coffee cup and deliberately let her gaze wander out over the ballroom with an expression of boredom on her face.

Beside her, Leon felt his anger snap its jaws.

‘Tell me,’ he drawled, his voice like a blade, ‘what makes you think you have a right to be rude to me?’

Flavia’s head swivelled. Words jumbled fiercely in her brain—hot, angry words that she wanted to hurl at him! But she couldn’t—couldn’t say the words she was burning to throw at him.

What makes you think you can come on to me the way you are? What makes you think you can drag me out on to the dance floor and make me dance with you, invading my body space, making me react to you the way I did? What makes you think you can look at me the way you do—making it obvious … blindingly, searingly obvious … what you want?

But she couldn’t hurl those words at him. Instead, all she
could do was glare at him stonily, her face tightening, and retreat behind her rigid, icy guard to keep him at bay. Resort again to the unforgivable rudeness that she knew, with a small, shaming part of her brain, that she was handing out to him.

‘I don’t think anything about you at all, Mr Maranz,’ she said, forcing her voice to be cold. ‘You’re my father’s guest, not mine, and I would far rather he did a host’s duty by you instead of leaving the task to me.’

Involuntarily her eyes went past him to the dance floor, urgently trying to seek out her wretched father and Anita. Would they get off the floor and come back to their table?

Leon saw her searching gaze. Was that, maybe, what this was all about? Was Alistair Lassiter’s idle, pampered daughter sulking because her father paid more attention to his mistress than to her?

He took a mouthful of brandy, studying Flavia’s rigid face. ‘Are you jealous of Anita?’ he ventured.

Again Flavia’s gaze snapped to him.
‘What?’

He gave a slight shrug. ‘It would not be surprising. Daughters—especially those who are used to being Daddy’s darling—are very often extremely possessive of their fathers, and resent them paying attention to any other female. Let alone one as young and glamorous as Anita.’

Flavia could only stare. ‘You think I’m jealous of
Anita
?’ She could not hide the disbelief in her voice.

‘Why not?’ Leon replied. ‘Your father seems quite … smitten by her.’

Flavia could feel her face icing. ‘Anita,’ she bit out, ‘is a gold-digging piece of work who wouldn’t look twice at him if he weren’t rich! Every bit of jewellery she’s dripping with, every designer number in her vast collection, was paid for by
him
!’

There was scorn in her voice, and she didn’t bother to hide it.

Leon’s reply was hard. ‘You are fortunate, then, that
you
only had to be born your father’s daughter to enjoy his wealth.’

At least she had the grace to look discomfited, he saw. His gaze studied her face. Just what
was
Flavia Lassiter’s character? On the plus side she seemed unimpressed by his wealth, disdaining to fawn on him, yet she enjoyed the fruits of Alistair Lassiter’s largesse and admitted she made no attempt to earn any money for herself, or even busy herself with charity work, which so many women of her type did. And she was perfectly willing to be shamelessly rude to him—was that truly only because she was trying to deny what was so obviously flaring between them?

A dark thought shadowed his mind yet again. Or was it because she saw no necessity to be polite to him because he did not come from the well-bred world she moved in so effortlessly. Because he had started life half a world away in a South American shanty town and come penniless to this country, nothing more than yet another indigent immigrant—someone to look down on and resent, to look through as if he simply did not exist …?

Again he felt the familiar sting of anger inside him, fuelled by an old, old memory of a time when few had seen any need to show him politeness.

He thrust the reflection aside. He would not be haunted by it … by memories of his past …

There was a swirl of glittering purple skirts and Lassiter’s mistress, closely followed by Lassiter himself, was approaching the table once more. Anita’s face was animated as she hailed Leon.

‘There you are! I wondered where you’d got to.
Do
come and dance! Alistair says he’s too tired to go on.’

She pouted flirtatiously at Leon and moved to take his hand, but he raised it in negation, giving a slight but definite shake of his head.

‘I never dance with another man’s woman,’ he said.

Anita’s pout turned into a displeased moue. Leon could
immediately see she was peeved to be thought of as Lassiter’s ‘woman’, but at the same time she clearly wanted to dance with Leon himself. He could understand why. Alistair Lassiter was not looking his best right now. His face was red and puffed, and there was a line of sweat around his collar. As he sat down heavily he looked his age, and he was running to fat.

Anita perched herself petulantly on the vacant chair next to Leon, then busied herself spending the next ten minutes making up to him shamelessly. Leon could see Lassiter—not liking it, but at the same time he was obviously not keen on objecting to it. Cynically, Leon found himself once again considering whether Lassiter would actually go so far in ingratiating himself with him by not objecting if he took matters even further with his mistress.

Or his daughter …

His eyes slid past Anita’s over-made-up face to where Flavia Lassiter was still sitting stiffly, taking small, repetitive sips from her coffee cup, clearly in an attempt to avoid all further conversation. She was pretending she was occupied in staring out across the ballroom, though it was obvious she was paying her surroundings no attention at all.

Except to him. Flavia Lassiter, whatever his uncertainty or speculation as to her disdain for men of lowly foreign origins, was, Leon knew with complete assurance, radiating a totally female awareness of him on all frequencies—she was bristling with it. Once more a grim sense of satisfaction permeated him. She could snub him all she liked, claim whatever that she didn’t think of him at all—but she was lying. Lying all the way down her beautiful slender body …