The Dark Side of Desire. Julia James
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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 …
Why? That was the question that circled in his mind now, as he stood in his luxurious hotel suite, savouring the vintage brandy, enjoying the bountiful fruits of his hard work, his determination and drive. Why should that anger still come? Why should it have a power over him?
And who was she to have the ability to revive that anger? Who was she, that upper-crust daughter of Alistair Lassiter, to look through him as if he were as invisible as the impoverished immigrant he had once been? Someone to serve drinks, clear tables, to wait hand and foot on wealthy women like her? Who was she to blank him, snub him, consign him to the ranks of those whose existence was barely acknowledged?
He could feel his anger stab like the fiery heat of the brandy in his throat. Then, forcing himself to lessen his grip on the glass, he inhaled deeply, taking back control of his emotions, subduing that bite of anger. The anger was unnecessary. Because surely, he argued, his first explanation of Flavia Lassiter’s coldness was the correct one—she was fighting her own response to him, and it was that that had made her avoid meeting his eyes, made her so curt towards him. That was the explanation he must adhere to. For reasons he as yet found unfathomable, but would not for very much longer, she was trying to hold him at bay.
A cynical glint gleamed in his eye. Alistair Lassiter would be overjoyed by his interest in his daughter. He would see it, Leon thought cynically, as an opportune way of keeping him close—something Lassiter was extremely keen to do.
The cynical glint deepened. Right now Maranz Finance was Lassiter’s best hope of saving his sinking, profligate business empire from complete collapse …
CHAPTER THREE
FLAVIA was sitting, tight-lipped, in the back of her father’s limo. Her face was set. On the other side of her father, Anita leant forward.
‘You look so good, sweetie, with your hair down and some red lippy,’