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.
CHAPTER FOUR
LEON 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.