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.
The next morning, before she could change her mind, she phoned the auction house that was located in the county town, and arranged for one of their valuers to call that afternoon. When he came he identified several items—furniture and silver, and a landscape painting by a well-known Victorian watercolourist—that he expected to sell for the amount of money she would need to pay back her father, but it was still with that heavy heart that she committed them to the saleroom’s next auction.
Guilt continued to pluck at her. But by early evening, however, she knew she had made the right decision. She had started to receive messages on the landline answer-machine from her father.
She’d been aware he’d been phoning and texting on her mobile, which she’d ignored, and now she did the same to the landline messages he left, irately ordering her to phone him back. The latest, however, which she heard as she came down from her grandmother’s room in the early evening, stopped her in her tracks.
‘Leon Maranz is trying to get in touch with you. He’s complaining to me that you aren’t returning his calls on your mobile. Damn well answer them, girl—he’s not someone I want annoyed! What the hell do you think you’re playing at? Just phone him back!’
Her father’s angry voice was cut off, and Flavia was left staring at the handset in its cradle on the table by the front door. Cold flushed through her.
Then heat.
Then, jerkily, she snatched up the phone and hit the ‘message delete’ button.
But she could not delete the memory of what her father had said.
Leon Maranz was trying to get in touch with her.
Emotion spiked through her. It was dismay—of course it was dismay! How could it be anything else? This was exactly why she had fled London! Just as she’d dreaded, he’d taken that damn episode in his limo as some kind of encouragement! And now he wanted more.
Into her mind’s eye leapt a vivid imprint of his strong, saturnine face, the dark, heavy-lidded eyes levelled at her. Their message crystal clear. As if she had lifted a floodgate memory poured into her head, and for one long, endless moment she was back in the limo, gazing helplessly at him as with the lean, casual power of a predator he moved in on her to take his fill of her …
She dropped the phone back in its cradle, realising her hand was shaking.
Whatever it took—whatever it took—she would never go back to London—never again put herself in the path of Leon Maranz. She would sell those antiques, pay back her father and never again be used and manipulated by him. Never again be trailed by him like alluring bait in front of the men he wanted to do business with.
Even if that man were Leon Maranz.
Especially if that man were Leon Maranz.
CHAPTER SIX
LEON dropped his phone on his desk and threw himself moodily back in his chair.
Were the hell was she? Flavia Lassiter had disappeared off the face of the earth. Her father had admitted he had no idea where she was, speculating only that she must be staying with friends, and her mobile was perpetually on voicemail, his texts unreturned. He glared stormily ahead of him across the vast expanse of his office.
Frustration bit at him. OK, so he’d been an idiot, pouncing on her like that, and he’d obviously spooked her big-time. But he was trying to make amends now. Yet how could he do that if she was running shy of him the way she was now?
Was there someone else in her life? If there were, all she had to do was tell him—not bolt and hide the way she had! The poisoning suspicion crawled into his head yet again. Or was it that Flavia Lassiter was not hiding from him because he’d scared her off, but because she had no intention of having anything to do with someone who was not from her own gilded background—who’d made his own painful way up from penury, a no-name immigrant without breeding or class …?
His eyes darkened as he felt once more the suspicion and resentment that her dismissive attitude had first spiked in him. Was that why Flavia Lassiter had gone to ground? Because she wanted nothing to do with a man like him, born and raised in a South American shanty town?
For a moment emotion swirled within him, dark and turbulent. Then, abruptly, he reached for the phone on his desk again. If Flavia Lassiter thought herself above the world he came from, well, he didn’t—and he would remind himself of that right now. Remind himself that, for all the glittering riches of the world he lived in here in Europe—the one Flavia Lassiter had been born into and took for granted—back across the Atlantic, in the vast southern hemisphere, teemed millions just like him, living the way he’d once lived. Wanting only a chance, a hope, a stepping stone to a better life, a better future. And to get that future they would work every bit as hard as he had done—harder. All they needed was that first, vital step on their way.
Which was where he came in.
He punched through to his PA in the outer office. An impromptu visit would put his fixation with Flavia into perspective—remind him of his roots, of what his wealth had made possible. Values infinitely more essential than those the Lassiters held dear.
‘Book me on a transatlantic flight this afternoon—first available carrier. I’ll need all the pro bono project files updated, and have the local project managers on standby. Tell them to get their latest proposals ready for me to look over—and alert Maranz Microloans I’ll want to see their books, plus take in some site visits.’
‘What about your appointments today, Mr Maranz?’ his PA enquired dutifully. ‘Mr Lassiter has phoned twice this morning to check the deal’s still on.’