‘And you want to pimp me out to him—’ scorn was acid in her voice ‘—just to save your skin.’
Her father gave a derisive, mocking laugh. ‘Little Miss Pure and Virtuous? Is that it? Well, you can be as bloody pure and virtuous as you like when you and your senile old bat of a grandmother are out on the streets! Because I promise you—’ his voice congealed the breath in her lungs as he spoke ‘—if you don’t play ball and make sure Leon Maranz gets everything he
wants from you, I’ll rip Harford from you. It’ll be on the market this week. So what’s it to be? It’s make your mind up time.’
Slowly, very slowly, Flavia looked at the documents lying on her grandfather’s desk. Saw the zeroes blur, and then reform. Felt acid leach into her stomach, cold inch down her spine.
Slowly, very slowly, she gave him her answer.
The team of project directors seated around the table were setting out their next round of pro bono proposals for funding. Leon knew he should be paying more attention, but his mind was distracted. Focussed elsewhere.
It had been for days now. Focussed on the mobile phone in his jacket pocket. Whenever it rang he was aware of a distinct jolt of expectation and hope. Would it finally, this time, be Flavia Lassiter returning his calls?
But it never was.
He’d hoped that leaving London would stop him being constantly on the alert for her, but here he was on the point of heading back east across the Atlantic and he was just as frustrated by her silence as ever. He’d tried accepting that she just didn’t want to know, tried putting her out of his mind, even tried looking out for another woman to take his mind off Flavia Lassiter.
But even the famed beauty of South American womanhood had failed to beguile him. The more he’d tried to be beguiled, the less he had been. The more he’d kept seeing Flavia in his mind’s eye, feeling her lips beneath his in his memory, the pliant softness of her body in his embrace …
It was infuriating. It was exasperating. It was unnerving.
I’m becoming obsessed …
The unwelcome notion played in his head, disturbing and disquieting. He tried to rationalise it away, reminding himself that up till now he’d never had to face female rejection—that was why he was reacting so badly to Flavia doing it. But he could rationalise it all he wanted—what he couldn’t do was expunge her from his memory or cease to want her.
They’d reached the end of the proposals, and he realised he must make the appropriate answers. Forcing his mind to focus on the subject in hand, he found himself simply giving blanket approval to everything. And why not? he reasoned impatiently. His team were first class, reliable and hardworking, with excellent judgement—it was why he’d picked them in the first place. So their proposals would be fine. He need not check them. Instead he would do what he’d been itching to do all through the meeting. Check his incoming texts.
Dismissing his team with a smile and an expression of appreciation and encouragement, he slid out his phone and hungrily skimmed down the messages.
As he reached the last one he stilled completely. Not a muscle moved in him. For a moment the brief text blurred in his vision, then cleared again.
Sorry I was out of range—FL.
That was all it said—but it was enough. More than enough.
For one long moment he simply stared, as if the message might be a mirage. Then, tamping down the emotion that had sprung forcefully inside him, he texted back. A message just as simple—but all he needed to say.
Have dinner with me tomorrow night.
As he hit ‘send’, his nerves felt strung out like wires. Then, with a total sense of all tension snapping, he saw the brief two-letter reply that told him everything he’d been waiting so long to hear.
OK
It was all he wanted.
Everything he wanted.
Without further hesitation he set off for the airport. He could not be back in London soon enough …
CHAPTER SEVEN
FLAVIA sat on the bed in her bedroom in her father’s Regent’s Park apartment. Once again she had left her grandmother in the care of Mrs Stephens. Once again she had made the train journey back to London.
A journey that had always been an ordeal for her.
But never like this …
Her hands were clenched in her lap and she felt cold all through her body, despite the warmth of the evening.