But for now all she could do was tough it out—get through the evening however long it seemed.
After an interminable length of time the meal and the fund-raising presentations from the charity directors finally drew to a close, with coffeepots and petits-fours and an array of liqueurs being placed on the tables. At the far end of the huge room on a little stage a band had formed, and was starting to strike up.
Flavia closed her eyes, trying to shut it all out. She wanted out of here. Now. But it wasn’t going to happen. She knew that. And she also knew, with a heaviness that was tangible, that Anita and her father were going to head off to the dance floor, and she would be left with Leon Maranz. Unless—dear God, please, she found herself praying—he went off with someone else. But the woman on his other side had got up to dance as well, with her partner, and with a hollowing sensation Flavia realised that she was now sitting next to Leon Maranz with empty seats on either side of them.
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 somethin
g 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.