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she didn’t know how to handle that—that was why she was sitting there so stiffly, so nervously. Well, she need not be nervous. This time he would not rush her, as he had so rashly before, overcome with wanting her. He would give her the time she needed to feel at ease with him.
To come with him on the journey he would take her on—deep, deep into the sensual heart of the passion that he knew with absolute certainty awaited them together.
But that was for later. Much later. For now, they were dining together. Getting to know each other. Starting their relationship.
He opened his menu and, slightly jerkily, she did likewise. He gave her time to peruse it, then made some passing observations and some suggestions. Stiltedly, she made her choice.
How she was going to manage to swallow, she didn’t know. Tension was racking through her, tightening her throat, churning her stomach. She seemed to be frozen inside, and for that she was abjectedly grateful. It was though she were watching the world from inside a glacier—a glacier that was keeping her safe inside its icy depths. Numbing her with its cold.
If only, she thought desperately, it could numb her other senses! If only she didn’t have to sit here looking at him, listening to him, hearing his voice—that dark, accented voice that seemed to resonate deep within her—her eyes trying to blank him out and failing utterly, totally.
The moment she’d walked into the room her eyes had gone to him instantly, as if drawn by some giant magnet. The image that had been burning on her retina since she’d flung herself out of his limo had leapt into life, imprinting itself on the flesh-and-blood man. Despite her frozen insides, she had felt her throat tighten as her body responded to him. And now, sitting so close to him, his presence was impinging on her so that she was ultra-aware of him. Of the strong, compelling features, the dark, expressive eyes, the breadth of his shoulders sheathed in the dark charcoal jacket, the sable hair that caught the light from the candelabra.
Deep within the frozen core of her body she could feel the layers of ice shift and fracture …
Hatred for what her father was making her do writhed within her. Her consciousness of the lie she was parading in front of Leon Maranz was like a snake in her mind—the lie of behaving as though she were here willingly, as if her hand had not been forced by her father in the most compelling way he could devise.
For a moment, as her eyes rested on the man opposite her, she felt a flaring impulse within her.
Tell him! Tell him the truth of why you are here with him tonight! Tell him what your father is threatening you with! You have no right to be here under such false pretences—no right to deceive him, pretend that you haven’t been forced into this!
But she couldn’t—didn’t dare. Cold ran in her veins. What if she did tell Leon Maranz the truth about what her father was making her do and he was so angry that he then walked away from bailing out her father? Let her father go down the tubes.
The cold intensified. If that happened she knew with absolute certainty that her father would revenge himself on her by foreclosing on Harford. Punish her for not saving him.
So there was nothing she could do—nothing at all. She had to live out this lie. Do what her father ordered. Continue with this tormenting ordeal that was tearing her apart …
The wine had been poured and Leon was raising his glass
‘To a new beginning for us.’
His voice was slightly husky, and Flavia could feel it resonate within her. Feel the pressure of his dark gaze on her. Her eyelashes dropped over her eyes, veiling them, as she took a tiny sip of her own wine.
Leon set down his glass. ‘I wanted to thank you for accepting my invitation this evening,’ he said, his voice low and measured.
Her fingers tightened around the stem of her glass. The lie of what she was doing—she had not accepted his invitation at all; she had been manipulated and forced into it by her father— screamed silently in her head. But there was nothing she could say—nothing.
‘And I wanted to apologise to you. Apologise for the way I behaved when I was taking you home—and you felt you had to flee from me.’
There. He had said it. He’d known he’d have to—that it was the only way forward with her, to ease the strain between them. Now, though, two spots of colour flared in her cheeks, and he could see her expression blank completely. Damn. Maybe he shouldn’t have said anything at all! Maybe that infamous English reserve meant that even his apologising was embarrassing to her!
Or maybe—the thought sliced into his mind like an acid-tipped stiletto—maybe the reason for her tension was quite different …
Like sharp stabs, words darted through his mind.
Maybe her tension is because she does not want to be here at all. What if she is here only because she now realises I am likely to bail out her father?
His expression darkened. Was that the bald, blunt truth of it? He could feel his thoughts running on unstoppably, ineluctably.
Because if that’s so—if that’s the only reason she’s here, the only reason she’s putting up with me—then …
Then what? That was what he had to decide. But even as he thought it he knew what the answer had to be.
Then there could be no future for them. None.
If she is not here because she wants to be—of her own volition, because she is as drawn to me as I to—then we end this right now! Whatever the strength of my desire for her, I will not succumb to it.
He could feel emotion roil within him as suspicion barbed him with poisonous darts. The ghosts of his past trailed their cold tendrils in his head. Who did she see as she sat there, the epitome of her class and her well-bred background, all pearl necklace and crystalline vowels? Did she see nobody but some jumped-up foreigner, utterly alien to her, distasteful and beneath her? Someone to look down on—look through—because, however much money he had, he could never be someone to keep company with, to be intimate with …?
