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She looked up, craning her neck, into the sky. It was a helicopter, its rotors chopping the air like a fearful heartbeat. She stared, hearing and then seeing the machine loom over the trees beyond, coming from the east. A frown warped her brow as she watched it descend. Heading down towards the lawn.
The branches of the trees at the edge of the lawn were whipping frenziedly in the gusts, the tall flowers in the herbaceous borders were winnowed, the grass below the machine flattened. Before her eyes the helicopter landed, setting down on the wide lawn beyond the terrace. Its engines were cut. The whirling, thudding vanes slowed. They had hardly stopped when the door opened and a tall, lithe figure jumped down.
Like a flame leaping inside her, Flavia felt her heart sing out.
Leon! It was Leon!
Leon—here—now. Come to her.
Disbelieving with joy, she could only stand, watching him walking towards her, her heart full.
As he alighted from the helicopter Leon could feel his heart churning. The rhythmic chopping of the helicopter’s rotors was still throbbing in his head. Even before the machine had landed he had seen Flavia standing there in front of the house—the gracious, greystone Georgian house that was every bit as beautiful as it had looked on the computer screen, every bit as beautiful as Alistair Lassiter had said it was.
No wonder Flavia Lassiter wanted to hang on to it.
Just as her father had said.
He could hear him talking again in his head, hear what he’d said about her. The words fell like stones. Destroying, one by one, everything Leon had thought he knew about Flavia …
The knife that those words had plunged into his side twisted again.
The moment Lassiter had gone out of his office Leon had seized up the phone, called the number on his screen. Urgency had impelled him—but a new urgency.
No one had picked up the phone. All he had got was an answer-machine, telling him to leave a message. He’d dropped the phone down. No, he would not leave a message. He would not wait pointlessly for Flavia not to return his call, just as she hadn’t any of his calls. The time for that was over. It was time for something much more decisive.
He straightened, seeing her standing there, stock still, on a gravelled terrace on the far side of the lawn the helicopter had landed on. The churning in his heart intensified, his emotions firing like gunshots. As his eyes rested on her, he could hear a silent cry come from him.
Flavia!
Flavia standing there—as beautiful as his memory had painted so vividly—real and close and there in front of him. He wanted to rush up to her, sweep her into his arms, fold her close against him! Feel her heart beating against his!
But instead all he did was quicken his stride towards her, feeling the knife in his side strike again.
I have to know! I have to know whether she’s the way her father says she is or whether …
Whether she was the woman he had discovered that night at Mereden, those magical days and nights on Santera. Passionate and ardent. Warm, genuine, sympathetic, generous.
Or someone quite different. Someone who could be as sweet as you like when she wanted something. Someone who set her sights on something and went after it, whatever it required.
Such as deliberately, calculatingly having an affair with a man she thought was going to bail out her father—the father who was keeping her home solvent.
Again, as it had done over and over on the journey here, the question seared in his head. Was it true—was it true what her father had said of her?
The knife twisted in his guts again.
His stride quickened and he reached the terrace. For an instant longer Flavia seemed to stand there, transfixed. Then …
‘Leon! Oh, Leon!’
She had thrown herself at him, and without conscious volition his arms went around her. Held her to him. Closed around her. Emotion clenched in him. It seemed a lifetime since he had last seen her, last kissed her as he boarded the flight for London, leaving her behind in Palma. But now she was back in his arms, her face buried in his shoulder. Almost, almost he forgot what had sent him here, heart churning, thoughts dark as night. Almost he simply cupped her face and kissed her lips with his, recapturing the happiness he’d felt with her.
Almost.
But then, with a ragged breath, he steeled. Put her away from him. She swayed, gazing at him, the joyous expression draining out of her face. Bewilderment, consternation took its place. Leon wanted to seize her back into his arms, make her eyes shine again—but he forced himself to resist.
Not yet—not yet. First he must know the answer to the question he would demand of her.
I thought I knew her—had
