important.’
The edge had been back in his voice, and Flavia had wondered at it. Not that it took too much wondering. Obviously one of this evening’s guests was to be someone her father intended to do some highly lucrative deal with, and when money was at stake, increasing his wealth, her father, she thought cynically, put the highest priority on it. And if that meant wanting his own daughter to smarm over some fat, ageing businessmen, it didn’t bother him in the least.
Filled with distaste at her father’s unsavoury tactics, Flavia had pulled away from him and gone forward to greet the first arrivals, a polite but remote smile on her face. She knew she came across as stand-offish, but there was no way she was going to ape the likes of Anita, and pout her lips and flutter her eyelashes at the influential businessmen her father wanted her to charm!
She glanced unenthusiastically over the chattering guests, and as she did so, she stilled. Something had caught her attention. Correction—someone had caught her attention …
He must have just arrived, for he was standing by the double doors that led out into the wide entrance hall of the huge apartment, a glass of champagne in his hand. He was looking into the crowded room, his eyes resting on someone she couldn’t see from this angle. She found she was glad of it, because what she wanted to do, she realised with some dim part of her mind, was look at him.
He drew her eye, drew her focus—made it impossible for her to look away. Impossible …
Impressions stormed in her mind.
Tall—broad-shouldered—dark-haired—strong features starkly defined.
He made her want to stare, and that sent a hollowing arrow through her, stilling the breath in her throat.
There was an air about him as he stood there, one hand thrust into his trouser pocket, the other holding his champagne glass, looking tall and lean and very, very assured.
He was a rich man. She could see that easily. Not just because of his bespoke suit and clearly expensively cut sable hair, but because of the aura he projected, the air of supreme control.
A man to draw eyes.
Especially female eyes.
And she could see why—helplessly acknowledged the effortless power of his frame, the strongly defined features that comprised a blade of a nose, a planed jawline, a wide, mobile mouth and, above all, the dark, opaque, hooded eyes that were resting, focussed and targeted, on whoever it was he was looking at.
Who is he?
The question formed itself in her head, though the moment it did so she tried to erase it. What did it matter who he was? There were any number of people at her father’s parties, and one more or less made no difference. But even as she thought it she knew it was not true. Not for this man. This man was different …
She swallowed, freeing the breath that had been stuck in her throat, and as she did she realized with a start that her pulse had quickened. Realised, too, with more than a start, with a hollowing, knifing dawning, that somehow—and she didn’t know how, couldn’t know how—the man’s gaze had shifted, pulled away from whoever it was in the room he’d been looking at and he was now looking at her …
Right at her.
Instantly, instinctively, she veiled her eyes, shutting him out of her vision as if he were some kind of threatening presence—disturbing and disruptive—making herself invisible to him.
Tautly, she returned her gaze to the people she was with, and haltingly resumed her conversation. But her mind was in tumult, and when, some indeterminate time later, she heard her father’s voice directed at her, she welcomed the interruption to her mental consternation.
‘Flavia, my darling, over here a moment!’ he called in the doting, caressing voice he always used to her in public.
Dutifully she made her way towards him, trying to put out of her head the image engraved on her retinas of the darkly disturbing man who had so riveted her. She could feel agitation increasing her heart-rate.
As she approached her father the shifting pattern of guests moved, showing that there was someone standing beside him. Her agitation spiked erratically and her eyes flared involuntarily.
It was the man who had drawn her eye—more than her eye—a moment ago. Numbly, she walked up to her father, who was smiling with a benign air. ‘Darling.’ Her father’s hand reached for her arm and closed over it. ‘I’d like to introduce you—’
Flavia let herself be pulled forward. Her mouth had gone dry again. She could hear her father saying something, but it was like a buzz in her ears. All she could focus on was the man standing with her father. The same tall, broad-shouldered, confident-stanced man she’d seen in the doorway.
‘Leon Maranz. And this is my daughter, Flavia.’
Her father’s voice was affectionate and indulgent, but Flavia didn’t care. All she could do right now was gather her composure, which had no reason—no reason, she echoed vehemently—to go all to pieces like this.
With palpable effort she made herself speak, forcing herself to say what was socially required. ‘How do you do, Mr Maranz?’ she said. Her tone was clipped, distant. Her acknowledging glance at him was the merest flicker, the barest minimum that social courtesy demanded.
She wanted urgently to take a step back, to move away, keep her distance. Up close like this, the impression he’d made on her that she’d found so disturbing even from halfway across the room was a hundred times stronger. Just as before she took in height, easily topping six feet, and shoulders sheathed, like the rest of his lean body, with the material of a bespoke handmade suit that, like the pristine white shirt he wore, stretched across a torso that was honed and taut. He might scream ‘filthy rich’, but fat cat he was not …
More like a sleek-coated jaguar …
That strange, disturbing, subliminal shiver seemed to go through her again as the thought passed across the surface of her mind.
‘Ms Lassiter …’
The voice acknowledging her clipped greeting was deep, almost a drawl. There was an accent to it, but not an identifiable one. She didn’t need a foreign name, or a foreign accent, to know that the last thing this lean, powerful, disturbing man was British. The natural olive hue of his tanned skin, the sloe-darkness of his eyes, the sable of his hair and the strong, striking features all told her that—had told her so right from the moment she’d set eyes on him.
Her eyes flickered over him again, trying not to see him, trying to shut him out. She saw something glint briefly, swiftly gone, in his dark, black-lashed eyes—something that exacerbated the strange shiver that was still going through her.
She fought for control. Self-control. This was ridiculous! Absurd to be so affected by a complete stranger—some rich, foreign business acquaintance of her father that she neither knew nor cared about, nor had any reason at all to be so … so … reactive to!
Her spine stiffened and she could feel the motion drawing her body slightly away from Leon Maranz’s powerful orbit. Withdrawing a fraction—an essential fraction. Again, just for a barest moment, she thought she saw that dark glint in his eyes come again, and vanish.
She
