One-Click Buy: November Harlequin Presents (85 page)

‘That we once had an affair? I doubt she would mind. Thankfully, she's not the jealous type.'

‘I would be,' Francesca muttered.

‘Then you and your boyfriend must have had quite a row after his flirtatious behaviour this evening.'

‘I told you, Jack wasn't flirting.'

‘Then you're not very clever at reading body language.'

Not very clever at reading body language? She was reading her body language now and she didn't like what it was saying. Every fibre of her was pulsing, reacting to him. Her breasts felt tender and her nipples were pushing painfully against her bra. He could still do this to her even though she could feel his three-year-old anger simmering just beneath the surface.

‘And
you
weren't jealous, Angelo? I don't believe that! Even if you tell me that you don't believe in love and romance, you forget that I know you! You used to question every male model I had to do a shoot with!'

‘Fortunately since then I've learnt to use my head when it comes to women,' Angelo grated. He opened his mouth to say something but she would never know because just then the doorbell rang. Literally saved by the bell.

She darted towards the door, breathing unevenly, and opened it to find that her saviour was Jack.

‘He's here!' she hissed under her breath, grabbing him by the collar of his shirt and tugging him closer to her.

‘And he's getting under your skin. Interesting.'

‘This is no time to joke, Jack. Just…just put your arms around me and do a convincing act of being my boyfriend, would you?'

With his arms around her, she felt safe from the coal-black eyes burning a hole behind her and, by the time she had unwrapped herself from the embrace, she was more or less back in control.

Angelo had finally taken the hint she had been giving him ever since he'd first stepped through her door earlier on and was ready to leave. He nodded briefly at Jack and then looked coolly at Francesca, who was presenting a united front with Jack pressed next to her.

‘I'll be in touch.'

‘Of course.' She smiled but her jaw ached. It was a relief when he closed the door quietly behind him and her tense muscles could sag.

‘You're going to have to deal with him from now on, Jack.' She headed towards the kitchen, knowing that he would follow and that he would also sense her mood and get her a cup of coffee while she sat at the table and tried to recover from feeling as though she had been mown down by a steamroller.

‘Do you want to jack the job in?' He handed her a cup of coffee and sat at the opposite end of the table.

Weird, she thought, that he would be the one caretaking her now, when it had always been the other way around. Time certainly changed everything. His bad old days had gone. She felt as though hers were now about to begin and a wave of resentment flooded through her at the thought that Angelo could step back into her life and manage to turn it upside down.

‘And sacrifice my pride? Let us both down?' She laughed shortly. ‘I don't think so.' Then, on a sigh, ‘But he's playing with me, Jack.
Let's behave like adults and civilised adults can discuss the past without getting emotional.
And he enjoys watching me when I react. He never used to be like that, like a cat toying with a mouse. He said he doesn't intend to use his influence to our disadvantage and I believe him, but he's happy to watch my discomfort every time I'm around him.'

‘And you're uncomfortable because…? Why don't you just tell him the truth?'

‘No.' Why not? Because she didn't want to watch the scales drop from his eyes. He might hate her for walking out on him, but if he saw her in all her honest glory he would be contemptuous and she didn't want that. Her pride again, but then who didn't have an abundance of that particular vice? ‘No, the answer is for you to deal with him. There's no reason for him to call in a hurry, anyway. He doesn't have the excuse of wanting to go through menus or anything like that and he's not going to interrupt his work schedule to make pointless contact with us just because he likes watching me squirm in his presence.'

‘Then you don't have anything to worry about.' He dragged a chair over with one foot and settled into a more comfortable position. ‘So you can sit there and listen about me. You haven't even asked why I turned up here when I should have been down at the pub…'

His convoluted story of an enraged husband—‘Never suspected a thing,'—a child in the background—‘I'll never trust a blonde again,'—and a pleading woman—‘I told her from the start that I was all about the Fun,'—more or less managed to take her mind off the problem preying on it like a lethal virus with a mission to destroy. But as soon as Jack had left, walking back to his place after a couple of beers, she was thinking again about Angelo, replaying everything he had said to her.

She couldn't believe that after all this time, and after all the changes she had made in her life, she could still find herself hurtling back into the past with such a lack of self-control. Back there, in the sitting room, when he had been standing in front of her deliberately baiting her with memories of when they were lovers, she had felt her body melting. Yes, he had been goading her on. Yes, he had liked seeing her rigid with discomfort. Yes, yes, yes! But she had still responded, against her will, against all rhyme and reason, and it had been written all over her face. No wonder he had been so insolently dismissive of her so-called relationship with Jack.

The intervening week gave her plenty of time to brood over the unfolding scenario. In fact, it became a close companion as she went through the books, paid a visit to their bank manager, dealt with the steady flow of clients and their demands. Daily stress had now linked hands with simmering panic and, between the two, they were giving her a number of reasons to lose sleep.

Jack, of course, was once again blithely sauntering through life, cooking magnificently in the kitchen, experimenting with different combinations and nurturing a new relationship which, he assured her, was free of hidden complications. He should know. He had cunningly checked out her house for contradictory signals, which apparently had been his big mistake with Jodie, the Blonde with the Background.

His amusing stories at least managed to keep her on an even keel. Thank God for him! He invited her to have opinions on everything, from his cooking to his love life, never leaving her the option of slinking quietly into her own thoughts and getting overwhelmed by them. Nor did he press her to share them with him.

She had to wait until she was in bed to really indulge in the nightmare of having Angelo around. If only she had never been recommended to Georgina. If only she had not been greedy and decided that they could handle a really big job. If only, if only.

But then, something whispered in her head, don't you feel
alive
for the first time in years? That always seemed to be the little voice that had the last whisper before she fell asleep and was the first to greet her when she woke up in the morning.

But as the days dragged on and the phone remained thankfully free of Angelo's dark, disturbing voice, she felt herself begin to relax a bit more.

She had been right. There was no need for contact, at least not for a while, not until they needed to make practical arrangements for delivery of the food. They would have to discuss what staff Angelo and Georgina needed and what staff they were going to employ themselves for an event of that size. There was nothing to be gained in mentally rehearsing conversations that would take place down the line and the grind of daily life left her little time to add that further element of stress to the repertoire already there and thriving.

So she didn't think about it. In fact, she so successfully convinced herself that he was a distant bridge that she could happily defer crossing until some unspecified time in the future that it was a shock when, on a balmy Saturday evening, she answered the phone and heard his voice down the line.

She sat down as her stomach took an immediate nosedive, quickly followed by the rest of her internal organs.

‘What are you doing?' was the first thing he asked her, before she had time to get her head in order.

‘What am I doing when?'

‘Now.'

‘Now? I'm…I'm…well…'

‘Nothing,' he inserted helpfully. ‘Good. Because I've decided to pay you a little visit.'

‘It's nearly six-thirty, Angelo! Jack and I…have plans…'

‘Have you? That's funny. I telephoned him at his house. You remember his number is also on your business card? Someone called Robbie answered and informed me that he's house-sitting for the weekend because Jack's somewhere in Yorkshire until Monday. You mean you didn't know?' Angelo clicked his tongue sympathetically. ‘Very bad to be kept in the dark about your boyfriend's movements…'

Yorkshire. The wretched cricket match which he had been determined to see with his mates.

‘Oh, yes,' she said weakly. ‘Now I remember.'

‘So I thought that I would rescue you from an evening of solitude.'

‘Don't you have more pressing plans for a Saturday night?'

‘Georgina is…not around, shall we say? So I'll be with you in, say, half an hour. We're going to go and buy some food and then you are going to show me what you can do with it.'

‘Jack is the real genius when it comes to the food,' Francesca wittered on as a sickening alternative to Saturday night in presented itself. ‘I'm the lackey, really. Chopping and stuff.'

‘Chopping's a good start. And don't put yourself down, Francesca. I have every faith in your talents and I'm curious to see what you can produce. I will see you shortly.'

He seemed to have become very talented at abrupt conversations because he didn't give her time to voice any more objections. In fact, he barely gave her time to brush her hair and stick on some make-up and then the doorbell was ringing and there he was. Cool, casual and impossibly good-looking. And on her doorstep. And yes, she was horrified to see him standing there. But she was also…shamefully excited.

‘I've already brought the wine.' He handed her two bottles of very expensive stuff which she dumped on the table in the hallway before grabbing her bag.

‘This is just crazy.' Her heart was thumping madly as she looked at him. He was wearing a casual pair of cream trousers and an open-necked designer polo shirt. Against it, his skin was bronzed and vitally attractive and she didn't want to stare so she focused on the logo on his shirt instead.

‘What's wrong with crazy some of the time?' Crazy? It didn't feel crazy to him. It felt like the sanest thing he had done in a while. Georgina, he mused, would have been very hard pressed to agree with his self-diagnosis. She, too, had called him crazy when he had spoken to her three days before. A lot else, as well. In fact, crazy had been one of her more gentle remarks.

‘You can't do this,' she had told him, over her spritzer in his apartment. ‘You can't just
break off this engagement
, not when everything's been planned and invitations have been sent out!'

But after the tears and the pleading had come the inevitable rage. And, at that stage, crazy had been one of her less flamboyant descriptions of him.

Angelo had gritted his teeth and sat through the tirade. He had felt sorry for her, in a curiously detached way, but had been implacable in his decision and he knew that his implacability had fuelled her anger, as had his observation that she would find someone far more suitable as a husband in time.

He had been relieved when she had finally stormed out of his apartment, after informing him that she would be keeping the vastly expensive diamond engagement ring and that he could cover the costs of every single thing that could not be returned. It had seemed a very small price to pay, in his opinion.

The only thing he had kept from her had been the reason why he had decided not to go through with the marriage. That would have been honesty stretched to the point of needless cruelty, so he had mentioned nothing of his previous relationship with their caterer and had greeted accusations of infidelity in complete silence.

‘Do you mean,' Francesca was saying as she struggled to divest herself of the idea that they were
on a date
and focus on the notion that he might just want to prove to himself that she could cook, ‘that you're testing my skills? For the big day? Just in case I secretly use cook-in sauces in my recipes? I don't, as it happens.'

‘I'm glad to hear it. So you won't mind proving it to me. My car's just there so we'll drive to the nearest supermarket. Where is it?'

‘I usually get my fresh meat and fish directly from source,' Francesca said with a touch of pride. ‘And the meat is always organic.'

‘Well, I think that just for tonight we will do away with the fish and meat markets and just take what we can get at the supermarket counters. I can take or leave the organic business.'

‘That's not a very twenty-first century response,' Francesca said, slipping into the passenger seat and watching her house disappear with a certain amount of foreboding.