One-Click Buy: November Harlequin Presents (87 page)

‘Antiseptic,' he murmured as her body temperature rocketed upwards at an alarming rate. ‘Did you know that? Let's go and find some plaster.'

‘I have some in one of these drawers,' Francesca mumbled.

‘Leave it to me.' He began pulling open drawers while she stood, transfixed, staring, heart racing. He found the right drawer eventually and carefully began putting the plaster over the cut. His touch was electrifying.

‘There's no need for you to do that, Angelo. I'm perfectly capable of putting on a piece of plaster myself.' Fat lot of good the protest was, she thought, when she was passively allowing him to do what he wanted.

‘Nonsense. All women feel faint at the sight of blood. It's a well documented fact.' He looked at her and grinned. ‘Fortunately I'm a man and therefore very good at dealing with situations like this.'

‘That is the most…the most…'

‘Truthful thing you have ever heard spoken?'

‘The most
ridiculous
nonsense I've ever heard in my life.' The plaster was on but he was still standing right there in front of her, making it very difficult for her to breathe and impossible for her to move, with her back to the counter.

‘You remember I once told you that for a while I toyed with the idea of studying medicine at university…'

‘And
you
remember that I once replied that thinking about studying medicine didn't actually qualify you as a doctor?'

‘I always thought that that was a particularly harsh response,' Angelo said piously, ‘especially considering that I had just successfully diagnosed your stress-induced stomach ulcer as indigestion.'

For a few breathless seconds Francesca didn't say anything, then she muttered, looking away, ‘I'll get on and do the cooking, then, if you don't mind. Thanks for putting on a piece of plaster for me and I don't mean to have the last word but I could have done it myself.' She turned away, waiting for him to return to his chair, which he did. She failed to hear his exasperated sigh. ‘Actually,' she carried on, papering over her chaotic feelings with small talk, ‘the catering course I went on was very good. We didn't just learn how to cook. We also learnt quite a bit about nutrition and how what we eat affects our health and well-being, and also some basic first aid measures for dealing with the sort of accidents that can happen in a kitchen. You know, cuts, burns, that sort of thing.' With her back to him, she could gather herself, get some kind of self-control going.

‘Really. Interesting.' For a moment back then, he'd known that she was his, as dramatically turned on by him as he was by her. It hadn't lasted.

‘Yes. Yes, it was. Very.' Prawns were cooked rapidly, dressing was made for the salad to accompany them.

‘And was this the same course that your…boyfriend did?' Angelo drawled.

‘Jack…no, Jack did another one, different place.'

Another brick wall. He decided to drop the subject. Damned if he was going to let her get away with an endless but safe conversation about the various methods of skinning tomatoes, though.

‘You are making me feel guilty, sitting here, doing nothing.'

‘You could always go for a walk and leave me here to get on with it,' Francesca suggested. ‘I work better without an audience and you're right, it's boring for you just sitting down and watching.'

‘I never said that I was bored. You're not drinking your wine.'

Francesca stopped what she was doing and took a long swig of the wine. Very expensive indeed. Light, crisp, dry with a nicely smoked flavour. ‘There,' she said, looking at him. ‘Satisfied?'

‘Not quite yet,' Angelo murmured, finishing his wine and rising to pour himself another. He would definitely have to get a taxi back to his apartment—if he needed to leave.

‘Don't worry. The food won't disappoint but if you guzzle too much of that stuff you won't be able to appreciate it.' Back to the safety of the chicken and the olives and the frying. ‘If you're bored, you can choose some different music to put on. My CDs are all in the rack behind you.'

Angelo could feel irritation starting to get the better of him. He swallowed it down and began looking through her collection of music, extracting random CDs, which he stockpiled on the kitchen table in a spreading, untidy heap.

Out of the corner of her eye, Francesca witnessed the encroachment of mess over the previously pristine surface and was not at all nonplussed. She had discovered early on in their relationship that, although Angelo was highly organized in his work life, in fact the most organised man she had ever come across, he was spectacularly untidy in his private life. Clothes were dropped and stepped over, ties were hung in gathering piles over any convenient surface, jackets were draped over backs of chairs with absolutely no thought to preserving their longevity. She had found it exasperating and curiously endearing at the same time.

‘I hope you intend to put back all those CDs you've dumped on my kitchen table,' she said, covering the pan that held the chicken and taking time out to sit down with her glass of wine.

‘Of course.' He paused in his frowning inspection of cases to shoot her a surprised look.

‘Because your ability to be messy is legendary and I have no intention of clearing up behind you.'

Angelo frowned.

‘And there's no need to look annoyed. I don't have to tiptoe around you.'

‘When did you ever do that?' he demanded. ‘I don't recall you ever doing that!'

‘Oh. I forgot.' She drained her glass and stood up to fetch some plates from the cupboard. ‘That was one of my faults. Lack of appropriate respect for the great Angelo Falcone!' Somewhere in her head she thought,
Oh, dear, shouldn't have said that,
but then why should she be on her agonisingly best behaviour? He was in
her
house, and not by her invitation. She would tell him that, should he want to pursue the conversation!

He didn't.

‘Let us not argue,' he said mildly. He refilled her glass. ‘Although, getting back to your accusation that I am a messy person, I challenge you to come to my apartment and test it for cleanliness.'

‘Your housekeeper. Just like the one you employed in Venice. There's no point in arguing with evidence, Angelo.' She indicated the CDs on the table with a nod of her head and began laying the table, containing a sigh when he gathered up the cases and stacked them unevenly at the bottom of the table, meaning that he would sit far too close to her for her liking.

He shrugged and slipped on one of her classical CDs, beautiful, soothing music that rippled through the small kitchen like water trickling gently over stones. Soft, romantic music. Music to dance to in a flowing dress, in the arms of a lover. All wrong, she thought, for this particular situation. She had to keep reminding herself that the man was engaged, that he had treated her pretty badly, never mind his super-polite behaviour now.

She served the prawns while the chicken was still simmering and reddened with pleasure at the appreciative noises he made. When he poured her another glass of wine, she accepted.

‘I hope you don't think that I drink this much when I'm preparing food for clients,' she said during a comfortable pause as she cleared away the prawns and began doing last-minute things to the main course. ‘Because I don't.'

‘Some of the finest meals are cooked while under the influence of good wine,' Angelo commented. ‘That starter ranks up there.'

‘You don't mean that.' With her back to him, she could feel her face glowing with pleasure. ‘Do you?'

‘Does it matter to you what I say?'

‘Yes. You're a prospective client of mine. Of course it does!' Francesca could feel her voice rising, unnaturally bright. A bit like the colour spreading across her cheekbones. ‘I'm always pleased when our food is complimented.'

Another brick wall. Three steps forward and two steps back, and every step back made the urgency inside him stronger. He didn't know what was driving him on to want this woman. He just knew that he did and if his reasons weren't exactly noble, then his awesome powers of reason were insufficient to steer him off course.

The one thing he did know was that this time it would be different for him. He would be utterly in control. He would get her out of his system and would be able to walk away from her without looking back.

But first he would have to break down the barriers between them. Swallowing back a sigh of frustration, he embarked on the least provocative line of conversation he could think of, asking her questions about the catering business generally, watching as she transferred food from saucepans and pots to basic white casserole dishes.

‘Do you keep in touch with anyone from the modelling world?' he asked, when she had finally sat down and indicated to him that he should help himself.

Francesca laughed. ‘Lord, no! I couldn't wait to get out of it in the end. For a start I was beginning to be the mother figure to a new crop of girls, all still in their teens. Some of them even had the adolescent spots to show for it!'

‘I thought spots weren't allowed on models.' He didn't remind her that his offer for her to quit modelling, to move to London with him, had met with blank refusal.

‘They're not. Hence the army of make-up artists who follow in the wake of every model. I've never met any spot that can't be successfully camouflaged under some expert face paint.' He was listening to every single word she was saying, giving her nonsense small talk his undivided attention. She had forgotten what a huge part of his charisma that was—the ability to listen.

‘That used to irritate you, if I remember.'

Francesca's eyes skittered away from his dangerously good-looking face. ‘I didn't miss it when I left. My face probably did, though!'

‘You look better than you did then, if anything.' He willed her to actually look back at him and she did. ‘Your hair suits you shorter. This chicken is very good, by the way. You do yourself a disservice when you say that Jack is the talent behind the cooking.'

‘He thinks up unusual combinations. I know my limits. I stick to the things I know.'

‘I don't believe you,' Angelo murmured. ‘Only cowards stick to what they know. The predictable path is always the boring one.'

His voice was mesmerising. She tried to break the spell by eating, but, as always, the business of preparing the food had left her without any particular desire to sample it.

‘I don't always stick to what I know,' Francesca retorted. ‘But if the business is to succeed I can't just do exactly what I want, when I want!'

‘And what would that be if you could?'

‘What would what be?'

‘What would you like to do if you weren't buttoned down chopping onions and preparing the same recipe over and over again because you've decided to leave the imaginative stuff to your boyfriend?'

‘I am not
buttoned down
!' She jumped up from the table and began clearing up some of the used pans, her movements jerky. ‘I might have known it wouldn't last!'

‘What?' Angelo said tightly. He knew what. He had blown it. Just when he had actually got her to the point of dropping some of those damned defences, he had put her back up all over again. He should just drop this crazy idea, just realise that some challenges were a little too challenging.

‘The politeness!' She folded her arms and glared at him.

‘Oh, for God's sake!' He raked his fingers through his hair and glared right back at her. ‘Being rooted in one place seems to have given you a keen sense of paranoia.'

‘Paranoia?' She felt fired up with anger and safe within it. ‘I'm not attacking you! I'm asking you if there are things that you still miss.'

You!
The word shrieked in her head and she blanched. ‘Like what?'

‘Like travelling. Seeing the world.'

‘I'm building a business. I haven't got the time or the finances to travel and see the world. Anyway, I did all that when I was younger.' She turned away abruptly and began filling the sink with soapy water for the dishes. She missed him. Yes, she had always known that, had always felt a little opening there in her heart, like a crack in the door just big enough to let a breeze laden with old memories blow through. What she hadn't realised until now was that the breeze was really a gale just waiting for the crack to get bigger.

‘So now you've sampled my cooking, it's time you left.'

Maybe, just maybe, he would take the hint and actually do what she asked, so that without looking around she would simply hear the click of the front door closing and know that he had gone.

She wasn't aware of him approaching her until she was caged in by the sink, one strong, muscular bronzed arm on either side of her.

‘You mean maybe it's time I left before I can say anything that you might not want to hear,' Angelo grated. ‘And turn around and look at me when I'm talking to you!'