‘How very resourceful. And how very puzzling that you were so eager to settle down. When we last spoke you were fighting the idea.’ Or maybe, he thought icily, just fighting the idea of doing it with him.
‘I know. I still thought that I wanted the adventure of never being in one place for too long, but…well…’
He watched the faint embarrassed blush creep into her cheeks, the way she tried to conceal her expression by looking down. He saw the truth staring him in the face. She had settled down because she had found the right man and it hadn’t been him. It had never been him and, who knew, maybe this other man had been on the scene all along? After all, it hadn’t been as if he had kept tabs on her. They had spent many periods of time apart, pursuing their separate careers. There would have been ample opportunity for her to have had someone else in the background. Someone else making love to her, turning her on. It was a thought that had not crossed his mind before but, now that it had, it took root and rapidly sprouted poisonous tendrils that curled into every corner of his mind.
‘For the best,’ he said into the tense silence. ‘As most things turn out to be, in my opinion. After all, have we not both found our perfect partners?’ His head seethed with images of her betrayal. Three years and he was discovering that the rage he felt towards her had only been papered over.
Francesca looked at him uncertainly, wondering what was going on behind the polite words.
‘I have come to a decision,’ he said abruptly, handing her back her papers and pointedly looking at his watch. A man on the move. A busy man who had only so much time to spend walking down a mildly interesting memory lane. He stood up and left sufficient money on the table to more than cover the cost of the drinks, ignoring her protests as she stuffed the papers back into her bag. He likewise ignored the businesslike outstretched hand as she half rose to her feet.
‘That’s okay,’ she said quickly. ‘I understand. Neither of us expected…Good luck with your wedding.’
‘You have the job.’
It took a few seconds for what he’d said to sink in, during which time Francesca stared at him in blank amazement. ‘What?’ she stammered.
‘You heard me. You have the job. You’ll be hearing from me within the next week.’
‘But I don’t want the job!’
Angelo paused to focus all his attention on her. ‘Reason being?’ he asked softly.
‘Reason being that we used to be lovers, Angelo! We can be adult and have a conversation because we have no choice, but there’s no way that I’m prepared to work for you! It would be…a joke! And how do you imagine your wife-to-be would feel knowing that the woman providing the food for her wedding is her husband’s ex-lover?’
‘I am glad you used the term ex. And why on earth should Georgina be aware of the fact that once, years ago, we had a fling? It is an irrelevance. I am hiring you on the basis of the fact that I like your menu.’ He didn’t bother to pretend to himself that this excuse was even close to the truth. He had only to choose a caterer, order them to do precisely what he wanted, and they would oblige. Money always made people very amenable, and money was something he had in bucket loads. No, he wanted to cure himself of the gaping wound caused by her treachery. He wanted to still his raging mind from the torturous knowledge that he had been used like a plaything while she cavorted with another man behind his back. He wanted her in a position from which he could exact long overdue revenge.
‘I don’t want the job. Thanks all the same.’
‘I don’t believe I offered you a choice.’
Their eyes clashed and Francesca refused to look away. ‘And what influence do you have over what I decide to do, Angelo? Are you going to throw me into a dungeon somewhere if I don’t do what you want?’ She gave a short laugh of disbelief. ‘We’re not living in the Middle Ages and you’re not my master! I can get by without this job just nicely!’
‘Can you, though?’ He made a show of mulling it over. ‘Really, I have found that London is a very small place. One word in the right ear and…’ He gave an exaggerated helpless shrug that left her in no doubt as to the implication of his threat. ‘I mean, how would it seem to prospective clients were they to know that you had turned down the job of a lifetime because you were afraid that you would not be up to the task?’
‘You wouldn’t.’ But the colour had left her face. He would. He would destroy what she had built up because once upon a time she had bruised his manly ego. It was an insane reaction, but she knew that underneath that highly sophisticated exterior he was all Italian. It was what made him so potently attractive—the passion behind the steely self-control. She felt faint.
‘I might not,’ he conceded magnanimously. ‘But are you willing to take the chance? To lose what you have? Your boyfriend works with you, which I assume means that you may well be jeopardising his future as well as your own—’
‘Why? Just to even old scores? Is that it, Angelo?’
‘A concept as old as the Bible,’ he mused. ‘But I also like what you have to offer. Why do you think I chose to interview you in the first place? Georgina said that you were a horse with little more than an outside chance. You should be flattered. Now, I really should be going. I have a business engagement later and I expect you will want to hurry home to that cosy little house of yours and start talking over preparations with your…partner, hmm?’
‘Angelo…’
‘You’re not scared, are you, Francesca? Because you’ll be in contact with me?’
‘No, of course not!’
‘Good. In that case, I will be in touch. I have your number.’ He smiled but his eyes remained coolly dismissive. ‘See this job as a challenge, your big opportunity to work on a slightly larger scale than you have been accustomed to in the past…’
‘Too large a scale!’ she inserted quickly.
‘You should have thought about that before you sent in your tender.’
‘I wouldn’t want to let you and your fiancée down.’
‘Believe me, I’ll make sure you don’t.’ He left her without looking back and she remained standing at the table, barely aware of the waitress coming over with the bill, taking the money and returning with change. After the initial shock of seeing him, she realised that her body had gone into automatic mode, dealing with his questions, behaving as though she wasn’t on the verge of hysteria.
Now that he had gone she felt as though she had been put through a wringer. She knew that she had never managed to exorcise his memory, but she had not been prepared for just how much he still affected her. Every part of her body was stretched to breaking-point and there would be more to come. More contact with him. More painful reminders of what she had been obliged to leave behind. There was nothing she could do about it. She didn’t need the job but she couldn’t afford to lose clients. He had caught her neatly in a trap and all she could do was get through it without too much damage being inflicted on her in the process.
CHAPTER THREE
ANGELO timed his call perfectly, as he timed all things. He waited just long enough for her to stew but not so long that she had time to think up any flimsy excuses to back out, because now that he had seen her he knew that, in the deepest recesses of his mind, she had remained unfinished business.
He pushed himself back from his desk and inclined his chair so that he could stretch out his long legs in front of him. The past couple of days had involved a delicate balancing act with Georgina who, after her initial dismay that he had decided to go with an unknown act, had been ready to move into action and take over the arrangements with her mother. Informing her that he would be personally involved in the process, he had met with a brick wall of understandable incomprehension.
‘It’s not necessary,’ Georgina had complained. ‘Mummy and I—’
‘—will, I hope, respect my wishes?’
‘But I don’t understand—’
‘What is there not to understand? You wanted my involvement and now you have it.’ Put like that,
it was left to Georgina to try and quantify the level of involvement she had been expecting but, while he had listened with every show of appreciating what she was saying, he refused to budge and in the end she had been obliged to accept that he would more or less be running the show.
He reached for his mobile and rang the number on the business card that had been burning a hole in his wallet for the past three days.
Francesca answered almost immediately and, for a split second, hearing her voice down the end of the line was a brutal reminder of how they once used to talk on the phone, sometimes for hours on end, long, lazy conversations that made the physical distances between them seem less impossibly far.
‘It’s Angelo,’ he said abruptly.
‘How are you?’
‘Is your diary at hand? We can arrange a time to meet so that we can discuss these menus in detail.’
‘Angelo…I’m really not sure whether I’m equipped to cater for such a large number of people…’
‘Haven’t we covered that particular patch of ground already?’
‘But—’
‘I can meet with you and your partner tomorrow evening. Georgina will naturally want to come along as well.’ Long, sexy conversations three years ago, when talking to her had been like a physical release for him after a gruelling day at work. He could remember her soft voice catching on a laugh, the way she had lowered it whenever she’d told him how much she was missing him, missing making love to him. He wondered now whether she had been saying the same things to someone else, someone more indispensable to her than he had ever been. ‘Six-thirty at the bar in the Savoy,’ he told her curtly. ‘I’ll expect you both there.’
Francesca was treated to the click of someone ending a phone call before she had a chance to speak and, with a little sigh of resignation, she turned to Jack, who had been sitting at the kitchen table, listening in on the phone call.
‘It won’t be as bad as you think,’ was the first thing he said when he saw her face.
Francesca looked at him and smiled reluctantly. Jack knew enough about the situation to appreciate the awkwardness of it, but he knew nothing of the depth of feeling she had carried around with her for years, the knowledge of love lost for reasons beyond her control.
‘No, it’ll be worse. I wouldn’t be surprised if he gets us there so that he can shake his head at what we suggest and conclude that we’re not up to scratch for the job.’
‘That would make him a very bitter man.’
‘You’ve got it.’ And it was a situation that never should have arisen. She should never have met him, should never have fallen in love with him. Theoretically, she should have fallen in love with the man sitting opposite her at the table. Same age, same background, same friends, most of whom they had long left behind, but still…
The beauty queen of the local comprehensive school with the highest truancy rate in the country should have ended up with the wild, reckless but irresistibly handsome bad-boy heartthrob, but fate had had other plans in store. Fate had decided to throw friendship into the cauldron, and friends they had become to the exclusion of everything else.
‘Must have been a shock, seeing you,’ Jack said with a wicked grin. ‘Maybe he’s still got the hots for you.’
‘Oh, please. That was years ago. No, what he wants is to see me fail because I had the temerity to turn him down years ago and Angelo is not the sort of man who takes kindly to being turned down by a woman.’
‘We won’t fail, Ellie.’
‘He calls me Francesca. For him, I’m the one who strung him along, rejected him only to run off and begin a new life with you.’
‘Which is kind of true, in a way.’
‘But not in the way he thinks. He thinks that we’re an item.’
‘And maybe it’s safer that way,’ Jack said thoughtfully. He leaned forward and rested both elbows on the table. ‘I mean, he won’t try anything if he thinks that I’m on the scene, will he?’
‘Try anything like what?’
‘Bit of a kiss and a cuddle in the larder?’
‘The man’s engaged!’
Jack shrugged. ‘Fat lot of difference that would make to most men.’
‘Jack, you’re…you’re…’
‘Totally realistic?’ He grinned affectionately at her. ‘Think that’s why I don’t have any success with the ladies?’
‘You have lots of success with the ladies, Jack McGill. You just don’t want to take the plunge.’
‘Because I’m realistic. I know the minute I step off the diving board I’m going to be thinking about swimming to the side of the pool and hopping on another one.’
‘I give up on you.’ But she never had and she knew she never would. They were tied to one another with bonds too strong to break.
‘But the man obviously still has some effect on you.’
‘Because I know him! I know he could destroy our careers for no better reason than getting revenge!’
Jack ignored the interruption. ‘And it might be a good thing, in a way, that he’s come back into your life. Maybe seeing him at close quarters, seeing him with his woman, you’ll be able to put the whole thing into perspective and get on with your life. You’ll be able to get him out of your system once and for all. You can’t end up an old maid, Els. Fate worse than death when there are so many eager chaps out there waiting to snap up a beauty like you.’
‘Oh, silly, selfish me, not looking at it from that point of view,’ Francesca said dryly, but maybe, just maybe, he had a point. Maybe she needed to see Angelo Falcone, needed to see him in the company of his fiancée, embarking on the greatest adventure of his life, before she could fully move on from the past. Like it or not, the past had held her captive for too long.
‘Knew you’d agree with old Jack. And we could pretend to be an item if it makes it easier. A fair few women have told me what a sexy hunk I am.’ He folded his hands behind his head and looked smug. ‘Which just goes to show that bald men can still pull the birds.’
Francesca didn’t think for a minute that Angelo harboured any feelings towards her, bar the obvious one of wanting to see her suffer, but it certainly felt more reassuring thinking that Jack was some sort of emotional barrier between them.
Lord only knew how he intended to play the role, but she had given him sufficient warnings about what he was to say and what he wasn’t. The upshot was that he had agreed to talk only about the food, with which he was inordinately talented. In the event of any pregnant pauses, she’d informed him, he was to rush in with illuminating chat on regional Italian cuisine, which was something he knew more about than most Italians, especially considering he had never set foot on Italian soil. Under no circumstances, she’d warned him repeatedly, was he to indulge in any chit-chat about the past.
‘Talk about the food, sit and look pretty.’
‘Pretty might be pushing it,’ Francesca had countered but, the following day, she had to admit that he had scrubbed up well. He had pulled his only suit out of hibernation, matched it to a tie that just managed to get away with being quirky and a pinstriped shirt she had never seen. A present from one of his many ex-girlfriends, he had confided in her.
Classically, he just missed the mark, but he had the face of the perennial charmer. Wicked blue eyes and a rough appeal that had trapped many an unwary victim.
And she had taken time with her outfit as well. A smart, simple suit that was businesslike but in a warm apricot colour which stopped it from looking too severe. She knew that they looked like a well-matched team, but her heart was still beating madly when the time arrived and they were walking into the bar at the hotel.
A few days’ reprieve and some sensible thinking had done very little to still her nerves. She found her eyes skittering around the room, searching him out. He wasn’t there.
‘Relax,’ Jack said under his breath.
But even when they were seated, with their fruit juices in front of them, she still couldn’t relax. She started to think h
e had changed his mind. His fiancée had talked him out of it and because she, Francesca, didn’t matter, he hadn’t seen fit to call and tell her the change of plan. By the time she finally saw his familiar figure standing in the doorway she had convinced herself that they were simply not going to bother to arrive.
Draped on his arm was a petite blonde, impeccably groomed and stunningly dressed in a casual short floral skirt and a silk vest top with a matching jacket that sat snugly on her waist. She heard Jack’s swift intake of breath and smiled inwardly, imagining what he was thinking. Georgina would be just the sort of woman he found impossibly attractive. Blonde, small, fragile. He would find it very difficult not to flirt and, to his credit, he didn’t. At least, not for the first forty-five minutes, during which they discussed menus, changes to menus, ingredients, everything under the sun to do with food.
All the while Francesca kept her eyes averted from Angelo, but every nerve in her body was tuned in to the lazy sprawl of his body on the chair next to her and to Georgina’s hand, resting lightly and possessively on his wrist.
She didn’t dare admit to herself how much it hurt to watch their familiarity, the way Georgina turned her face and smiled whenever he said anything, the way her slim hand sometimes touched his thigh in an absent-minded, feathery caress. She hoped to God she wasn’t staring, but she knew that she was rigid with tension.
When a bottle of chilled wine was brought to their table, her weak refusal was ignored and Angelo poured her a glass and held it out for her. The slight brush of their fingers made her want to yank her hand back because it was as if an electric shock had been delivered to her body and, when her eyes met his, she could see from the cool smile on his face that he was well aware of her reaction.
‘And how did you get into this line of business?’ she heard Georgina ask Jack when most of the details had been discussed and Francesca was beginning to think that it was an appropriate time to leave.
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