‘Inconvenient. I’m having my dinner.’
‘I thought I might catch you both to apologise on behalf of my fiancée.’ He leaned against the door so that if she decided to close it she would find herself engaging in an undignified struggle.
‘Jack’s not here,’ Francesca told him reluctantly. ‘And if you lean any harder on this door you’re going to break it.’
‘That’s the problem these days. Impossible to find solid craftsmanship anywhere. Are you going to let me in?’
‘We’ve already discussed the food for your wedding.’
‘I told you, I would like to apologise for Georgina. Humour me my good manners.’
No need to come in to apologise, she wanted to tell him. You can do that quite easily from outside. But he was her employer, at least for the time being. More importantly, he was someone who could ruin her if he so chose. And she was a professional. With a sigh, Francesca pulled the chain back and watched as he strolled into her house and looked around him with unconcealed curiosity.
It was a small, old semi-detached house but it had been refurbished to a very high standard. Gone were the dingy carpets. Instead, wooden floors had been laid throughout and the wallpaper had been replaced with various shades of paint, ranging from buff in the hallway to burgundy in the small dining room. The curtains were light and pooled on the ground and, in a burst of creative energy shortly after she had bought the house, Francesca had had installed a stained glass window which formed a dramatic partition between the dining room and the kitchen.
‘Nice,’ Angelo commented, taking it all in before allowing his eyes to rest on a now casually clad Francesca. ‘Did you do it all yourself or did your boyfriend help?’
‘You came to apologise, I believe?’
‘It’s something I do far better over a cup of coffee, or something stronger if you have it.’
Francesca sighed. ‘You’d better come into the kitchen. I was in the middle of my dinner.’
‘Smells good.’
‘Angelo…’ She paused and turned around to look at him. ‘We had our chit-chat three days ago. And we had our serious talk about the menus today. So please spare me the polite conversation.’ He obviously hadn’t had time to completely change but the formal shirt had been replaced by a rugby style sweatshirt. He looked devastating. Too devastating for someone whose will-power had a tendency to flag whenever he was around. She could almost fill her nostrils with his clean, manly scent when she breathed in.
‘Stop acting like a child, Francesca. There’s nothing wrong with being polite. You seem to forget that I didn’t purposefully seek you out.’
Francesca didn’t reply. She stalked into the kitchen, looked at the mushroom omelette with distaste and made herself eat some of it while she waited for the kettle to boil.
When he sat opposite her, she resisted the temptation to tuck her knees to one side in case she touched him. Crazy! They had touched each other with hunger three years ago and yet now she couldn’t bear to think of herself reacting to any inadvertent physical contact.
‘I confess I was curious to meet your boyfriend. He wasn’t what I was expecting.’
Francesca shrugged and pushed her plate to one side. ‘What you were or weren’t expecting is none of my business.’ She made him his coffee, only belatedly realising that she had remembered how he took it. Strong, black, one sugar, just a level teaspoon. ‘There’s no need for you to apologise about your fiancée. It’s easy to get a bit light-headed if you drink wine at that hour of the evening, before there’s any food in your stomach. Was she pleased with what Jack and I had in mind for the meal? I hope so because last-minute changes are very difficult to accommodate.’
Angelo watched as she busied herself, tidying away things from the kitchen counter, dumping dirty dishes in the sink, doing anything to avoid looking at him. Talking about anything but what he wanted to talk about—her partner. Jack was no ex-model, but they looked good together, as though they belonged, and that had got to him. It enraged him that this woman could still affect him after all these absent years and after the way she had walked away from their relationship.
He had dropped Georgina off, returned to his flat, semi-changed, and decided that he was old enough and experienced enough not to allow his emotions to burst through their restraints. Somehow, though, he had found himself back at his car, had found himself punching in that address on the business card into the Satellite Navigation finder in his car, driving to her house.
‘After years mixing with the glamorous people in the modelling world, I was a little surprised to find that your lover is…so…shall we say unapologetically lacking in polish?’