November Harlequin Presents 2(136)

Francesca opened her mouth to refute the assumption that Jack was her lover, and shut it.

‘Maybe I find it refreshing to be with someone who isn’t impressed by what people do for a living or how much money they earn.’

‘Are you implying that I was?’

‘I’m not implying anything.’ But he was. Would he really have given her the time of day if she had been a checkout girl in a supermarket? And wasn’t it telling that he had ended up with a woman whose pedigree would be a credit to him?

‘How long have you known him?’

‘A while.’

‘A while being…?’

‘Being none of your business, Angelo. In fact, my life is none of your business. I can’t take away the fact that we were once an item, but that was then and this is now.’ She was leaning against the sink, arms folded, every muscle tense.

‘Which doesn’t mean that I don’t still have your interests at heart.’ He liked the sound of that. Liked the way it made him rise above the pettiness of jealousy into the higher realms of magnanimity.

Francesca snorted with open disbelief. ‘And how do you work that one out, Angelo? How have you gone from wanting to settle old scores to caring about my personal welfare?’

‘I admit when I first saw you it brought a lot of old feelings out into the open. I am only human, after all,’ Angelo drawled. ‘But since then I’ve realised that I owe it to you to be honest and I honestly cannot see what you find stimulating about him.’

‘And that’s why you came? Because you’re big-hearted and you just wanted to express concern about my choice of partner?’ She looked at him resentfully, not liking the way he had come into her house and taken it over. ‘I love Jack,’ she said truthfully. ‘We work together and we get along well.’ She shrugged. ‘It doesn’t bother me that he’s unapologetically lacking in polish, as you put it. Actually, I think it’s pretty superficial to judge someone on their appearance. It’s what’s underneath that counts. But I don’t suppose you would agree with that.’ She knew that this was a pointless conversation. She knew that she should be as polite but as distant as she could be with him, remind herself that he was a man due to be married to a woman he was in love with. But seeing him after all this time out of the blue had turned her world upside down and she could feel herself hurtling towards an argument, any argument.

‘Because I’m such a superficial person?’ He shot her a tight, cold smile. ‘I don’t remember you accusing me of that particular trait three years ago.’

‘You went out with a model,’ Francesca retorted. ‘That says it all.’

‘In other words, you consider yourself to have been superficial and shallow then. Is that it?’

‘I was glamorous and you went for the glamour.’

‘And your boyfriend didn’t? Look in the mirror, Francesca. You might no longer dress in skimpy designer outfits and strut down catwalks, but you’ve still got the same face and the same body. You might think that packing in the modelling job and going down the sensible career route has suddenly turned you into Ms Averagely Good-Looking whose mind turns men’s heads, but let me assure you that the way you look is still going to be what ropes them in.’ He allowed the insult time to ferment before going on. ‘And, once you’ve roped them in, who knows how long the attraction will last? You cannot have failed to notice that your lover was paying more attention than was strictly polite to my fiancée…’

So that was what this visit was about, she thought. He hadn’t come to apologise about Georgina’s slightly tipsy introduction to them, nor had he come in the role of big-hearted Mr Kind who wanted to save her from her incompatibility with Jack. He had come because he had noticed Jack’s flirting. It hadn’t been obvious, but then Angelo was a man who noticed the most subtle of nuances.

‘That’s not true!’ Francesca said quickly. ‘He’s just very friendly, very outgoing, very charming.’

‘So outgoing and charming that he barely looked at you once during the entire time we were sitting at that table?’ He laughed as though she had taken leave of her senses.

‘We weren’t on a date. Of course he wasn’t going to sit and stare at me with big infatuated eyes!’ She could feel patches of bright colour on her cheeks. ‘We were there to do a job and, since we’ll probably be dealing mostly with your fiancée, of course he’s going to try and form a bond, make sure that they can communicate!’ Who was she kidding? Underneath all the perfectly courteous chit-chat, Jack had pulled the ladies’ man out of the drawer. She had detected it in the modulation of his voice and the husky note of his laughter which, she now reflected, there had been far too much of. Georgina hadn’t cracked any thigh-slapping jokes and her coy remarks certainly hadn’t deserved the level of amusement they had received.