‘I don’t…have a boyfriend.’
‘Could you repeat that?’
‘You heard me. I don’t have a boyfriend. Jack and I aren’t lovers and never have been.’
Angelo slung his legs over the side of the bed and looked at her thoughtfully as he scooped up the clothes from the floor.
‘How interesting,’ he drawled, walking towards her. ‘Now, why would you lead me to believe that you were involved with someone else? Did you want to prove to me that you had moved on with your life?’
‘Of course not! Would you mind getting dressed?’
‘I’ll do better than that. I shall go and have a shower and then, when I return, we can talk…’ He strolled towards the door, pausing to say over his shoulder, ‘Unless, of course, you want to keep me company in the shower?’
A cold shower. He needed it. Having tasted her, he realised that he wanted more. He emerged fifteen minutes later, fully dressed, to find her no longer in the bedroom but standing by the front door.
‘If you think I am leaving, then you can think again,’ he said, heading straight to the sitting room. ‘Now that we have finally broken the ice, there is so much talking to do. Including,’ he added softly, ‘why you lied to me about Jack.’
Francesca reluctantly followed him to find that he had taken up position on the sofa, where he was reclining like lord and master, hands behind his head and his feet hooked over the low arm, giving him an eagle-eye view of her as she sat on the chair facing him.
The table lamp was still switched on and, for all the resentment seething through her, resentment at him for showing up and turning her world upside down and anger at herself for making love to him, she still found her eyes riveted by the startling reality of his physical presence.
He dominated the room. Just as he had dominated the kitchen. The whole house. Nothing new about that. He had always done that, captured the attention of everyone when he walked into a room. She used to tease him about it, feigning petulance because shouldn’t she, as the model, be the one to rivet everyone? But she had enjoyed the feeling, loving the knowledge that, however many women followed his every move, he was hers.
Now, she just felt as though he was depriving her of oxygen.
‘Well?’ he prompted. ‘Why did you lie to me?’
‘Does it matter?’ She looked at him with impotent hostility. ‘I didn’t lie when I told you that I loved him,’ she said grudgingly. ‘We just aren’t involved with one another romantically and, actually, it wasn’t my idea. It was Jack’s.’
‘Because…?’
‘Because he thought that you might try and make a pass at me for old times’ sake.’ There was at least an element of truth there and it absolved her from any more in depth confessions, which was a blessing.
‘And did you think that I might?’
‘No. I thought you were a happily engaged man. I didn’t realise then that you would be willing to cheat on your partner before you even took the marriage vows.’ He deflected her neat turning of the tables with a careless shrug. ‘But then again,’ she continued, gaining some self-righteous momentum, ‘I wasn’t to know that your engagement was just a sham, that you weren’t in love with your fiancée, just using her because she happened to have all the right connections and, of course, a man of your standing would have to have a woman with all the right connections. Silly me! Which brings us to Georgina. Are you going to tell her about me? About our past? About the fact that you came here and…and…’
‘She will never know about our past. Why on earth should she?’ Angelo said honestly. ‘And I am glad you brought up my fiancée because I am curious to know how it is that someone so full of moral rectitude still ended up in bed with me. With a fiancée hovering in the background. You might have had your clear conscience when it came to Jack but did you not stop to consider the other person who might have been affected by our love-making?’
The silence stretched between them to breaking-point. She had laid down her own traps only to find herself neatly manoeuvred into a much bigger one, not of her making.
‘No answer to that?’ He stood up and flexed his muscles. ‘We seem to have forgotten all about eating in the…urgency of things. No matter. You won’t be catering now anyway.’ The smile he gave her was the smile of a tiger watching the pointless antics of an antelope in full flight.
For a few seconds Francesca thought that he was moving over to where she was sitting, and for a few seconds Angelo considered it. Considered confronting her with the shaming truth that she had forgotten all about Georgina in her suffocating need to make love to him. He rejected the idea.