November Harlequin Presents 2(153)

He also considered, for rather less time, the possibility of walking away from her now. For good. Wouldn’t he be left with the pleasurable feeling of having finished business? Of having put a full stop at the end of the incomplete sentence? Once and for all?

Instead, he paused as he drew level with her and smiled. ‘It’s been a…revelation, seeing you tonight, Francesca. And I am very sure I will be seeing you again.’ He looked at her and thought that he could make love to her again. Right now and right here, forget about the comfortable trappings of a bed.

‘Over my dead body, Angelo. I might have made a mistake once but I learn quickly. I won’t be making the same mistake again.’ If only she could feel that. Deep in her bones where it mattered. Instead, she heard the heartfelt words roll off her tongue as she stared back up at him and was terrified that, put to the test, they would be as empty as a shell.

‘I would love to stay and debate the definition of the word mistake,’ he murmured, ‘but it’s late. I should be getting back.’

The sound of the front door closing was, Francesca gloomily reckoned, roughly two hours too late.

She had emerged from the evening with her pride well and truly in tatters because her body had decided to break away and follow a course of its own. He had touched her and she had melted; it was as simple as that.

And off he had gone, back to Georgina and his well-ordered life. With, of course, another caterer to take over the joy-filled wedding celebrations.

She could have kicked herself. Could have kicked anything. And did. The chair. Followed by the door as she made her way upstairs, only to confront the shameful sight of bedclothes all tangled up, gleefully reminding her of her own lack of will-power.

It took half an hour to change the linen, another hour to put it in the washing machine and, once washed, into the tumble-drier. Hopefully it would eradicate the lingering aroma of lust but she knew that that was just paying lip service to a problem. In her head the lust was still there and, worse, it was all tangled up in emotions and feelings she didn’t even want to start analysing too deeply.

It was after midnight when she reached for the phone and dialled Jack’s number. The chances of interrupting his sleep were remote. On a weekend Jack made a point of getting as little sleep as possible and, sure enough, he answered his mobile in the slurred, happy voice of someone well past the point of sobriety.

‘The catering job for the Falcone wedding is off,’ she told him bluntly.

There was a long pause which she filled by getting a few things off her chest. The fact that it would have been impossible anyway, given the circumstances. The fact that she was well rid of her past, that confronting it and not walking away had been a mistake from the very beginning. Angelo Falcone, she declared vehemently, would probably never have chosen them on their merits. An unknown two-man band with zero experience of catering for huge amounts of people. He had chosen them because he had wanted to watch them both squirm in their inability to make the grade.

Jack sounded doubtful. ‘I thought you said that he was going to give us a fair stab at it.’

‘And he’s obviously had a change of heart.’

‘You mean he cancelled us? Just like that?’

‘Sort of.’

‘What does sort of mean?’

‘It means that I was put in a position where there was no option but to back out. I’m sorry, Jack. We’ll just have to build ourselves up slowly.’ She had intended to pour her heart out, to tell him of her fiasco of an evening. After all, she and Jack shared everything. But at the last minute she had a change of heart. So at the end of fifteen minutes she hung up feeling as though, somehow, it had been a wasted phone call. Certainly not a call that warranted being made at midnight on a Saturday—one of the few Saturday nights they had taken off, so that Jack could watch his beloved cricket match. And she had got nothing off her chest. She went to bed with the same conflicting thoughts running rampant in her head and woke up, groggy and tired, in the same frame of mind.

The one salvation was that by the time Jack returned to London she was calmer, more able to explain why she had turned the job down after all, blaming it on her own insecurities, saying that she’d rather it went to an outside party than deal with the suspicion that she had only landed it because of a historical affair that had bitten the dust years ago. The guilt was too much, she explained, with a convincing display of sincerity. Yes, it would have been nice but…such was life. She left him to wonder what exactly had been the catalyst behind her sudden decision and opted for expressions of genuine regret at the passing of a great opportunity. Not, of course, overplaying her hand in case he decided to pursue the unfortunate situation of his own accord.