November Harlequin Presents 2(154)

She also spent the next two days in a state of muted terror in case Angelo kept his promise and came back to call. She would never have expected it of him, would never have expected him to play around behind his fiancée’s back, but maybe Jack was right, maybe men were all open to a bit of temptation. And she had not held back in her responses. Why not pursue the eager ex when the present fiancée was simply a business arrangement? Wouldn’t that be how he might think?

She felt like a cat on a hot tin roof, jumping every time the telephone rang, every time someone came to the door with deliveries. She was expecting him to descend on her, and so, when she heard the doorbell of her own house trill at nine in the evening, hours after she had stopped work, she knew who it was going to be. Not Jack. She also knew that she was not going to take the chain off the latch.

She was rigid with tension as she opened the door a crack. She was also well rehearsed in exactly what she was going to say and the tone of voice she was going to use. Cold, distant, firm.

But it wasn’t Angelo and her surprise took the wind out of her sails.

‘Good evening, Mrs…uh…Miss…’

‘Let me in. I want to talk to you.’ Georgina’s cut glass accent cut through her stammering like a knife through butter and Francesca found herself fumbling with the chain and pulling open the door.

She swept into the house in an elegant swirling cloud of yellow. Yellow jacket, yellow shoes, pale yellow clutch bag. She spent three seconds contemptuously taking in her surroundings before turning her full attention to Francesca.

Even though Georgina wore high heels Francesca towered over her, not that her height gave her any advantages. The only thought running through her head was that Angelo had told his fiancée about the lapse in his fidelity and Georgina, the business arrangement who wasn’t jealous, obviously wasn’t so much of a business arrangement that she hadn’t seen fit to storm round and have her say. Her very furious say, judging from the expression on her face.

Francesca cleared her throat and tried to find a way out of the thick fog of guilt engulfing her.

‘What…what can I do for you?’

’What can you do for me?’

‘Look, I think I know why you’ve come here…’

‘I’m sure you do,’ Georgina said scathingly. ‘I bet that bastard came running here just as soon as he could.’

Silence, Francesca thought, was the best form of self-defence. What she had done had been wrong. She deserved every bit of the attack about to be launched at her.

‘I should never have considered you for the job. Never! I told Angelo that you were nothing but a two-bit company and I should have stuck to my guns. But oh, no! I thought I would be obliging and go along with giving you a fair try. Didn’t know then what I know now, though, did I? And you, you…you nobody…didn’t see fit to fill me in, did you?’

Francesca remained in mute silence, mortified and prepared to weather the onslaught. If she could have turned back the hands of time, oh, she would never have agreed to cook dinner for him, would never have agreed to let him into her house in the first place. If, if, if…

‘Well, if you and Angelo think that he can break off the engagement so that the pair of you can walk into the sunset holding hands, while I’m left looking a complete idiot in front of my friends, then you’re both in for a shock!’ Georgina’s porcelain skin was mottled with fury.

‘He’s broken off the engagement?’ Francesca asked weakly. Oh, dear Lord. Why? She felt her legs on the verge of giving way and decided that sitting down might be a good idea. Crumpling to the floor in a heap would add to her mortification and, aside from that, those very pointed yellow shoes looked as though they could inflict severe damage when wielded by a tiny furious blonde.

‘Perhaps we ought to sit down,’ she said and left Georgina no option by heading straight into the sitting room.

‘When…when did this happen?’ she asked.

Georgina wasn’t sitting down. She was pulsating by the window.

‘Please don’t pretend that you don’t know. Five days ago.’

‘Five days ago?’ Francesca did the maths. So Angelo hadn’t been playing around. He had come to her as a single man. Why hadn’t he said anything? Maybe, she thought slowly, because he had come intending to seduce her and he figured his chances of success would have been lower had she seen herself as no more than a romp in the hay with a man who, even if he was the one to break off the engagement, would still be smarting from the sting of it.

Or maybe, she thought, digging into her knowledge of him, the way his mind worked, just maybe it had given him a kick to think that he could have her against all the odds, have her blinded to his situation by her own desires. And, if that was the case, had he really even wanted her? The way she had wanted him?