He finished the phone call at roughly the same time as the taxi pulled up in front of an elegant Georgian house set in a crescent of identical houses—gleaming, beautifully proportioned white façades, black wrought iron railings and, lining the pavement outside, sleek, fast cars.
‘Where are we?’
‘My place. You want to talk? We’ll talk in total privacy.’ And those cool, dark eyes on her, melting her in places she didn’t want, stirring up all kinds of things she could do without, because of the sickening realisation that whatever he had once felt for her had been stripped back to the barest bones, leaving only a searing passion that would never destroy him but very well might destroy her.
CHAPTER SEVEN
HIS house was larger inside than it appeared on the outside. Three floors, each of them compactly and efficiently laid out. The front door opened into a hall with sepia-coloured marble tiles, from which she glimpsed a door leading to a small sitting room. She followed him away from that towards the kitchen which dipped down three stairs and which was a functional blend of chrome and wood.
He made straight for the coffee percolator and began brewing some coffee while Francesca maintained a fuming presence at the door.
‘Sit down,’ he said, without bothering to turn around and look at her. ‘You know you will eventually, anyway.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me that you had broken off your engagement with Georgina when you came around to my house?’
Angelo turned round slowly and looked at her, arms folded. ‘Because I wanted you to make love with me thinking that I was still engaged. I wanted you to be so blinded by desire that your well-structured sense of morality would not have been able to overcome your physical craving.’
‘You…you…’ Francesca looked at him and struggled to find the right words to convey the depth of her disgust.
‘Arrogant bastard?’ he interjected helpfully.
‘How could you?’
‘Oh, don’t think that it was passionless curiosity on my part. It wasn’t. I wanted you every bit as much as you wanted me.’
‘But you had a bruised ego to take into account and what better way to apply some balm to it than by proving to yourself that you still had sufficient power over me to have me against the odds?’
‘Something like that.’ He shrugged and returned to the business of making them some coffee, some very strong coffee. She looked as though she could do with it and, frankly, he couldn’t blame her. He had reduced their night of passion to a game with a winner and a loser. His bruised ego, as she had put it, should have been feeling considerably less bruised, bearing in mind that he had been the winner in the game, but it wasn’t. Not that he was about to share this with her. No, he had learnt that emotional revelations were the first steps to vulnerability and vulnerable was not a place he intended to occupy again.
He handed her the cup of coffee, noting how her hand shook as she took it.
‘I never thought…’ Francesca managed to make it unsteadily to one of the kitchen chairs and sank into it. ‘I never thought that you could…use me like that, Angelo.’ Of course she did! The minute she had learnt of the broken engagement, of the timing of it, she had known in her heart that he had used her. It was her own fault that she felt sickened by the fact. Was she now going to give him the further satisfaction of seeing her break down in front of him, all her emotions displayed like lines on a page waiting to be read? She realised how much her hands were shaking, enough to make her spill the coffee if she wasn’t careful. She sat on them and took a few steadying breaths, not looking at him, although she knew that he was looking at her, coolly and dispassionately.
‘I’m not the man you used to know,’ Angelo commented neutrally. ‘Nor are you the same woman I used to know.’
‘Why did you break off your engagement?’ This time she did look at him and was proud that she met his unwavering gaze steadily. In fact, he was the first to break eye contact, pushing himself away from the counter and moving to straddle one of the chairs facing her.
‘It wasn’t fair on her,’ he said. ‘On either of us. A business arrangement is fine but it depends on both partners playing by the rules.’
‘And your rules didn’t include emotions.’
‘I also discovered that what passed for sexual attraction to Georgina wasn’t quite as…satisfactory as it could have been…’ This time she was the one to look away as his stare became unbearable to hold.
‘Well, now that you’ve explained things to me, I think I’ll leave.’ Her legs felt much steadier now. She felt that she might actually be able to balance herself on them.