‘You mean Angelo, don’t you?’ she asked in rising panic but Jack was already backing out of the door, leaving her at the mercy of a visitor she didn’t want to see. Not now. Not yet. Not when she felt sure she was finally getting to grips with everything. Hadn’t she made an effort with some make up just this morning? Wasn’t that a clear sign that she was turning a corner?
She waited with pounding heart and when Angelo was finally standing in the doorway she found that her voice had seized up. He looked haggard. The smart suit which he should have been wearing mid-morning on a weekday was noticeably absent. In its place was a pair of cords and a faded rugby sweater.
He ran his fingers through his hair and entered the room tentatively.
‘How are you?’
‘Fine.’ Francesca smiled brightly, one of those high wattage smiles she had mastered to put Jack at ease.
‘Jack told me that you’ve been confined to bedrest by the doctor.’
‘It’s nothing. Just a bit of raised blood pressure. What are you doing here?’
‘We have to talk. Have you read the article?’
‘No. What’s it about?’ Her mind was slowly cranking into gear. A centre spread in a serious newspaper pointed to a declaration of some sort. It wouldn’t be simply some business coverage. He wouldn’t be looking at her like that, his eyes burning into her, if he wanted her to read something about the latest deal he had done. Her hands were trembling as she turned the pages, finally finding the middle of the newspaper.
Her eyes skimmed over the words on the page, the glaringly big caption at the top, the picture of Angelo taken at some important function and reproduced to show the man in all his eligibility. She felt bright patches of colour flood into her face and, when she finally raised her eyes to meet his, she barely knew what to think. The article was all about her, the significant woman in his life, and nothing had been spared. From the miserable circumstances of her childhood to her rise as a model, it was charted with scrupulous honesty to detail. His intentions were entirely honourable, the spread ran; the man presumed to be one of the country’s most eligible bachelors was going to hitch his wagon to a woman who came from the wrong side of the tracks.
‘I don’t understand…’
‘What’s there not to understand?’ Angelo said thickly. ‘You look thin. Is that normal? Shouldn’t pregnant ladies be fat? And glowing? Is that why the doctor told you to take it easy?’
‘Why would you do this? Ruin your career?’ She hadn’t read it all but she had read enough.
‘I’m not ruining my career. I’m proposing to you.’ He dragged the chair by the dressing table over to the window so that he was sitting next to her.
‘Why did you let them print all that stuff?’ Francesca whispered. ‘Now the whole world knows about…our involvement…and my background…’ Her eyes flickered down, seeking out the details of her past once again and re-reading them. In stark black and white it sounded even grimmer because there was no attempt to portray extenuating circumstances.
‘It was the only way.’ He shook his head and did something that was unbearably touching. He played nervously with her fingers. Francesca watched his down-bent head as the questions raced through her mind. In the most public way possible, Angelo Falcone had proposed to her, taking the bull by the horns and giving the media what they would eventually discover anyway, namely her past. But why? Did it mean that much to him that his baby was born with the Falcone name? Because there was no mention of love.
He raised his eyes to her. ‘When I left you a week ago, I didn’t know what to think. Not only was there the fatherhood situation to deal with, but in the space of an hour you had managed to trample everything I thought I knew about you into the ground.’ It was only when she had revealed everything to him that Angelo had realised, with a sickening sense of utter shock, exactly how much he had drifted into a comfort zone. Despite all his declarations of non-involvement, he had grown used to her. Like ivy curling around a column she had entwined herself around him and the pieces of her past, the past that made the present, dammit, had been like the bitter stab of treachery.
‘I’m sorry. I should have told you sooner, years before, but I knew that things would end the minute you found out about me. You’re not an ordinary man, Angelo. If you were, it wouldn’t have been so bad.’ She risked stroking his hair and he pulled her hand to him and held it. ‘Ordinary men aren’t in the public gaze. They can handle a woman with a dodgy background.’