She was saying something to him, and he shot her a penetrating, earnest look to cover up the fact that his mind had been on a walkabout involving her and her intriguing personality, which seemed to grow more beguilingly addictive with every passing minute.
"Yes," he said automatically to whatever it was she had said...obviously a question, judging from the way she was looking at him, head tilted to one side, mouth semi-parted so that the smallest sliver of her pearl white teeth was showing.
"Sorry?" she asked, puzzled.
"What did you say?"
"I asked you what you thought the chances are that those two girls will straighten their lives out."
"Oh, yes! Right. To be honest, my impression was that they'd done a bunk from Manchester, found themselves in London and were realizing that they'd bitten off a bit more than they could chew. I wouldn't be surprised if they started asking themselves whether going back to face irate mums and aggravating siblings mightn't be preferable to the unknown down here."
"Mmm. I thought that too, actually. In fact..." She rummaged in her bag and extracted her notebook, which she then proceeded to peruse, frowning in concentration.
"Kate pretty much admitted that she was already thinking along those lines. I think it helps that they traveled down together. They prop each other up, whereas they might be more vulnerable if they were on their own, more of an easy target for...undesirable types...you know what I mean...."
"I do," Franco said gravely. "Now, what do you want to eat?" He watched her as she glanced around the pub, absent-mindedly pushing her hair behind her ears.
"Anything with chips. I'm starving."
He fought to conceal a smile. "Haven't had anything for the day?"
"Not much. Cereal, toast." She leaned a little forward so that she could decipher what was written on the blackboard on the wall towards the back of the room. "Fruit and sandwiches for lunch. Nothing since midday, though, which is probably why I'm so hungry; He felt a wave of laughter surge through him and he covered his mouth with one hand to stifle the sound. He knew, with unerring instinct, that laughing at her appetite was something she would not find very appealing. He suspected that she might mistakenly assume that he was sneering at her, treating her like a country bumpkin lacking in social graces.
"Are you all right?" she asked, when he was forced to camouflage his laughter as a choking cough, which made him sound like an old man whose fifty-a-day habit was finally catching up. "Have you got something in your throat?" She stood up and administered a resounding firm slap to his back, which propelled him forward, mostly through sheer shock.
"What are you doing?" he gasped.
"I thought you might have had something stuck in your throat."
"What?"
"I don't know," Ruth said, sitting back down and giving him a ladylike glare.
"Must have swallowed the wrong way," he mumbled.
"Anyway, chips you say?"
"Thank you. With some fish. I see that they do haddock and chips with bread and a salad."
"Anything else?" He stood up and turned away with an exaggeratedly grim expression, because his lips were beginning to twitch again and another of those slaps administered to his back might cause untold damage to his spine.
Ruth consulted the blackboard again while Franco watched, dumbstruck at the thought that she might actually be considering adding to what she had already ordered, but eventually shook her head in polite denial.
The pub was slowly but surely filling up. Most of the tables were now taken and the only room at the circular bar in the center was elbow room. Ruth watched as Franco smoothly found a gap and caught the bartender's eye with the practiced ease of someone for whom attracting attention was as effortless as drawing breath.
In fact, as she looked at him now, she could see that the attention he had managed to attract was not limited to the bartender. Women had angled their bodies so that they could surreptitiously snatch a glance or two at the striking man with the pint in one hand, the glass of wine in the other, weaving his way back to the table and... Ruth thought of the image she presented and glumly acknowledged that the stunningly sexy woman didn't fit the bill. More likely fetchingly homely lass.
"Now," he said resuming his seat and pushing the glass of wine over to her. "What's it to be? your decision? In or out?"
Ruth gently twirled the glass in a circle on the table, lightly holding it by the thin stem. "In. But..."
"But...what... ?" he asked softly.
"But you put up with me if I occasionally get weepy and sentimental over some of the girls."
"I'd be surprised if you didn't."
She wondered whether he would have qualified that as pleasantly surprised. "I'm a weepy, sentimental person at the best of times," she said sticking her chin out and daring him to argue the merits of that, which he didn't.
"Don't tell me that you cry at movies?"
"Loudly."
"And lose sleep over sad stories in the press?"
"To the point of insomnia."
"And fret if you think you've offended someone?"
"Add nauseam."
"Then we have a lot in common. I do all those things as well."
The thought of Franco Leoni sobbing during a movie made her burst out laughing, and she threw her head back and arched into the back of the chair, wiping her eyes. He smiled at her, a long, slow smile, and the laughter dwindled from her lips. The moment of hilarity was gone, replaced by a split second's worth of devastating awareness that seemed to continue into eternity.
Eventually she dragged her eyes away from his face as a harassed waitress appeared with their food and then the moment was gone, replaced with suitably appropriate chit-chat about their interview the evening before, and how it could be formatted into the report they were building.
Another couple of interviews with youngish girls, he said, perhaps ranging in experience from the newly arrived to the well and truly ensconced. Though those might be less tempted to pour out their hearts and souls because bitterness could be a very effective plug when it came to free speech.
Then they would interview older women' women who had started out down the road years before and ended up at its most logical destination.
"Think you can stand it?" he asked casually, as she tucked into her food, and she nodded without speaking as her mouth was full.
"I shouldn't have any more wine," she said, when she had swallowed both food and wine.
"Goes to your head?"
"Horribly."
"And what do you do when that happens?" He leaned forward and his eyes raked over her in a manner that was both casual and searingly intimate. "Anything that could feed my night-time fantasies?" he murmured in a teasing, playful voice.
"Very funny," Ruth said severely. She wondered if he thought she was so thick that she wouldn't recognize that he was making fun of her and her outmoded approach to life, so inconsistent, she knew, with someone her age. "Now that I've decided..." Was that quite the right phrase? Or would been persuaded have been more appropriate? "...to carry on, what shall we do tonight? It's nearly eight-thirty and, well, do we see whether we can do some more interviews? Or not?"
"We do." He fished in his pocket and withdrew a crumpled-up piece of paper which he proceeded to flatten out. "I have a couple more contact names and places that we could check out Nothing quite as salubrious as last night's rendezvous, but then we're looking at girls who are a bit more hardened by life in the big city."
"Where on earth do you get these names and places from?" Ruth asked peering at the piece of paper.
"Having friends who work in the press can be of great help sometimes."
He grinned and she said slowly. "You're really enjoying all this, aren't you?"
"So far."
"Because it makes a change?"