"Fancy a nightcap?" he asked lightly, slinging on his battered jacket. "Little celebration to mark the completion of what we set out to do?"
"No, thanks." She yawned and shoved her hair into the back of the jacket. "I'm very tired."
The response, expected though it had been, was still unbelievably maddening.
Begging, he told himself grimly, was an avenue he had no intention of exploring. He could no more beg for a woman than he could swim twice round the world. In fact, swimming twice round the world was probably the easier option.
"What shall I do with all the information we've compiled?" she asked, half turning to him, though still, he noticed, not actually looking at him. "I could transcribe it onto disk over the weekend. My handwriting is hardly legible!" She pushed open the door of the cafe and then paused outside for a few seconds, looking around her, getting her bearings.
"Hmm. The information. Good point." The wind whipped up a bit and he zipped up his jacket, pulling the collar up to warm his face. "You look as though you're freezing," he said. "Have my jacket."
"No! Don't be silly! I'll be fine once I get into a cab." She turned and stretched out her hand, which was trembling. "So it's goodbye, then."
Ruth smiled at him. The stiff wind had flicked strands of hair out from the jacket, whipping them across her face so she was forced to gather them up with one hand and then hold them in place.
Thank goodness it was dark. Could he see the tears gathering in the comers of her eyes? Could he see the trembling of her outstretched hand? If he did, she hoped that he would put that down to the cold and not to the dreadful sinking feeling that was pouring through her system like poison.
Of course it was a tremendous relief that they would be parting company. She had tried her very hardest to shove the memory of that humiliating night to the back of her mind, to tell herself that these things happened, but it hadn't worked. She had not been able to look him in the face, and it had taken every last ounce of courage to survive the past week and a half.
Once she hopped into the cab and sped away she doubted that she would ever see him again. He hadn't made much of an appearance at the company in the past and he was unlikely to in the future. If anything, her presence there would be enough to ensure his absence.
It hadn't been lost on her that for the past week he had done his best to be kind to her, cracking jokes, teasing her, gamely going along with the pretence that nothing had happened, but she wasn't a fool. He felt sorry for the poor little vicar's daughter who was obviously as well versed in the games adults play as she was in nuclear physics. Which was not at all.
"About all that information..." he said thoughtfully, as they briskly began to cover ground out into the more populated streets, where finding a taxi might pose less of a problem. "No point transcribing the lot onto disk. For starters, it'll take you for ever."
"No, it won't. Honestly. I'm quite a good typist."
"How much have you actually got?"
"Quite a bit, as a matter of fact," she admitted panting as she tried to keep up with his much longer strides. "I had no idea how much note-taking I'd done until a couple of days ago when I gathered it all together."
"As I thought," he said, trying to keep a note of crowing triumph out of his voice. "Reams of information. Far easier if I sift through it first and highlight the important areas. Then you can transcribe it to take in to work."
"Okay," she said easily. "Shall I get a courier to take it to your office on Monday?"
He appeared to give this a bit of thought. "No," he finally said, drawing out the single syllable so that it reverberated with sincere regret that he couldn't be more accommodating. "Don't forget, time is of the essence if were to get this out for the next issue, or at the very least the issue after. I'll come over to your place tomorrow evening, let's say around sever?
Seven-thirty?" He had spotted a taxi and was flagging it down.
"My place?" Ruth gulped and with the best will in the world couldn't keep the tremor of trepidation out of her voice.
"Don't put yourself out by cooking anything elaborate. Just something simple, or I could bring a takeaway..."
He had pulled open the door to the taxi and was shoveling her inside. "I'll get another taxi," he informed her, leaning into the cab. "So, that's settled then, is it? Your place tomorrow. Takeaway? Or will you rustle something up?"
"Well..." she began desperately. Visions of any such scenario transpiring had not occurred to her. Consequently, she had no weapons at hand with which to deal with it.
"Honestly, Ruth, pasta will be great." Before she could frame an answer to that self-imposed invitation, he had turned away and was rattling her address to the taxi driver, then he gave her a brief salute, nodded, and said. "See you tomorrow, then."
"Yes, but..." Her words were lost in the heavy slam of the door and then the taxi was pulling away from the kerb and Franco, as she looked back, was a rapidly diminishing figure, before disappearing altogether as the car rounded a comer.
She was dimly aware of having been railroaded into something, but then decided that she was being fan¬ciful. What incentive did Franco Leoni have to railroad her into anything? His primary concern was for the magazine, and he was right. They couldn't afford to sit around, and if he sifted through all her transcripts tomorrow then she would have all of Sunday to type up the relevant information.
So why, she wondered, did she spend the whole of Saturday feverishly buying food and tidying her little flat and generally acting as though his casual visit, arranged out of necessity rather than choice, was a date?
His suggestion of a simple pasta meal had been the starting point for one of her specialties, a prawn and tomato dish, lathered in a rich, creamy sauce, which was excellent with penne pasta and asparagus. Going strictly in accordance with her own appetite, she made sufficient to feed a small army.
It was only when the cooking had been accom¬plished, and she stood back to survey her handiwork, that a sudden, unappealing thought occurred to her.
Franco had mentioned, in passing...she couldn't re¬member exactly when...that he disliked women fuss¬ing around him. She wondered, with a groan of de¬spair, whether he might read all the wrong things into what for her had been doing something she basically enjoyed. Would he imagine that she was trying to im¬press him with her culinary skills? Ingratiate herself under his skin?
Once the notion had taken root, it grew with re¬markable speed. By the time six-thirty had rolled around, Ruth's imagination had leapt ahead to a scenario that involved Franco inspecting her lavish offer¬ings with contempt and then leaving as quickly as his feet could take him, forgetting all about her transcripts in the process, and having to bellow up to her to fling them down.
To compensate for the meal, she opted for the least attractive clothing in her wardrobe. A pair of green chinos that were a size too big for her and conse¬quently made her look ridiculously thin and unfemi¬nine and an off-white shirt that had belonged to her father before she had decided to appropriate it for her own use years previously.
The shirt hid everything and the trousers made her look like a boy. In fact, the whole get-up was emi¬nently satisfactory, given that she wanted to imply to her uninvited guest that his presence was something she could take or leave, that she had certainly gone to no trouble on his behalf, and that the abundance of food was more to do with her own hearty appetite than it was to do with impressing him.
By the time the doorbell rang at precisely seven-¬fifteen, Ruth had collated every single piece of paper¬work and had stacked it with mathematical precision in the middle of the coffee table in her tiny sitting room. Even someone with appalling vision would not have missed the telling bundle.