The Italian's Pregnant Mistress(32)

He had tried to encourage her into chatting about whatever was on her  mind but Francesca had just smiled politely at his kindly, encouraging  face and assured him that she would take his advice, put her feet up and  do something about regulating her diet.

Dr White presented a very sympathetic father figure but Francesca had no  desire to spill her feelings out to him or to anyone else. Angelo had  walked out of her house, apparently taking her at her word, which was  good, and she had not heard a word from him since. Maybe he had gone  away, had thought about the ramifications of what she had told him and  decided to take the most logical path to dealing with the situation. He  was, after all, a highly logical man. He would be in touch, she assumed,  in due course, when the need to discuss financial arrangements for the  baby became necessary. That wouldn't be for months yet, by which time  she intended to be out of London for good, which would be all to his  advantage. A child living an hour and a half out of the city was a child  he could visit maybe once or twice a month, just enough to salve his  conscience and certainly not enough to arouse any suspicions amongst his  friends and colleagues. So much for all that talk about wanting to be  involved in every aspect of his baby's life. So much for marriage.                       
       
           



       

Well, could she blame him? He had reacted exactly as she had predicted.  Her past had brought the shutters crashing down because, at the end of  the day, he just couldn't afford to go out with someone whose  credentials were not just average but downright insalubrious.

Francesca, lying flat on her bed, stared up at the ceiling. Next to her  was a tray with the remnants of breakfast, brought in by Jack, who had  taken to checking up on her three or four times a day and insisting that  she eat, like a tyrannical mother hen chivvying a poorly chick into  obedience. She half expected that guilt had something to do with that.  She hadn't delved into the details of Angelo's reaction to what she had  told him, but she had disclosed enough for Jack to realise that there  had been no cheerful brushing aside of the past. So now he had taken to  fussing around her, even though, with her out of action, he was handling  the catering business pretty much on his own, only allowing her to do  the books and whatever else she could accomplish from the end of a  telephone.

In a couple of hours' time the breakfast tray would be replaced by a  lunch tray, complete with a flower in a vase, and some bracing chat  about lots of positive things that she should be looking forward to.

Francesca was learning fast how to avoid the concern in his eyes by a  barrage of light-hearted patter, just the sort to put his mind at rest,  while her own mind relentlessly continued to gnaw over her memories of  Angelo. Several times she found herself poised to dial his number. She  could always use the excuse of needing to sort things out, but the  thought of hearing from his own lips that he wanted nothing further to  do with her, that she should cease calling him, that he would do what  was necessary but no more, terrified her. In his eyes, she would have  been tarnished by her past and she knew that he would not want her to  infect his own golden future.

She could feel herself being sucked down the familiar grim path when she  became aware of the door downstairs being unlocked and Jack's footsteps  coming up the stairs. Earlier than usual.

Francesca wearily plastered a welcoming smile on her face. She made  herself go to the chair by her window, which she knew would make him  happy because it would show that she was doing a little bit more than  just lying down in bed in a maudlin, defeated manner, and was smiling  when he strode into the bedroom.

'You're a bit early for lunch, Jack,' she greeted him cheerfully. 'I  know you want to feed me up, but a hot meal at ten forty-five in the  morning is a bit much!' The smile made her jaws ache. 'Tell me how that  job went last night. Did you have to provide waiter service in the end?  I've called up the Hamiltons and confirmed that we'll cater for them on  the twenty-third and they're going to let us do our own thing with the  food, thank Heavens.'

Jack tossed a newspaper on her lap and then stood back with his arms folded. 'Something in there you need to read.'

Glancing at the headlines, Francesca wondered what the urgency was to read a report on pre-election opinion polls.

'Centre spread,' Jack elaborated. 'And, while you're reading that, there's someone downstairs who wants to see you.'

'Who?' Francesca asked suspiciously.

'The same person who brought me the newspaper. I think your ex might  have guessed that in the normal run of things I wouldn't go near a  broadsheet. You know I always try to steer clear of any newspaper that  has enough pages to wallpaper my lounge.'

'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.