'What is there not to understand? You wanted my involvement and now you have it.' Put like that, it was left to Georgina to try and quantify the level of involvement she had been expecting but, while he had listened with every show of appreciating what she was saying, he refused to budge and in the end she had been obliged to accept that he would more or less be running the show.
He reached for his mobile and rang the number on the business card that had been burning a hole in his wallet for the past three days.
Francesca answered almost immediately and, for a split second, hearing her voice down the end of the line was a brutal reminder of how they once used to talk on the phone, sometimes for hours on end, long, lazy conversations that made the physical distances between them seem less impossibly far.
'It's Angelo,' he said abruptly.
'How are you?'
'Is your diary at hand? We can arrange a time to meet so that we can discuss these menus in detail.'
'Angelo … I'm really not sure whether I'm equipped to cater for such a large number of people … '
'Haven't we covered that particular patch of ground already?'
'But-'
'I can meet with you and your partner tomorrow evening. Georgina will naturally want to come along as well.' Long, sexy conversations three years ago, when talking to her had been like a physical release for him after a gruelling day at work. He could remember her soft voice catching on a laugh, the way she had lowered it whenever she'd told him how much she was missing him, missing making love to him. He wondered now whether she had been saying the same things to someone else, someone more indispensable to her than he had ever been. 'Six-thirty at the bar in the Savoy,' he told her curtly. 'I'll expect you both there.'
Francesca was treated to the click of someone ending a phone call before she had a chance to speak and, with a little sigh of resignation, she turned to Jack, who had been sitting at the kitchen table, listening in on the phone call.
'It won't be as bad as you think,' was the first thing he said when he saw her face.
Francesca looked at him and smiled reluctantly. Jack knew enough about the situation to appreciate the awkwardness of it, but he knew nothing of the depth of feeling she had carried around with her for years, the knowledge of love lost for reasons beyond her control.
'No, it'll be worse. I wouldn't be surprised if he gets us there so that he can shake his head at what we suggest and conclude that we're not up to scratch for the job.'
'That would make him a very bitter man.'
'You've got it.' And it was a situation that never should have arisen. She should never have met him, should never have fallen in love with him. Theoretically, she should have fallen in love with the man sitting opposite her at the table. Same age, same background, same friends, most of whom they had long left behind, but still …
The beauty queen of the local comprehensive school with the highest truancy rate in the country should have ended up with the wild, reckless but irresistibly handsome bad-boy heartthrob, but fate had had other plans in store. Fate had decided to throw friendship into the cauldron, and friends they had become to the exclusion of everything else.
'Must have been a shock, seeing you,' Jack said with a wicked grin. 'Maybe he's still got the hots for you.'
'Oh, please. That was years ago. No, what he wants is to see me fail because I had the temerity to turn him down years ago and Angelo is not the sort of man who takes kindly to being turned down by a woman.'
'We won't fail, Ellie.'
'He calls me Francesca. For him, I'm the one who strung him along, rejected him only to run off and begin a new life with you.'
'Which is kind of true, in a way.'
'But not in the way he thinks. He thinks that we're an item.'
'And maybe it's safer that way,' Jack said thoughtfully. He leaned forward and rested both elbows on the table. 'I mean, he won't try anything if he thinks that I'm on the scene, will he?'
'Try anything like what?'
'Bit of a kiss and a cuddle in the larder?'
'The man's engaged!'
Jack shrugged. 'Fat lot of difference that would make to most men.'
'Jack, you're … you're … '
'Totally realistic?' He grinned affectionately at her. 'Think that's why I don't have any success with the ladies?'
'You have lots of success with the ladies, Jack McGill. You just don't want to take the plunge.'
'Because I'm realistic. I know the minute I step off the diving board I'm going to be thinking about swimming to the side of the pool and hopping on another one.'
'I give up on you.' But she never had and she knew she never would. They were tied to one another with bonds too strong to break.
'But the man obviously still has some effect on you.'
'Because I know him! I know he could destroy our careers for no better reason than getting revenge!'
Jack ignored the interruption. 'And it might be a good thing, in a way, that he's come back into your life. Maybe seeing him at close quarters, seeing him with his woman, you'll be able to put the whole thing into perspective and get on with your life. You'll be able to get him out of your system once and for all. You can't end up an old maid, Els. Fate worse than death when there are so many eager chaps out there waiting to snap up a beauty like you.'
'Oh, silly, selfish me, not looking at it from that point of view,' Francesca said dryly, but maybe, just maybe, he had a point. Maybe she needed to see Angelo Falcone, needed to see him in the company of his fiancée, embarking on the greatest adventure of his life, before she could fully move on from the past. Like it or not, the past had held her captive for too long.
'Knew you'd agree with old Jack. And we could pretend to be an item if it makes it easier. A fair few women have told me what a sexy hunk I am.' He folded his hands behind his head and looked smug. 'Which just goes to show that bald men can still pull the birds.'
Francesca didn't think for a minute that Angelo harboured any feelings towards her, bar the obvious one of wanting to see her suffer, but it certainly felt more reassuring thinking that Jack was some sort of emotional barrier between them.
Lord only knew how he intended to play the role, but she had given him sufficient warnings about what he was to say and what he wasn't. The upshot was that he had agreed to talk only about the food, with which he was inordinately talented. In the event of any pregnant pauses, she'd informed him, he was to rush in with illuminating chat on regional Italian cuisine, which was something he knew more about than most Italians, especially considering he had never set foot on Italian soil. Under no circumstances, she'd warned him repeatedly, was he to indulge in any chit-chat about the past.
'Talk about the food, sit and look pretty.'
'Pretty might be pushing it,' Francesca had countered but, the following day, she had to admit that he had scrubbed up well. He had pulled his only suit out of hibernation, matched it to a tie that just managed to get away with being quirky and a pinstriped shirt she had never seen. A present from one of his many ex-girlfriends, he had confided in her.
Classically, he just missed the mark, but he had the face of the perennial charmer. Wicked blue eyes and a rough appeal that had trapped many an unwary victim.
And she had taken time with her outfit as well. A smart, simple suit that was businesslike but in a warm apricot colour which stopped it from looking too severe. She knew that they looked like a well-matched team, but her heart was still beating madly when the time arrived and they were walking into the bar at the hotel.
A few days' reprieve and some sensible thinking had done very little to still her nerves. She found her eyes skittering around the room, searching him out. He wasn't there.
'Relax,' Jack said under his breath.
But even when they were seated, with their fruit juices in front of them, she still couldn't relax. She started to think he had changed his mind. His fiancée had talked him out of it and because she, Francesca, didn't matter, he hadn't seen fit to call and tell her the change of plan. By the time she finally saw his familiar figure standing in the doorway she had convinced herself that they were simply not going to bother to arrive.
Draped on his arm was a petite blonde, impeccably groomed and stunningly dressed in a casual short floral skirt and a silk vest top with a matching jacket that sat snugly on her waist. She heard Jack's swift intake of breath and smiled inwardly, imagining what he was thinking. Georgina would be just the sort of woman he found impossibly attractive. Blonde, small, fragile. He would find it very difficult not to flirt and, to his credit, he didn't. At least, not for the first forty-five minutes, during which they discussed menus, changes to menus, ingredients, everything under the sun to do with food.