‘I’m a little hungry.’
‘That’s a very pedestrian way to greet my remark,’ Angelo complained, thinking how much he had missed her forthrightness. ‘Shall we go out for dinner? I know a very nice little restaurant just around the corner…’
‘You mean get dressed, walk somewhere, order food, wait for food, eat it, then drag the remainder of the evening out with coffee? That sounds a little long.’ She grinned and nudged her leg along his. His body felt slick, as hers did, from the physical exertion of making love. ‘I could rustle up something from your fridge.’
‘I’m not sure that’s such a good idea,’ Angelo drawled.
‘Why not?’ Francesca was genuinely puzzled. Once upon a time they had cooked together, or rather she had watched him while he cooked, lounging around in one of his shirts, in that little apartment in Venice. Now that she herself had become a cook, and one in demand, it made no sense to her that they should hunt out cuisine in any restaurants.
‘Because what we have now,’ he told her dispassionately, ‘is all about sex. It’s not about domesticity and cooking.’ Never again would he go down that road with this particular woman. He could look back now at the past and in retrospect make a couple of very good deductions as to how she had managed to insinuate herself beneath his skin to the point where he had recklessly allowed himself to become vulnerable. It had been an easy enough road but a slippery one. The sex had turned into something warmer and more comfortable, and lazy, snatched evenings in his kitchen with the sound of some classical music wafting in the background while they played at being real partners had been the first step downhill.
‘Oh, right. Yes. I understand.’
‘I hope you do, Francesca, because if you don’t then we might just as well call it off right now.’
He was deadly serious.
‘It would be a shame, considering how much pleasure we give to one another, but it would be life…’
The rush of hurt that followed his words, his casual indifference to anything intimate between them aside from intimacy of a purely physical nature, was intense. Why the hell should she be hurt? It wasn’t, she reminded herself, as though she could ever, ever allow her relationship with Angelo Falcone to go anywhere. What he had offered was just what suited her, the only thing that could suit her, when it came to him. It was lunacy to get wistful about something as trivial as sharing the cooking.
‘Are you sure it’s okay for us to even be here?’ she asked ingenuously. ‘In your townhouse? Considering it’s all about sex, wouldn’t it make more sense for us to meet in a hotel somewhere? Maybe we should think about eliminating conversation completely.’
‘Now you’re being ludicrous.’
‘If a No Cooking rule applies on the premises, then that’s fine with me.’ She hated herself for the desperation that kept her rooted to the spot, but if he was using her then wasn’t she similarly using him? She loved him and wanted him and if she chose to indulge those feelings for a while, then what was wrong with that?
For the first time, she envied Jack his cavalier attitude towards members of the opposite sex, the blithe manner in which he could have passing relationships and be perfectly happy. It was a damn sight healthier than being hunkered down in a hole of her own making.
‘Just so long as you know that you’ll never sample my fabulous cuisine now, even if you begged.’ She kept her voice light as she slipped out of the bed and headed towards the en suite bathroom.
Angelo followed her. He had had to be frank with her but, still, it was a relief that she hadn’t walked out. Not that it would have been the end of the world, but it would have been a tad disappointing when his expectations had been raised.
She wasn’t aware of him pushing the door open and for a few seconds he stood there and stared as she stepped under the shower, catching her hair in her hands and raising her face to the shower head. She had the most exquisitely graceful body he had ever seen.
He entered the shower cubicle before she was even aware that he was in the bathroom and relieved her of the shampoo.