Francesca didn’t reply. She stalked into the kitchen, looked at the mushroom omelette with distaste and made herself eat some of it while she waited for the kettle to boil.
When he sat opposite her, she resisted the temptation to tuck her knees to one side in case she touched him. Crazy! They had touched each other with hunger three years ago and yet now she couldn’t bear to think of herself reacting to any inadvertent physical contact.
‘I confess I was curious to meet your boyfriend. He wasn’t what I was expecting.’
Francesca shrugged and pushed her plate to one side. ‘What you were or weren’t expecting is none of my business.’ She made him his coffee, only belatedly realising that she had remembered how he took it. Strong, black, one sugar, just a level teaspoon. ‘There’s no need for you to apologise about your fiancée. It’s easy to get a bit light-headed if you drink wine at that hour of the evening, before there’s any food in your stomach. Was she pleased with what Jack and I had in mind for the meal? I hope so because last-minute changes are very difficult to accommodate.’
Angelo watched as she busied herself, tidying away things from the kitchen counter, dumping dirty dishes in the sink, doing anything to avoid looking at him. Talking about anything but what he wanted to talk about—her partner. Jack was no ex-model, but they looked good together, as though they belonged, and that had got to him. It enraged him that this woman could still affect him after all these absent years and after the way she had walked away from their relationship.
He had dropped Georgina off, returned to his flat, semi-changed, and decided that he was old enough and experienced enough not to allow his emotions to burst through their restraints. Somehow, though, he had found himself back at his car, had found himself punching in that address on the business card into the Satellite Navigation finder in his car, driving to her house.
‘After years mixing with the glamorous people in the modelling world, I was a little surprised to find that your lover is…so…shall we say unapologetically lacking in polish?’
Francesca opened her mouth to refute the assumption that Jack was her lover, and shut it.
‘Maybe I find it refreshing to be with someone who isn’t impressed by what people do for a living or how much money they earn.’
‘Are you implying that I was?’
‘I’m not implying anything.’ But he was. Would he really have given her the time of day if she had been a checkout girl in a supermarket? And wasn’t it telling that he had ended up with a woman whose pedigree would be a credit to him?
‘How long have you known him?’
‘A while.’
‘A while being…?’
‘Being none of your business, Angelo. In fact, my life is none of your business. I can’t take away the fact that we were once an item, but that was then and this is now.’ She was leaning against the sink, arms folded, every muscle tense.
‘Which doesn’t mean that I don’t still have your interests at heart.’ He liked the sound of that. Liked the way it made him rise above the pettiness of jealousy into the higher realms of magnanimity.
Francesca snorted with open disbelief. ‘And how do you work that one out, Angelo? How have you gone from wanting to settle old scores to caring about my personal welfare?’
‘I admit when I first saw you it brought a lot of old feelings out into the open. I am only human, after all,’ Angelo drawled. ‘But since then I’ve realised that I owe it to you to be honest and I honestly cannot see what you find stimulating about him.’
‘And that’s why you came? Because you’re big-hearted and you just wanted to express concern about my choice of partner?’ She looked at him resentfully, not liking the way he had come into her house and taken it over. ‘I love Jack,’ she said truthfully. ‘We work together and we get along well.’ She shrugged. ‘It doesn’t bother me that he’s unapologetically lacking in polish, as you put it. Actually, I think it’s pretty superficial to judge someone on their appearance. It’s what’s underneath that counts. But I don’t suppose you would agree with that.’ She knew that this was a pointless conversation. She knew that she should be as polite but as distant as she could be with him, remind herself that he was a man due to be married to a woman he was in love with. But seeing him after all this time out of the blue had turned her world upside down and she could feel herself hurtling towards an argument, any argument.