‘And did you think that I might?’
‘No. I thought you were a happily engaged man. I didn’t realise then that you would be willing to cheat on your partner before you even took the marriage vows.’ He deflected her neat turning of the tables with a careless shrug. ‘But then again,’ she continued, gaining some self-righteous momentum, ‘I wasn’t to know that your engagement was just a sham, that you weren’t in love with your fiancée, just using her because she happened to have all the right connections and, of course, a man of your standing would have to have a woman with all the right connections. Silly me! Which brings us to Georgina. Are you going to tell her about me? About our past? About the fact that you came here and…and…’
‘She will never know about our past. Why on earth should she?’ Angelo said honestly. ‘And I am glad you brought up my fiancée because I am curious to know how it is that someone so full of moral rectitude still ended up in bed with me. With a fiancée hovering in the background. You might have had your clear conscience when it came to Jack but did you not stop to consider the other person who might have been affected by our love-making?’
The silence stretched between them to breaking-point. She had laid down her own traps only to find herself neatly manoeuvred into a much bigger one, not of her making.
‘No answer to that?’ He stood up and flexed his muscles. ‘We seem to have forgotten all about eating in the…urgency of things. No matter. You won’t be catering now anyway.’ The smile he gave her was the smile of a tiger watching the pointless antics of an antelope in full flight.
For a few seconds Francesca thought that he was moving over to where she was sitting, and for a few seconds Angelo considered it. Considered confronting her with the shaming truth that she had forgotten all about Georgina in her suffocating need to make love to him. He rejected the idea.
He also considered, for rather less time, the possibility of walking away from her now. For good. Wouldn’t he be left with the pleasurable feeling of having finished business? Of having put a full stop at the end of the incomplete sentence? Once and for all?
Instead, he paused as he drew level with her and smiled. ‘It’s been a…revelation, seeing you tonight, Francesca. And I am very sure I will be seeing you again.’ He looked at her and thought that he could make love to her again. Right now and right here, forget about the comfortable trappings of a bed.
‘Over my dead body, Angelo. I might have made a mistake once but I learn quickly. I won’t be making the same mistake again.’ If only she could feel that. Deep in her bones where it mattered. Instead, she heard the heartfelt words roll off her tongue as she stared back up at him and was terrified that, put to the test, they would be as empty as a shell.
‘I would love to stay and debate the definition of the word mistake,’ he murmured, ‘but it’s late. I should be getting back.’
The sound of the front door closing was, Francesca gloomily reckoned, roughly two hours too late.
She had emerged from the evening with her pride well and truly in tatters because her body had decided to break away and follow a course of its own. He had touched her and she had melted; it was as simple as that.
And off he had gone, back to Georgina and his well-ordered life. With, of course, another caterer to take over the joy-filled wedding celebrations.
She could have kicked herself. Could have kicked anything. And did. The chair. Followed by the door as she made her way upstairs, only to confront the shameful sight of bedclothes all tangled up, gleefully reminding her of her own lack of will-power.
It took half an hour to change the linen, another hour to put it in the washing machine and, once washed, into the tumble-drier. Hopefully it would eradicate the lingering aroma of lust but she knew that that was just paying lip service to a problem. In her head the lust was still there and, worse, it was all tangled up in emotions and feelings she didn’t even want to start analysing too deeply.
It was after midnight when she reached for the phone and dialled Jack’s number. The chances of interrupting his sleep were remote. On a weekend Jack made a point of getting as little sleep as possible and, sure enough, he answered his mobile in the slurred, happy voice of someone well past the point of sobriety.