The last of the dishes now completed the pyramid which threatened to topple over, and Charlotte stood up and fetched a tea towel from the drawer. ‘I can tell you don’t do much washing up, Riccardo,’ she joked, to distract herself from the hollowness of the reality opening up in front of her. She picked up a plate from the top and dried it, feeling his proximity like a knife wound.
Riccardo thought that that was typical, because despite all her chat about his great bonding talents—as though connecting with his own flesh and blood had really been some kind of mountain he had been obliged to try and climb—she still saw him as essentially the arrogant bastard who had rejected her once upon a time. She hadn’t let it go in eight years and she never would.
‘Well, no.’ Riccardo shrugged one of those dismissive shrugs that spoke volumes of the man who ran an empire with a steel fist. Pride would not allow him to plead his case. If she’d dismissed him as a bastard, then why fight the image? ‘Why should I?’
He stood back from her and folded his arms. From a detached point of view, he disapproved thoroughly of what she was wearing. Combat trousers and sloppy cotton jumpers that looked as though they had been through the wash a thousand times were not, in his opinion, the kind of sexy, feminine gear he liked to see women in. But oddly, over the past couple of weeks, he had grown accustomed to her curled up in her comfy clothes, and it now struck him that he, too, had begun to dress down. It wasn’t surprising, really, considering how casual life was in her house. It wasn’t a place fashioned for designer clothes. That he had changed without even noticing it jarred.
‘Limitless money can buy limitless things,’ he heard himself say, and winced internally at the high-handed bore he sounded. ‘Including a dishwasher. Not, of course, that I usually find myself facing stacks of dirty dishes. Isn’t that what good restaurants are for?’
‘I find it more fun to do the washing up with Gina by hand,’ Charlotte said coolly. ‘It’s a nice time for us to catch up and chat. But I guess in the world you live in catching up at the end of the day at the kitchen sink just isn’t quite the done thing. Anyway, who would you have to catch up with?’
She closed the cupboard door on the last of the dried dishes and retreated to the safety of the kitchen chair. It felt good to argue with him. Really, if she was going to say goodbye, then she couldn’t face saying goodbye to a considerate, witty, sexy, ‘cooking a meal and doing the dishes’ Riccardo. She drew her legs up and propped her chin on her knees. When she glanced down, she could see her perfectly painted pink toenails. She had given herself a pedicure two days ago. It was something she never did, but Riccardo had been downstairs explaining fractions to Gina, and she had found herself in the wonderful and novel situation of being able to spend a little quality time on herself. So she had painted her toenails.
Afterwards, she had realised that a part of her had done it for his benefit. He liked women who had painted toenails. It was something he had told her years ago in passing. Not, she knew, that he would even spare a glance at hers, but she had done it anyway. Just looking at them now made her angry with herself because she had disobeyed all her own rules of self-preservation and allowed herself to fall in love with him all over again.
She looked at him standing there, tea towel slung carelessly over one shoulder, arms folded as he stared right back at her.
‘Meaning what exactly?’ Riccardo asked tightly.
‘Meaning that you haven’t exactly spent the past eight years committing yourself to another human being, have you, Riccardo? No long-term partner, no family. Just a series of babes, and everyone knows that men don’t catch up with babes over the kitchen sink. Men catch up with them over some Chablis and French food in a restaurant, followed by a hot night in the sack. I’ll bet you’ve never even gone on holiday with any of them!’ Okay, she was pushing it, she could tell by the grim, shuttered expression on his face, but perversely that made her feel good.