by Kate Hardy
She was leaving already? But…‘Hang on, don’t you need to sort out some furniture first?’
‘Done.’
That was the problem when someone was as efficient as Fran. They could sort things out at the speed of light. Anyone else would’ve had to wait at least six weeks for the furniture to be delivered. Not her. ‘What about paint? I was going to help you paint the walls.’ It would take at least a day to do that, and they’d need another day to air the place to get rid of paint fumes. That would give him two days—with any luck, enough time to work out how to get her to stay.
‘Paint’s not a problem. I can live with magnolia walls.’
So he didn’t even get the two days he’d been banking on?
Oh, hell.
He stared at the suitcases in dismay. ‘You’re going now? Right this very minute?’ She’d been planning to leave without saying goodbye to him?
‘You’ve been very sweet to put me up while my flat’s been uninhabitable. But everything’s fine now. So it’s not really fair to put you out any longer.’
She hadn’t put him out. Far from it. She’d turned his flat into his home instead of just a place to sleep and maybe eat. ‘Fran—’
But what he’d intended to say was cut off by a beep from outside.
‘That’ll be my taxi,’ she said.
He really didn’t want her to go.
But she clearly couldn’t wait to leave, or else she wouldn’t have packed so fast, would she? So although he’d thought that the last couple of weeks had changed everything between them, maybe it hadn’t been the same for her.
She was leaving.
And their relationship was back to being a fake. Something to stop other people being hurt.
He hadn’t bargained on getting hurt, himself.
And he didn’t know if he could go through with this. Pretend in front of his family that everything was fine, when it was very far from fine. He raked a hand through his hair. ‘Look, do you want me to make some excuse for you at Nonna’s dinner on Thursday?’
She shook her head. ‘No, I’ll be there. I want to be able to say goodbye.’
Another blast of the taxi’s horn. The kind of length that meant, I do have other fares to pick up, you know, so will you stop messing about and hurry up?
‘I’d better go,’ she said, picking up her suitcases. ‘Apologies for the short notice, but I’ll need to take tomorrow morning off. I’m expecting some deliveries. But I’ll work late to make up the time.’
‘Whatever.’ He was too numb to protest.
‘Thanks for everything, Gio.’ She picked up her suitcases. ‘I’ll see you later.’
‘Let me take those.’ He didn’t want her to go—but he wasn’t going to stand by and watch her struggle. His hand touched hers as he took the cases from her, and the contact made his heart contract sharply.
This couldn’t be happening.
Shouldn’t be happening.
If she hugged him goodbye, that would be it. He was carrying her back to his flat and to hell with the taxi driver.
But she didn’t. She just gave him a really, really bright smile—as if she were truly delighted to be going back to her own space. ‘Thanks for everything, Gio.’
The door closed.
And the taxi drove off.
Gio walked up the stairs to his flat. And even though there wasn’t actually that much missing—Fran, being neat and tidy, hadn’t taken up much room in the first place—the place seemed empty. Echoey.
The whole heart of it had gone. With Fran.
He couldn’t settle to anything that evening. Although he went through the motions of cooking a meal, dinner for one felt completely wrong. Like a discord. In the end, he stopped toying with his food and scraped it into the bin. Music didn’t make him feel any better, because he kept thinking of the times he’d played to Fran, the light in her eyes. And there was nothing on television.
He couldn’t face going to bed. It was too big, too wide, too empty without Fran in his arms. So he sat on the sofa, flicking channels aimlessly and just wishing. Wishing that he’d never been stupid enough to let her go.
Not home. Not even a flat. After the space she’d shared at Gio’s, it felt more like a broom cupboard. Not her broom cupboard, either. Fran hadn’t yet replaced her ruined books, and although she’d managed to salvage her photographs there wasn’t anything to stand them on. So she hadn’t unpacked them and the place felt as impersonal as a hotel room.
Her wardrobe rail had dried out, so she mechanically replaced her clothes on the hangers. She had to clench her jaw hard when she unpacked the party dress—the dress she’d been wearing when Gio had first kissed her properly, when he’d sung for her. The dress she’d thought was ruined, but Angela’s friend had salvaged. It would definitely have to go to a charity shop. She couldn’t handle the memories.
So much for thinking what they’d shared was special. He’d hardly been able to wait to get his space back. He’d even offered to help her paint the walls, he’d been that keen for her to go.
She dragged in a breath. Her world had collapsed before. This time it was going to be a hell of a lot harder to build it all back up again.
But she’d do it. She’d get there. And never, ever again would she lose her heart to someone.
Even turning the shower thermostat to near-on freezing didn’t make Gio feel any more awake the next morning. He’d slept so badly that he felt hungover—as if he’d drunk way too much cheap red wine. Paracetamol went a little way to muffling the pain in his head, but he felt lousy.
Today, he’d talk to Fran. Tell her how he felt. Lay his heart on the line and ask her to move back in with him.
But Fran walked into the office dead on nine o’clock, all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, as if everything was perfectly all right with her world. ‘Good morning.’
And the words Gio had planned to say stuck in his throat. She was obviously quite happy with the situation. Pleased to be back in her own space. So if he asked her to move back in with him, it was obvious that she’d say no.
‘Morning,’ he muttered.
If she noticed he looked like hell, she didn’t comment. Simply slid into her seat and started working through the morning’s post.
And Gio’s world turned just that little bit darker.
How the hell could he stay with her in the office? No way was he going to be able to get any work done. His concentration was shot to pieces. All he wanted to do was wrap his arms round her and kiss her stupid. And she was acting as if nothing had ever happened between them—that they’d only ever had a business relationship.
He couldn’t handle this.
‘Gotta go to Docklands,’ he muttered, and left. Before he did something stupid.
Like beg.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
GOING to Isabella’s farewell party at Netti’s restaurant was the hardest thing Fran had ever had to do. To walk in, greet the Mazettis and chat with them as if nothing was wrong, when she and Gio had barely spoken to each other all week and things were decidedly awkward between them.
She knew he found the situation as difficult as she did, because he’d avoided her. There had always been a meeting he’d needed to go to. Or a problem at one of the branches he needed to sort out. Or something to do with the franchise. He hadn’t even picked up the phone to talk to her; he’d sent her text messages or emails instead. They’d agreed by voicemail that they’d arrive separately at the party; their cover story was that he’d be ‘late’ because she hadn’t been able to get him out of the office.
And now they had to pretend, for Nonna’s sake, that everything was perfectly fine.
Thank goodness everyone kept swapping seats between courses so she didn’t have to sit next to Gio. If he’d draped his arm round her shoulders or picked her up and shared her chair—as he’d been doing for the previous few weeks—she wouldn’t have been able to resist nestling closer to him.
Which, considering that he’d made it very c
lear he didn’t want to take their relationship further, was completely pathetic.
And Fran wasn’t going to let herself be pathetic.
She was just really, really glad she’d dressed up tonight. Posh underwear to make herself feel special, high heels to boost her confidence, and full make-up with a concealer to hide the dark shadows under her eyes.
Tonight she was going to smile and smile and smile.
To hide the fact that her heart was breaking.
How could Fran do this? Gio wondered. How could she sit and chat so easily to his parents and his sisters and his grandmother and his cousins, as if nothing was wrong? How could she laugh at Ric’s terrible puns and make a fuss of the kids and filch the last one of Netti’s cheese discs from the plate in the centre of the table and just be so damned normal?
He was finding it a hell of a struggle.
And then it got worse.
‘Gio. You’ve been sitting too far away—because, as always, you were late to dinner,’ Isabella said, tutting. ‘Come and talk to me.’
There wasn’t a spare seat next to his grandmother. Because Fran was sitting there.
Hell, hell, hell.
His family was used to him scooping Fran up and sitting her on his lap. He’d done it ever since that first Sunday lunch at his parents’ house. So he knew they’d expect him to do it now. If he didn’t, they’d guess that something was wrong between them. But if he did…would Fran mind?
Then again, she was playing along tonight. Pretending everything was normal, for Nonna’s sake.
And playing along with his family’s expectations meant that he could hold her again.
It was too much for him to resist. So he walked over with a smile, scooped Fran out of her chair and sat in her place, settling her on his lap.
He could feel the warmth of her body through the little black dress she was wearing. And he could also feel the tension running through her; her body was almost rigid. As though she’d snap if either of them moved.
Clearly she minded. A lot.
But he couldn’t see a way out of this without giving some very awkward explanations he’d rather not make. So he simply smiled and chatted to his grandmother as if he didn’t have a care in the world—and hoped that nobody in his family was trying to read his body language. Or Fran’s.
This was unbearable, Fran thought. Gio had been keeping his distance, and she could cope with that. But now they were up close and personal, sitting on his lap as if they couldn’t bear to be any further apart…
Oh, lord. Her body remembered just how his skin felt against hers. Just how his body felt inside hers.
And how she wanted him to touch her. Cover every inch of skin with kisses. Tease her until she was on the knife-edge of climax—and then take her over with him, all the way.
She shivered.
‘Are you all right, Fran?’ Ric asked. ‘You look a bit…’
She felt Gio tense.
Well, she wasn’t going to blow their cover at this late stage. Not after all the work they’d put into it. ‘A bit sad,’ she said. ‘Yes, I am. Because Nonna’s going back to Milan when I’m only just getting to know her, and it’ll be too long before she’s back here again.’
Right answer. She felt Gio relax again.
Though his arms were still wrapped round her waist, holding her close to him. Too close for comfort, and not close enough to satisfy the ripples of desire running down her spine.
But she wasn’t going to beg.
He’d made his position clear.
And she’d respect that.
‘I’m coming back at Christmas,’ Isabella said with a smile, ‘though you can always come to Milan. In fact, yes. Gio, you should bring Francesca over to see the rest of the family. And no excuses about being too busy at work. It’s time you had a holiday, too.’
‘Sure, Nonna. We’ll work something out,’ he said.
At long, long last the party was over. And Fran couldn’t stop herself hugging everyone extra hard at the end of the evening. Because this was going to be the last time she saw them. This wasn’t goodnight. Wasn’t ciao. It was arrivederci—a formal and permanent goodbye.
She’d loved having a family to belong to. A family where she fitted in instead of feeling stranded on the edges.
As for Gio—she didn’t dare think about what she felt for Gio. Because she knew she’d crumble, right here, right now. At least she’d had the foresight to call a taxi, so she didn’t have to deal with the awkward situation of Gio feeling obliged to take her home.
Fran slept badly that night.
By the morning she’d made her decision. This really couldn’t go on; there was only one solution. One that was going to hurt like hell—but it was better than letting everything drag on, never letting the scars have a chance to heal.
To her relief, Gio was actually in the office when she walked in.
She closed the door behind her and leaned against it. ‘Gio.’
He swivelled round in his chair. ‘What?’
‘I’m sorry. I can’t do this,’ she said. Her throat felt as if it were filled with sand. Choking.
She was not going to break down and cry. She was going to do this with dignity.
‘I know we said a week’s notice on either side, but it’s not a good idea. I’ll forfeit a week’s wages in lieu of notice.’ Money wasn’t the most important thing here. She had her redundancy pay and her ‘garden leave’ from the studio. But she needed to leave now. Before she made a complete and utter fool of herself.
She was leaving?
Leaving Giovanni’s?
For good?
Gio stared at her, so shocked he wasn’t capable of uttering a single word.
‘Sorry to let you down. I hope the franchise thing works out okay for you. Um, bye.’
And that was it.
The door closed behind her again.
She was gone.
It hurt. It felt as if her heart were being torn out with a rusty spoon to walk away from Gio, to walk away from the colleagues she’d become fond of and the family she’d felt part of.
But Fran knew without a doubt it was the right thing to do.
Because Gio hadn’t even tried to stop her.
Quite what she was going to do now, she wasn’t sure. But she was going to walk out of the coffee shop with her head held high. And nobody was going to see her tears.
The black hole was back.
Except it was bigger than before.
A lot bigger, Gio thought savagely.
And throwing himself into work didn’t help. At all. Without his perfect office manager to be part of it, the franchise scheme had lost its appeal. He couldn’t care less any more about corporate identities and how to blend it with regional specialities.
Without Fran, nothing mattered.
Even his old stress relief—playing technically difficult pieces on the guitar—didn’t help any more. Because he kept remembering the nights he’d played to her, sung to her. The time he’d sung for his supper—and she’d rewarded him with kisses. Kisses that were gone for good.
He was sitting in his office after a week in hell, staring into space, when he heard the door close.
Fran?
No, of course not. He pushed the hope down before it had time to grow. He spun round in his chair to see his mother standing there, and pinned a fake smile on his face. ‘Hi, Mum. How’s it going?’
‘That’s the question I want to ask you,’ Angela said.
‘Fine, fine.’ He flapped a hand dismissively. ‘Just a bit busy with the franchise stuff.’
‘Which is why you haven’t called home for a week. Why you’ve ignored every single text from your sisters and you don’t answer your mobile phone. Why you take your office phone off the hook every evening and stay here until stupid o’clock. And why you never return any messages from your voicemail or answering machine.’
Gio forced his smile to widen. ‘I’m fine, Mum. Just busy.’
‘Righ
t.’ She walked over to him and traced the shadows under his eyes with the tip of her finger. ‘So that’s why you have these, is it? And you’ve lost weight.’ Her mouth thinned. ‘You haven’t been eating properly, have you?’
‘Course I have,’ he fibbed. Food tasted like ashes. And he couldn’t remember what or when he’d last eaten. It didn’t matter. He couldn’t care less.
She shook her head, mouth pursed. ‘Don’t try to pull the wool over my eyes, Giovanni Mazetti. When you’re really busy, you persuade Netti to do you a takeaway and you at least stop for two minutes in her kitchen for a chat. But nobody’s seen you for a week.’ She paused. ‘Nobody’s seen Fran, for that matter.’
Ah. He should’ve guessed his mother would work it out for herself.
‘Are you going to tell me what happened, or do I have to nag it out of you?’
He shrugged. ‘It’s like you and Nonna always say. No sensible girl’s going to wait around for a workaholic, is she?’
‘Fran’s sensible,’ Angela pointed out. ‘And you reformed for her. You actually started taking time out to enjoy yourself. You even took lunch breaks. And yet the day after Nonna went back to Milan, you broke up with her.’ She shook her head. ‘Something doesn’t quite ring true.’
He sighed. ‘OK. If you want the truth, it was a set-up right from the start. I know how much Nonna wanted me to settle down. You all assumed Fran was more than just my office manager, despite the fact I told you the truth, so she agreed to be my pretend girlfriend while Nonna was in England.’
‘I see.’ Angela folded her arms. ‘Bit of a drastic measure, don’t you think?’
‘Nonna sounded so happy at the idea I’d settled down. How could I disappoint her?’ He looked away. ‘I’ve already disappointed my family enough.’
Angela took his hand and squeezed it. ‘Gio, you’ve never been a disappointment to any of us. And if this is about when your dad was ill, that really wasn’t your fault. Just for the record, he’d been having chest pains for a few weeks before the heart attack, except being your father he pretended they didn’t exist and didn’t tell anyone about them. And he was perfectly capable of getting a temp in to cover your shift; he didn’t have to do it himself. Nobody’s ever blamed you for what happened—except yourself,’ she said gently. ‘And nothing we could do or say would persuade you of the truth. It drives me crazy that you’re still wearing a hair shirt after all these years. The business is doing so well that you can afford to take time out and do that degree in music—and you should have done it years ago. You need to do what makes you happy, Gio.’