‘In Venice, we always used to listen to classical music. Do you remember?’ He took a packet of fresh tagliatelle from the chilled counter and tossed it into the trolley, then he began weaving slowly towards the aisles of tinned food. Much quieter there. He paused and spent an inordinately long time staring at various sauces while she stood hesitantly next to him and wondered what to say.
‘Somehow that always felt right in Venice. It’s a classical music sort of place.’
‘It never occurred to me that you might actually dislike that kind of music…’
‘I don’t.’
‘So tell me what you will be playing for us tonight over our wonderful meal, hmm?’
Francesca forced herself not to be rattled at his determination to chat to her. It was only natural. After all, they could hardly walk round a supermarket in total silence or else spend the entire evening conversing on the subject of food, fascinating though that was. There was just so much anyone could find to say about the merits of fresh shaved parmesan cheese over the mass produced grated variety. He was chatting because by nature he was an adept social mixer.
If she was jittery then it was entirely her fault. She couldn’t seem to stop him affecting her.
‘I have quite a good jazz collection.’ She guided the trolley away from the pointless jars and towards the checkout tills.
‘Not exactly new and modern, though, is it?’
‘You’d hate new and modern, Angelo.’ The queues were long. Francesca could see the woman in front glancing surreptitiously at Angelo, probably trying to work out whether he was famous, whether she should recognise him.
‘Try me.’
‘I think you’re confusing me with your fiancée. Shouldn’t she be the one opening you up to the joys of modern English music?’
Angelo’s eyes became veiled. ‘Georgina only does easy listening. Oh, and classical, of course, because that has always been my preferred taste.’
‘And, naturally, she would never want to have an opinion on anything that contradicts her lord and master.’ Flustered at the outburst, Francesca stared down into the trolley and took a deep, calming breath. ‘Sorry. Out of order and, before you ask, no, I’m not saying that you two aren’t suited. But you have to admit that it’s a bit strange. You coming to my house, getting me to cook for you. I can’t help but think that Georgina wouldn’t be exactly over the moon at that, and I don’t care how many un-jealous bones she’s got in her body.’ She looked at him seriously and lowered her voice. ‘You must know that you’re putting me in a very uncomfortable position just by hiring me to cater for your wedding, never mind this—you being here. Is that why you’ve come? Because you enjoy seeing me uncomfortable?’
‘You are being paranoid.’ He had forgotten how much he liked the way she stripped all the outer layers from a conversation and got to the honest core of it. Of course, now would be the perfect time to tell her that he and Georgina were no longer going to be married, that the big wedding catering job was not going to materialise, but he didn’t. Instead he smiled lazily at her.
‘If it stresses you out cooking for me, then of course I would not want you to feel obliged…’
‘It doesn’t stress me out.’ She shuffled a few inches forward with her trolley.
‘Good. Then no problem. Is it always this busy at a supermarket?’
Distracted, Francesca looked at him with an appalled expression. ‘Angelo, could you keep your voice down when you make remarks like that? Of course supermarkets are busy places. When was the last time you set foot inside one?’
‘Ah. Now let me think.’ He began helping her take things out of the trolley, watching with amusement as she restructured his untidy piling up of items on the belt. ‘I think I may have once gone into a very small one close to where I live.’
‘And you don’t want me to call you a dinosaur?’ Francesca hissed. ‘Look, please let me offload this trolley. Half the stuff you’re cramming on is trying to fall off the sides.’
‘Hence my argument for paying someone else to do the shopping for you.’
‘Yes. If you have more money than sense.’ And, of course, for most women, more money than sense in a man would be a very redeeming feature. He might be marrying Georgina because she fitted the bill, but how would he feel if perhaps she was marrying him because he fitted the bill?
‘Or not enough time on your hands to wage World War Three in pursuit of a few items of food.’
‘It’s not always like this.’ She grinned reluctantly at him. ‘If you come at weird hours it’s quite empty and you can fly around and get what you want without having to queue at the tills.’ Walking at a snail’s pace and insisting on looking at every jar and bottle didn’t help either when it came to speed. She realised that they had been shopping for well over an hour. Time was ticking past. There was a meal to cook. The chances of him being out of her house by nine were beginning to look remote.
She was aware of him chatting to her, nothing that would put her on the defensive. Once or twice, as she was filling the bags while he stood next to her, under orders to let her handle the packing, he referred to their past. Little droplets of memories that warmed her inside. The bread shop they would go to in Venice. The patisseries in Paris, where they had occasionally stayed in her apartment when it had been more convenient with their overlapping schedules.
He insisted on taking the bags into the house. ‘I’m more than competent when it comes to lifting heavy things,’ he informed her seriously. ‘Why don’t you go and stick the wine in the fridge and put on some of that modern English music a dinosaur like myself has not heard of?’
There was no point arguing. She stuck the wine in the fridge, wondered what she was doing, put on some R&B music, wondered a bit more what she was doing, and then there he was, piling bags on to the kitchen table and hunting in the cupboards for a couple of glasses for the wine.
And still talking to her, as though they were the friends they no longer were.
‘Let me help you,’ Angelo said, pouring them both a glass of wine.
‘What’s the good of that if the point is to see whether I’m capable of producing good food?’
Angelo stifled the urge to inform her that producing good food, or food of any kind, was not the point of the evening for him. He also stifled the urge to tell her that she looked as sexy as hell kitted out in a black and white checked apron, that he would be interested in seeing how the apron looked without anything worn under it.
‘I like the music,’ he said, dropping his eyes and swirling his wineglass gently around. ‘Sexy.’
The word dropped into the silence and rested there for a few moments. ‘Where’s Georgina this evening?’
‘Paris, I believe.’ Exhausting her rage through some retail therapy. Her mother would, no doubt, already have sympathised with her daughter that he was no good for her, a foreigner without any knowledge of how the British operated. The accusation had been one of the more choice ones from his ex-fiancée.
‘You believe? That’s a bit indifferent, Angelo. You should have asked her over here with you to sample my cooking.’
‘I prefer to savour the revelation on my own.’ He sipped some of his wine and caught her eyes over the rim of his glass.
The smoky intensity in his eyes went to her head like a bolt of lightning—a few heated seconds, plenty long enough for the sharply honed knife she had been wielding with such expertise to slice through skin.
With a little yelp, Francesca yanked her finger and dashed to the sink.
‘Let me see it!’ Angelo was next to her before she was even aware of him leaving the chair.
‘It’s nothing.’ She gave him a wobbly smile. ‘I don’t normally chop my finger to bits when I’m slicing onions.’
‘It’s pouring blood. Where is your first aid box?’
‘It’s not pouring blood. It’s…’ The remainder of her sentence was lost in sheer shock as he raised her finger to his mouth and sucked it.
; ‘Antiseptic,’ he murmured as her body temperature rocketed upwards at an alarming rate. ‘Did you know that? Let’s go and find some plaster.’
‘I have some in one of these drawers,’ Francesca mumbled.
‘Leave it to me.’ He began pulling open drawers while she stood, transfixed, staring, heart racing. He found the right drawer eventually and carefully began putting the plaster over the cut. His touch was electrifying.
‘There’s no need for you to do that, Angelo. I’m perfectly capable of putting on a piece of plaster myself.’ Fat lot of good the protest was, she thought, when she was passively allowing him to do what he wanted.
‘Nonsense. All women feel faint at the sight of blood. It’s a well documented fact.’ He looked at her and grinned. ‘Fortunately I’m a man and therefore very good at dealing with situations like this.’
‘That is the most…the most…’
‘Truthful thing you have ever heard spoken?’
‘The most ridiculous nonsense I’ve ever heard in my life.’ The plaster was on but he was still standing right there in front of her, making it very difficult for her to breathe and impossible for her to move, with her back to the counter.
‘You remember I once told you that for a while I toyed with the idea of studying medicine at university…’
‘And you remember that I once replied that thinking about studying medicine didn’t actually qualify you as a doctor?’
‘I always thought that that was a particularly harsh response,’ Angelo said piously, ‘especially considering that I had just successfully diagnosed your stress-induced stomach ulcer as indigestion.’
For a few breathless seconds Francesca didn’t say anything, then she muttered, looking away, ‘I’ll get on and do the cooking, then, if you don’t mind. Thanks for putting on a piece of plaster for me and I don’t mean to have the last word but I could have done it myself.’ She turned away, waiting for him to return to his chair, which he did. She failed to hear his exasperated sigh. ‘Actually,’ she carried on, papering over her chaotic feelings with small talk, ‘the catering course I went on was very good. We didn’t just learn how to cook. We also learnt quite a bit about nutrition and how what we eat affects our health and well-being, and also some basic first aid measures for dealing with the sort of accidents that can happen in a kitchen. You know, cuts, burns, that sort of thing.’ With her back to him, she could gather herself, get some kind of self-control going.
‘Really. Interesting.’ For a moment back then, he’d known that she was his, as dramatically turned on by him as he was by her. It hadn’t lasted.
‘Yes. Yes, it was. Very.’ Prawns were cooked rapidly, dressing was made for the salad to accompany them.
‘And was this the same course that your…boyfriend did?’ Angelo drawled.
‘Jack…no, Jack did another one, different place.’
Another brick wall. He decided to drop the subject. Damned if he was going to let her get away with an endless but safe conversation about the various methods of skinning tomatoes, though.
‘You are making me feel guilty, sitting here, doing nothing.’
‘You could always go for a walk and leave me here to get on with it,’ Francesca suggested. ‘I work better without an audience and you’re right, it’s boring for you just sitting down and watching.’
‘I never said that I was bored. You’re not drinking your wine.’
Francesca stopped what she was doing and took a long swig of the wine. Very expensive indeed. Light, crisp, dry with a nicely smoked flavour. ‘There,’ she said, looking at him. ‘Satisfied?’
‘Not quite yet,’ Angelo murmured, finishing his wine and rising to pour himself another. He would definitely have to get a taxi back to his apartment—if he needed to leave.
‘Don’t worry. The food won’t disappoint but if you guzzle too much of that stuff you won’t be able to appreciate it.’ Back to the safety of the chicken and the olives and the frying. ‘If you’re bored, you can choose some different music to put on. My CDs are all in the rack behind you.’
Angelo could feel irritation starting to get the better of him. He swallowed it down and began looking through her collection of music, extracting random CDs, which he stockpiled on the kitchen table in a spreading, untidy heap.
Out of the corner of her eye, Francesca witnessed the encroachment of mess over the previously pristine surface and was not at all nonplussed. She had discovered early on in their relationship that, although Angelo was highly organized in his work life, in fact the most organised man she had ever come across, he was spectacularly untidy in his private life. Clothes were dropped and stepped over, ties were hung in gathering piles over any convenient surface, jackets were draped over backs of chairs with absolutely no thought to preserving their longevity. She had found it exasperating and curiously endearing at the same time.
‘I hope you intend to put back all those CDs you’ve dumped on my kitchen table,’ she said, covering the pan that held the chicken and taking time out to sit down with her glass of wine.
‘Of course.’ He paused in his frowning inspection of cases to shoot her a surprised look.
‘Because your ability to be messy is legendary and I have no intention of clearing up behind you.’
Angelo frowned.
‘And there’s no need to look annoyed. I don’t have to tiptoe around you.’
‘When did you ever do that?’ he demanded. ‘I don’t recall you ever doing that!’
‘Oh. I forgot.’ She drained her glass and stood up to fetch some plates from the cupboard. ‘That was one of my faults. Lack of appropriate respect for the great Angelo Falcone!’ Somewhere in her head she thought, Oh, dear, shouldn’t have said that, but then why should she be on her agonisingly best behaviour? He was in her house, and not by her invitation. She would tell him that, should he want to pursue the conversation!
He didn’t.
‘Let us not argue,’ he said mildly. He refilled her glass. ‘Although, getting back to your accusation that I am a messy person, I challenge you to come to my apartment and test it for cleanliness.’
‘Your housekeeper. Just like the one you employed in Venice. There’s no point in arguing with evidence, Angelo.’ She indicated the CDs on the table with a nod of her head and began laying the table, containing a sigh when he gathered up the cases and stacked them unevenly at the bottom of the table, meaning that he would sit far too close to her for her liking.
He shrugged and slipped on one of her classical CDs, beautiful, soothing music that rippled through the small kitchen like water trickling gently over stones. Soft, romantic music. Music to dance to in a flowing dress, in the arms of a lover. All wrong, she thought, for this particular situation. She had to keep reminding herself that the man was engaged, that he had treated her pretty badly, never mind his super-polite behaviour now.
She served the prawns while the chicken was still simmering and reddened with pleasure at the appreciative noises he made. When he poured her another glass of wine, she accepted.
‘I hope you don’t think that I drink this much when I’m preparing food for clients,’ she said during a comfortable pause as she cleared away the prawns and began doing last-minute things to the main course. ‘Because I don’t.’
‘Some of the finest meals are cooked while under the influence of good wine,’ Angelo commented. ‘That starter ranks up there.’
‘You don’t mean that.’ With her back to him, she could feel her face glowing with pleasure. ‘Do you?’
‘Does it matter to you what I say?’
‘Yes. You’re a prospective client of mine. Of course it does!’ Francesca could feel her voice rising, unnaturally bright. A bit like the colour spreading across her cheekbones. ‘I’m always pleased when our food is complimented.’
Another brick wall. Three steps forward and two steps back, and every step back made the urgency inside him stronger. He didn’t know what was driving him on to want this woman. He just knew t
hat he did and if his reasons weren’t exactly noble, then his awesome powers of reason were insufficient to steer him off course.
The one thing he did know was that this time it would be different for him. He would be utterly in control. He would get her out of his system and would be able to walk away from her without looking back.
But first he would have to break down the barriers between them. Swallowing back a sigh of frustration, he embarked on the least provocative line of conversation he could think of, asking her questions about the catering business generally, watching as she transferred food from saucepans and pots to basic white casserole dishes.
‘Do you keep in touch with anyone from the modelling world?’ he asked, when she had finally sat down and indicated to him that he should help himself.
Francesca laughed. ‘Lord, no! I couldn’t wait to get out of it in the end. For a start I was beginning to be the mother figure to a new crop of girls, all still in their teens. Some of them even had the adolescent spots to show for it!’
‘I thought spots weren’t allowed on models.’ He didn’t remind her that his offer for her to quit modelling, to move to London with him, had met with blank refusal.
‘They’re not. Hence the army of make-up artists who follow in the wake of every model. I’ve never met any spot that can’t be successfully camouflaged under some expert face paint.’ He was listening to every single word she was saying, giving her nonsense small talk his undivided attention. She had forgotten what a huge part of his charisma that was—the ability to listen.
‘That used to irritate you, if I remember.’
Francesca’s eyes skittered away from his dangerously good-looking face. ‘I didn’t miss it when I left. My face probably did, though!’
‘You look better than you did then, if anything.’ He willed her to actually look back at him and she did. ‘Your hair suits you shorter. This chicken is very good, by the way. You do yourself a disservice when you say that Jack is the talent behind the cooking.’
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