‘I’m nervous!’ Francesca cried. ‘You make me nervous!’
‘Why?’
‘You know why! Because you’re right. A few well-placed words could ruin what Jack and I have built up!’ A few well-placed words could do a hell of a lot more damage than that, but there was no way she was going to let him have any insights into her thoughts and fears. ‘And what if I give you my word that I will do nothing to endanger your livelihood?’ He realised that he didn’t want her tiptoeing around him, scared to death that he might carry out his casual threat. Not that he knew what he wanted. He shook his head in exasperation. ‘I have no intention of ruining you, Francesca. I admire what you’ve done. It must have taken a lot of guts to walk away from a safe income and take a chance on something like catering. And you, who never knew how to boil an egg.’ He raised his eyebrows and smiled at her, the first genuine smile she had seen on his face since fate had brought them back together.
Guarded though she remained, she felt herself relax. Just a little. Enough to return a ghost of a smile.
‘I know.’ When she lowered her eyes she saw his firm, sensual mouth. Lower them a bit more and she bumped into the hard expanse of his chest.
He was right. It was tricky pretending, acting as though they were vague acquaintances who just happened to have bumped into one another. A lot of the friction between them could be eradicated if they could speak to one another normally. She drew in a deep breath and looked at him.
‘Would you like another coffee, Angelo? I apologise if I’ve been on edge. It’s been hard wondering whether you were going to pull the rug from under our feet…’
Our feet. The coupling involved in that simple phrase cut him to the quick. It was a reaction he kept to himself as he took hold of the olive branch offered and accepted the coffee, obliging her by going into the sitting room to wait while she made it.
The sitting room was as modern as the rest of the house. Comfortable, with a deep sofa and two generously sized chairs, but there were no concessions to the Victorian origins of the house. The rug was thick and boldly inviting while the walls, bar two dramatic framed posters, were free of clutter.
She walked in while he was inspecting the room and quietly placed the coffee on the squat side table by the sofa, then she sat on one of the chairs and watched him.
‘I always imagined that you would be drawn to the little country house with the white picket fence,’ he said finally, looking at her over the rim of his cup as he sipped.
‘One day.’ Francesca shrugged. ‘Just not yet. London is the right place to be when it comes to catering. Much bigger catchment area. I could still do it in the country somewhere, but I doubt there would be enough money in it to keep things going and I can’t afford to try and turn a hobby into a living.’
‘So where did the money go, Francesca?’
‘Houses in London aren’t cheap and especially houses in a halfway decent location.’
‘So all those earnings went into buying this place?’
‘Mostly.’ She lowered her eyes, knowing that he would have clocked into the obvious discrepancy. She had been a successful model for quite a while and the pay cheques had not been measly. ‘And also there’s the purpose-built kitchen behind the house. If we wanted to do catering seriously we couldn’t just make do with my tiny kitchen. I had to have that built and it wasn’t cheap.’
‘And what does the boyfriend contribute to this scenario? What was he doing before he went into cooking?’
It was a perfectly harmless question. Francesca tried not to read criticism into it but she could feel her hackles rise and she swallowed down the urge to launch into another defensive argument. There was no mileage in arguing with Angelo. It just created a never-ending atmosphere of thick tension in which it was impossible to function. Bad enough sitting here with him, in the same room, knowing that only a few metres of empty space separated them.
He was leading the way by behaving in an adult fashion with her and it was her duty to follow his lead. She drew in a deep breath and skirted around a potentially perilous question.