One-Click Buy: November Harlequin Presents (92 page)

She caught him looking at her in the mirror and smiled, asked him about the restaurant, teased him that too much rich food would have him putting on weight and enjoyed the sound of him laughing back with her. Keeping it light all the time.

They strolled to the restaurant, which turned out to be an Italian and a very good one.

Looking at her across the table, he was amazed to find himself getting turned on by her, by the habit she had of resting her chin in her hand and frowning slightly, as though every piece of conversation was being given the utmost consideration. Even when the topic of conversation happened to be work, a subject guaranteed to turn off the most ardent female and therefore one he had never felt the slightest inclination to discuss. Francesca, though, made a good listener. She offered opinions, which, he had to admit, were not entirely frivolous, and teased him out of his seriousness by telling him one or two amusing anecdotes about her own job and the near disasters they had had over the years.

Nearly two and a half hours later, Angelo was prepared to admit that he felt relaxed. Relaxation, he reasoned, was not an intrusion into the ground rules he had laid down. Sex was one thing, but it had to be interspersed with something else. Obviously, not as a rule, but occasionally they might surface sufficiently to go out for a meal and at such times conversation was fine.

Perfectly satisfied with how the day had progressed—in fact, how
life
seemed to be progressing at the moment—he instinctively began walking back to his townhouse. Lord knew, but the blood was already surging through his veins at the prospect of ravishing her again. After a couple of steps he realised that she wasn't next to him. In fact, spinning round on his heel, he saw that she was standing on the kerb, hand outstretched to hail a passing cab.

‘What are you doing?' he demanded, waving away the taxi that had slowed down for the fare.

‘Going home.' Francesca looked at his darkly scowling face and smiled. ‘It's late and I'm going to have to get up early to catch up on all the things I should have done today but didn't get around to.'

Angelo looked at her through narrowed eyes, weighing up whether to try and entice her back to his house. He knew he could. Instead, he nodded and smiled. All told, it wouldn't be a good idea to have her back anyway. It was late and he had no intention of her sleeping over.

‘I'll call.'

Francesca dropped her eyes. Those two words said it all. She had become the puppet and he the all-powerful puppet master, holding the strings, in control. If sweet revenge had been what he was after, then he had got it because he had reduced her to a state of voluntary helplessness. But she believed what he had told her, that revenge was not the name of the game. If it had been, he would have walked away the very first time he had proved to himself that he could have her. He certainly would not have broken off his engagement with Georgina and wrecked his perfect plans. Angelo Falcone was not a man to disturb the onward march of his well-planned life on the spur of the moment. He wanted her and had given her the option of satisfying him and herself in the bargain, and she had taken it because she was a coward when it came to him. He had stormed back into her life and revealed it for what it was. A life devoid of any emotional passion or connection to anyone else, given meaning only by virtue of the career she had chosen.

She nodded and turned away, stretching out her hand once again for a passing cab. She neither expected, nor was surprised by the fact that he didn't see fit to wait by her side until one arrived. Why should he? She meant no more to him than a body that could excite him. Any feelings beyond that were illusory. They could chat and laugh but her main purpose was to be his willing bed companion. Everything else orbited around that one central need.

And she would do it, because she loved him and loved life when he was in it, for better or for worse.

The fact that her circumstances would never change, that she would never be able to even dream of anything more, was her cross to bear.

In the meantime, she would snatch what she could get. A black cab pulled up and she hopped in, tempted to look back and seek him out, and making herself stare straight ahead, destination unknown.

S
OMETHING
wasn't quite right. Angelo could feel it in the small breaks in conversation, during which her eyes slid away from his and her hand fiddled with the damn wineglass, from which she was drinking very little.

‘Okay, you might as well spit it out. What's wrong?' The Italian restaurant, at which they had dined for the first time almost six weeks ago, had become their staple eating out place. It was convenient and convenience counted when sitting down and eating was something that they wanted to do in the minimum amount of time.

Because their need for one another had not diminished. Angelo looked at her broodingly across the table and raised his wineglass to his lips. He was mildly surprised that she was still a fixture in his life, considering they now saw each other several times a week, which had given him ample time to grow bored, but he wasn't questioning the situation. He just knew that when he clicked his fingers she came running and that suited him superbly. He had also been careful not to allow any complacency to enter into the well-oiled arrangement. No cosy cooking in the kitchen, not even a take-away. They either ate out or didn't bother to eat at all. And no sleeping over. He left, whatever the time, when they utilised her house and she did the same when, as more often than not, she came to him. His boundaries were perfectly intact, allowing him to enjoy himself without any bothersome stirrings of conscience or doubt.

‘Nothing.' Francesca dragged her eyes back to him and forced herself to smile. ‘I'm not very hungry.'

‘So I notice. But I'm not buying that as an excuse. So tell me what's wrong. Some catering job not going according to plan? Or are you worrying about Jack again? He's a big boy. He can take care of himself.' He had heard a great deal about Jack over the past few weeks, entertaining stories of his various escapades, some of which left her tearing her hair out in despair.

‘I know that,' Francesca said, staring down at her plate and contemplating the arrangement of chicken and sautéed potatoes there which was making her feel slightly nauseous.

‘So what then?'

She detected the hint of impatience in his voice and winced. Mood swings were not part of the deal.

‘What if I told you that I was tired? That I just wasn't in the mood to go back to your house tonight and make love? Or that yes, I wanted to go back to your house, but to talk.'

‘Talk about what?'

‘Anything.' Francesca shrugged. ‘What you've been up to. What I've been up to. The weather. The crisis in the Health Service. Why it always seems to rain on weekends.
Anything
.'

‘We know what each other has been up to. The weather is autumnal. The Health Service always seems to be in a mess, and it rains on weekends because the English climate is unpredictable, diabolical and likes to see people cancel their planned activities at the last minute. There, covered.' He signalled for the bill and continued watching her while he waited.

‘So it is. I'm glad we got that out of the way. Now we can repair back to your place and do what we do best.'

‘Long evenings spent chatting isn't what this is about, Francesca. I thought you understood that.' He saw the way she flinched and was tempted to exercise a bit more compassion, but he resisted. No point in setting precedents that he would then find himself compelled to continue fulfilling. He wasn't in the business of building a relationship with her. He had been there, done that and had the tee shirt to show for his efforts. Besides, he thought, they talked, didn't they? How much more conversation was she looking for?

‘I do understand, Angelo. I don't know what came over me.' Now she was beginning to feel emotional, saying all sorts of stuff that she hadn't intended. She certainly hadn't intended to launch into a tirade about wanting to go back to his place and bond on some kind of spiritual, platonic level. The opposite. She had been looking forward to seeing him, to sleeping with him before she broke her news. She hadn't planned on an emotional outburst which would leave him cold and withdrawn.

Angelo, expert as he was at second-guessing other people, recognised her wobbly smile for what it was, a plaster covering up something else, and for a fleeting second felt a chill of foreboding sweep through him before he reminded himself that there couldn't possibly be anything substantially wrong. He had seen her two days ago and they had spent an amazing four hours together, a marathon and lazily indolent evening during which they had not managed to struggle out of his much-used king-sized bed. And, dammit, they had talked then, hadn't they? What could have happened in the space of two days to have brought about this sudden and unwelcome shift in atmosphere?

Had Jack been talking to her? He knew that they shared some kind of bond, although the reasons behind it were beyond him, but that being the case, maybe the man had put notions in her head, notions about the wisdom of getting involved in a purely sexual relationship that wasn't going anywhere. From what she had told him, Jack was the last person to lecture anyone on the importance of building relationships but then people who lived in glass houses were often the ones who threw the most stones. And, like it or not, she paid heed to things the man said, which was something he found irksome but was willing to put up with in view of the fact that they were just friends. He did not feel inclined to be quite so generous if the man had been putting ideas into her head. In fact, he would have to mention something to her about Jack, maybe give her a little talk on the importance of cutting apron strings.

He fulminated in silence as they stepped outside the restaurant, where the swing towards autumn was felt in the chill in the air. Francesca was making conversation, chatting about a television programme she had watched the night before. Normally, he would have teased her by adopting a viewpoint he knew would get under her skin and they would have a heated debate, even if the topic only happened to be something trivial that had taken place in one of those ridiculous reality shows she was addicted to. By the time they finished discussing the subject her cheeks would be flushed and her eyes dancing with pleasure at the sparring.

Not tonight.

He waited until there was a pause in the conversation, then inserted silkily, ‘You never told me, how is Jack? Is he between women at the moment? Or is he still dancing around the one with the kid?'

Startled by the abrupt change of conversation and the tone of his voice, Francesca glanced at Angelo's hard profile and felt her stomach flip over. She so much wanted this evening to go well but had to concede that she had ambushed her own good intentions from the start by antagonising him with her foolish speculations about wanting to talk to him, wanting to know whether he would ever see her without sex being the primary objective. She linked her arm through his and attempted to smooth the situation back to where she wanted it to be.

‘I know you don't approve of Jack's lifestyle, Angelo, but he's happy and I have to say most of his women do remain friends with him.'

‘That's by the by,' Angelo dismissed. ‘Isn't it about time he grew up and stopped depending on you for advice? If you want my opinion, the relationship you have with him is entirely unhealthy. How is he ever going to have the strength to do anything on his own if he knows that you'll always be there, picking up the pieces and dusting him down?' He refrained from voicing his primary concern, which was that Jack might have far too much influence over what she thought for her own good.

Francesca was bewildered. ‘I'm not always around picking up the pieces,' she refuted hotly. ‘Jack confides in me as a friend—'

‘And offers advice to you as a friend as well, I assume? A little word here, a little insinuation there? Has Jack been saying anything to you that would make you dissatisfied with what we have? I can feel your mood, Francesca. Has he been spinning you tales of what you should expect out of this? Maybe steering you towards something like commitment? Because, if that's the case, then I can tell you straight away that it's not going to work. What we have is sex and there's no point spoiling a perfectly good situation by entertaining thoughts that it might lead anywhere.'

Francesca was winded by the onslaught and barely had time to recover before he was continuing, voice hard. ‘There's no mileage in thinking that I will end up the fool that I was three years ago, because I won't.' They had reached his place and she followed in a daze as he slipped his hand into his trouser pocket to withdraw his keys so that he could unlock his front door.

He flicked on the light in the hallway and, without looking at her, strode into the kitchen so that he could pour himself a glass of something stiff and strong.

‘Oh, commitment is the furthest thing from my mind.' Francesca couldn't stop a note of bitterness from entering her voice. ‘Anyway, Jack would never preach to anyone about commitment. He develops strong allergic reactions just at the sound of the word.'

‘So what's bugging you?'

Francesca recognised the disgruntlement in his voice and told herself that she had no one to blame. It was her own damn fault. She had made a conscious and adult decision to take what she could get while she could, knowing full well that it was an ill-conceived decision, but allowing her heart to rule supreme over her head. Every choice had a price and the selfish ones carried the highest stakes. She wouldn't think about that. Not just yet. She went up behind him and slipped her arms around his waist, feeling some of the tension seep out of his body.

‘Can't a girl have an off moment?' She rested her head on his shoulder and then stood on tiptoe so that she could kiss the back of his neck.

Angelo laughed and turned around. He pulled her in to him and smiled. ‘When she's in my company? How is it possible to have an off moment when in the company of Angelo Falcone?'

And now his tension had completely evaporated, like rain on a hot summer's day. The power of physical contact. At least as far as he was concerned, it made a nonsense of words. He didn't want to hear hesitancy or doubt in her voice. He wanted her to be upbeat, cheerful and in a state of constant excitement. That had been the bargain.

‘You're right. It's impossible. After all, isn't Angelo Falcone the most charismatic man in the universe? The most intelligent? The sexiest?'

‘A cynic might think that you're being sarcastic but thankfully I'm no cynic. At least, not at the moment.' He kissed her, a light, teasing kiss that evolved into a hungry demand, and felt her body weaken against him.

‘Shall we continue this in my bedroom?' he asked softly, breaking off to tuck a few strands of hair behind her ears.

‘A bed might be more comfortable than the kitchen floor,' Francesca agreed.

They made it up to the bedroom in double speed. By now she was as familiar with his house as she was with her own, although the familiarity was only skin deep. She knew the format of its layout but since they rarely did anything normal inside it, like flop around with cups of coffee or watch television or even sit in some of the chairs with a good book or a newspaper on a Sunday morning, it still had the feel of a very nice, very comfortable hotel. The most intimate thing she did there, aside from make love, was have a shower.

She had also put candles in his bedroom, ignoring his objections that they were a potential fire hazard. Atmosphere, she had told him. Nothing was as wonderfully atmospheric as candles flickering in the dark. And scented ones were even better. Every so often she replaced them and had been amused when, a couple of weeks back, she had discovered that he had added one or two to the collection.

She got undressed as he carefully lit them one by one and she felt a lump gather in her throat. It seemed strangely romantic in a union that was devoid of all romance.

She was out of her clothing by the time his ritual lighting of the candles was over and Angelo turned and looked at her, marvelling at the lithe, graceful lines of her body. Full breasts, perfectly moulded and topped with large rose-coloured nipples, a stomach that owed nothing to exercise and everything to her gene pool, slender hips and legs that were as supple as a gazelle's. Any wonder she still had such a hold over him? What man in his right mind wouldn't want to make love to a woman as exquisite as that over and over again?

He stood where he was and unbuttoned his shirt. His skin felt hot. He tugged the shirt off and tossed it on the floor, then his trousers and boxers followed suit. He was heavily aroused and it amused him to see the way her eyes drifted to his erect manhood. He could almost hear the little catch in her breath. He took it in one hand and tantalised her by slowly pleasuring himself.

Without saying anything, Francesca moved to the bed and lay down, stretching out provocatively and curling her fingers around the wrought iron railings of the bed head.

Angelo moved towards her, hand still on his stiffened member, until he was standing right over her.

‘Oh, the games people play.' He laughed softly, watching as she moved forward so that she could push his hand away and replace it with her mouth. He had never known a woman who was so adept at giving him pleasure, just as she was giving him pleasure now, licking and sucking the massive swell of his erection.

He plunged his fingers into her hair and arched back, knowing that he was only a hair's breadth away from spilling his seed. He had to exercise the utmost control, making sure that his breathing was deep and even. He tugged her gently away when he was actually aching from the need to ejaculate.