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‘I’m nervous!’ Francesca cried ‘You make me nervous!’

‘Why?’

‘You knohy! Because you’re right A feell-placed words could ruin what Jack and I have built up!’ A feell-placed words could do a hell of a lotto let hihts and fears ‘And what if I give you er your livelihood?’ He realised that he didn’t want her tiptoeing around hiht carry out his casual threat Not that he knehat he wanted He shook his head in exasperation ‘I have no intention of ruining you, Francesca I aduts to walk away fro And you, who never kne to boil an egg’ He raised his eyebrows and senuine sht theether

Guarded though she reh 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 hile she made it

The sitting room was as modern as the rest of the house Coenerously 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 iined 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 coer catchment area I could still do it in the country sohand I can’t afford to try and turn a hobby into a living’

‘So where did the o, 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 anted 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 sed down the urge to launch into another defensive arguelo It just created a never-ending atmosphere of thick tension in which it was i here with hi 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