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‘And did you think that I ht?’

‘No I thought you were a happily engagedto cheat on your partner before you even took theof the tables with a careless shrug ‘But then again,’ she continued, gaining soement was just a sha her because she happened to have all the right connections and, of course, awould have to have a wos us to Georgina Are you going to tell her about me? About our past? About the fact that you came here and…and…’

‘She will never know about our past Why on earth should she?’ Angelo said honestly ‘And I aht up my fiancée because I am curious to kno it is that someone so full of moral rectitude still ended up in bed with ht have had your clear conscience when it came to Jack but did you not stop to consider the other person who ?’

The silence stretched between the-point She had laid down her own traps only to find herself neatly

‘No answer to that?’ He stood up and flexed hisin the…urgency of things No ave her was the s the pointless antics of an antelope in full flight

For a few seconds Francesca thought that he was , and for a few seconds Angelo considered it Considered confronting her with the shaina in her suffocating need to make love to him He rejected the idea

He also considered, for rather less tiood Wouldn’t he be left with the pleasurable feeling of having finished business? Of having put a full stop at the end of the incomplete sentence? Once and for all?

Instead, he paused as he drew level with her and sht, Francesca And I aain’ He looked at her and thought that he could et about the cos of a bed

‘Over ht havethe saain’ If only she could feel that Deep in her bones where it mattered Instead, she heard the heartfelt words roll off her tongue as she stared back up at him and was terrified that, put to the test, they would be as empty as a shell

‘I would love to stay and debate the definition of the wordback’

The sound of the front door closing was, Francesca gloohly two hours too late

She had e with her pride well and truly in tatters because her body had decided to break away and follow a course of its own He had touched her and she had melted; it was as simple as that

And off he had gone, back to Georgina and his well-ordered life With, of course, another caterer to take over the joy-filled wedding celebrations

She could have kicked herself Could have kicked anything And did The chair Followed by the door as she ht of bedclothes all tangled up, gleefully re her of her own lack of will-power

It took half an hour to change the linen, another hour to put it in the washing machine and, once washed, into the tu aro lip service to a problem In her head the lust was still there and, worse, it was all tangled up in e too deeply

It was after ht when she reached for the phone and dialled Jack’s nu his sleep were re as little sleep as possible and, sure enough, he answered his mobile in the slurred, happy voice of someone well past the point of sobriety