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‘The catering job for the Falcone wedding is off,’ she told him bluntly

There was a long pause which she filled by getting a few things off her chest The fact that it would have been iiven the circumstances The fact that she ell rid of her past, that confronting it and not walking away had been a elo Falcone, she declared vehemently, would probably never have chosen them on their merits An unknoo-e amounts of people He had chosen them because he had wanted to watch therade

Jack sounded doubtful ‘I thought you said that he was going to give us a fair stab at it’

‘And he’s obviously had a change of heart’

‘You mean he cancelled us? Just like that?’

‘Sort of’

‘What does sort of mean?’

‘It means that I was put in a position where there was no option but to back out I’m sorry, Jack We’ll just have to build ourselves up slowly’ She had intended to pour her heart out, to tell hi After all, she and Jack shared everything But at the last e of heart So at the end of fifteen h, somehow, it had been a wasted phone call Certainly not a call that warranted being hts they had taken off, so that Jack could watch his beloved cricketoff her chest She went to bed with the sa ray and tired, in the same frame of mind

The one salvation was that by the time Jack returned to London she was calmer, more able to explain why she had turned the job down after all, bla that she’d rather it went to an outside party than deal with the suspicion that she had only landed it because of a historical affair that had bitten the dust years ago The guilt was toodisplay of sincerity Yes, it would have been nice but…such was life She left him to wonder what exactly had been the catalyst behind her sudden decision and opted for expressions of genuine regret at the passing of a great opportunity Not, of course, overplaying her hand in case he decided to pursue the unfortunate situation of his own accord

She also spent the next two days in a state of elo kept his promise and came back to call She would never have expected it of him, would never have expected him to play around behind his fiancée’s back, but ht, maybe men were all open to a bit of temptation And she had not held back in her responses Why not pursue the eager ex when the present fiancée was siht think?

She felt like a cat on a hot tin roof, ju, every ti him to descend on her, and so, when she heard the doorbell of her own house trill at nine in the evening, hours after she had stopped work, she kneho it was going to be Not Jack She also knew that she was not going to take the chain off the latch

She was rigid with tension as she opened the door a crack She was also well rehearsed in exactly what she was going to say and the tone of voice she was going to use Cold, distant, firm

But it wasn’t Angelo and her surprise took the wind out of her sails

‘Good evening, Mrs…uh…Miss…’

‘Let lass accent cut through her stah butter and Francesca found herself fu open the door

She swept into the house in an elegant swirling cloud of yellow Yellow jacket, yellow shoes, pale yellow clutch bag She spent three seconds conte her full attention to Francesca

Even though Georgina wore high heels Francesca towered over her, not that her height gave her any advantages The only thought running through her head was that Angelo had told his fiancée about the lapse in his fidelity and Georgina, the business arrangement asn’t jealous, obviously wasn’t so ement that she hadn’t seen fit to stor from the expression on her face