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‘No need I will call a taxi for you’

‘No! Thank you Public transport…’

‘Don’t be ridiculous! The bus and tube service today will be extremely limited’

He picked up the jacket and there it was—that tiny weight nestling in the concealed pocket on the inside He could feel it because it here he often kept his own cellphone, and it here he had stashed Victoria’s yesterday He had cootten about it—even when, over Christ, whether he knehere she had left it

It just went to prove how ain had made him take his eye off the ball

‘I have a phone here…’

He flipped the lid and stared at fiveat the innocent little metal object in the palm of his hand

‘What’s up?’

Reminded of her presence, Alessandro looked at her distractedly

‘The taxi…?’ Megan prodded nervously, because he was now staring at her in a really odd way and she figured that the egg ti to run perilously low She would imprint this memory in her brain for ever, she told herself fiercely It would do her well to reain, that she could outstay her welcome in a very short space of time

She backed towards the door, but she doubted he even really noticed He looked as though he were a million miles away

‘Yes The taxi’ Alessandro snapped shut the phone and shoved it in the pocket of his sweats ‘Might be quicker if I walk out with you and hail one’

‘Are you sure you’re okay, Alessandro?’

‘What? Yes,’ he told her irritably ‘Why? Are you planning on getting your Florence Nightingale hat on if I’m not?’

‘There’s no need to ju on her coat ‘I only asked’

‘Because underneath that thin veneer of hating ht?’ He clenched his fist round Victoria’s cellphone, burning a hole in his pocket, and willed his legendary self-control back into place ‘I’ my jacket, and for that I thank you’