‘Sit, Georgie. Please. Would you? I checked with the agency.’ He looked at her resentful, distrustful face and had to steel himself against the uphill task staring him in the face.
‘I planned on…coming here…seeing you, talking to you before that article came out. I know what you’re thinking. I can read it on your face but let me explain.’
God, he’d missed her.
Missed her ready laugh, missed the way she teased him, missed the way her small body curved against his.
She’d left and he’d known. Known that he’d fallen in love with her, that all the wisdom he’d shored up from his disadvantaged childhood and disillusioning marriage had not been enough to stop her from getting to him.
She hadn’t even had to try.
‘I told you, no explanations needed. I’ve moved on.’
‘Don’t say that. Please.’
‘Not that there was anything tomove on from. A bit of fun. That’s all there was to it. I’m going to make some coffee. Would you like some? And then I’ll finish cleaning here and make a move because I have things to do.’
She stood up abruptly, lowering her eyes and shielding her expression.
He watched her turned back, longed for her…wanted her to turn around, to meet his eyes, and yet was grateful for the reprieve because it gave him a chance to work out what he was going to say.
CHAPTER TEN
‘IS THAT REALLYwhat you think?’ Alessandro asked quietly as she dumped a cup of coffee in front of him and sat back down but on the opposite side of the table. ‘That what we had was just a bit of fun?’
He’d warned her about involvement at the start. He’d warned her about a number of things. That warning to make sure she didn’t start believing that their phoney relationship was real returned now to mock him because the one thing he hadn’t foreseen washisinvolvement.She, on the other hand, open and funny and light-hearted, hadnot oncedone anything to make him think that she’d fallen in love with him.
She’d enjoyed him and then she’d walked away.
Coming here, for him, was the biggest risk he’d ever taken in his life because he was on the back foot and the way ahead was unclear, but love had left him with no choice.
‘What I think, Alessandro, is that I don’t want to get involved in this conversation. We had what we had and it’s over. I don’t want to have any post-mortems and I don’t want to hear what your plans are for a future with your ex-wife.’
‘That article, it’s not what you think.’
‘Isn’t it? Seemed pretty clear-cut to me. Sophia gazing up at you…you gazing down at her…arm in arm after a cosy dinner at a romantic restaurant.’
Georgie sighed and fiddled with the handle of her cup. Just saying those words out loud felt like a knife twisting in her heart. She was proud, however, that she had taken the bull by the horns and wasn’t hiding behind a show of not understanding why he had come.
‘I’m glad for you.’ It was a struggle to say that and a victory when she succeeded.
‘You’re glad for me?’
‘I know what happened and how it happened. You finally realised just how irreplaceable it is to have family time as a unit. My being there might have been an illusion, but it opened your eyes to what you hadn’t seen before.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘You know what I’m talking about, Alessandro,’ Georgie said impatiently. ‘Or youwouldknow if you stopped to really think about it.’
He looked bewildered. Guarded but bemused and she didn’t want that expression to start making inroads into her common sense.
She didn’t want to start analysing it, didn’t want to think that there might be more to what she had seen and read, that when he said that it might not be what she thought, he might just be telling the truth.
She was sick of misinterpreting situations and reading men the wrong way.
She was sickof being naïve.
Maybe he just hadn’t worked out why he and his ex-wife were suddenly getting back together. Or, at least, he hadn’t analysed the situation in depth.
