Did it matter?
She wished he would just leave but, since it happened to behishouse, that wasn’t really an option.
She could do the next best thing, though, so she began standing up, backing away from the table, eyes riveted to his darkly handsome face.
‘Please, Georgie.’
He stood and took a couple of steps towards her and Georgie froze in her tracks.
She was appalled when, somehow, he was towering over her and,somehow, he’d reached out andsomehowher wrist had managed to find itself circled by his fingers.
She snatched her hand away and rubbed her wrist and looked at him with scathing hostility.
‘I realise that this is your house, Alessandro, but I’m going to leave now and, much as I like the money this job brings, I won’t be coming back to clean for you. I’ll let the agency know.’
Her heart was hammering inside her and she couldn’t tear her eyes away from his ashen face.
Why was his face ashen?
What did his face have to beashen about?
She was the one whose heart had been broken in two! Her face had a lot to be ashen about!
‘I was going to come here to see you even before that ridiculous story broke.’
His voice was low and shaky and Georgie stared at him through narrowed eyes, not trusting herself to give an inch.
She folded her arms and eyed the kitchen door, desperate to flee through it and yet desperate as well to stay right where she was and hear what he had to say.
‘To do the decent thing? Fill me in before I found out sooner or later?’
‘I was going to come here to…’
The silence gathered around them until Georgie could feel herself breaking out in perspiration. Her fingers were digging into her arms and she loosened them.
‘To what?’ she finally asked.
‘To ask you to marry me.’
His words floated into her head and she stared at him, open-mouthed and in disbelief. She thought that she might have misheard what he’d said or maybe she’d missed a vital link in his sentence because her nerves were all over the place.
‘Sorry?’ she eventually stuttered.
‘I came here to ask you to marry me, Georgie.’ He reached into his pocket, pulled out a little black box and held it towards her.
Georgie stared at it, then quickly looked at him.
‘It’s a shock. I know that. I can see it all over your face. I know what I said…what I told you about making sure not to get feelings for me…and I know…’
He shoved the box back into his pocket, raked his fingers through his hair and flushed darkly.
‘We could have this conversation in the living room,’ he said roughly, ‘if you’ll let me. If you’ll hear me out.’
There was a nervousness in the way he hovered and maybe that was what propelled Georgie to nod and follow as he preceded her out into the vast hall and towards the sitting room where, not that long ago, she had bumped into him with his ex-wife and two lawyers in tow.
He’d come toask her to marry him?
That made no sense. They’d parted company with a peck on the cheek. He hadn’t, not once, said anything about having feelings for her. The opposite if anything.
