‘You must feel very pleased with yourself that your plan worked out, Alessandro.’ And the very suitable lawyer with her posh voice was obviously part two of his plan. He had dumped all handicaps and moved on, with the same relentless focus that she had seen in him years ago. ‘And how did you meet…Dominic’s mother?’ she asked, twisting the knife herself now.
‘Work,’ Alessandro said abruptly.
‘She tells me that she’s a corporate lawyer.’
‘The top of her field.’
‘Guess she ticks all the boxes, then.’ Megan thought of all the boxes she had failed to tick—but wasn’t it stupid to still be bitter after all this time? He had moved on with his life and so, really, had she. Of course, he was getting married, which rated a lot higher on the Moving On With Life scale than having had a couple of boyfriends, neither of whom had lasted more than seven months, but she wasn’t going to dwell on that.
‘All the boxes,’ Alessandro agreed smoothly.
‘You’ve even managed to land yourself a ready-made family!’
‘Dominic has his own father. I’m not required to play happy families with my fiancée’s offspring.’ In actual fact, Alessandro had met Dominic all of three times, even though he had now been seeing Victoria for six months. Their schedules were both ridiculously packed, and meetings had to be carefully orchestrated—usually dinner somewhere, or the theatre, or supper at his Kensington place. With his own personal chef, eating in was as convenient as dining out. Family outings, therefore, had not been on the agenda—something for which Alessandro was somewhat relieved.
‘Charming,’ Megan said brightly. ‘I always thought that when you married someone you hitched up to all their baggage, including any offspring from a previous marriage. Crazy old me.’
‘I don’t remember you being sarcastic.’
‘We’re both older.’ She shrugged and gave him the final directions to her house, which was only a few streets away. ‘We’ve both changed. I don’t remember you as being cold and arrogant.’ Not that that didn’t work for her. It did, because she disliked this new, rich Alessandro, with his perfect life and his ruthless face. ‘You can drop me off here. It’s been great catching up, and thanks for the lift.’
About to open the car door, she felt his hand circle her wrist. It was like being zapped by a powerful bolt of electricity.
‘But we haven’t finished catching up.’ He killed the engine, but remained sitting in the dark car. ‘You still have to tell me about yourself.’
Megan looked at him. ‘Do you mind releasing me?’
‘Why don’t you invite me in for a cup of coffee?’
‘I share a house. My housemate will be there.’
‘Housemate?’
‘Charlotte. Do you remember her, Alessandro? Or have you wiped her out of your memory bank along with the rest of your past?’
‘Of course I remember her,’ Alessandro said irritably. Hell, here he was, being perfectly nice, perfectly interested, and what was he getting? She’d used to be so damned compliant, always smiling, always laughing, always keen to hear what he had to say, no sharp edges. ‘And I have a very vivid recollection of my past. I just have no wish to revisit it.’
He had released her, but her whole body was still tingling from that brief physical contact.
‘You can come in for a cup of coffee,’ she told him. ‘But I don’t want you hanging around. You might think that it’s all jolly good fun, taking a trip down memory lane, but—speaking as the person you dumped—I have zero interest in reliving old times.’
She opened the car door and walked towards the house, leaving him to decide what he wanted to do. She felt his presence behind her as she rustled in her bag for her keys, but she pointedly didn’t look round at him as she slotted the key into the lock.
‘The kitchen’s through there,’ she said, nodding towards the back of the house. ‘I’m going to change.’
She took the stairs two at a time, her heart beating like a hammer. She couldn’t believe that this was happening, that some quirk of fate had brought her past catapulting into her present. She also couldn’t believe that seeing him could have such a huge impact on her. She had sometimes imagined what it would be like to see him again, never believing in a million years that it would actually happen. In her head she had been cool, contained, mildly interested in what he had to say, but with one eye on her watch—a busy young thing with a hectic life to lead, which didn’t involve some guy who had dumped her because she didn’t match up to the high standards he had wanted. In other words, a woman of twenty-six who was totally over the creep.
Now look at her! A nervous wreck.
She glanced at her reflection in the mirror and saw a flushed face and over-bright eyes. Charlotte, who would have given her a stiff pep talk on bastards and how they should be treated, was, of course, conspicuous by her absence. Where were friends when you needed them? Living it up with work colleagues somewhere in central London, instead of staying put just in case an urgent pep talk was required.
She was only marginally calmer when she headed downstairs fifteen minutes later, in a pair of faded jeans, an old sweatshirt, and her fluffy rabbit bedroom slippers—because, hey, why should she put herself out to dress up for a man whose taste now ran to sophisticated brunette lawyer-types with cut-glass accents?
He was waiting obediently in the kitchen, a graceful, powerful panther who seemed to dwarf the small confines of the room. He had removed his black coat, which lay over the back of one of the kitchen chairs, and was sitting at the table, his long legs extended to one side and elegantly crossed at the ankles.
‘So…tell me what you’ve been up to these past few years,’ he said, watching her as she turned her back on him to fill the kettle.
This, more than the woman in the black skirt and neat burgundy shirt, was the Megan he remembered. Casual in jeans and an oversized jumper and, as always when pottering inside her flat, wearing the most ridiculous bedroom slippers. Aside from kids, he’d always figured her to be the only person in the country who wore gimmicky bedroom slippers. His eyes drifted up her body, along her legs to her breasts, and he felt as though the room had suddenly become airless.
‘I got my teacher training qualifications,’ she said, stirring coffee into the boiling water and finally turning round to hand him a mug. ‘Then I taught at St Nicks for three years. I moved down to London because Charlotte was working here and I thought it would make a change. I spent a year or so at St Margaret’s, and I started working at Dominic’s school in September.’
‘That’s a very dry, factual account. Why London? The last time I looked there were remarkably few open fields or running brooks, or little cottages with white picket fences.’
‘I decided that I fancied a change from open fields, Alessandro. Maybe you were a little too quick to shove me into the role of the country bumpkin.’ She wasn’t going to tell him how claustrophobic her life had suddenly seemed the second he had walked out of it, how the excitement of teaching in a rural school had been tarnished with the uncomfortable feeling that outside her tiny world lay excitement and adventure. He didn’t deserve to know anything about her.
‘Look, I could embellish it with all the fun things I’ve done in between, Alessandro, but they would mean nothing to you.’
‘Try me.’
‘I’d rather not. I’m tired, and I don’t have the energy.’ Acutely conscious of those dark, fabulous, watchful eyes on her face, Megan took a sip of coffee and stared down at the table.
‘I see you’re still buying those ridiculous bedroom slippers.’
‘Christmas present last year