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‘It’s going to be fun.’
‘I loathe musicals.’
‘This is going to be brilliant,’ Megan assured him as he helped her on with the coat. ‘The lead singer was recruited on a reality television show.’
‘And I loathe reality television shows even more. So put those two things together and I have no idea why I agreed to go in the first place.’ He folded her against him as they walked out to the taxi. ‘Just as well I shall have something to look forward to when we get back….’
But Megan was excited. It had been ages since she had last been to the theatre. It also made a nice change to be going out. Between seeing Alessandro and doing the routine business of her work, a lot of her extra-curricular hobbies had gone by the wayside. Her football games, which were on a Wednesday, had been ditched in favour of him. Thinking about it, so had a number of her friends outside work—including Robbie, whom she hadn’t seen since New Year’s Eve.
She frowned and wondered at how quickly her spare time was being eaten away.
She would have to do something about that—give Robbie a call in the week, see what he had been up to, maybe arrange to meet him for a drink.
Alessandro hadn’t mentioned the football coach for a while, so hopefully he wouldn’t mind her meeting him. Good friends should never be dropped in favour of a relationship, however preoccupying that relationship might be.
He also never spoke of Victoria, and all attempts to get him on the subject had been stillborn. It was as if she had never existed.
She looked at him in the darkness of the cab. Aside from the standard white shirt, he was in black. Black trousers, black jacket, black coat. He looked dangerous, but then he turned to her, smiled, and pulled her towards him, and Megan settled in the crook of his arm with a contented sigh.
‘Are you glad I persuaded you to come with me tonight?’ he asked softly, and after a moment’s hesitation Megan nodded—because what could be better than this? ‘And, in case I haven’t told you, you look amazing.’
‘Is it the sort of thing Victoria would have worn?’ The words had left her mouth before she could hold them back, and she could feel Alessandro stiffen next to her.
‘It is immaterial what Victoria would have worn or not worn. Don’t compare yourself to her. I don’t.’
Megan sank closer against him with a contented sound. ‘I know, and you don’t realise how much that means to me, Alessandro. That you don’t compare us. That you broke off your engagement because of me.’
She raised her head to look at him, but he was staring through the window, and in the darkness of the taxi she couldn’t make out the expression on his face.
CHAPTER SEVEN
MEGAN had expected the others in their party to be replicas of the pinstriped trio, but in fact, she was pleasantly surprised to find that they were neither old nor boring. One of the women, Melissa, was radiantly pregnant, and was keenly interested to hear everything about the school at which Megan taught—because, as she explained earnestly, although her baby was still only a seven-month bump, names had to be put on registers for private schools as early as possible. Places were so oversubscribed in certain boroughs.
‘Ideally, I’d like to move to the country,’ she confided, as they were swept along in the crowd to their seats. ‘But apparently that’s not where the money is. At least not the banking money.’
‘I’m going to move back to the country,’ Megan said wistfully. ‘As soon as I’ve got enough experience at my school. Maybe in a couple of years’ time. Somewhere green and pleasant, as they say. Lots of open fields and trees and rabbits.’
‘I don’t see Alessandro feeling comfortable around fields and trees and rabbits,’ Melissa said, one hand on her stomach.
‘Oh, I know! He’s definitely a city kind of guy! He enjoys the fast pace, and the cut-throat, watch-out-for-the-knife-in-the-back kind of lifestyle….’
Alessandro, who was right behind her, could hear every word—even though he was apparently keenly tuned in to a conversation about the stockmarket—and he wasn’t sure whether he liked the fact that Megan was discussing a future without him in it. Of course what they had would fizzle out in due course…they were both dealing with the process of successful closure of a relationship. The intensely gratifying sex would inevitably become mundane, at which point they would bid each other goodbye with a little sigh of relief that they were over one another at last. But shouldn’t he be the one to decide when that point in time came?
‘Escape back to the country…?’ he murmured, as soon as they were seated, conveniently at the very end of their row.
