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‘You kissed me, Jago,’ she pointed out calmly. ‘And please don’t criticise Freddie. He’s romantic and kind.’
Romantic?
She thought Freddie was romantic?
He stiffened, offended by the implication that he was somehow lacking in that direction. ‘You don’t think I’m romantic?’
‘You?’ She looked startled at the question, as if the thought genuinely hadn’t occurred to her before. ‘You don’t have a romantic bone in your body, Jago.’
Rocked from his unshakable conviction that he was the only man she’d ever wanted, Jago was completely wrong-footed. ‘This isn’t the place to have the type of conversation we need. I’m taking you to dinner tonight. I’ll pick you up at eight-thirty. We can talk then.’
‘And you think you’re romantic?’ She shook her head, her expression sympathetic and slightly amused. ‘Sorry. I’m already going out.’
With Freddie no doubt.
His lean hands curled into fists. ‘You still want me, Katy, and I want you.’
Having laid most of his cards on the table, Jago watched her warily, trying to gauge her reaction. Normally he prided himself in his ability to understand and outsmart the most devious member of her sex, but Katy didn’t play any of the games that women normally played. Whatever reaction he was expecting to that declaration, it wasn’t the one he received.
Instead of falling into his arms and treating his announcement with the misty-eyed delight that he’d expected, she merely looked at him, visibly unenthusiastic at the prospect of resuming their relationship.
Uncomfortably aware that nothing was going according to plan, Jago suddenly found himself in the novel position of not knowing how to handle a woman. After that kiss he’d assumed that they’d be resuming their relationship as soon as she’d ended her engagement to Freddie. But there was something disturbingly discouraging about the expression in her blue gaze.
‘Up until twenty-four hours ago you believed me capable of sleeping with another man, even though I’d told you that I was in love with you.’ Her tone was cool and controlled. ‘You told me yesterday that your barest minimum requirement in a relationship is fidelity. Well, mine is trust, Jago. I absolutely cannot be with a man who doesn’t trust me.’
Jago sucked in a breath. ‘I already explained what happened.’
‘And that’s supposed to make it OK?’ Her voice shook slightly and he realised that she wasn’t quite as cool as she was making out. ‘You didn’t trust me, Jago. I doubt that you’ve ever trusted anyone. You move on before you can get close to a woman.’
Thoroughly discomfited by her blunt appraisal, he took refuge in attack. ‘You still want me, Katy. Do you think I didn’t feel it when we kissed last night?’
‘A relationship has to be based on more than kissing. I’m not interested, Jago.’ Her grip on the flowers tightened. ‘We might have to work together, but I don’t want anything else.’
And with that parting shot she walked off, leaving him to come to terms with the fact that for the first time in his thirty-five years, a woman had chosen to walk away from him.
He wanted her back.
Katy stuffed the flowers in water so that they didn’t die before the end of her shift and slipped the card into her pocket with shaking fingers.
She wondered what Jago would have said had he known that they weren’t from Freddie at all but from Alex, whom she’d spoken to on the phone the night before. And it was Alex she was having dinner with. Alex and Libby.
In fact, his hasty assumption that she hadn’t broken up with Freddie was yet another indication of Jago’s jaundiced view of her sex. He was assuming that, despite the kiss they’d shared, she was still going ahead and marrying another man.
She wondered what had happened in his life that made him so cynical about women.
It showed that he still knew very little about her. She would never do a thing like that.
She would never kiss one man and then marry another.
And that was the reason she’d ended her engagement to Freddie the evening before.
She felt slightly guilty about not telling Jago but she hadn’t actually lied, she reassured herself. She just hadn’t told the whole truth.
And why should she?
Jago didn’t love her. All he wanted was a physical affair and she knew that pursuing a relationship with Jago would be a quick route to another broken heart. They just didn’t want the same things in life. So surely she was right to protect herself?
She walked out of the staffroom, reflecting that breaking up with Freddie had been surprisingly painless. Even though initially he’d seemed a little startled by her announcement that she couldn’t marry him, he’d accepted it with a readiness that suggested that he’d been having second thoughts about the wedding himself. She just wished that telling her parents would prove as easy.
