Page 40 of Friends Who Fake It

He made a grunting sound of agreement, and her smile was lopsided. “I remember.”

“Do you?” her heart pitter pattered in warning. She ignored it. Silly, silly. “What do you remember?”

He seemed to appreciate the danger, too. He took a small step away from her, half-turning towards the French doors and looking out at the velvety night sky. “That was around the time you moved to London.”

She nodded, unevenly.

“I ran into you at that bar.”

She moved across the room, coming to stand beside him. “As I recall, you were surrounded by a group of impossibly beautiful friends, including one rather stunning actress who was draped all over you.”

His expression didn’t change, but Willow had to work to cover the bitterness in her voice. Not because she was jealous of the other women, but because Francesco had always seemed to have it so easy. He was so confident, so easy going. Even though he’d had his own demons to fight, he’d just pushed on with his life, working hard, playing harder.

Whereas Willow was a twenty-five-year-old who still couldn’t stand up to her stepmother.

She sighed softly.

“You looked like a deer in the headlights,” he said, glancing down at her and frowning. “I remember thinking you were going to get eaten alive, going to bars like that, meeting people like me.”

Her throat seemed to thicken, making it harder to swallow. “And yet, I survived.”

“Yes,” he nodded, but his expression was thoughtful. “You seemed lonely.”

“That night?”

He appeared to consider that, then tilted his head in a gesture of agreement. “And probably ever since.”

“I’m not,” she lied.

“I know you have friends,” he murmured, eyes looking into hers with an intensity that seemed to peel back all her layers. “But that’s not the same thing.”

She hated how perceptive he was. She tried to pull a face, to make it seem like he was over-analysing things.

“I thought that was the purpose of friends.”

His eyes flicked back to the view, and for some reason, she glanced down at his bare feet and felt her insides turn to mush. Her heart basically grabbed a placard in protest.

“You never seemed lonely here.”

The blood in her veins seemed to develop a power all of its own. “In Italy?”

“At the villa.”

“Well, there are a million of you. Even more now,” she pointed out, because the family was undergoing a rapid expansion, with the addition of spouses and children.

“Yes,” he said, sounding unconvinced. “Did you ever think about leaving London?”

She bit into her lower lip. “And go where?”

“Anywhere. You have a trust fund at your disposal, right?”

Something about the way he said that turned her gushing veins to ice. She fidgeted with her fingers, hating the thought of him reducing her to the sum of her parts. To someone who’d been born into wealth and would just take advantage of it.

“I have a job, you know.”

“But that’s something you could put on hold, right?”

But there, predictably, at the back of her mind, was the fear. The lurking sense of danger, that always stirred to life to protect her. Was he asking these questions because he wanted her to leave London? Because, the complications of what they’d done would be easier to manage if she just wasn’t around.

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