was.’ The first and by far the best.
‘That explains it, then,’ Kerry said, with satisfaction in her voice.
‘Explains what?’
‘It’s impossible for a girl to completely forget her first lover. Not if he was good in bed. Which I’m presuming he was.’
‘He was simply fantastic.’
‘You know, Jordan, he probably wasn’t as fantastic as you think he was. The memory can play tricks on us. For ages after my divorce I thought I was a fool for leaving my husband. But then I ran into him one night at a party and I realised he was nothing but a sleazebag and I was much better off without him. I’ll bet your Italian boyfriend dumped you, didn’t he?’
‘Not exactly. I came home from uni one day to find a note saying that his father was seriously ill. He said he was sorry, but he had to go home to his family, and he wished me well in the future.’
‘He didn’t promise to write or anything?’
‘No. And he didn’t leave me a forwarding address. I didn’t realise till he’d gone how little I knew about him. He never talked about his family. Or called them. At least not whilst I was around. I guessed later that he was probably out here from Italy on a temporary working visa and never meant to stay.’
‘That’s another reason why you find it hard to forget him,’ Kerry told her. ‘He’s unfinished business. Pity he had to return to Italy, otherwise you might have been able to look him up and see for yourself that he’s not nearly as fantastic as you thought. If truth be told, he’s probably fat and bald by now.’
‘It’s only been ten years, Kerry, not thirty. Besides, Italian men rarely go bald,’ Jordan pointed out, recalling Gino’s luxuriantly thick, wavy black hair. ‘And Gino would never let himself get fat. He was right into physical fitness. He worked on a construction site during the day, and went to the gym several nights a week. He’s the one who started me on the exercise kick.’ Jordan jogged a couple of kilometres most mornings, and did weights three times a week.
‘Worked as what on a construction site?’ Kerry asked.
‘A labourer.’
‘A labourer?’ Kerry repeated disbelievingly. ‘You prefer a labourer to Chad Stedley?’
‘Gino was very smart,’ Jordan defended, ‘and a darned good cook.’
‘Well, bully for him,’ Kerry said dismissively. ‘Marry Chad and you can go out to dinner every night. Or hire your own personal cordon bleu chef. Look, I don’t care if this Gino was Einstein and Casanova rolled into one! You have to move on, girl. You can’t let some old flame spoil your future. And your future is becoming Mrs Chad Stedley. If you want my advice, as soon as Chad rings you tell him you’ve thought about it and your answer is yes, yes and triple yes!’
Jordan scooped in a deep breath, then let it out very slowly. ‘I wish it were that easy.’
‘It is that easy.’
Was it?
Jordan could see the sense of Kerry’s arguments. Regardless of what she’d felt for Gino, he was past history. If you looked at things logically, to let her memory of him spoil what she could have with Chad was stupid.
Jordan was a lot of things. But stupid was not one of them.
‘Yes, you’re right,’ she said firmly. ‘I’m being silly. I’ll do exactly as you said,’ she decided, and felt instantly better.
Hadn’t she read somewhere that any decision was better than no decision at all?
That was right. It was.
Kerry rolled her eyes. ‘Thank goodness for small mercies. The girl has finally seen some sense. Look, everyone’s starting to leave now. It’s not my turn to help clean up, so how about we go have a celebratory drink together somewhere swanky? I don’t fancy going home to an empty place just yet.’
‘I’m not really dressed for swanky,’ Jordan said. Unlike Kerry, whose red woollen wrap-around dress would look just as good in a nightclub as it did in the office.
‘You can say that again,’ Kerry said drily, as she gave Jordan’s navy pin-striped trouser suit the once-over. ‘Next time we go clothes shopping together I’m not going to listen to any more of your “I’m a lawyer, I have to dress conservatively” excuses. Still, if you take down your hair and undo a couple of buttons of that schoolmarm blouse, you just might not stick out like a sore thumb. We’ll pop into the Ladies’ and fix you up when we get there.’
‘Get where?’
‘How about the Rendezvous Bar? That’s less swanky since they refurbished it.’
Jordan’s top lip curled. ‘It’s also gaining a reputation as a pick-up joint.’
Kerry grinned. ‘Yeah, I know.’
Jordan’s eyebrows lifted skywards. ‘You’re incorrigible, do you know that?’
‘Nah. More like desperate.’
‘Oh, go on with you,’ Jordan said. ‘A girl as pretty as you will never be desperate.’
Kerry beamed. ‘I do so love spending time with you, Jordan. You always make me feel good about myself. Want to go clothes shopping tomorrow?’
‘Sorry. No can do. I have to work.’
‘On a Saturday?’
‘More like all weekend.’ She still hadn’t finished her closing address for the Johnson case. Not to her satisfaction, anyway.
Kerry wagged a finger at her. ‘All work and no play makes Jordan a dull girl.’
‘Which is why I agreed to go for a drink with you,’ Jordan replied as she took her friend’s free arm. ‘So stop picking on me, woman, and let’s get the hell out of here.’
GINO clicked off the phone, amazed by what Cliff Hanson had just told him.
Apparently Jordan had left her office building at ten past six and walked with a female friend towards Wynyard Station. The man tailing her had presumed she was going to catch a train home. Instead, she and her companion had turned into the Regency Hotel and they were, at this very second, sitting in the bigger of the two hotel bars, having a drink.
The amazing part was that the Regency was where Gino himself was staying.
For the second time that day fate had placed Jordan on a path which could have crossed with his.
This time, however, he wasn’t in ignorance of the fact. Which was why he’d ordered Hanson to tell his operative to sit close to the door and keep an eye on Jordan till he could get down there.
Adrenaline coursed through Gino’s veins
