Miranda Lee - It Started With A Proposition

Gino sat there for some time, watching Jordan. She glanced repeatedly at a redhead in a red dress, who was dancing cheek to cheek with a tall, good-looking guy. Clearly this was the female colleague she had come here with. Also clearly, Jordan wasn’t happy with being left to sit alone.

As soon as the band stopped playing the redhead returned to the table, accompanied by her dancing partner. After a brief conversation with Jordan, the redhead and the man headed for the exit, arm in arm.

When Jordan started downing her almost full glass of wine with considerable speed, obviously intending to leave also, Gino decided it was time to make his presence known.

The distance from his table to hers seemed endless, his chest growing tighter with each step. Just before he reached the table Jordan put down her empty wine glass then bent to her left, to retrieve her bag from the adjoining chair.

She actually had her back to him when he said, ‘Hello, Jordan,’ the words feeling thick on his tongue.

She twisted back to face him, her chin jerking upwards, her lovely blue eyes widening with surprise.

No…not surprise. Shock.

‘Oh, my God!’ she exclaimed. ‘Gino!’

Shock, but not bitterness, he noted. Nor hatred.

Relief flooded through him.

‘Yes,’ he said with a warm smile. ‘It’s me. Gino. May I join you? Or are you here with someone?’

‘Yes. No. No, not any more. I—’ Jordan broke off, a puzzled frown forming on her small forehead. ‘You’ve almost lost your Italian accent!’

Trust her to notice something like that, Gino thought ruefully, as he sat down at her table. She’d always been an observant girl, with a mind like a steel trap.

When he’d first met her he’d not long been back from a four-year stint at the university in Rome, his Italian accent having thickened during his extended stay.

This reunion was going to be more awkward than he’d ever imagined. For how could he explain her observation without revealing just how much he’d deceived her all those years ago?

He had no option but to lie.

‘I’ve been back in Australia for quite a while.’

‘And you didn’t think to look me up?’ she threw at him.

‘I couldn’t imagine you’d want that,’ he said carefully. ‘I thought you’d have moved on.’

‘I have,’ she said, and tossed her head at him.

A very Jordan-like gesture, but it didn’t have the same effect as it had when her hair was down.

‘You became a lawyer, then?’ he asked, pretending he didn’t already know.

‘Yes,’ she said.

‘Your mum must be very proud of you.’

‘Mum passed away a few years back. Cancer.’

Another reason for her to look sad and lonely. ‘I’m so sorry, Jordan. She was a nice woman.’

‘She liked you, too.’ She sighed, looking away for a moment, before looking back at him. ‘So what are you doing nowadays?’

‘I’m still working in the construction business,’ he replied, hating himself for keeping up with the deception. But what else could he do? This wasn’t going to go anywhere. It couldn’t. This was just…closure.

Yet as he looked deep into her eyes—such lovely, expressive blue eyes—it didn’t feel like closure. It felt as it had felt the first day he’d met her.

The temptation to try to resurrect something here was intense. So was his escalating curiosity about her love-life. Okay, so she wasn’t married. That didn’t mean she didn’t have a lover, or a live-in boyfriend.

‘You’re not married, I notice,’ he remarked, nodding towards her left hand, which was empty of rings.

‘No,’ she returned, after a slight hesitation.

Gino wondered what that meant. Had she been married and was now divorced?

‘And you?’ she countered, her eyes guarded.

‘I might get around to it one day,’he said with a shrug.

‘You always vowed you wouldn’t marry till you were at least forty.’

‘Did I?’

‘You very definitely did.’

Gino decided to stop the small talk about himself and cut to the chase.

‘What are you doing here alone, Jordan?’

‘I wasn’t alone,’ she returned sharply. ‘I was with a work colleague, but she ran into an old boyfriend of hers and he asked her out to dinner. They’ve just left.’

‘You didn’t mind?’

‘Why should I mind? We only came in for a drink. It’s high time I went home, anyway.’

‘Why? It’s only early. Is there someone special waiting for you at home? Boyfriend? Partner?’

Anger flared into her eyes. ‘That’s a very personal question, Gino. One which I don’t feel inclined to answer.’

‘Why not?’

Her eyes carried exasperation as she shook her head at him. ‘You run into me by accident after ten years and think you have the right to question me over my personal life? If you were so interested in me, then why didn’t you look me up when you came back to Australia?’

‘I’ve been living in Melbourne,’ he said, by way of an excuse.

‘So? That’s only a short plane trip away.’

‘Would you have really wanted me to look you up, Jordan? Be honest now.’

Her face betrayed her. She had wanted him to. But no more than he’d wanted to himself.

‘You could have written,’ she said angrily. ‘You knew my address. Whereas I had no idea where you were, other than in Italy.’

‘I thought it better to make a clean break—leave you free to find someone more…suitable.’

She laughed. ‘You were being cruel to be kind, then?’

‘Something like that.’

She stared at him, her eyes still furious.

Gino had forgotten how worked up she could get when she thought someone wasn’t being straight with her. Jordan had no tolerance of lies—or liars.

Gino conceded he’d dug a real hole for himself all those years ago. Not that it mattered what she thought of him. What mattered was whether she was happy or not.

The evidence of his eyes was troubling. She looked tired, and stressed, and frustrated. If she did have a live-in lover—or a boyfriend—he wasn’t making her very happy.

‘So there’s no special man in your life right now?’ he asked.

She glanced away for a second, then looked back at him. ‘Not right now. Look, I—’

‘Would you dance with me?’ he asked, before she could bolt for the door.

The band had started up again, a bluesy number with a slow, sensual rhythm.

Jordan stared at him. But not so much with anger now. With a type of fear, as if he’d just asked someone scared of heights to step with him to the edge of a cliff.

Maybe she thought he was coming on to her.

He wasn’t. He just wanted to find some way to get past her defences, to have her open up to him about her life.

She was a good dancer, he knew, but so was he. They’d loved going dancing together.

‘For old times’ sake,’ he added, standing up and holding his hand out to her.

She stared at it for a long moment, as if it was a viper about to strike.

Finally she rose, taking off her jacket and draping it over her bag on the chair before placing her hand in his.

How soft it was, he thought as he drew her onto the polished wooden dance floor. Soft and pale, with long, elegant fingers and exquisitely kept nails.

She’d always had a thing for painted nails, he recalled. Both fingers and toes. Her favourite colour had been scarlet, but she’d had bottles and bottles of nail polish, of every imaginable shade.

Tonight her fingernails were painted a deep cream, matching her blouse.

Now that her jacket was off, he could see she still had a lovely figure, despite being thinner: her breasts were still pert, her waist was tinier than ever, and her stomach athletically flat.

His mother would have said she didn’t have good childbearing hips—the way Italian girls did—but Gino had always found Jordan’s slender shape extremely attractive. He loved her tight little butt and her long slim legs, loved her blonde hair and her pale soft skin.