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Authors: Sharon Kendrick

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She had eaten healthily and carefully throughout the pregnancy and she didn’t want to let herself go. For her sake, but also because of the sophisticated and sylph-like women in Luca’s circle of friends.

And for Luca’s sake? prompted a little voice in her head. Don’t you want t keep your body looking good for him? She let the water out and stepped out of the bath, the droplets drying on her skin.

She stared at her face in the mirror. What happened now? Would Luca attempt to make her his wife in the most fundamental way now that there was no baby inside her? Not tonight, that was for sure—but in the days to come?

She pulled on some velvet trousers and hid their elasticated waist with a long, silky shirt in a shade of deep green which brought out the natural green in her eyes. She blasted her hair with the dryer and fussed around with it and stood back from the mirror, quite pleased with her reflection.

And when she came out from the bathroom it was to see that Luca had set the table and she blinked in surprise to see that it was lit by candlelight. There was salad and pasta and a dish of figs and white peaches.

And a bottle of champagne cooling.

Her mouth feeling suddenly dry with nerves, Eve sat down.

‘That looks…very nice,’ she said weakly.

He glanced up from tearing the foil from the bottle. He saw her eyes stray nervously to the wine. Did she think he was trying to lull her into letting her guard down?

His mouth hardened as he poured the champagne into two goblets and he handed her one.

‘What shall we drink to?’ said Eve. To love? she thought ironically as she saw the cynical curve of his mouth. To happy ever after?

‘To our son. To Oliviero.’

Of course. ‘To Oliviero.’ She raised her goblet to mirror his and as their glasses touched she thought she had never heard a colder sound.

‘It is good to be home?’ he said carefully.

Eve took a huge mouthful as she looked around the room which had his beautiful and rather austere taste stamped all over it, wondering if it would ever truly feel like
her
home, as well as his. Wistfully, she remembered that glorious weekend she had spent here, when they had been unencumbered by anything except the sheer pleasure of the moment. It seemed like another lifetime ago, but in a way she supposed that it was.

She wondered how many different women had sat here, just where she was sitting now. Drinking champagne as a precursor to going to that vast bed of his and being made love to for the rest of the night.

But she would go off alone to her creamy, peachy bedroom and he would go off alone to his.

And the irony was that she was his wife!

She took the question at face value. ‘It’s good to be out of hospital,’ she said carefully.

‘That good, huh?’ he mocked.

‘I didn’t mean it how it sounded.’

‘Don’t worry about it, Eve,’ he said. ‘It’s bound to be strange.’

Frustratedly, she took another sip of the champagne. It was cold and dry and delicious and it seemed to dull some of the empty, aching feeling inside her. Dangerous to drink on an empty stomach. Alcohol loosened the inhibitions and who knew what she might then blurt out? She put the glass down and reached for the food instead.

She wished that he wouldn’t just sit there like that, watching her from the narrowed dark eyes as if she were some kind of specimen in a test-tube, some new and undiscovered species. Maybe that was it. Maybe he just wasn’t sure how to treat the woman who had just had his baby who was his wife, but in name only. Come to think of it, she thought slightly giddily—she couldn’t blame him. There certainly wasn’t a rule-book he could look up for guidelines on how to cope with such a situation.

‘When will you have to go back to work?’ she asked him.

‘Whenever I please. I want to make sure that you’re happy and settled before I do.’

Happy and settled. If only he knew. She wondered what had happened to the old Eve—who could chat and banter and tease him and feel like an equal to him. Had she been left on the shores of her native land, been cast off with her life as a single mother? ‘That’s very sweet of you.’

Luca had been described in many ways by women during his life, but ‘sweet’ had never been one of them. He did not want to be ‘sweet’. He made an impatient little noise as he got up from the table and drew something from the back pocket of his jeans, a
slim, navy leather box, and he put it on the table in front of Eve, as casually as he would a deck of cards.

Her heart was beating very fast. Everyone knew what came in boxes which looked like that.

‘Wh-what’s this?’

‘Why not open it, and see?’

She flipped the lid off and drew in a breath of disbelief to see a bracelet glittering against the navy velvet. A band of iridescent, sparkling diamonds, each one as big as a fingernail. She stared at it, then looked up at him in genuine horror.

‘Luca, I can’t possibly accept this.’

‘Of course you can. You’re my wife and you have given me a beautiful son. Here, let me put it on.’

He bent his head to fasten the clasp around her wrist and Eve closed her eyes as his fingertips brushed against her skin, so warm and beguiling in contrast to the heavy, cold jewellery. Damn the bracelet, she thought. Throw it across the room and just touch me properly.

But he did not. He held her hand up and the brilliant circlet of jewels glittered, as if it were a trophy. Eve looked at it. It must have cost a fortune, and there were women who would have drawn blood for it, but she was not one of them.

‘It’s very beautiful,’ she said dutifully.

The baby gave a little squawk and Luca almost seemed to expel a sigh of relief. ‘I’ll bring him to you.’

She watched him go to the carry-cot, her eyes drifting over the broad shoulders, the long, powerful legs and the way his dark hair curled slightly at the nape of his neck. The jeans stretched over the high, firm curve of his buttocks as he bent to lift the baby
and she shivered with a hungry kind of longing. She hadn’t exactly been immune to him before, but she had been preoccupied with the baby-to-be and with adjusting to life in a new city.

But now… Now all she wanted was to touch him. To rediscover the hard, strong lines of his face with her fingertips. To stroke them slowly over the silken flesh of his body.

She swallowed and turned appealing eyes up at him as Oliviero was placed warm and securely in her arms. ‘You mustn’t keep spoiling me like this. Honestly, Luca.’

‘But I like doing it,’ he said. And did it not simplify things? It had been so black and white when she had been pregnant. Thinking of her as a woman not yet recovered from the birth made it easier not to concentrate on the fact that no barrier now existed, and that they were just a man and a woman, living together. But not together.

Their eyes locked for long, confusing seconds and Eve felt a sudden tension which crackled through the room like electricity. Were they just going to ignore it, or endure it? And would it simply go away, or grow stronger and stronger?

‘Luca—’

The baby wriggled restlessly and Luca knew he had to get away before he went back on everything he had vowed he would not do. ‘Feed him,’ he said shortly, and he didn’t need to see the brief darkening of her eyes to know that he had hurt her.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

T
HE
soft, dark greens of the cypress trees painted umbrellas against the blue of the sky and the ancient stone walls passed by in a blur.

Eve leaned comfortably back in her seat and looked out at the countryside.

‘All roads lead to Rome,’ she said dreamily.

Luca gave a brief, satisfied smile. When had the change happened, he wondered, and when had he first started to notice it? He had watched her bloom and blossom, almost like watching a flower grow. And he had discovered that, just as a flower took time to blossom, change took time. You could not hurry it. Everything had its own rhythm. For a man used to clicking his fingers and getting exactly what he wanted, when he wanted, it had been a pretty major lesson in life.

‘And all roads lead out of Rome, of course,’ he murmured. ‘As that’s where we’re headed!’

‘Ha, ha!’ She turned round and looked at Oliviero, who was peacefully asleep in his baby-seat. He was wearing a teeny little sailor-suit today—all crisp white cotton and embroidered anchors. Not quite what she would have chosen, but she had quickly discovered the Italian love of dressing their babies up, and she and Luca were driving out for a lunch party at Patricio and Livvy’s country home and they had bought the outfit. ‘He looks sweet, doesn’t he?’

‘He does indeed,’ he said indulgently.
‘Abbastanza buon mangiare.’

‘Which means?’

‘Try and work it out.’

Eve frowned. She hadn’t been learning Italian for long, but her progress had been remarkable, which she put down to Luca’s tendencies as a slave-driver. ‘
Buon
means good.’

‘Sì.’

The frown deepened. ‘And I think
mangiare
is to eat.’

‘It means, “good enough to eat”.’ He smiled and gave an exaggerated and very Latin shrug. ‘You see? I can teach you nothing, Eve!’

But immediately she felt tension creep into the atmosphere and she didn’t know whether she welcomed or cursed it. She was sure that there was plenty he could teach her, and she certainly wasn’t thinking of the Italian language. So should she regard it as achievement or failure that she and Luca had managed to live together in relative harmony? As man and woman, if not man and wife.

How was it possible for them to communicate as friends and loving parents, and yet leave a great yawning hole in their communication about where their relationship was heading? And how long could it continue?

She stole a glance at Luca, who was swearing softly in Italian as a goat almost blundered into the road. He was just so gorgeous. He hated air-conditioning in cars, so had left his window half open and the warm, fragrant air blew in and ruffled his black hair. His shirt-sleeves were rolled up, showing the tiny dark hairs which sprinkled the strong arms,
and the faded jeans emphasised the long, muscular definition of his thighs.

He was a hot-blooded and passionate man. She knew that for herself. She’d just had her six-week check-up following Oliviero’s birth, and yet Luca had made no move towards her. How long could he continue to lead a life which was celibate? And it was one of those strange things—the longer it went on, the harder it would become to confront it.

Almost as if facing it would risk shattering the tentative trust and friendship they had built up together. And surely it was not her place to come out and say something? Was she living in fear that she might be rejected, or did it go deeper than that? For wasn’t part of her terrified of the masquerade of having sex with Luca and pretending that it was just sex, when she had grown to love him so much and wanted nothing but his love in return?

And that was asking too much.

Luca turned his head, and smiled. ‘Looking forward to lunch?’

She shifted slightly on her seat, afraid that he might be able to read the progression of her thoughts, half tempted to tell him to stop the car and then to hurl herself into his arms and see where
that
led them!

‘Mmm. I like Patricio. And Livvy. I like all your friends.’

‘Your friends too, now.’

‘Yes.’ But as friendships they were conditional, she knew that. They relied solely on her relationship with Luca and her position as his wife and sooner or later she was terrified that someone was going to discover just what a sham it all was. And then what?

Luca slowed the car down as it gingerly made its way down the bumpy lane, leading to a long, low farmhouse, sitting like a bird’s egg in a glorious nest of green. Hens were scratching around by a barn door and, somewhere in the distance, Eve could hear a dove cooing.

Luca switched the engine off, his eyes roving over her as she undid her seat belt. She wore the simplest of outfits—a slim-fitting white denim skirt and a little T-shirt in jade green—and yet she managed to look like sex on legs. Thought maybe, he thought, subduing the familiar, dull ache—maybe that was more to do with his current state of heightened awareness. If she had worn a piece of all-enveloping sackcloth, he suspected that the end result of his thoughts would have been the same.

‘You have got your figure back,
cara
,’ he said softly. ‘The outfit you wear looks lovely.’

Now why say something like
that
, just before they were due to go into lunch, or had that been the whole point? Pay her a compliment and make her aware of herself and leave her simmering and discontented throughout lunch? What the hell was he playing at?

‘What, these old things?’ she joked. ‘Now, are you going to carry your son in, or shall I?’

The velvet-dark eyes glittered. ‘Want to fight me for the pleasure?’ he challenged softly.

Eve put her hand on the door-handle, afraid that he would see that it was shaking. Was he deliberately making everything he said absolutely
drip
with suggestive innuendo, or was that simply her interpretation of it?

‘You can carry him,’ she said quickly.

Everyone else had already arrived and were all
gathered beneath a vine-covered canopy. The adults were sitting down at a large, wooden trestle-table and various toddlers were waddling around on the terrace. It looked quite idyllic and perfect.

‘Oh, doesn’t it look peaceful?’ sighed Eve longingly.

He looked at her profile, at the way her mouth had softened, and he nodded. ‘The kind of way you thought Italy always should be?’ he guessed softly.

She turned her head to look up at him. ‘Kind of,’ she admitted, but then voices were raised in welcome and there was no chance to say anything more.

Eve gave a wide smile, even though she couldn’t really take in all the faces at first. But there was Patricio, and Livvy was getting to her feet and smiling a great smile of welcome.

‘Eve! Luca! And Oliviero!’

Which gave the cue for everyone to scramble to their feet and coo over her darling baby, though Eve was acutely aware that the language switched immediately from Italian to English. And while she was working hard on it and knew that she couldn’t possibly expect to become fluent overnight, she sometimes despaired of ever mastering the tongue with the careless ease which Luca and his friends had. But she would need to.

She didn’t want to become one of those exiled mothers in a foreign land who never quite fitted in because they had never bothered to integrate. Or to have children who spoke a tongue which remained faintly foreign to her.

But thinking of the future like that scared her and so she forcefully put it out of her mind.

‘Eve, come and sit down and have a drink,’ said
Livvy. ‘There are a few people here you don’t know—let me introduce you.’

Eve accepted a glass of white wine and chewed on a salted almond as she was introduced to people with their impossibly romantic-sounding names—Claudio and Rosa, Caterina and Giacomo, Allessandro and Raimonda.

One woman in particular was just so beautiful that even the women seemed barely able to tear their eyes from her. Her name was Chiara, and she was younger than everyone else and with a man Eve hadn’t seen before, either.

‘Who is that woman?’ she asked Luca softly as he positioned Oliviero in a quiet and shady spot.

Luca barely glanced over in the woman’s direction. ‘Her name is Chiara,’ he said, in an odd kind of voice. ‘And the man she is with is one of Italy’s most famous film directors. She’s an actress.’

Yes, she looked like an actress, Eve decided. She had met enough of them in her time. She had that way of holding herself which spoke of supreme confidence—but then who wouldn’t be confident if they looked like that? Her glossy raven hair was knotted back in a French plait woven with ribbon and hung almost to the tiniest waist Eve had ever seen. She wore a simple dress in some kind of pinky-grey colour, but it moulded itself so closely to her body that no one could be in any doubt about what slender perfection lay beneath.

Eve helped herself to some salads and meats and began to falteringly attempt to speak a little Italian to Patricio, who laughed and teased her remorselessly. She drank wine and watched her husband as he kicked a ball to one of the little boys.

‘Oh, Luca is just a frustrated footballer at heart,’ shouted Patricio, and at that moment Luca looked up and met Eve’s eyes and something inside her melted.

He wasn’t just a frustrated footballer, but a frustrated lover, too, she thought. And so was she. And she wanted him. Desperately. All-consumingly. Someone had to put a stop to all this craziness and it might as well be her.

What could be the worst thing that could happen? That he would turn her down? No. That would not happen. She had seen the way he looked at her sometimes—he still wanted her, of that she was as certain as it was possible to be without actually testing it out.

So what was she really afraid of? That her love for him would grow deeper and deeper and never be reciprocated? And if so, wasn’t that a pretty selfish way to view it?

Whatever. She wasn’t going to hide from it any more. She was going to confront it, no matter how hurtful or painful. No matter what the outcome would be.

Livvy brought out a large chocolate cake to cheers from the men and greedy moans from the women, and only Chiara passed on the dessert.

‘Go on—have a little,’ tempted Livvy, but Chiara shook her head.

‘But I have to wear tiny clothes.’ She pouted and shrugged her tiny shoulders. ‘It’s how I earn my living!’

Eve had once read somewhere that men liked to see a woman eat—that it didn’t matter what she did if they weren’t around. Something about associating sex with hunger and that if a woman enjoyed her
food, she would enjoy her body. If I were Chiara I would have taken a slice and played around with it, she thought. Until she remembered that she of all people was not in a position to hand out advice to anyone.

‘Who wants to come and see my new horse?’ asked Patricio.

‘Oh, you men go and do your macho stuff,’ said Livvy indulgently. ‘We’ll all just sit here and talk about you!’

‘But we already know how wonderful we are!’ swaggered her husband, and when she threw a cherry at him he caught it, and put it between his lips, biting on it, his eyes on his wife’s mouth as he licked his tongue around the fruit and then slowly and deliberately threw the stone onto the grass.

Eve had to look away. How long since she had been intimate like that—
really
intimate? And if the truth were known, their sexual relationship had been so brief and intense that they had never slipped into that blissful state of being really comfortable with intimacy. She watched Luca go with a feeling of longing and suddenly she couldn’t wait for the lunch to end.

‘No more wine, thanks.’ She shook her head. The unaccustomed alcohol and the warmth of the day had made her feel a little sleepy. Any minute now and she would doze off.

But then Oliviero woke and began to cry and Eve blinked and went over to pick him up. The little darling was damp with heat, despite the shade. She dropped a kiss on his head.

‘Okay if I go inside and feed and change him?’ she asked. ‘It’s cooler in there.’

‘Sure.’ Livvy smiled. ‘I’ll show you where.’

Eve settled herself in a shuttered and deliciously dark room. She fed Oliviero, then changed him, still marvelling at the size of his tiny little feet as she stroked her finger up and down the rosy soles.

She was just about to go back and join the others when Chiara came in.

‘Hi!’ Eve looked up and smiled. ‘Too hot for you out there?’

Chiara smiled and shook her head as she ran a palm across her cool, sleek cheek. ‘The sun doesn’t touch me. I guess I’m used to it.’

Eve waited for Chiara to ask to hold the baby, but Chiara did not. Instead, she subjected Eve to a long and faintly puzzled scrutiny.

‘You’re English, aren’t you?’

These were not good vibes, but Eve could cope—she had coped with enough women in the entertainment business to know how to handle women like Chiara.

‘It’s pretty obvious, isn’t it?’ She laughed politely but Chiara did not laugh back.

‘You know,’ Chiara said thoughtfully, ‘you aren’t really what we all expected—not at all the kind of woman we thought Luca would marry.’

Eve felt her heart begin to race. Suddenly her supposed ability to cope dissolved into a mass of insecurity. Keep it light-hearted, she told herself. Don’t let her know it hurts.

‘I think he rather surprised himself,’ she said, but deep down she knew that this was vaguely dishonest. How triumphant would Chiara be if she knew the truth about their ‘marriage’.

‘You were pregnant, weren’t you?’

Here it came. Just brazen it out. ‘Yes, I was.’

Chiara nodded. ‘It’s a method which wouldn’t work with a lot of men, but, of course, Luca was the perfect choice in more ways than one. He is far too much of a traditionalist to ever allow a child of his to be born out of wedlock.’

‘I don’t think this really is any of your business, do you?’ asked Eve shakily, and hugged Oliviero to her, trying to concentrate on his sweet, baby smell and not the glitter of maliciousness in the actress’s eyes.

But Chiara showed no signs of shutting up. ‘I thought of trying it myself, if the truth be known.’ She turned her huge chocolate-brown eyes up at Eve. ‘But I left it too late and, by then, you had stepped in.’

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