The Italian's Love-Child (7 page)

That night she played the dominant role, undressing him and teasing him until he groaned for mercy. She kept her stockings on and straddled him as her hair flailed about her shoulders and she thought that she had never felt quite so uninhibited with a man.

And afterwards he lay there in silence for a little while, before eventually opening his eyes and giving her a rueful look.

‘Wow,’ he breathed.

She felt flushed and brimming over with confidence and with life. ‘You liked that?’

He gave a lazy smile. Caught a lock of her hair and pulled her head down so that their lips were a whisper apart. ‘Oh,
sì, cara
. I liked it. I liked the way you were so wild and so free.’ He slipped his hand between her legs and she gasped. ‘And you like that?’ he murmured.

She began to squirm with pleasure. ‘Oh, God—yes. Yes! Please don’t stop.’

The smile became a growl of a laugh, like a lion.
‘Stop? Let me tell you,
cara mia
, that I haven’t even started yet.’

But the weekend came to an end all too quickly and at the airport he kissed her with a passionate goodbye which left her reeling.

‘Stay an extra day,’ he murmured into her ear.

The temptation almost overwhelmed her. Reluctantly, she withdrew a body which felt as though it could quite happily stay glued to his for ever.

‘I can’t,’ she said regretfully. ‘I have an early studio call in the morning.’

He nodded, dropped a kiss on the top of her head. ‘I am away in the States for a month,’ he said. ‘And I will call you. Very soon.’

‘Do.’ She squeezed his hand and walked away, clutching her overnight bag.

Was that the irony of life? he wondered as he watched her sashaying towards the departure lounge with just a careless wave and a smile as she disappeared. That you always wanted what you couldn’t have? If she had been living in the same city, there was no way he would have asked her to stay an extra day! Protectively, he would have wanted and guarded his own space.

He turned and began to walk away, oblivious to the women who watched him as his mobile phone began to ring and he slid it from his pocket and began to speak.

Eve arrived home in time to run herself a bath before bedtime, which she enjoyed by candlelight, dreamily and rather sentimentally listening to some Italian opera as she soaked in the lavender-scented suds.

And she was as bright as a button the next morn
ing, despite a weekend of very little sleep, handling a sulky teenage pop star with aplomb and cleverly questioning the local Member of Parliament about why so little was being done about local traffic congestion.

In fact, she was on cloud nine, not really living in the real world but existing instead in the perfect world of the imagination, where life was like that weekend all the time. Until she reminded herself that life was never that good. It couldn’t be, could it? Because it wasn’t real.

Maybe it was because when you took a lover, he dominated your normal routine and drove everything else into the shadows. Especially when it was someone like Luca.

Was that because he lived so far away, and therefore the bits of him she got were the exciting, glamorous bits, with none of the everyday drudge bits in between, which usually made you view a relationship much more realistically?

If he were living up the road in the same village and they had settled into a grinding routine, then would she still feel this crazy floating-on-air feeling?

It was a couple of weeks later that she happened to glance up at the calendar on the kitchen and her eyes stayed fixed on it with a mounting sense of disbelief, her heart missing a beat of very real fear.

She was late.

Very late.

She carried on preparing her stir-fry, even though her hands were trembling, but when the fragrant rice and prawns were served out on a pretty plate decorated with sunflowers, she pushed it away, her appetite gone.

She was never late. Never, ever, ever. Not once in her life—why, she could have set her clock by it. Was that why she hadn’t noticed it before, because she took it so much for granted? Or was it because her thoughts and her senses had been so full of Luca?

But she couldn’t be pregnant. They had used condoms and they had been careful.

She tried to ignore it, but couldn’t, clicking onto the search engine of her computer, to discover that there was a three percent chance the contraception could have failed. She felt sick, until she told herself that the odds were still hugely in her favour.

For a while longer she allowed herself to hope, but it was a hope which became increasingly forlorn.

The days became a series of long, agonised minutes while she waited and waited for something to happen which stubbornly refused to happen.

Luca rang and she tried to chat normally, but inside her head was screaming with the terrible reality of her situation. They hadn’t even made a definite arrangement of when to meet, but where last week that would have bothered her, this week it barely even registered.

Seeing Luca was the furthest thing from her mind. She just wanted the confirmation that this was nothing but a hiccup, a bad and scary dream and that she wasn’t pregnant.

But she was an intelligent woman who could not hide from the truth, however unpalatable. Fearful of discovery and wagging tongues, she drove out of the village to the nearest large, anonymous chemist to buy herself a pregnancy kit, and by the end of the day uncertainty became fact.

She stared at herself in the mirror as if expecting
to see some outward sign that she had changed, but there was nothing. Her cheeks were still tinged with roses, her eyes bright and shining. Perhaps a little
too
bright and shining.

Didn’t they always say that pregnant women looked the picture of health?

And that was her. Healthy and yet terrified out of her tiny mind, because she was pregnant with Luca Cardelli’s baby.

E
VE
tugged at the crisply clean duvet cover with a little more vigour than was necessary and then looked round at her bedroom, checking the room like a chambermaid. Luca was coming to stay and she had felt honour-bound to go through the motions of welcoming him.

Clean linen, fresh flowers and scented candles waiting to be lit. Would it resemble some kind of over-the-top boudoir?

She sank down onto the bed and promptly creased the cover. She didn’t care. In fact, she didn’t care about anything. How could she, when she was privy to a piece of news which was about to change the whole course of her life?

Listlessly, she glanced at her watch. Luca would be here within the hour and she had better get her act together. She was going to have to tell him, she decided, and sooner rather than later. And besides, she doubted whether she would be able to keep it secret from him. How could she look into his eyes and pretend that nothing had changed?

It was such a big secret that it seemed to have taken over her life—she had half expected people at work to stop her in the corridor and congratulate her, because she felt so obviously pregnant.

But if people
did
know—then they were hardly going to congratulate her, were they? A woman who found herself unexpectedly pregnant, without a
steady, loving partner, tended to find herself an object of sympathy—even in these enlightened times. Oh, women made the best of it, and there was no reason why she shouldn’t make her life—and the life of her child—a wonderful, glittering success. But there was no doubt that at the beginning, at least, it wasn’t exactly news to send champagne corks flying.

How the hell was she going to tell Luca? Should she blurt it out straight away, or wait for the ‘right’ moment? And if such a moment existed, it would soon disappear, for she could predict what his reaction would be.

He was going to be furious. What man wouldn’t? To find that they were going to become a father to the child of a woman who was ‘nearly a stranger’?

She heard the sound of a car approaching, of a door slamming and murmured words carried on the wind. Through the antique lace of her bedroom curtain, she saw the tall, dark figure as he paid the taxi driver.

He was here. She should have been excited but her heart felt numb, with fear and dread the only emotions she was capable of feeling.

Luca glanced up at the cottage, his eyes narrowing. Had that been Eve up there, watching him? And if so, why hadn’t she pulled back the curtain and waved?

His mouth hardened. You met a woman you thought was sexy and intelligent and uncomplicated and suddenly she started playing the diva. She had sounded strained on the telephone, the way a woman sounded if you forgot her birthday. Was she sulking already? And if so, why?

He lifted his hand and banged on the brass knocker. He was here now. He thought of her slender, tight body, the way she had ridden him to heaven and back, and felt the corresponding throb of desire. Who cared if she was sulking? He would kiss away her pique and make her sigh with pleasure for two whole days. And after that?

Almost imperceptibly, he shrugged.

The door opened and Eve fixed her brightest smile onto her face. ‘Luca!’ And flung her arms around him, mainly so that her eyes would give nothing away. Not yet. Not yet.

He smiled against her hair and dropped his bag to the floor. Better. Much better. ‘Have you missed me, then,
cara mia
?’

Act as you usually would, she told herself as she drew her head away, a small smile playing at the corners of her mouth. ‘
Missed
you? I’m a very busy woman, Luca Cardelli—I don’t have time to miss anyone!’

It was what he would have once deemed a textbook answer. A woman who did not make him centre of her universe. A woman with a life of her own. Perfect. But oddly, it did not please him. He
wanted
her to tell him that she had missed him. Break through her cool patina of sophistication. To conquer her, he realised, with a grim kind of shock. He liked to conquer his women. And once he had conquered them, he moved on.

‘Come in. What would you like to do first? I could make us some tea and then we could go for a stroll down by the sea—’ But her words were blotted out by his kiss, the seeking splendour of his lips, and she froze, like a block of ice in his arms.

Not yet. She couldn’t. Not yet.

‘Luca!’ She pulled away. ‘Anyone would think that you had come here with only one thing in mind,’ she teased remonstratingly, her heart pounding, still with that terrible constricting fear.

‘You don’t want to take me straight upstairs and make love?’ he demanded. ‘You want
tea
?’

‘Well, don’t you? You’ve been travelling all day! Come on, I’ll put the kettle on!’ As she marched towards the kitchen she was acutely aware that she was coming over like a cross between a domestic drudge and a schoolmarm.

He followed her into the kitchen, his eyes narrowed with irritation. What kind of a greeting was this? Did she think that he had flown all the way here to be marched into her kitchen like a hungry schoolboy?

‘You know, an Italian woman would never treat her lover so,’ he observed, on a sultry note of caution.

Slowly, Eve turned around. ‘Then I suggest you find yourself an Italian lover, instead of an English one.’

‘Tell me, do you give all your men such a careless greeting?’

His silky question made it sound as though she had a line of lovers stretching as far back as the eye could see! Eve felt sick and the sickness reminded her of the secret—such a tiny secret at the moment—which was growing inside her belly.

And suddenly she realised that her instinct had been correct all along and that there wasn’t any such thing as a ‘right time’ to tell him. To wait would be to perpetuate the deception and to let him make love
to her first would be unthinkable. And much too poignant. Tell him when he was naked and she was vulnerable? She couldn’t.

‘Sit down, Luca,’ she said heavily.

Luca’s eyes narrowed. Something did not add up. He had been given an inkling that something was not right from the moment he had arrived, but he had put it down to nerves, even though there had been no nerves during that deliciously enjoyable weekend in Rome. She wasn’t the kind of woman to be shy at showing him her home—for a start, he had already seen some of it and she wasn’t insecure enough to need
his
approval about where she lived.

So what was it?

Silently, he pulled out a chair and sat down, stretching out his long legs, his expression pokerfaced and shuttered.

Eve’s nerve suddenly failed her. ‘I’ll just finish making the tea,’ she blustered

Still he watched and waited.

Eve tipped boiling water in the teapot, making a drink that she knew neither of them would touch, but it seemed important to be going through the motions of doing
something
. And why didn’t he
say
something? Why was he just sitting there, like a brooding dark and golden statue? Why wasn’t he asking her what was wrong and then she could have blurted it out, instead of having to say it cold, searching for words to cushion it and knowing deep down that there were none.

‘I’m pregnant.’

For a long, tense moment, Luca thought that he was dreaming, or in the middle of a nightmare.

‘Turn around and look at me,’ he said softly. ‘And say that again.’

Her hands gripping onto the sink as if for support, Eve sucked in a hot, painful breath and turned around to face him. She had expected to see anger, fury, disbelief, but there was none of these things. His eyes were as cold and as forbidding as black ice and his face was like that of a stranger. She looked at him and felt as though she hardly knew him, and she didn’t, she supposed, not really.

And yet, even now his child was growing inside her.

‘I’m pregnant.’

His eyes roved to her belly, looking for a tell-tale swell, but the sweater she wore told him nothing.

He nodded. ‘That is why you didn’t want to make love.’

Something in the calmness of his voice washed over her like a balm and for the first time since she’d found out she felt a small degree of comfort. He was an intelligent and perceptive man—he had obviously realised that no earthly use would be gained from anger.

‘That’s right. I just felt that it would be
inappropriate
in the circumstances.’

He gave a low, contemptuous laugh. ‘Inappropriate? For whom? For you, or for your baby—or for the poor fool who fathered it?’

She had thought that anger could only be expressed in a loud and furious storm, but Eve realised at that moment that there was another, different kind of anger. A quiet and scornful kind of anger which was far more deadly. She stared at him, her eyes full of consternation, not quite understanding—for if
blame could be apportioned, then it was equal blame, surely? If fault was to be found, then they were both at fault.

‘Luca—’

His icy words cut across her as if she hadn’t spoken. ‘Were you already pregnant the night you slept with me?’ he hissed. ‘Or was there just a chance that you might be?’ He gave a low, bitter laugh, barely able to believe that he had been so sucked in by her offhand attitude that he had pursued her like a schoolboy!

His black eyes bored into her like daggers. ‘Won’t this complicate things for you?’ he questioned sardonically. ‘I should not think that the father will offer support if he finds out that you have been intimate with another!’ Another low, bitter laugh. ‘Well, do not worry,
cara
. He will not hear it from me! I will take it to the grave with me.’

His eyes were cold, she thought. So cold.

‘And I hope to God that I never set eyes on you again as long as I live,’ he finished woundingly.

As if she were a spectator watching a play, Eve watched him get up from the chair, her lips parting in disbelief. It was as if she were watching him in slow motion and something had taken away her powers of speech, for he was almost at the door when she managed to bite the words out.

‘But you…you’re the father, Luca!’

This time the silence seemed to go on for ever. He felt rooted to the spot, as if he had just been turned to ice, yet the blood which roared around his veins was as hot as the fires of hell.

‘What?’

It was a single word, shot out like a threat, as if
daring her to repeat her statement again, but she had to. She
had
to.

‘You’re the father.’

He turned round and laughed. ‘I am not the father!’

And something in his arrogance and contempt brought the real Eve back to life. The real, strong Eve, though a very different woman now. She had to be, nature had decreed it. How dared he? She thought of the life within her, created by accident and now denied by its biological father, and a slow fury began to simmer inside her.

She held her head up proudly. ‘I can assure you that you are.’

His heart pounded. ‘Prove it.’

Now it was her turn to look at him witheringly. ‘I have no intention of “proving” it. And besides, I don’t need proof, Luca—I know.’

‘How?’

‘Because I haven’t slept with another man for two years!’

‘You expect me to believe this?’

‘I expect
nothing
!’ she retorted. ‘I am telling you simply because I believe it is your right to know—though, God knows, I wish I hadn’t bothered now!’

He was nodding his head, as if a blindingly simple solution had just appeared before him. ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Of course.’

Eve sucked in a deep breath. Calm down, she told herself. It isn’t good for you and it isn’t good for the baby. He was bound to be shocked at first and go off at the deep end—who wouldn’t after a momentous piece of news like that? She looked at him hopefully. ‘Of course, what?’

He nodded once more. ‘I understand perfectly now.’

‘You do?’

‘Sure. It’s all coming back to me. That night in London, when you told me you wanted children. I remember you saying it, it struck me at the time. And you’re a career woman, aren’t you, Eve? A woman with a high profile and a demanding job. So who needs a man around? A baby is what you wanted, isn’t it? A designer baby—women do it all the time, these days. And who better to father your baby than one of the richest men in Italy? Well, clever, clever,
cara
.’

He stared at her as if she were a particularly unappealing creature who had just landed from outer space. ‘But I’m interested to know how you did it. Perhaps you deliberately scratched your pretty pink fingernails through the condom when you were putting it on? If so, it was an ingenious plan.’

She felt as though he had slapped her. ‘Get out,’ she said. ‘Get out of here before I call the police and have you thrown out!’

But he didn’t move. ‘How much do you want?’ he asked insultingly. ‘A one-off payment, is that what you had planned?’ He looked around at her pretty, cottagey kitchen and his lips curved into a disdainful smile. ‘I expect you earn pretty good money, don’t you, Eve? But my kind of wealth is way out of your league. With my money you can afford all the things you really want—the best nanny, a bigger house, a fancy car, holidays. Isn’t that right,
cara
?’

‘Don’t
ever
call me that again!’ she spat out. ‘I’m giving you one last chance to leave, Luca, and if you don’t, then God help me, but I
will
call the police!’

He glanced at the clenched fists by her sides. His
temper was on such a knife-edge that he knew he had to get away. For all their sakes. And the fact was the she carried his child, and, though the method she had used was unforgivable, that fact remained.

‘I am leaving,’ he said coldly.

‘And don’t come back! I never want to see you again!’

He plucked a wallet from his jacket pocket, and for one awful moment Eve thought that he was going to throw some money down in front of her. But instead he extracted an expensive-looking business card and placed it on the table with calm and steady fingers.

‘That’s the address of my lawyer,’ he said carefully. ‘I’ll let him know that you’ll be in contact.’