The Italian's Love-Child

by Sharon Kendrick

  But it was dangerous to be passive. He had told her quite clearly what he thought of her and she could not and should not forget that. ‘You’d better say what it is that you want to say, and then go—I’m very tired.’

  Yes, he could see that for himself. Beneath her fine grey-green eyes were the blue-dark traces of shadows.

  ‘Are you sleeping?’

  ‘In fits and starts. And, of course, I have to get up very early.’

  His mouth thinned. She should have handed her notice in immediately! ‘You didn’t contact my lawyer,’ he observed slowly.

  ‘Did you really expect me to?’

  What would she say if he told her yes, of course he had expected her to. A lifetime of experience had made him cynical. His vast wealth had set him apart from the moment he had attained it. And that he would have considered it perfectly normal for her to have attempted to make a huge claim on his fortune. She, above all others, was surely entitled to?

  ‘Yes,’ he said simply. ‘I did.’

  ‘Well, rest assured—I didn’t and I don’t intend to. Your money is safe. Was there anything else?’

  She was being so cold, so distant, as if ice were running through her veins instead of blood. And could that be good for the baby?

  ‘I want you to have everything you need, Eve.’

  ‘But I do! I have a house and I have a job, a good job.’

  He remembered the way she had looked around her, as if worried her words would be overheard. He was pretty certain that her pregnancy was still a secret and his killer instinct moved in; he couldn’t help himself. ‘But for how long?’

  She stared at him. ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘Have you told them you’re pregnant?’

  ‘That’s none of your business.’

  ‘I think it is.’ A spark spat in the grate with all the force of a gunshot. ‘You may not be employable as a pregnant woman.’

  She gave a little laugh. ‘There are laws governing that kind of discrimination,’ she returned. ‘So please don’t worry on my account.’

  This was going neither the way that Luca wanted, nor had expected. He had expected a little…what? Gratitude? That the past few weeks might have given her time to calm down and see sense. Surely she must realise that his money could make all the difference to her life as a mother?

  ‘I do not want you to struggle for money—not when I have enough, more than enough.’

  ‘But it isn’t going to be a struggle. I’ll manage—’

  ‘I don’t want you to manage, I want you to be comfortable!’

  ‘What you want is not really what counts, Luca! It is what I say that does!’

  ‘But it is my baby, too,’ he pointed out.

  ‘Oh?’ She feigned surprise. ‘So you’re no longer disputing paternity? What happened? Did you have someone run a DNA test on me, while I was asleep?’

  ‘Eve!’ Proud, stubborn woman! ‘Let me help you,’ he said suddenly.

  She was still hurting from the things he had said; it was hard to imagine a time when she would not. ‘You think your money can buy you anything, don’t you?’

  His black eyes glittered. ‘Would you deny me my child, then, Eve?’ he questioned simply.

  And something in the way he said it cut through all her defences.

  Up until that very moment she had been able to think of the baby almost as an abstract concept—as if it hadn’t been real and, even if it had been, it was nothing now to do with Luca. But she was fast discovering that she had been very naïve. By telling him she had involved him, and someone like Luca wouldn’t take that involvement lightly.

  Oh, why hadn’t she kept it secret? He had never intended theirs to be anything other than a short-term love affair. He wasn’t the kind of man who would ever settle down, he just wasn’t. The affair would have burnt out after a few heady weeks, or months—he would have moved on to the next conquest, the way that men like this always did.

  But could she honestly have kept it secret from him? Wasn’t it his right to know that his seed had borne fruit? She bit her lip at the irony of it. Because he had never meant it to.

  ‘What do you want?’ she asked cautiously.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said, and it was the first time in all his charmed and powerful life that he had ever made such an admission. He sat down on the sofa and studied her, the dark eyes narrowed in question. ‘You haven’t even told me how far advanced you are.’

  ‘Nearly five months.’

  Five months! ‘Already?’ he asked, slightly unsteadily.

  ‘Yes, my bump’s hardly showing yet.’ She met his eyes, and despaired, for their inky allure still touched a part of her she had decided had to be out of bounds. If he had stayed away—even for a bit longer—she might have become immune to him. But she wasn’t—and that didn’t help matters. ‘Time flies when you’re having fun,’ she said sarcastically.

  Had it really been that long? She must have got pregnant the very first time—before Rome, before he had gone to the States. He remembered with a sinking heart the way he had been incautious, the way he had wanted to make love to her straight after the first time. And she had stopped him.

  He frowned. How had so much time passed, almost unnoticed? He had thrown himself into his work since she had first told him—perhaps, he recognised now, using it as a kind of denial therapy. And all the time he had been waiting for the financial demands he was certain would come his way. He had set her a test, he recognised, just as he had right at the beginning when he had waited for her to contact him. And wasn’t that what he always did, in his professional as well as his personal life—set impossibly high standards and wait for people to fail to meet them?

  Only Eve had not failed.

  ‘Anyway.’ She forced herself to be businesslike, because surely that was what it all boiled down to. ‘If it’s just the finance thing you’re worried about, then don’t, because I will be fine.’ She gave him a bright smile. ‘Unless there was anything else?’

  He stared at her incredulously. ‘You think this is simply about money? You expect me to walk out of that door without a backward glance and have no interest in this child of mine?’

  This child of mine. Powerful words. Daunting words. But then Luca was a powerful and daunting man.

  ‘I have no expectations whatsoever. I never did have,’ she added deliberately and at least he had the decency to flinch. ‘You’d better tell me what yours are. Some kind of contact, I suppose?’

  ‘Contact!’ he repeated furiously. ‘What an ugly word that is!’

  ‘Well, it may be ugly, but it happens to be the relevant word!’ she retorted, stung. ‘All in all it’s a pretty ugly business, isn’t it?’

  He rose to his feet then, came over to where she sat and crouched down beside her. If it had been any other woman, in any other situation, he would have taken her in his arms, to comfort her and to soothe her. But her frozen stance told him not to try.

  All his life, Luca had been able to seduce any woman he wanted, to persuade her round to his way of thinking, but now he suddenly recognised that Eve was not so malleable.

  His eyes travelled to the perfect fingernails, painted a coral-pink today, and he remembered his outrageous accusation.

  ‘So what is it to be?’ continued Eve remorselessly. ‘Every other weekend, with some of the holidays? Alternate Christmases? That’s how it works, isn’t it?’

  ‘I don’t give a damn how it works!’ He reached out and caught her face in the palm of his hand and tipped it up to look at him, and to his surprise she didn’t stop him. ‘There is only one sensible choice which lies ahead of us,’ he said, and his perfect English suddenly became a little more broken. And in a way, maybe this was how it was supposed to be. All his life he had run from commitment, but he could run no longer. ‘You will marry me, Eve,’ he said fiercely.

  She looked at him. ‘Marry you?’ she said incredulously.

  CHAPTER NINE

  ‘AND those are the facts,’ fini
shed Luca, with a shrug.

  ‘Wow!’ said his sister softly, and handed him the sleeping baby.

  Luca raised his eyebrows sardonically as his hands tightened automatically around the warm little bundle. ‘What’s this?’ he questioned drily. ‘Aversion therapy?’

  ‘Nonsense! You are brilliant with your nephew—you always have been. You’re a natural with babies, Luca.’

  The baby stirred and sighed and Luca glanced down at him, his hard, handsome features softening. ‘Just that it seems I won’t get much practice with my own.’

  ‘Oh, Luca—for heaven’s sake! It isn’t like you to be such a defeatist!’

  ‘I am not being defeatist, Sophia!’ he snapped, but the baby made a squeak of protest, so he lowered his voice. ‘I am merely being practical. She lives in England and I live in Rome—and we are not together. The facts speak for themselves.’

  ‘Well, why don’t you be together?’ demanded his sister. ‘For heaven’s sake, Luca, you can’t spend your whole life as a commitment-phobe, searching for the impossibly perfect woman. You’ll just have to marry her—I can’t think of a better reason for breaking your long-term bachelorhood than a baby! People do it all the time!’

  Thoughtfully, Luca stroked a tender finger across the glossy raven hair of his nephew and then looked up at his older sister, with an expression in his eyes he could see surprised her.

  ‘I have asked her to marry me,’ he said.

  ‘You did?’

  He nodded.

  ‘And?’

  ‘And she said no.’

  There was a moment of shocked, stunned silence, and then, to his astonishment, his sister tipped her head back and burst out laughing, causing her son to squirm in Luca’s arms and he handed him back, a stern look on his face.

  ‘I see no cause for laughing,’ he said icily.

  Sophia wiped the corner of her eyes. ‘You don’t? Well, I think it’s priceless! A woman has turned the great Luca Cardelli down! Do you know, I think I like this woman!’

  ‘It is not funny!’

  ‘No,’ she said slowly. ‘No, I suppose it’s not. Well, you’re going to have to do something, Luca.’

  ‘I know I am,’ he said grimly.

  The red studio light went off and there was a burst of spontaneous clapping and Eve looked round and smiled as she saw the executive producer walking into the studio, a sheaf of papers in his hand.

  ‘It went well?’

  ‘Eve, it was absolutely brilliant!’ He waved the papers like a winner’s medal. ‘I have here the viewer figures, my dear, and I can say, without fear of contradiction, that we have a hit on our hands.’

  She knew they did. It was indefinable, that feeling, but she had worked in television long enough to know success when she encountered it. She had been pretty optimistic from day one, but you never really knew for sure, not until the figures came in.

  ‘We’ve had a sack-load of letters and emails, the phone hasn’t stopped ringing all week and the duty log is full of praise.’

  It had all worked out perfectly, so perfectly that she sometimes felt she ought to pinch herself.

  She hadn’t even had to tell Clare about her pregnancy—the editor had guessed it for herself, and so it seemed had most of the crew. Leaving the set regularly in order to be sick had kind of given the game away.

  Her early-morning sickness had shown no sign of abating. And that was when the idea had come up for Eve to be taken off the breakfast show and given her own daily slot just before midday. As someone had remarked, it wasn’t exactly a loss to the world of television if they used the show to replace the endless reruns of a comedy which had been made two decades earlier.

  Eve In The Morning! was to be modelled on the classic audience-participation theme, but with an added twist. As well as the usual studio discussions on the lines of: ‘Too Fat To Enjoy Sex!’ or ‘My Husband Doesn’t Know I’m A Stripper!’, there was to be a special five-minute slot every week which would keep the viewers up to date with her pregnancy. Viewers liked to be involved, and what better way to involve them?

  ‘That’s fantastic.’ Eve smiled broadly at the executive producer, some of the tension leaving her, and she placed her hand over her swollen belly as the baby gave a kick as if to say, Concentrate on me, now! Time to go home for a well-earned rest. She picked up her handbag, switched on her phone and it began ringing immediately.

  Number unknown.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Eve?’ The voice was so frosty that Eve was surprised it didn’t freeze her slim little mobile phone.

  The baby kicked again. It’s your daddy, she thought to herself and her initial feeling was one of relief. She had not heard a single word from him since the day she had refused his offer of marriage, which had left her wondering whether Luca Cardelli had washed his hands of his baby. But it seemed he had not.

  ‘Hello, Luca,’ she said steadily, and licked her suddenly dry lips. ‘Er, I can’t really talk now.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because I’m in the studio and there are a lot of people around—’

  ‘Then find somewhere where there are not!’

  There was some note of implacable determination which made her do just that, and she quickly walked out until she found an empty dressing room.

  ‘How are you?’ she asked.

  He ignored that, drawing in a deep breath in order to keep his temper in check. ‘More importantly, cara,’ he said silkily, ‘how are you and, more importantly, how is my baby?’

  Inexplicably, his possessive statement didn’t ruffle her one little bit. Indeed, there was a mad, stabbing maternal pride that he chose to acknowledge his child like that. She sighed. Sometimes you just couldn’t argue with nature.

  ‘I’m fine. Well, I am now. They took me off the breakfast show because I was being so sick—and they’ve given me my own show—’

  ‘I know they have,’ he interrupted coldly.

  ‘You do?’ Eve frowned in confusion. ‘But we don’t transmit to Italy!’ she said, rather stupidly.

  ‘I am not in Italy.’

  ‘Then wh-where are you?’ she asked, but even as she asked it she knew what the answer would be.

  ‘I’m in the Hamble.’

  A nameless dread crept over her. ‘What are you doing there?’

  ‘We’ll discuss that later,’ he clipped out. ‘I think we’d better meet for lunch, don’t you, Eve?’

  It was one of his questions which wasn’t really a question at all, and Eve knew that there was only one answer which was acceptable to them both. For him, because he demanded it and she knew that he had the right to, and for her because her curiosity was roused. ‘Okay, I’ll meet you,’ she said slowly. ‘Where?’

  ‘I’ll meet you at the Fish Inn at one forty-five.’

  ‘One forty-five,’ she echoed.

  The journey back seemed to take for ever, and Eve glanced at her watch. There wasn’t time to go home first, and besides—what would she go home for? It wasn’t like a normal lunch date with a normal man. She was pregnant and about to see the reluctant father. Not a lot of point prettying herself up. And suddenly Eve felt a pang. Luca was a formidable man.

  So why the hell was he here?

  The Fish Inn was the best restaurant in the village. Simply furnished, serving fresh food and with a stunning view over the harbour—people flocked from miles around to eat there. It was usually impossible to get a table at this short notice, but Luca had somehow managed.

  He was already seated when she arrived and his tall, lean body unmistakable. His black hair was ruffled and he wore some beautiful cashmere sweater, the colour of soft, grey clouds, and her heart turned over at the sight of him.

  And that is enough, she told herself. More than enough.

  He stood up as soon as he saw her, his face looking brooding and shuttered and the dreamy feeling fled, leaving her with a faint feeling of unease.

  From behind the lashed curtain of his narrowed eyes, he watc
hed her approach as if his life depended on it. Her face was blooming, he noted with approval, and her eyes were shining with life and with health. She wore dark trousers and a big, soft oatmeal-coloured sweater. Big as a man’s sweater, he thought viciously, and felt a stab of anger. But, big as it was, it could not disguise the definite swell of her belly and the anger transmuted into fierce and atavistic pride as he realised that the swell was part of him. His child in her belly. And, to his horror and shock, he felt the early, aching throb of desire.

  ‘Eve,’ he said.

  He spoke pleasantly, but as he would to some casual acquaintance. It was as if they were oceans apart. There was no kiss on either cheek, no guiding of the arm to her seat. Nothing to treat her in any way as special. In fact, he seemed almost to recoil from her and she wasn’t quite sure why that should hurt as much as it did.

  ‘Luca,’ she said evenly, and sat down.

  ‘How formal we are with each other,’ he mocked softly. ‘Why, we speak as strangers, Eve. Who would know, to look at us—that we have made such beautiful love together, and that we have created a child which grows beneath your heart?’

  His words were like weapons. The child beneath her heart. Didn’t that phrase mock her with the tantalising image of what it could have been like, if theirs were a normal, loving relationship? And, at the same time, didn’t it manage to emphasise just what little there was, or ever had been between them?

  Was he trying to wound her, to pay her back?

  How calm he looked today, light years away from the man who had stared at her in complete and utter disbelief when she had refused his offer to marry her.

  ‘I don’t want to marry you!’ she had declared. ‘You just want to use marriage to acquire me, and to acquire rights over our baby! Just as you would a business deal!’

  He had neither denied nor confirmed it. Just given her a long, considering look and said flatly, ‘And that is your decision?’