The Italian's Love-Child

by Sharon Kendrick

  ‘Spinga, signora! Spinga, ora!’

  ‘Luca! I’m so scared! What is she saying?’

  ‘She is saying, push, cara. And you must not be scared. Trust me, I am here with you.’

  ‘Oh! Ow!’

  She gripped his hands, her fingernails tearing into his flesh, but he scarcely noticed. ‘You’re doing fine,’ he coaxed. ‘Just fine.’ He snapped something rapid in Italian at the midwife, who immediately began speaking in slow, fractured English.

  ‘One more push, signora. One more. Take a deep breath and…’

  ‘Now, cara!’ urged Luca softly as he saw something in her face begin to change. ‘Now!’

  Eve pulled her hand away from his, her head falling back as she made one last, frantic little cry and Luca moved just in time to see his baby being born.

  ‘Here’s your baby,’ said the midwife and she deftly caught the infant.

  He stared. A little wet black head and a long, slithery body. The world seemed to stand still as the midwife sprang into action, cutting the cord, wiping a plug of mucus from the little nose.

  Eve half sat up in bed, her damp hair plastered all over her face, watching the midwife as if nothing else on the planet existed right then.

  For one long and breathless moment, there was silence, and then the infant opened its lungs and let out a baleful and lusty cry and Eve burst into tears of relief as the midwife held it up triumphantly.

  ‘You have a son, signore, signora!’ and she swaddled him in a blanket and placed him straight on Eve’s breast.

  Luca turned away, feeling the unfamiliar taste of tears at the back of his throat, but Eve needed strength now, not weakness. He sucked in a deep breath as he tried to compose himself. He had watched her suffer, had heard her cry out in pain and seen the fear on her face as the overwhelming spasms had brought the baby from her body. For the first time in his life he had been helpless, the experience of it all making everything else he had seen in his life somehow insignificant, but that should not really surprise him. For this was a miracle. Truly, a miracle.

  Joyfully, Eve stared down at the baby as it suckled from her breast and she glanced over at Luca, but he was staring out of the window. She needed him right now, but her needs were no longer paramount. And suddenly nothing else seemed to matter. Motherhood had kicked in.

  She studied the tiny creature intently. ‘Hello, baby,’ she said softly. ‘Hello, Oliviero. Oliviero Patricio.’ Funny how the name they had chosen seemed to suit him perfectly. She put her finger out and a tiny little fist curled round it. Maybe because everything about him was perfect.

  Luca turned round, still shaken, and stared at the tableau the two of them made. The child suckled at her breast and she was making soft little cooing sounds. She looked like a Madonna, he thought—as if the two of them had created their own magic circle, excluding the world and all others.

  Didn’t men sometimes say that they felt excluded when a baby was born? And that was when the relationship was as it should be. His mouth tightened, and he felt bitterly ashamed at the selfishness of his thoughts. Eve had given birth to a beautiful son, he thought. His son. And his heart turned over.

  Eve saw him watching her, and felt suddenly shy, unsure how to deal with these big, new emotions. ‘Would you…would you like to hold him?’ she asked.

  ‘He’s not still hungry?’

  The midwife laughed. ‘A child of this size will always be hungry! Hold him, signore—let him know who his father is!’

  Luca had always held his nephew with a kind of confident ease, but this felt completely different. He bent down and Eve carefully deposited the precious bundle into his arms.

  She watched the two of them, transfixed by the sight of the strong, powerful man held in thrall to the tiny baby.

  Luca looked down and his son opened his eyes and stared up at him, and in that moment his heart and his soul connected. ‘I will die for him,’ he said fiercely, hardly aware that he had spoken aloud. ‘My little Oliviero Patricio.’

  Eve lay back on the pillows, and the enormity of what had happened slammed home to her in a way it hadn’t before. She had been protected by the slight sense of unreality which pregnancy gave you, which made you sometimes feel you weren’t part of the outside world.

  Hadn’t part of her always thought that if it didn’t work out, they would quietly divorce and she could slip back to England? But now she knew that would never happen. The possessive pride which had softened Luca’s hard, handsome face told her that. He would die for him, he had said, and he would fight for him, too. She knew that. Whichever way she looked at it—as a gilded prison, or a marriage of convenience—she had better make the best of it, because she was here now for the duration.

  She closed her eyes. She was weary now.

  They took Oliviero home six days later, to a flat where Luca had clearly been busy. There were flowers everywhere—roses and lilies and tulips—colourful and scented, and more than a little overwhelming. The yellow nursery was filled with balloons, and there was a pile of cards, waiting, and gifts wrapped exquisitely in blue and silver and blue and gold. It looked as if a Hollywood film star were about to pay a visit and Eve found it all a little overwhelming.

  And the lift journey up to the penthouse only served to remind her that this was essentially a bachelor’s flat. She thought of the pristine white walls and the frosted glass and shuddered as her mind tried to make the connection with a rampaging toddler.

  Luca carried the baby in and placed the carry-cot on the coffee-table, smiling at him tenderly before looking up at Eve.

  ‘He sleeps well,’ he observed softly. ‘You feed him well, Eve.’

  Stupidly, she found herself blushing and turned away. It seemed such an intimate thing for him to say, and yet what could be more intimate than the fact he had witnessed the birth? He had seen her at her most naked and vulnerable, stripped and defenceless and in a way that was scary.

  Luca noted the way she wouldn’t look at him, and his eyes narrowed. So be it. If distance was what she wanted, then distance was what she would get.

  ‘Are you hungry?’ he questioned.

  Her instinct was to say no, but she knew she had to eat. She nodded. ‘I think I might have a bath first.’

  ‘That’s fine,’ he said coolly. ‘Sit down, and I’ll run one for you.’

  She had offended him and she didn’t know why. ‘No, honestly—’

  ‘Eve, sit down,’ he repeated, rather grimly. ‘You have been through a lot.’

  Rather gingerly, she sat down, gazing at Oliviero as he lay sleeping so peacefully, listening to the sound of water rushing into the bath.

  ‘It’s ready.’

  She looked up. Luca was standing there, silhouetted by the door, looking dark and edgy and somehow formidable. It would have been strange fitting into these new roles of mother and father whatever the circumstances, but the distance between them only seemed to make them stranger. A distance she didn’t quite know how, or if, she could ever breach.

  Slowly, she got to her feet. Still at that new-mother-scared stage of not wanting to let him out of her sight, she fixed him with an anxious look. ‘You’ll keep an eye on Oliviero?’

  His eyes hardened. What did she think he was going to do? Take a stroll around the piazza and leave him? ‘Sure,’ he said shortly.

  She couldn’t remember ever seeing him quite so keyed up. Maybe it was the birth of a baby. It was a stressful time for a man, too—she mustn’t forget that.

  But the bath made her feel a million times better and so did the hair-wash. Through the soapy and bubbly water she looked down at her stomach, which seemed amazingly flat. Of course, it wasn’t flat at all compared to its normal state, but it wasn’t too bad, considering. The midwife had told her that she was going to be one of those lucky few who would be back in her jeans within the month, and Eve hoped so.

  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

  THE 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 cours
e,’ 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.