The Italian's Love-Child

by Sharon Kendrick

  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.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  Chiara smiled, as if she was enjoying herself immensely.

  ‘Oh, didn’t you know that I used to be Luca’s lover?’

  Eve’s first reaction was to feel sick, until she told herself to grow up. He was bound to have had lots of lovers and they were bound to have been as beautiful as Chiara.

  ‘No. No, I didn’t.’

  ‘In fact…’ Chiara’s manicured fingernails delved into her slim, neat handbag, and she pulled out a piece of newspaper ‘…this was the last photograph taken of us together. Would you like to see it?’

  No, Eve would not like to see it, but she was not going to appear to be a totally-lacking-in-confidence kind of wife. She even managed a shrug. ‘Why not?’

  Because Eve was still holding the baby, Chiara leaned over with the clipping and held it in front of her and Eve could smell the seductive musk of her fragrance.

  ‘Here it is!’

  If it had been any other couple, it would have been a pretty unremarkable photo, but it was not any other couple—it was Luca and Chiara. The beautiful people, thought Eve, slightly wistfully—with their jet-dark hair and olive skin and clothes which shrieked of wealth and success. Luca’s eyes were narrowed at the camera. She knew that look—caught unawares and irritated. But Chiara was giving it everything she had—her hair tossed back and that big, mega-watt smile showing her perfect white teeth.

  And then she noticed the date and her heart missed a beat.

  It was the day…

  It was the day after Lizzy’s birthday.

  The very same day that he had come round to Eve’s house and tried to make love to her and she had very nearly let him. Dear God, he must have flown straight from her and into Chiara’s arms!

  In a way, she thanked God that she was holding onto Oliviero, for who knew what her reaction might have been otherwise? She guessed that she must have shown her horror and shock—she could feel all the blood draining from her face and she felt very slightly giddy.

  But she somehow managed an equable smile.

  ‘You make a lovely couple,’ she said blandly.

  It was clearly not the reaction that Chiara had expected, nor wanted. She put the clipping back in her bag.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, in an odd kind of voice. ‘That’s what everyone said.’ She sighed. ‘It was a wonderful night. But then it was a wonderful relationship.’

  Somehow Eve got through the rest of the afternoon, but she did it only by avoiding Luca’s eyes wherever possible. She played with the children and she chatted animatedly with the adults, making sure that she was never on her own for him to come and speak to her, and making sure that her face bore a smile of enjoyment at all times.

  Even in the car it was easy to maintain the masquerade. She didn’t want a scene when he was driving, not with their son strapped in the back.

  Luca frowned. ‘Are you okay?’

  Eve shut her eyes. ‘I’m fine,’ she said faintly. ‘Just had a little too much sun and wine, I think.’

  ‘Go to sleep, then,’ he murmured. The powerful car purred along the rural roads and his eyes hardened as he stared ahead. Why the hell had Patricio invited Chiara? Her eyes had been following him round like some beaten puppy and he had felt sorry for the man who had been her companion.

  Eve didn’t sleep, just lay there, her mind going over and over it. There she had been, marvelling at Luca’s restraint. Wondering why a man with such an overpowering sensuality had been able to suppress it.

  Well, maybe he hadn’t! Maybe that had all just been a ruse. What about the times when he had to slip out—to the shops or to his bank—was that all he was doing? Or was there some luscious lovely like Chiara, all too willing to give him what his wife was not?

  Back at the apartment, she went through the motions of bathing and changing—refusing all Luca’s offers of help—and she fed Oliviero in a simmering kind of silence.

  Luca watched her, his antennae alerted to something, he didn’t know what—but there was something about Eve’s body language which told him that something was not right.

  He waited until she had put the baby to bed, and then he looked up, noted the barely restrained fury on her face.

  ‘So are you going to tell me what the problem is?’

  ‘I should have thought that was perfectly obvious.’

  ‘I am not going to conduct an entire conversation in riddles, Eve!’ he snapped.

  ‘Well, then.’ She stared at him defiantly, hoping he wouldn’t see the great oceans of despair in her eyes. ‘I am clearly the problem.’

  He didn’t react.

  ‘Go on.’

  It all came tumbling out then—all the hurt and longing and the feeling that she was here only because she had trapped him and that, in a way, she had trapped herself, and not just by having a baby. For she had come to learn that the love she felt was not returned, and how could she ever be happy knowing that? And that this might be the cleanest
way to end it.

  ‘You slept with Chiara the very day I refused to make love to you!’ she accused. ‘What happened, Luca? Did you get so stirred up that you had to do it with someone, anyone—that you had to do it with her!’

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  LUCA’S voice was like cold, deadly ice. ‘Is that the opinion you have formed of me, then, Eve? A man so governed by his hormones that he is unable to control his sexual appetite? And surely if that were the case, then your theory contradicts itself—or no doubt I would have made more than one attempt to seduce you since you have been living here?’

  Eve stared at him, her face warm with anger and confusion. Where was the remorse? The shame? The denial? ‘What other explanation can there be?’

  ‘Oh, I wonder,’ he mocked sardonically.

  Amid the hot fires of jealousy and the aching awareness that he had not so much as laid a finger on her since long before their marriage, Luca’s look of disdain slowly began to seep into her fuddled brain and to make some kind of sense. She had judged him and found him wanting, choosing to believe the word of a woman she didn’t know, without even giving him a chance to defend himself.

  ‘So…you…you didn’t?’ Her voice sounded tiny, and the world seemed to hang on his answer.

  He looked at her, and saw all the insecurity and fears written on her face. Had he been blind to them before? Or had he just chosen not to see? ‘Of course I didn’t,’ he said softly. But he might have done, he supposed. A man less fastidious might have done. Or a man less blown away by an unknown woman in England who had turned him down…

  ‘I guess I was angry that you wouldn’t make love to me,’ he admitted quietly. His arrogant sexual pride had suffered a wounding blow, but maybe it had needed to. ‘Maybe even angrier with myself for having come on so strong.’ He gave a half-smile. ‘It’s not my usual style, Eve.’