The Italian's Love-Child (14 page)

‘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
!’

L
UCA’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.’

No, she couldn’t imagine that he needed to.

He remembered back to what now seemed like a lifetime ago, but, of course, it was. ‘I told myself that you meant nothing and so, yes, I agreed to see Chiara that night. I suspect that she tipped off the photographers, because when we came out of the restaurant the paparazzi were there. But nothing happened. I dropped her off and I went home. Alone.’

‘So why did she say those things?’

‘Because she wants me. Because she’s jealous of you.’

‘Of
me
?’ said Eve, in an empty little voice. If only she realised what little there was to be jealous of. ‘She said you’d had a wonderful relationship.’

‘We had a brief affair—that was all.’

‘Which is what ours should have been,’ she pointed out painfully. ‘Shouldn’t it?’

He stared at her, realising how important his next words were. Realising that the truth could hurt, but that didn’t mean you should avoid it. ‘Who knows?’ he said softly. ‘No one can see into the future and no one can change the past. But that wasn’t the way it turned out, was it, Eve? Things happened. Fate stepped in. We had a baby—’

‘And we got married,’ she finished. ‘A…farce of a marriage.’

‘Is that what you think it is?’

‘Well, isn’t it?’

‘It isn’t the marriage I want it to be, no,’ he said carefully.

‘You mean you want us to start having sex?’

He gave a bitter laugh. ‘Are you trying to shock me,
cara
? Or anger me? Do you want to enrage me with your bold, flip comments so that I come over there and kiss you and take your clothes off and pull you to the floor and make love to you?’ He saw the sudden dull flush which darkened her cheeks and he felt an answering ache which almost tore him in two. ‘Oh,’ he said softly. ‘So you do.’

‘Luca,’ she said huskily and her tongue snaked out to circle her lips, like a hungry little animal. ‘Yes. Yes, of course I want that. Don’t you?’

He felt so close to acting out his words that he had to resist the desire with every ounce of self-restraint he possessed.

‘No! No, I don’t!’

She stared at him in hurt and confusion. This was the rejection she had always feared, but maybe it had been a long time coming. And maybe she needed to know. You couldn’t keep hiding from your feelings just because you were afraid they might hurt you. Being mature meant having the courage to confront the real issues.

She stared at him, her voice shaking, willing herself not to cry. ‘What, then? What is it that you want, Luca?’

He could talk around it for hours. Quantify and justify and explain it, but in the end there was only one thing he needed to tell her. ‘I need to tell you
that I love you, Eve,’ he said huskily. ‘
Ti amo.
I love you so very much.’

Eve bit her lip. ‘Please don’t say that.’

‘Why?’ His voice was gentle. ‘Don’t you want me to love you?’

What had she just thought about having courage? ‘Yes.’

It was such a soft whisper of a word that he barely heard it. ‘Say that again, Eve.’

‘Yes. Yes.’ She turned her eyes up to him. ‘Yes, of course I want you to love me as I love you, but I’ve wanted it for so long that I’m scared you don’t mean it.’

‘Oh, I mean it,’ he said. ‘But this is all new stuff to me, Eve. I have never said it before. Never felt it before.’

For a moment she saw vulnerability written on his face. ‘What, never?’

He shook his head and now the aching within him became more than physical. For the first time in his life he felt a great, gaping emotional hole which only Eve could fill.
‘Tesora—’

The haunting, heartfelt term of endearment broke through every last barrier and she crossed the distance between them, only a little distance really, but it felt like the divide between the old life and the new.

‘Luca. Dear, darling, sweetest Luca.’

He pulled her into his arms, kissed the top of her head and then tipped her face up to look at his and her green-grey eyes were huge. He saw the tears on her cheeks and he brushed them away with his lips.

‘Never cry,
tesora
,’ he whispered against her skin. ‘Promise me you will never cry again.’

She shook her head. ‘I can’t promise you that,’ she said shakily. ‘We might have rows—fierce, terrible rows—and you might make me cry—’

‘And will you make me cry, too?’ he teased softly.

‘You? A big man like you.
Crying?
’ But her words faded to nothing when she saw the brightness in his dark eyes and in that moment she saw his vulnerability too and her hug became fierce and she was overwhelmed with love for him. ‘Luca,’ she whispered. ‘Oh, Luca,
please
.’

He knew what she wanted and what he wanted, too. He had waited too long and he could wait no longer. Without another word he picked her up into his arms and carried her into his bedroom.

‘I want to see you naked,’ he said shakily. He unbuttoned the white skirt and let it fall to her feet.
‘Cielo dolce,’
he murmured indistinctly. ‘For too many nights have I dreamed of you like this.’

She felt his warm hands on her hips and she felt so dizzy with desire she thought that she might faint. ‘I…I know. I’ve dreamed of it, too.’

‘Undress me,’ he urged as he slid a delicate little pair of panties down her legs, his fingertips brushing against the silkenness of her thighs and feeling her shiver beneath them.

‘I…I…can’t,’ she breathed helplessly. ‘I can barely think, nor breathe, nor feel…’ But he took her hand and guided it to his heart.

‘Can you feel that?’

The strong, powerful thunder of his blood. Her head fell to his shoulder. ‘Yes.’ She shuddered against him. ‘Oh, yes.’

‘That is for you,
cara mia
. All and only for you. Now lift your arms,’ he instructed gently, as he
would a child, and obediently she did as he said, so that he pulled the T-shirt off and tossed it away, snapping the clasp of her bra open so that her breasts fell free and unfettered. He wanted to take one into his mouth, to suckle and to tease it, but a need even stronger drove him on.

Ruthlessly, he stripped the clothes from his body until they were both naked and then he drew her down onto the bed, smoothing the hair away from her face, looking deep into her eyes.

Luca sighed. ‘I want you. So very much.’

There was a split-second silence. ‘Then kiss me.’

‘I will kiss you until you beg me to kiss you no more,’ he promised. But still he gazed at her, as if wanting to prolong this moment, this mind-shattering realisation of all that she had come to mean to him.

Eve lifted her mouth. ‘Don’t make me wait any more,’ she moaned.

He kissed her back, feeling her fingers slide with abandon over his skin as if she was relearning his body by touch alone. ‘Greedy woman,’ he laughed, with soft delight.

He felt as though there were a million new nerve endings in his body. She could thrill him by the soft whisper of her lips, make him tremble with the wet touch of her tongue. He shuddered, helpless beneath her and then he moved above her and made his mouth move along the moist, erotic pathways of her skin until she cried out.

And when he entered her, he said her name and it was as if he had never made love before—the way people spoke of, but he had never believed could happen. Not to him. A complete communion, he thought dazedly. Afterwards he lay back and stared
at the ceiling with eyes which felt new and reborn. ‘Oh, Eve,’ was all he said.

Eve kissed his elbow. It was a particularly gorgeous elbow. Then she clambered on top of him, her hair spilling untidily all over, some of it on his face, so that he laughed and blew it away.

‘Luca?’

‘Mmm?’

‘How long have you loved me for?’

He picked up another errant strand and thoughtfully twirled it around his finger. ‘Honestly?’

‘Honestly.’

‘If you want me to give you a time and a date, then I cannot,’ he admitted. ‘It kind of crept up on me. Like being out in the rain. A little drop at first, here and there, so faint that you thought you might have imagined it. And then a little more, and then more still—until suddenly I was standing in a deluge without quite realising how I’d got there!’

She pretended to pout. ‘So I’m like a storm?’

‘Mmm. Wild and strong and overwhelming.’

‘But you knew that I loved you?’

He smiled. It had happened to him too often in his life not to. And as always the realisation had scared him, but this time for very different reasons—not because he wanted to run away from her love, but because he had to be sure he was worthy of it. It would have been easier to have been impetuous, but, caught up in these new and strange emotions, he had used caution. ‘Yes,
cara
,’ he said softly. ‘I knew.’

‘And when were you going to get around to telling me you loved me back?’ she persisted. ‘How long would you have waited? What if we hadn’t had that row today—then I would never have known.’

‘Oh, yes, you would. I suppose I was waiting for the right moment only, when it happened, it was a wrong moment, really. Not champagne and flowers but a misunderstanding over a jealous woman.’

Eve wriggled luxuriously against him. ‘But it brought things to a head.’ She yawned.

‘Mmm.’ He idly put her little finger in his mouth and sucked on it. ‘You see, we have done everything the wrong way round,
cara
. At first there was passion and only passion, but before we knew it there was a baby, too.’

‘And anger,’ she ventured.

He nodded. ‘And anger. But no getting to know you. No old-fashioned courtship. No getting to know each other. No trust built nor friendship established. I wanted that and you deserved no less than that—we needed that if we were to share our future.’

It was, she realised, a very matter-of-fact way of looking at it, but she didn’t mind. And really—when you thought about it—it made sense. For marriage was a contract as well as a love affair.

‘So this,’ she said as a glorious thought occurred to her. ‘This is really our honeymoon?’

‘It sure is.’ He smoothed the flat of his hand over her bottom.

‘And…and how long will it last?’

‘How does for ever sound?’ he questioned huskily as his mouth moved down to cover hers.