The Italian's Love-Child

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.

CHAPTER SEVEN

EVE 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 an