The Italian's Love-Child

CHAPTER TEN

LUCA walked into the scanning room and the first things he noticed were the lights. He frowned, his eyes narrowing as they accustomed themselves to the brightness, but the frown deepened as he took in the rest of the small room.

There was Eve, lying on a trolley, with a white-coated technician smearing some thick kind of jelly all over her swollen belly—while a man dressed entirely in denim was swinging a little meter close by.

In one corner, a youngish woman with jangly earrings was in earnest conversation with another man—another—who was holding a hand-held camera.

They all looked up as he walked in, and the woman with the jangly earrings smiled and, before Eve could stop her, said, ‘I’m sorry—but we’re filming in here.’

There was a short, tense silence.

‘And what precisely,’ said Luca, in a voice of dangerous silk, ‘do you think you’re filming?’

The woman with the jangly earrings stared at him. ‘We’re doing a feature for a television show, and it’s really very crowded in here—so if you wouldn’t mind leaving.’

It was exactly like a bomb going off, thought Eve. A deadly little stealth bomb. ‘I am not going anywhere,’ he grated. ‘But I’m afraid that you are. Get out.’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘You are not, repeat not, filming Eve having a scan. Now are you going to leave or do I have to pick up the damn cameras myself and throw them out?’

Jangly earrings looked at Eve. ‘Eve?’

She should have been mortified, outraged, and furious with Luca marching in here and single-handedly managing to put her livelihood in jeopardy. But she was none of those things. In theory, the filming of her scan for the show had seemed like a great idea, but the reality was that it had felt intrusive.

And she had never been so glad to see someone in her life.

‘Just who is this man, Eve?’

‘He’s…’

‘I’m the baby’s father,’ interjected Luca icily. ‘And I want to see the scan of my baby. In private.’

There was something about his face and something about the tone of his voice which dared anyone to defy him and the news crew were clearly not going to be the exception.

With much mumbling and clicking of tongues, they packed up their equipment and left, but not before the woman with the jangly earrings had turned to Eve.

‘Perhaps you could call me later?’

It took Luca a moment or two to control his breathing, and the white-coated

technician was blinking in bemusement.

‘And here was me thinking I was going to be on television!’ she joked.

Steadying his breathing, Luca shot Eve a look which said ‘I will talk to you afterwards’ and she felt exactly like a schoolgirl who had been summoned to see the headmaster.

But Luca’s rage was temporarily forgotten when the technician began to slide the scanner over the bump and what had looked like a blur of grey and black gradually began to seem real.

‘There we are,’ said the technician. ‘Two arms and two legs—perfect. And there’s the heart—can you see it beating?’

There was silence, only this time a breathless, excited kind of silence.

‘Oh, look!’ said the technician, as if she hadn’t said this a thousand times before. ‘He’s sucking his thumb!’

‘He?’ shot out Luca.

‘Oh, sorry! We always say “he”. Habit, really, I know I shouldn’t. Would you like to know your baby’s sex?’ she asked casually.