The Italian's Love-Child

CHAPTER TWELVE

‘WE’RE not going to cook every night,’ said Luca suddenly, one morning.

Eve didn’t answer for a moment. The baby’s foot was sliding across the front of her belly and she sat and watched it, then lifted her head. ‘You mean last night was a disaster?’

He shook his head. The simple meal they had eaten on the terrace beneath the stars had been almost perfect. Almost. She was engaging and stimulating company and, because sex was off limits, all the focus had been on the conversation and this was new territory for him.

Luca wasn’t averse to talking to women but he usually regarded conversation with them as purely functional. You might talk to a woman if you were dealing with her at work. Or if you were flirting with her, or making pleasant small talk before taking her to bed, or chatting to the wives of friends. They were easier to talk to, in a way, because they had no expectations of you as a potential partner, which all other women did.

But he was a man’s man—he rarely had conversation with a woman for conversation’s sake. With Eve he had to—and last night he had realised why she had been so successful at her job. He had persuaded her to talk about her work, something she was normally reluctant to do.

He had understood for the first time that working in television was not easy and that the skill lay in making it look easy. Not many people could cope with live and unpredictable interviews, while at the same time having the studio crew sending frantic instructions into your earpiece.

‘Will you ever want to go back to it?’ he had persisted.

In Italy? With a baby? Who knew what she would want—and did people ever get what they truly wanted? Protected still by the bubble of pregnancy which surrounded her, Eve had smiled. ‘We’ll see.’

Luca stared at her, watching the dreamy way that she observed the baby’s movements. ‘No, Eve, it was not a disaster.’

Disaster was too strong a word. Crazy was better.

It seemed crazy that they should part at the end of the evening and go off to sleep in their separate beds. Or rather, for him to toss and turn and think about how pregnancy could make a woman seem so intensely beautiful. Like a ripe and juicy peach.

He wanted to lie with her. Not to make love—something deep within him told him that it would be entirely inappropriate to consummate their marriage when she was heavy with his child. But he would have liked to have held her. To have wrapped her in his arms and smoothed the silken splendour of her hair. To have run his fingertips with possessive and wondrous freedom over the great curve of her belly.

‘It is just that your freedom, and mine—will be restricted by a baby.’

‘Only a few weeks now,’ she observed serenely.

‘Exactly! Time to make the most of what we have, while we still have it! We shall play the tourist.’

‘I suppose when you put it that way,’ Eve murmured. Maybe they should get out more. Heaven only knew, it was difficult enough to be this close to him and not close enough to him. Itching for him to touch her, to kiss her—anything which might give her some inkling of whether or not he still found her sexually attractive, or whether that had died a death a long time ago.

He showed her a different side of Rome. Took her to all the secret places of his boyhood, the dark, hidden crevices and sunlit corners.

‘We aren’t really playing the tourist at all, are we?’ she asked him as they strolled slowly around a hidden garden, soft with the scent of roses. ‘No tourist would ever find places as hidden away as these are.’

‘Ah, but this is the true Rome. For Romans.’

Eve felt a brief, momentary pang of isolation. Their child would grow up and learn this secret Rome, with a native’s knowledge which would always elude her.

‘Eve?’ said Luca softly. ‘What is it?’

I’m frightened of what the future holds, she wanted to say to him. But she wouldn’t. She had to learn to cope and deal with her own fears—not project them onto Luca. ‘Nothing,’ she said softly.

They dined with Patricio, Luca’s oldest friend and his wife, Livvy, who went out of their way to make her feel comfortabl

e. Livvy had a toddler about the same age as Kesi and Eve was glad that all Luca’s friends weren’t childless.

Gradually, she began to relax.

And then, one starlit evening, they were walking home after having late-night coffee and pastries and Eve suddenly stopped, drawing in a gasp as a terrible sharp spasm constricted across her middle. ‘Ouch!’

Luca caught her by the arm. ‘What is it?’

She could see the paling of his face and shook her head. ‘It was nothing. It must have been the cake that… Oh, Luca…Luca—it hurts!’

‘Madre de Dio!’ he swore and steadied her. ‘I said we should get a taxi!’ He held up his hand and a taxi screeched to do his bidding as if it had been lurking round the corner, just waiting for his command.