‘I see no cause for laughing,’ he said icily.

Sophia wiped the corner of her eyes. ‘You don’t? Well, I think it’s priceless! A woman has turned the great Luca Cardelli down! Do you know, I think I like this woman!’

‘It is not funny!’

‘No,’ she said slowly. ‘No, I suppose it’s not. Well, you’re going to have to do something, Luca.’

‘I know I am,’ he said grimly.

The red studio light went off and there was a burst of spontaneous clapping and Eve looked round and smiled as she saw the executive producer walking into the studio, a sheaf of papers in his hand.

‘It went well?’

‘Eve, it was absolutely brilliant!’ He waved the papers like a winner’s medal. ‘I have here the viewer figures, my dear, and I can say, without fear of contradiction, that we have a hit on our hands.’

She knew they did. It was indefinable, that feeling, but she had worked in television long enough to know success when she encountered it. She had been pretty optimistic from day one, but you never really knew for sure, not until the figures came in.

‘We’ve had a sack-load of letters and emails, the phone hasn’t stopped ringing all week and the duty log is full of praise.’

It had all worked out perfectly, so perfectly that she sometimes felt she ought to pinch herself.

She hadn’t even had to tell Clare about her pregnancy—the editor had guessed it for herself, and so it seemed had most of the crew. Leaving the set regularly in order to be sick had kind of given the game away.

Her early-morning sickness had shown no sign of abating. And that was when the idea had come up for Eve to be taken off the breakfast show and given her own daily slot just before midday. As someone had remarked, it wasn’t exactly a loss to the world of television if they used the show to replace the endless reruns of a comedy which had been made two decades earlier.

Eve In The Morning! was to be modelled on the classic audience-participation theme, but with an added twist. As well as the usual studio discussions on the lines of: ‘Too Fat To Enjoy Sex!’ or ‘My Husband Doesn’t Know I’m A Stripper!’, there was to be a special five-minute slot every week which would keep the viewers up to date with her pregnancy. Viewers liked to be involved, and what better way to involve them?

‘That’s fantastic.’ Eve smiled broadly at the executive producer, some of the tension leaving her, and she placed her hand over her swollen belly as the baby gave a kick as if to say, Concentrate on me, now! Time to go home for a well-earned rest. She picked up her handbag, switched on her phone and it began ringing immediately.

Number unknown.

‘Hello?’

‘Eve?’ The voice was so frosty that Eve was surprised it didn’t freeze her slim little mobile phone.

The baby kicked again. It’s your daddy, she thought to herself and her initial feeling was one of relief. She had not heard a single word from him since the day she had refused his offer of marriage, which had left her wondering whether Luca Cardelli had washed his hands of his baby. But it seemed he had not.

‘Hello, Luca,’ she said steadily, and licked her suddenly dry lips. ‘Er, I can’t really talk now.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because I’m in the studio and there are a lot of people around—’

‘Then find somewhere where there are not!’

There was some note of implacable determination which made her do just that, and she quickly walked out until she found an empty dressing room.

‘How are you?’ she asked.

He ignored that, drawing in a deep breath in order to keep his temper in check. ‘More importantly, cara,’ he said silkily, ‘how are you and, more importantly, how is my baby?’

Inexplicably, his possessive statement didn’t ruffle her one little bit. Indeed, there was a mad, stabbing maternal pride that he chose to acknowledge his child like that. She sighed. Sometimes you just couldn’t argue with nature.

‘I’m fine. Well, I am now. They took me off the breakfast show because I was being so sick—and they’ve given me my own show—’

‘I know they have,’ he interrupted coldly.

‘You do?’ Eve frowned in confusion. ‘But we don’t transmit to Italy!’ she said, rather stupidly.

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