The Italian's Token Wife
He watched them for a moment, half hidden by some cascading climbing roses. She was playing with the child, standing in the shallow end, legs apart, throwing the infant up into the air with a whooshing noise and catching him as he plunged back down into the water. She was laughing, and so was the child—uproariously. Evidently this experience was of enormous pleasure to him, for the little boy gave a shout of glee as he went up into the air before descending yet again for a mighty splash.
Rafaello stepped forward and immediately Magda halted in mid-lift, seeing him enter the pool area. She froze, indifferent to the abrupt wail of the baby as his fun was interrupted.
She was staring at him—horror-struck, so it seemed to Rafaello, and he felt an immediate burst of irritation. There was no need to look at him as if he were Dracula. But she was already wading to the semicircle of steps that led out of the water as fast as she could, wielding the protesting baby in front of her like a shield. She started to climb out hastily.
‘I’m very sorry. I didn’t realise I should not be swimming now,’ she said apologetically, and Rafaello experienced another stab of exasperation. He felt like Frankenstein’s monster as well as Dracula.
‘There is no need to get out,’ he informed her, dropping his towel down on to one of the loungers. ‘I only require one lane. Continue with the child.’
But she was getting out of the pool all the same. ‘No, no—we’ve finished.’
Judging by the wail that the child let out at that point, he, for one, considered his swim far from finished.
‘Stay in the water.’
His voice came out harsher than he meant it to. It was just that there was no reason for the girl to be looking at him like that. As if he were an ogre.
‘No, really…’ the girl mumbled. She’d stopped staring at him. Her gaze seemed awkward now instead, and she started to sidle towards the lounger her things were on, holding the protesting baby under his armpits. His legs kicked out furiously. His wet body started to slip through her hands, and for a moment Rafaello thought he would slide through them. He lunged forward just as the girl, at the same time, bent her knees to lower the child from a safer height to the ground.
For the barest second his eyes met hers, before he backed away, realising his assistance was unnecessary. What he saw in their expression shocked him. She looked absolutely terrified.
He straightened up. ‘I thought he was going to fall,’ he said.
She straightened as well, keeping hold of the baby’s hand, though he was tugging as hard as he could in the direction of the water.
‘His name is Benji,’ she said suddenly, and just as quickly she wasn’t looking terrified at all. She was looking fierce. ‘Just because he doesn’t have a father doesn’t mean he doesn’t have a name.’
Rafaello’s mouth tightened. She was a pint-sized thing, he thought. The swimsuit she was wearing should have been thrown away long ago. Thinking about it, it probably had been. It was a size too large for her, for a start, and its elasticity was completely gone. It was crinkling around her abdomen and hips, bunching over her squashed, unappealing breasts. It was also a hideous shade of purple and green, in a spectacularly unlovely pattern.
As he looked at it in disgust he realised her expression had changed again. It was one he recognised. She’d worn a similar expression the time he’d looked her over in his flat, deciding that she was ideal for his purposes. This time he recognised it.
Mortification.
He also recognised his own reaction to it—that same sense of discomfort he’d felt on the drive back from the airport this evening. OK, he admitted, so it wasn’t the poor girl’s fault she looked about as appealing as a plucked chicken. And she certainly didn’t have any spare cash to splash out on a decent swimsuit that might actually do something for her body instead of against it. In fact, that restriction must apply to her whole wardrobe, which was certainly the most appalling he’d ever encountered.
A sudden image of Lucia flashed into his mind, curved and poured into her endless designer numbers, worn a bare handful of times before being discarded.
The comparison was unkind. The girl in front of him might have come from a different planet.
He frowned. Another memory flashed in his mind—Lucia calling her a putana.
The stab of discomfort came again, stronger this time. What the hell business had Lucia to call her that? The idea was ludicrous.
More than ludicrous.
It was offensive.
His eyes flicked to the child again, still desperate to get back into the pool. OK, so there was no father around—but accusing her of being feckless, as she obviously had been, was hardly the same as accusing her of prostitution.