The Italian's Love-Child. Sharon Kendrick
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the bottle from her and began to remove the foil. ‘Eve and I were just discovering that we like to get straight to the heart of the matter, weren’t we, Eve?’
Eve glared at him, feeling the heat in her cheeks. What could she say? What possible explanation could she give to her friend for the conversation they had been having? None. She couldn’t even work it out for herself.
‘Well, that’s what she does for a living, of course,’ giggled Lizzy.
He poured the champagne and handed both women a glass, his eyes lingering with amusement on the furious look Eve was directing at him. ‘And what exactly is that?’ he questioned idly.
‘Go on, guess!’ put in Lizzy mischievously.
It gave him the opportunity to imprison her in a mocking look of question. ‘Barrister?’
In spite of herself, Eve was flattered. Barrister implied intelligence and eloquence, didn’t it? But she hated talking about her job. People were far too interested in it and sometimes she felt that they didn’t see her as a person, but what she represented. And television was sexy. Disproportionately prized in a society where the media ruled. Inevitably, it had made her distrust men and their motives, wondering whether their attentions were due to what she did, rather than who she was.
But she wasn’t going to play coy, or coquettish, or let Luca Cardelli run through a whole range of options.
‘No,’ she said bluntly. ‘I work in television.’
‘Eve’s a presenter on Wake Up!, every weekday morning from six until nine!’ confided Lizzy proudly. ‘I’ve got her on video—would you like to see?’
‘Oh, Lizzy, please,’ begged Eve. ‘Don’t.’
Luca heard the genuine appeal in her voice and his eyes narrowed. So that would explain why people were watching her at the party last night. Would that explain some of her defences, too? The guarded way she looked at him and the prickly attitude? He shook his head. ‘It will be boring for Eve. I’ll pass.’
Eve should have been relieved. She hated watching herself, and especially when there was an audience of friends; it made her feel somehow different, when she wanted to be just like everyone else. But, perversely, the fact that Luca wasn’t interested in watching her niggled her. How contrary was that?
‘Well, thank heavens for small mercies.’ She sighed, and the sound of the front door slamming and the bouncing footsteps of Kesi were like a blessed reprieve. She put her glass down and turned as a small bundle of energy and a mop of blonde curls shot into the room, straight for Eve, and she scooped the little girl up in her arms and hugged her.
‘Arnie Eve!’ squealed the little girl.
‘Hello, darling. How’s my best girl?’
‘I hurted my knee.’
‘Did you?’ Eve sat down on the sofa with Kesi on her lap. ‘Show me where.’
‘Here.’ Kesi pointed at a microscopic spot on her leg as Michael walked into the room, beaming widely.
‘Champagne?’ he murmured. ‘Jolly good. You must come more often, Luca—if Lizzy has taken to opening bubbly at lunch-time!’
‘It was only because it was left over from last night!’ protested his wife.
‘How very flattering,’ murmured Luca, and they all laughed.
‘I’m starving,’ said Michael. ‘Some of us have been chasing after toddlers in the sea air and working up an appetite!’
‘Well, Eve’s been up since half-past three,’ commented Lizzy.
Luca raised his eyes. ‘When you said early, I didn’t realise you meant that early. Still night-time, in fact.’ He looked at her, where only her grey-green eyes were visible over the platinum mop-top of the child. ‘Must be restricting, working those kind of hours,’ he observed. ‘Socially, I mean.’
‘Oh, Eve’s a career woman,’ said Michael. ‘She wouldn’t worry about a little thing like that!’
Eve twisted one of Kesi’s curls around her finger. ‘Am I allowed to speak for myself? I hate the term “career woman”—it implies ambition to the exclusion of everything else. As far as I’m concerned—I just do a job which means I have to work antisocial hours.’
‘Like a nurse?’ interjected Luca, his dark eyes sparking mischief.
‘Mmm.’ She sparked the mischief right back. ‘Or a dairy farmer.’
Their gazes locked and held in what was essentially a private joke, and Eve felt suddenly unsafe. Shared jokes felt close, too close, but that was just another illusion—and a dangerously seductive one, too.
Lizzy blinked. ‘Come and wash your hands before lunch, poppet,’ she said to Kesi.
Kesi immediately snuggled closer to Eve.
‘Want to stay with Arnie Eve!’
It gave Eve the out she both wanted and needed—anything to give her a momentary reprieve from the effect that Luca was managing to have on her, simply by being in the same room.
‘Shall I come, too?’ she suggested. ‘And we can wash your hurt knee and put a plaster on it—how does that sound?’
Kesi nodded and wound her chubby little arms around Eve’s neck and Eve carried her from the room, aware of Luca’s eyes watching her and the effect of that making her feel self-conscious in a way she thought she had grown out of long ago.
But when she returned, lunch was set out on the table by one of the windows which overlooked the water, and Luca was chatting to Michael and barely gave her a glance as she carried the child back into the room and, of course, that made her even more interested in him!
She settled Kesi into her seat and frowned at Lizzy, who was raising her eyebrows at her in silent question. Just let me get through this lunch and I need never see him again, she thought. And the way to get through it was to treat him just as she would anyone else she was having a one-off lunch with. Chat normally.
But she spent most of the meal talking to Kesi, whom she loved fiercely, almost possessively. Being asked to stand as her godmother had been like a gift, and it was a responsibility which Eve had taken on with great joy.
Lots of women in her field didn’t get around to having children and Eve was achingly aware that this might be the case for her. She told herself that with her god-daughter she had all the best bits of a child, without all the ties.
She had just fed Kesi an olive when she reluctantly raised her head to find Luca watching her, and knew that she couldn’t use her as an escape route for the entire meal.
‘So whereabouts are you living now, Luca?’
He regarded her, a touch of amusement playing around the corners of his mouth. She had barely eaten a thing. And neither had he. And she had been playing with the child in a sweet and enchanting way, almost completely ignoring him, in a way he was not used to.
He wondered if she knew just how attractive it was to see a woman who genuinely liked children. But perhaps he had been guilty of stereotyping—by being surprised at seeing this cool, sophisticated Englishwoman being so openly demonstrative and affectionate. He pushed his plate away. ‘I live in Rome—though I also have a little place on the coast.’
‘For sailing?’
‘When I can. Not too much these days, I’m afraid.’
‘Why not? Michael said you were a brilliant sailor.’
He didn’t deny it; false modesty was in its way a kind of dishonesty, wasn’t it? Sailing had been a passion and an all-consuming one for a while, but passions tended to dominate your life, and inevitably their appeal faded. ‘Oh, pressure of work. An inability to commit to it properly. The usual story.’
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