No, she couldn’t imagine that he needed to.
He remembered back to what now seemed like a lifetime ago, but, of course, it was. ‘I told myself that you meant nothing and so, yes, I agreed to see Chiara that night. I suspect that she tipped off the photographers, because when we came out of the restaurant the paparazzi were there. But nothing happened. I dropped her off and I went home. Alone.’
‘So why did she say those things?’
‘Because she wants me. Because she’s jealous of you.’
‘Of me?’ said Eve, in an empty little voice. If only she realised what little there was to be jealous of. ‘She said you’d had a wonderful relationship.’
‘We had a brief affair—that was all.’
‘Which is what ours should have been,’ she pointed out painfully. ‘Shouldn’t it?’
He stared at her, realising how important his next words were. Realising that the truth could hurt, but that didn’t mean you should avoid it. ‘Who knows?’ he said softly. ‘No one can see into the future and no one can change the past. But that wasn’t the way it turned out, was it, Eve? Things happened. Fate stepped in. We had a baby—’
‘And we got married,’ she finished. ‘A…farce of a marriage.’
‘Is that what you think it is?’
‘Well, isn’t it?’
‘It isn’t the marriage I want it to be, no,’ he said carefully.
‘You mean you want us to start having sex?’
He gave a bitter laugh. ‘Are you trying to shock me, cara? Or anger me? Do you want to enrage me with your bold, flip comments so that I come over there and kiss you and take your clothes off and pull you to the floor and make love to you?’ He saw the sudden dull flush which darkened her cheeks and he felt an answering ache which almost tore him in two. ‘Oh,’ he said softly. ‘So you do.’
‘Luca,’ she said huskily and her tongue snaked out to circle her lips, like a hungry little animal. ‘Yes. Yes, of course I want that. Don’t you?’
He felt so close to acting out his words that he had to resist the desire with every ounce of self-restraint he possessed.
‘No! No, I don’t!’
She stared at him in hurt and confusion. This was the rejection she had always feared, but maybe it had been a long time coming. And maybe she needed to know. You couldn’t keep hiding from your feelings just because you were afraid they might hurt you. Being mature meant having the courage to confront the real issues.
She stared at him, her voice shaking, willing herself not to cry. ‘What, then? What is it that you want, Luca?’
He could talk around it for hours. Quantify and justify and explain it, but in the end there was only one thing he needed to tell her. ‘I need to tell you that I love you, Eve,’ he said huskily. ‘Ti amo. I love you so very much.’
Eve bit her lip. ‘Please don’t say that.’
‘Why?’ His voice was gentle. ‘Don’t you want me to love you?’
What had she just thought about having courage? ‘Yes.’
It was such a soft whisper of a word that he barely heard it. ‘Say that again, Eve.’
‘Yes. Yes.’ She turned her eyes up to him. ‘Yes, of course I want you to love me as I love you, but I’ve wanted it for so long that I’m scared you don’t mean it.’
‘Oh, I mean it,’ he said. ‘But this is all new stuff to me, Eve. I have never said it before. Never felt it before.’
For a moment she saw vulnerability written on his face. ‘What, never?’
He shook his head and now the aching within him became more than physical. For the first time in his life he felt a great, gaping emotional hole which only Eve could fill. ‘Tesora—’
The haunting, heartfelt term of endearment broke through every last barrier and she crossed the distance between them, only a little distance really, but it felt like the divide between the old life and the new.
‘Luca. Dear, darling, sweetest Luca.’
He pulled her into his arms, kissed the top of her head and then tipped her face up to look at his and her green-grey eyes were huge. He saw the tears on her cheeks and he brushed them away with his lips.
‘Never cry, tesora,’ he whispered against her skin. ‘Promise me you will never cry again.’
She shook her head. ‘I can’t promise you that,’ she said shakily. ‘We might have rows—fierce, terrible rows—and you might make me cry—’
‘And will you make me cry, too?’ he teased softly.
‘You? A big man like you. Crying?’ But her words faded to nothing when she saw the brightness in his dark eyes and in that moment she saw his vulnerability too and her hug became fierce and she was overwhelmed with love for him. ‘Luca,’ she whispered. ‘Oh, Luca, please.’
He knew what she wanted and what he wanted, too. He had waited too long and he could wait no longer. Without another word he picked her up into his arms and carried her into his bedroom.
‘I want to see you naked,’ he said shakily. He unbuttoned the white skirt and let it fall to her feet. ‘Cielo dolce,’ he murmured indistinctly. ‘For too many nights have I dreamed of you like this.’
She felt his warm hands on her hips and she felt so dizzy with desire she thought that she might faint. ‘I…I know. I’ve dreamed of it, too.’
‘Undress me,’ he urged as he slid a delicate little pair of panties down her legs, his fingertips brushing against the silkenness of her thighs and feeling her shiver beneath them.
‘I…I…can’t,’ she breathed helplessly. ‘I can barely think, nor breathe, nor feel…’ But he took her hand and guided it to his heart.
‘Can you feel that?’
The strong, powerful thunder of his blood. Her head fell to his shoulder. ‘Yes.’ She shuddered against him. ‘Oh, yes.’
‘That is for you, cara mia. All and only for you. Now lift your arms,’ he instructed gently, as he would a child, and obediently she did as he said, so that he pulled the T-shirt off and tossed it away, snapping the clasp of her bra open so that her breasts fell free and unfettered. He wanted to take one into his mouth, to suckle and to tease it, but a need even stronger drove him on.
Ruthlessly, he stripped the clothes from his body until they were both naked and then he drew her down onto the bed, smoothing the hair away from her face, looking deep into her eyes.
Luca sighed. ‘I want you. So very much.’
There was a split-second silence. ‘Then kiss me.’
‘I will kiss you until you beg me to kiss you no more,’ he promised. But still he gazed at her, as if wanting to prolong this moment, this mind-shattering realisation of all that she had come to mean to him.
Eve lifted her mouth. ‘Don’t make me wait any more,’ she moaned.
He kissed her back, feeling her fingers slide with abandon over his skin as if she was relearning his body by touch alone. ‘Greedy woman,’ he laughed, with soft delight.
He felt as though there were a million new nerve endings in his body. She could thrill him by the soft whisper of her lips, make him tremble with the wet touch of her tongue. He shuddered, helpless beneath her and then he moved above her and made his mouth move along the moist, erotic pathways of her skin until she cried out.
And when he entered her, he said her name and it was as if he had never made love before—the way people spoke of, but he had never believed could happen. Not to him. A complete communion, he thought dazedly. Afterwards he lay back and stared at the ceiling with eyes which felt new and reborn. ‘Oh, Eve,’ was all he said.
Eve kissed his elbow. It was a particularly gorgeous elbow. Then she clambered on top of him, her hair spilling untidily all over, some of it on his face, so that he laughed and blew it away.
‘Luca?’
‘Mmm?’
‘How long have you loved me for?’
He picked up another errant strand and thoughtfully twirled it around his finger. ‘Honestly?’
‘Honestly.’
‘If you want me to give you a time and a da
te, then I cannot,’ he admitted. ‘It kind of crept up on me. Like being out in the rain. A little drop at first, here and there, so faint that you thought you might have imagined it. And then a little more, and then more still—until suddenly I was standing in a deluge without quite realising how I’d got there!’
She pretended to pout. ‘So I’m like a storm?’
‘Mmm. Wild and strong and overwhelming.’
‘But you knew that I loved you?’
He smiled. It had happened to him too often in his life not to. And as always the realisation had scared him, but this time for very different reasons—not because he wanted to run away from her love, but because he had to be sure he was worthy of it. It would have been easier to have been impetuous, but, caught up in these new and strange emotions, he had used caution. ‘Yes, cara,’ he said softly. ‘I knew.’
‘And when were you going to get around to telling me you loved me back?’ she persisted. ‘How long would you have waited? What if we hadn’t had that row today—then I would never have known.’
‘Oh, yes, you would. I suppose I was waiting for the right moment only, when it happened, it was a wrong moment, really. Not champagne and flowers but a misunderstanding over a jealous woman.’
Eve wriggled luxuriously against him. ‘But it brought things to a head.’ She yawned.
‘Mmm.’ He idly put her little finger in his mouth and sucked on it. ‘You see, we have done everything the wrong way round, cara. At first there was passion and only passion, but before we knew it there was a baby, too.’
‘And anger,’ she ventured.
He nodded. ‘And anger. But no getting to know you. No old-fashioned courtship. No getting to know each other. No trust built nor friendship established. I wanted that and you deserved no less than that—we needed that if we were to share our future.’
It was, she realised, a very matter-of-fact way of looking at it, but she didn’t mind. And really—when you thought about it—it made sense. For marriage was a contract as well as a love affair.
‘So this,’ she said as a glorious thought occurred to her. ‘This is really our honeymoon?’
‘It sure is.’ He smoothed the flat of his hand over her bottom.
‘And…and how long will it last?’
‘How does for ever sound?’ he questioned huskily as his mouth moved down to cover hers.
EPILOGUE
THE afternoon sun was soft and so was the warm breeze which ruffled the hair of the two women as they sat watching the children play.
‘Oh, Eve,’ sighed Lizzy. ‘This is just so-o-o beautiful.’
Eve looked around her, trying to see it through her friend’s eyes, recalling her gasp of joy when Luca had first brought her here.
The house in Viale Monte Pincio was up in the mountains outside Rome and only an hour-and-a-half drive away from the city, but it was like being in another world. The entrance to the garden was through a tall, wrought-iron gate and there was an abundance of pine trees and bay bushes and many fruits growing there. Blackcurrant, raspberries, lemon and cherries.
‘Yes,’ she agreed quietly. ‘So very beautiful.’
On the grass, among the daisies, Kesi played with Oliviero. Luca and Michael had gone to find some cool drinks while Eve and Lizzy were sitting idly watching them, listening to the buzz of the bees and the call of the birds.
‘You’re so happy,’ Lizzy observed.
‘How could I not be?’ said Eve simply. ‘I feel like I’ve come home.’
She and Luca had both come round to the way of thinking that maybe the apartment wasn’t the best place for Oliviero to grow up in. They had decided to buy a house in the city itself, but more and more they came here, to this quiet, rural retreat. For the first time in his life Luca was taking time out to smell the roses. And the coffee. And proving to be the most hands-on father that Eve could ever have wished or hoped for.
‘And Luca doesn’t miss his apartment?’
‘Not at all.’ Eve shook her head. ‘Actually, he was the one who brought up the subject about moving. We talked about it and decided that, lovely as it is, it wasn’t really a family home.’
Lizzy sat up, which wasn’t easy as she was pregnant and lying in a deckchair. ‘You don’t mean you’re having another baby?’ she questioned excitedly.
Eve giggled. ‘No. Not yet. Maybe not for a while yet.’ She and Luca adored their son with all their hearts but knew that another pregnancy would bring about another change and felt that they had had quite enough change for the time being! They were enjoying their life, their son and their love. They were content to wait. And see.
‘And you don’t miss working?’ Lizzy questioned.
Eve shook her head. ‘Not a bit. Luca has friends in the television industry over here and, now that my Italian is quite passable, it wasn’t inconceivable that I could get a job in the business again—maybe editing or producing. Grazie, il mio uomo piccolo!’ This to Oliviero who had just tottered up and planted a battered daisy in his mother’s lap, before tottering off again. ‘But I didn’t want to,’ she finished. ‘Luca is around a lot and I…well, I love motherhood. I love being a wife. Luca’s wife. Who could ask for anything more?’
‘Not even a drink, il mio angelo?’ questioned the deep silken voice behind her which always had the power to make her shiver with longing.
She smiled up at him. ‘Oh, I think I could probably manage a drink!’
Michael flopped down on a deckchair and Luca put the tray down before sinking to the grass, leaning his head lazily against Eve’s knees, and she ruffled his hair as she so loved to.
‘It seems a long way from the Hamble,’ observed Lizzy sleepily.
‘A long way from anywhere. It’s just so peaceful,’ yawned her husband. ‘Well, you’re both very lucky, I must say.’
Luca glanced up at Eve and their eyes met in a long, precious moment. Yes, they were lucky enough to have the money to buy them houses in Italy, and to keep Eve’s on back in England, too. But the luckiest thing was to have found each other. It didn’t matter where they lived—they could make anywhere their home, just as long as they were together.
For they had both discovered that a relationship didn’t have to have a perfect beginning to have the perfect ending.
ISBN: 978-1-4268-5809-3
THE ITALIAN’S LOVE-CHILD
First North American Publication 2006.
Copyright © 2003 by Sharon Kendrick.
All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher, Harlequin Enterprises Limited, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9.
All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.
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