The Italian's Love-Child (12 page)

‘We’ll need to think about decorating a room,’ he mused.

‘Pink, or blue?’ She searched his face. What if secretly he was so macho that he would only be satisfied with a son—and what if she didn’t produce one, what then? ‘Which would you prefer, a boy or a girl?’

He frowned, as if the question had surprised him.

‘I don’t care which; there is only one thing I care about.’

‘Yes.’ Their eyes met and she smiled. ‘A healthy baby. It’s what every parent prays for.’ She looked at him. ‘So it’s yellow?’

‘Yellow?
Sì. Giallo.
’ A smile creased the corners of his eyes. ‘Say it after me.’

She felt giddy with the careless innocence of it.
‘Gi-allo.’

‘So, there is your first Italian lesson!’ He leaned back indolently in his chair and studied the lush breasts through narrowed eyes. ‘What would you like to do today? The Grand Tour of the city?’

She thought about it. What she wanted and craved more than anything was some kind of normality, for there had been precious little of it in her life of late. And even if such a thing were too much to hope for, she needed to start living life as she—or rather, they—meant to go on.

‘Will you show me round the immediate vicinity?’ she asked. Would something like that sound prosaic to such an urbane and cosmopolitan man? ‘Show me where the nearest shops are. Where I can buy a newspaper, that kind of thing. We could—if you meant it—go and buy some stuff for supper? Is there somewhere close by?’

He nodded. ‘There is the
al mercato di Campo de Fiori
and there are shops. Sounds good.’

She hesitated. She knew something of his life-style—the man with nothing in the fridge who rarely ate in, who travelled the world and went to fancy places. ‘Luca?’

‘Eve?’ he said gravely.

She drew a breath. ‘Listen, I know you’re usually out—probably every night for all I know. You mustn’t stay in just because of me.’

‘You mean you want to go out at night?’

‘Like this?’ She shook her head, and laughed. ‘I’m far too big and lumbering to contemplate hitting on Rome’s top night-spots!’

He frowned. ‘You mean you want me to go out without you?’

‘If you want to. I just want you to know that I
don’t intend to cramp your style. You mustn’t feel tied—because of the baby.’

He stared at her. Did she have a degree in psychology, or just a witch’s instinct for knowing how to handle a man? That by offering him his freedom, he now had no desire to take it!

‘I am no longer a boy,’ he said gravely. ‘And “top night-spots” kind of lost their allure for me a long time ago. So I’ll stay in. With you.’

‘Sure you won’t be bored?’

‘Let’s wait and see.’

Her voice was wry. ‘That seems to be a recurrent theme with us, doesn’t it?’

‘Indeed.’ Their eyes met. He admired her mind, he realised, and her sense of humour, too. The baby was going to be a lucky baby to have her as a mother, he thought suddenly. ‘I’m glad you’re here, Eve,’ he said.

She put her coffee-cup down with a hand which was trembling. But he was merely being courteous, and he should be offered the same in return. She smiled. ‘And so am I.’

‘W
E’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 mur
mured. 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 comfortable. 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.

Eve’s Italian was still pretty non-existent, but even she understood the word
‘ospedale’
. ‘Luca, I am
not
going to hospital!’

‘Sì, cara,’
he contradicted grimly. ‘You are!’

She stared him out. ‘No,’ she said stubbornly. ‘And anyway, the baby isn’t due for another two weeks. I want to go home!’

His impotent fury that she could not and would not be persuaded—he could tell that from the stubborn set of her mouth—was softened slightly by her instinctive use of the word ‘home’. He nodded. ‘Very well,’ he agreed softly. ‘We will go home. But the doctor will visit, and he will decide.’ He saw her open her mouth to protest.
‘He will decide, Eve,’
he said, in a voice which broached no argument.

‘It’s a waste of his time!’

But Eve was wrong and Luca and the doctor were right. It was not a false alarm. The baby was on the way.

Everything became a fast and frantic blur, punctuated only by sharp bursts of pain which became increasingly unbearable.

‘I want an epidural!’ she gasped as they wheeled her into the delivery room.

But it was too late for an epidural, too late for anything. She was having her baby and the midwife
was saying something to her frantically, something she didn’t understand.

‘Spinga, signora! Spinga, ora!’

‘
Luca
! I’m so scared! What is she saying?’

‘She is saying, push,
cara
. And you must not be scared. Trust me, I am here with you.’

‘Oh! Ow!’

She gripped his hands, her fingernails tearing into his flesh, but he scarcely noticed. ‘You’re doing fine,’ he coaxed. ‘Just fine.’ He snapped something rapid in Italian at the midwife, who immediately began speaking in slow, fractured English.

‘One more push,
signora
. One more. Take a deep breath and…’

‘Now,
cara
!’ urged Luca softly as he saw something in her face begin to change.
‘Now!’

Eve pulled her hand away from his, her head falling back as she made one last, frantic little cry and Luca moved just in time to see his baby being born.

‘Here’s your baby,’ said the midwife and she deftly caught the infant.

He stared. A little wet black head and a long, slithery body. The world seemed to stand still as the midwife sprang into action, cutting the cord, wiping a plug of mucus from the little nose.

Eve half sat up in bed, her damp hair plastered all over her face, watching the midwife as if nothing else on the planet existed right then.

For one long and breathless moment, there was silence, and then the infant opened its lungs and let out a baleful and lusty cry and Eve burst into tears of relief as the midwife held it up triumphantly.

‘You have a son,
signore, signora
!’ and she swad
dled him in a blanket and placed him straight on Eve’s breast.

Luca turned away, feeling the unfamiliar taste of tears at the back of his throat, but Eve needed strength now, not weakness. He sucked in a deep breath as he tried to compose himself. He had watched her suffer, had heard her cry out in pain and seen the fear on her face as the overwhelming spasms had brought the baby from her body. For the first time in his life he had been helpless, the experience of it all making everything else he had seen in his life somehow insignificant, but that should not really surprise him. For this was a miracle. Truly, a miracle.

Joyfully, Eve stared down at the baby as it suckled from her breast and she glanced over at Luca, but he was staring out of the window. She needed him right now, but her needs were no longer paramount. And suddenly nothing else seemed to matter. Motherhood had kicked in.

She studied the tiny creature intently. ‘Hello, baby,’ she said softly. ‘Hello, Oliviero. Oliviero Patricio.’ Funny how the name they had chosen seemed to suit him perfectly. She put her finger out and a tiny little fist curled round it. Maybe because everything about him was perfect.

Luca turned round, still shaken, and stared at the tableau the two of them made. The child suckled at her breast and she was making soft little cooing sounds. She looked like a Madonna, he thought—as if the two of them had created their own magic circle, excluding the world and all others.

Didn’t men sometimes say that they felt excluded when a baby was born? And that was when the relationship was as it should be. His mouth tightened,
and he felt bitterly ashamed at the selfishness of his thoughts. Eve had given birth to a beautiful son, he thought. His son. And his heart turned over.

Eve saw him watching her, and felt suddenly shy, unsure how to deal with these big, new emotions. ‘Would you…would you like to hold him?’ she asked.

‘He’s not still hungry?’

The midwife laughed. ‘A child of this size will always be hungry! Hold him,
signore
—let him know who his father is!’

Luca had always held his nephew with a kind of confident ease, but this felt completely different. He bent down and Eve carefully deposited the precious bundle into his arms.

She watched the two of them, transfixed by the sight of the strong, powerful man held in thrall to the tiny baby.

Luca looked down and his son opened his eyes and stared up at him, and in that moment his heart and his soul connected. ‘I will die for him,’ he said fiercely, hardly aware that he had spoken aloud. ‘My little Oliviero Patricio.’

Eve lay back on the pillows, and the enormity of what had happened slammed home to her in a way it hadn’t before. She had been protected by the slight sense of unreality which pregnancy gave you, which made you sometimes feel you weren’t part of the outside world.

Hadn’t part of her always thought that if it didn’t work out, they would quietly divorce and she could slip back to England? But now she knew that would never happen. The possessive pride which had softened Luca’s hard, handsome face told her that. He
would die for him, he had said, and he would fight for him, too. She knew that. Whichever way she looked at it—as a gilded prison, or a marriage of convenience—she had better make the best of it, because she was here now for the duration.

She closed her eyes. She was weary now.

They took Oliviero home six days later, to a flat where Luca had clearly been busy. There were flowers everywhere—roses and lilies and tulips—colourful and scented, and more than a little overwhelming. The yellow nursery was filled with balloons, and there was a pile of cards, waiting, and gifts wrapped exquisitely in blue and silver and blue and gold. It looked as if a Hollywood film star were about to pay a visit and Eve found it all a little overwhelming.

And the lift journey up to the penthouse only served to remind her that this was essentially a bachelor’s flat. She thought of the pristine white walls and the frosted glass and shuddered as her mind tried to make the connection with a rampaging toddler.

Luca carried the baby in and placed the carry-cot on the coffee-table, smiling at him tenderly before looking up at Eve.

‘He sleeps well,’ he observed softly. ‘You feed him well, Eve.’

Stupidly, she found herself blushing and turned away. It seemed such an intimate thing for him to say, and yet what could be more intimate than the fact he had witnessed the birth? He had seen her at her most naked and vulnerable, stripped and defenceless and in a way that was scary.

Luca noted the way she wouldn’t look at him, and his eyes narrowed. So be it. If distance was what she wanted, then distance was what she would get.

‘Are you hungry?’ he questioned.

Her instinct was to say no, but she knew she had to eat. She nodded. ‘I think I might have a bath first.’

‘That’s fine,’ he said coolly. ‘Sit down, and I’ll run one for you.’

She had offended him and she didn’t know why. ‘No, honestly—’

‘Eve, sit down,’ he repeated, rather grimly. ‘You have been through a lot.’

Rather gingerly, she sat down, gazing at Oliviero as he lay sleeping so peacefully, listening to the sound of water rushing into the bath.

‘It’s ready.’

She looked up. Luca was standing there, silhouetted by the door, looking dark and edgy and somehow formidable. It would have been strange fitting into these new roles of mother and father whatever the circumstances, but the distance between them only seemed to make them stranger. A distance she didn’t quite know how, or if, she could ever breach.

Slowly, she got to her feet. Still at that new-mother-scared stage of not wanting to let him out of her sight, she fixed him with an anxious look. ‘You’ll keep an eye on Oliviero?’

His eyes hardened. What did she think he was going to do? Take a stroll around the piazza and leave him? ‘Sure,’ he said shortly.

She couldn’t remember ever seeing him quite so keyed up. Maybe it was the birth of a baby. It was a stressful time for a man, too—she mustn’t forget that.

But the bath made her feel a million times better and so did the hair-wash. Through the soapy and bubbly water she looked down at her stomach, which
seemed amazingly flat. Of course, it wasn’t flat at all compared to its normal state, but it wasn’t too bad, considering. The midwife had told her that she was going to be one of those lucky few who would be back in her jeans within the month, and Eve hoped so.