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Only Eve had not failed.
‘Anyway.’ She forced herself to be businesslike, because surely that was what it all boiled down to. ‘If it’s just the finance thing you’re worried about, then don’t, because I will be fine.’ She gave him a bright smile. ‘Unless there was anything else?’
He stared at her incredulously. ‘You think this is simply about money? You expect me to walk out of that door without a backward glance and have no interest in this child of mine?’
This child of mine. Powerful words. Daunting words. But then Luca was a powerful and daunting man.
‘I have no expectations whatsoever. I never did have,’ she added deliberately and at least he had the decency to flinch. ‘You’d better tell me what yours are. Some kind of contact, I suppose?’
‘Contact!’ he repeated furiously. ‘What an ugly word that is!’
‘Well, it may be ugly, but it happens to be the relevant word!’ she retorted, stung. ‘All in all it’s a pretty ugly business, isn’t it?’
He rose to his feet then, came over to where she sat and crouched down beside her. If it had been any other woman, in any other situation, he would have taken her in his arms, to comfort her and to soothe her. But her frozen stance told him not to try.
All his life, Luca had been able to seduce any woman he wanted, to persuade her round to his way of thinking, but now he suddenly recognised that Eve was not so malleable.
His eyes travelled to the perfect fingernails, painted a coral-pink today, and he remembered his outrageous accusation.
‘So what is it to be?’ continued Eve remorselessly. ‘Every other weekend, with some of the holidays? Alternate Christmases? That’s how it works, isn’t it?’
‘I don’t give a damn how it works!’ He reached out and caught her face in the palm of his hand and tipped it up to look at him, and to his surprise she didn’t stop him. ‘There is only one sensible choice which lies ahead of us,’ he said, and his perfect English suddenly became a little more broken. And in a way, maybe this was how it was supposed to be. All his life he had run from commitment, but he could run no longer. ‘You will marry me, Eve,’ he said fiercely.
She looked at him. ‘Marry you?’ she said incredulously.
CHAPTER NINE
‘AND those are the facts,’ fini
shed Luca, with a shrug.
‘Wow!’ said his sister softly, and handed him the sleeping baby.
Luca raised his eyebrows sardonically as his hands tightened automatically around the warm little bundle. ‘What’s this?’ he questioned drily. ‘Aversion therapy?’
‘Nonsense! You are brilliant with your nephew—you always have been. You’re a natural with babies, Luca.’
The baby stirred and sighed and Luca glanced down at him, his hard, handsome features softening. ‘Just that it seems I won’t get much practice with my own.’
‘Oh, Luca—for heaven’s sake! It isn’t like you to be such a defeatist!’
‘I am not being defeatist, Sophia!’ he snapped, but the baby made a squeak of protest, so he lowered his voice. ‘I am merely being practical. She lives in England and I live in Rome—and we are not together. The facts speak for themselves.’
‘Well, why don’t you be together?’ demanded his sister. ‘For heaven’s sake, Luca, you can’t spend your whole life as a commitment-phobe, searching for the impossibly perfect woman. You’ll just have to marry her—I can’t think of a better reason for breaking your long-term bachelorhood than a baby! People do it all the time!’
Thoughtfully, Luca stroked a tender finger across the glossy raven hair of his nephew and then looked up at his older sister, with an expression in his eyes he could see surprised her.
‘I have asked her to marry me,’ he said.
‘You did?’
He nodded.
‘And?’
‘And she said no.’
There was a moment of shocked, stunned silence, and then, to his astonishment, his sister tipped her head back and burst out laughing, causing her son to squirm in Luca’s arms and he handed him back, a stern look on his face.
