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And then Luca Cardelli had anchored his yacht one day, and set every female pulse in the vicinity racing with disbelieving pleasure.
The men who had sailed had been generally fit and muscular and bronzed and strong, but Luca had been all these things and Italian, too. As a combination, it had been irresistible.
She had been breathlessly starstruck around him, all fingers and thumbs, her normal waitressing skills deserting her, completely dazzled by his careless Italian charm. On one embarrassing occasion, the plate of prawns she had been carrying had slipped so that half a dozen plump shellfish had slithered onto the floor in a pink heap.
Biting back a smile, he had handed her a large, linen napkin.
‘Be quick,’ he murmured. ‘And no one will notice.’
No one except him, of course. Eve wished that the floor could have opened up and swallowed her. But she told herself it was just a phase in her life, of being utterly besotted by a man who saw her as part of the background.
Their conversation was limited to pleasantries about wind conditions and her uttering unmemorable lines such as, ‘Would you like some mayonnaise with your salmon?’ which made his act of generosity so surprising that she read all the wrong things into it.
The end-of-season yacht club ball was the event of the year, with the ticket prices prohibitedly high, unless you got someone to take you, and Eve had no one to take her.
‘You are going dancing on Saturday?’ Luca questioned idly as he sipped a drink at sundown on the terrace one evening.
Eve shook her head as she scooped up the discarded shells from his pistachio nuts. ‘No. No, I’m not.’
He lifted a dark, quizzical eyebrow. ‘Why not? Don’t all young women want to dance?’
She ran her fingers awkwardly down over her apron. ‘Of course they do. It’s just…’
The brilliant black eyes pierced through her. ‘Just what?’
Humiliating to say that she had no one to take her, surely? And not very liberated either. And the tickets cost more than she earned in a month. She wished he wouldn’t look at her that way—though what way could he look for her not to feel so melting inside? Maybe if he put a paper bag over his head she might manage not to turn to jelly every time he was in the vicinity. ‘Oh, the tickets cost far too much for a waitress to be able to afford,’ she said truthfully.
‘Oh.’ And his eyes narrowed.
Nothing more was said, but when Eve went to fetch her coat that evening there was an envelope waiting for her and inside it was a stiff, gold-edged ticket to the dance. And a note from Luca. ‘I want to see you dance,’ it said.
Eve went into a frenzy. She was Cinderella and Rockerfella combined; it was every fairy tale come true. She borrowed a dress from her friend Sally, only Sally was a size bigger and they had to pin it into shape, but even after they had done it still looked like what it was. A borrowed dress.
Eve surveyed herself doubtfully in the mirror. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Nonsense! You look gorgeous,’ said Sally firmly. ‘You definitely need some make-up, though.’
‘Not too much.’
‘Eve,’ sighed Sally. ‘Did or did not Luca Cardelli give you a ticket? Yes? Well, believe me—no man splashes out that much if he isn’t interested. You want to look sophisticated. Mature. You want him to whisk you into his arms and dance the night away, don’t you? Well, don’t you?’
Of course she did.
But Eve felt like a fish out of water when she walked into the glittering room, feeling an outsider and knowing that she was an outsider. Everyone else seemed to be with someone, except for her.
And then Luca arrived, with a woman clinging to his arm like a limpet, a stunning vision in a scarlet dress that was backless and very nearly frontless.
She remembered almost everyone’s eyes being fixed with envious fascination on them as they danced in a way which left absolutely no doubt about how they intended to end the evening and Eve felt sick and watched until she could watch no more. He said hello to her and told her that she looked ‘charming’. It was a curiously unflattering word and she wondered how she could have been so stupid.
She crept home and scrubbed her face bare and carefully took off Sally’s dress and hung it in the wardrobe. Luca left for Italy soon after and she didn’t even see him to say goodbye. She didn’t even get the chance to thank him.
But that experience defined her.
That night she vowed never to make her ambition overreach itself. To capitalise on what she was and not what she would like to have been. And she was no looker—certainly not the kind of woman who would ever attract a man like Luca Cardelli. She had brains and she had determination and she would rely on those instead.
Time shifted and readjusted itself, and it was an altogether different Eve who looked into the dark eyes with their hard, luminous brilliance.
Well, here it came, in a fanfare, with a drum roll! ‘I was a waitress,’ she said baldly, but smiled. ‘At the yacht club.’
