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And a bottle of champagne cooling.
Her mouth feeling suddenly dry with nerves, Eve sat down.
‘That looks…very nice,’ she said weakly.
He glanced up from tearing the foil from the bottle. He saw her eyes stray nervously to the wine. Did she think he was trying to lull her into letting her guard down?
His mouth hardened as he poured the champagne into two goblets and he handed her one.
‘What shall we drink to?’ said Eve. To love? she thought ironically as she saw the cynical curve of his mouth. To happy ever after?
‘To our son. To Oliviero.’
Of course. ‘To Oliviero.’ She raised her goblet to mirror his and as their glasses touched she thought she had never heard a colder sound.
‘It is good to be home?’ he said carefully.
Eve took a huge mouthful as she looked around the room which had his beautiful and rather austere taste stamped all over it, wondering if it would ever truly feel like her home, as well as his. Wistfully, she remembered that glorious weekend she had spent here, when they had been unencumbered by anything except the sheer pleasure of the moment. It seemed like another lifetime ago, but in a way she supposed that it was.
She wondered how many different women had sat here, just where she was sitting now. Drinking champagne as a precursor to going to that vast bed of his and being made love to for the rest of the night.
But she would go off alone to her creamy, peachy bedroom and he would go off alone to his.
And the irony was that she was his wife!
She took the question at face value. ‘It’s good to be out of hospital,’ she said carefully.
‘That good, huh?’ he mocked.
‘I didn’t mean it how it sounded.’
‘Don’t worry about it, Eve,’ he said. ‘It’s bound to be strange.’
Frustratedly, she took another sip of the champagne. It was cold and dry and delicious and it seemed to dull some of the empty, aching feeling inside her. Dangerous to drink on an empty stomach. Alcohol loosened the inhibitions and who knew what she might then blurt out? She put the glass down and reached for the food instead.
She wished that he wouldn’t just sit there like that, watching her from the narrowed dark eyes as if she were some kind of specimen in a test-tube, some new and undiscovered species. Maybe that was it. Maybe he just wasn’t sure how to treat the woman who had just had his baby who was his wife, but in name only. Come to think of it, she thought slightly giddily—she couldn’t blame him. There certainly wasn’t a rule-book he could look up for guidelines on how to cope with such a situation.
‘When will you have to go back to work?’ she asked him.
‘Whenever I please. I want to make sure that you’re happy and settled before I do.’
Happy and settled. If only he knew. She wondered what had happened to the old Eve—who could chat and banter and tease him and feel like an equal to him. Had she been left on the shores of her native land, been cast off with her life as a single mother? ‘That’s very sweet of you.’
Luca had been described in many ways by women during his life, but ‘sweet’ had never been one of them. He did not want to be ‘sweet’. He made an impatient little noise as he got up from the table and drew something from the back pocket of his jeans, a slim, navy leather box, and he put it on the table in front of Eve, as casually as he would a deck of cards.
Her heart was beating very fast. Everyone knew what came in boxes which looked like that.
‘Wh-what’s this?’
‘Why not open it, and see?’
She flipped the lid off and drew in a breath of disbelief to see a bracelet glittering against the navy velvet. A band of iridescent, sparkling diamonds, each one as big as a fingernail. She stared at it, then looked up at him in genuine horror.
‘Luca, I can’t possibly accept this.’
‘Of course you can. You’re my wife and you have given me a beautiful son. Here, let me put it on.’
He bent his head to fasten the clasp around her wrist and Eve closed her eyes as his fingertips brushed against her skin, so warm and beguiling in contrast to the heavy, cold jewellery. Damn the bracelet, she thought. Throw it across the room and just touch me properly.
