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But he did not. He held her hand up and the brilliant circlet of jewels glittered, as if it were a trophy. Eve looked at it. It must have cost a fortune, and there were women who would have drawn blood for it, but she was not one of them.
‘It’s very beautiful,’ she said dutifully.
The baby gave a little squawk and Luca almost seemed to expel a sigh of relief. ‘I’ll bring him to you.’
She watched him go to the carry-cot, her eyes drifting over the broad shoulders, the long, powerful legs and the way his dark hair curled slightly at the nape of his neck. The jeans stretched over the high, firm curve of his buttocks as he bent to lift the baby and she shivered with a hungry kind of longing. She hadn’t exactly been immune to him before, but she had been preoccupied with the baby-to-be and with adjusting to life in a new city.
But now… Now all she wanted was to touch him. To rediscover the hard, strong lines of his face with her fingertips. To stroke them slowly over the silken flesh of his body.
She swallowed and turned appealing eyes up at him as Oliviero was placed warm and securely in her arms. ‘You mustn’t keep spoiling me like this. Honestly, Luca.’
‘But I like doing it,’ he said. And did it not simplify things? It had been so black and white when she had been pregnant. Thinking of her as a woman not yet recovered from the birth made it easier not to concentrate on the fact that no barrier now existed, and that they were just a man and a woman, living together. But not together.
Their eyes locked for long, confusing seconds and Eve felt a sudden tension which crackled through the room like electricity. Were they just going to ignore it, or endure it? And would it simply go away, or grow stronger and stronger?
‘Luca—’
The baby wriggled restlessly and Luca knew he had to get away before he went back on everything he had vowed he would not do. ‘Feed him,’ he said shortly, and he didn’t need to see the brief darkening of her eyes to know that he had hurt her.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
THE soft, dark greens of the cypress trees painted umbrellas against the blue of the sky and the ancient stone walls passed by in a blur.
Eve leaned comfortably back in her seat and looked out at the countryside.
‘All roads lead to Rome,’ she said dreamily.
Luca gave a brief, satisfied smile. When had the change happened, he wondered, and when had he first started to notice it? He had watched her bloom and blossom, almost like watching a flower grow. And he had discovered that, just as a flower took time to blossom, change took time. You could not hurry it. Everything had its own rhythm. For a man used to clicking his fingers and getting exactly what he wanted, when he wanted, it had been a pretty major lesson in life.
‘And all roads lead out of Rome, of cours
e,’ he murmured. ‘As that’s where we’re headed!’
‘Ha, ha!’ She turned round and looked at Oliviero, who was peacefully asleep in his baby-seat. He was wearing a teeny little sailor-suit today—all crisp white cotton and embroidered anchors. Not quite what she would have chosen, but she had quickly discovered the Italian love of dressing their babies up, and she and Luca were driving out for a lunch party at Patricio and Livvy’s country home and they had bought the outfit. ‘He looks sweet, doesn’t he?’
‘He does indeed,’ he said indulgently. ‘Abbastanza buon mangiare.’
‘Which means?’
‘Try and work it out.’
Eve frowned. She hadn’t been learning Italian for long, but her progress had been remarkable, which she put down to Luca’s tendencies as a slave-driver. ‘Buon means good.’
‘Sì.’
The frown deepened. ‘And I think mangiare is to eat.’
‘It means, “good enough to eat”.’ He smiled and gave an exaggerated and very Latin shrug. ‘You see? I can teach you nothing, Eve!’
But immediately she felt tension creep into the atmosphere and she didn’t know whether she welcomed or cursed it. She was sure that there was plenty he could teach her, and she certainly wasn’t thinking of the Italian language. So should she regard it as achievement or failure that she and Luca had managed to live together in relative harmony? As man and woman, if not man and wife.
How was it possible for them to communicate as friends and loving parents, and yet leave a great yawning hole in their communication about where their relationship was heading? And how long could it continue?
She stole a glance at Luca, who was swearing softly in Italian as a goat almost blundered into the road. He was just so gorgeous. He hated air-conditioning in cars, so had left his window half open and the warm, fragrant air blew in and ruffled his black hair. His shirt-sleeves were rolled up, showing the tiny dark hairs which sprinkled the strong arms, and the faded jeans emphasised the long, muscular definition of his thighs.
He was a hot-blooded and passionate man. She knew that for herself. She’d just had her six-week check-up following Oliviero’s birth, and yet Luca had made no move towards her. How long could he continue to lead a life which was celibate? And it was one of those strange things—the longer it went on, the harder it would become to confront it.
Almost as if facing it would risk shattering the tentative trust and friendship they had built up together. And surely it was not her place to come out and say something? Was she living in fear that she might be rejected, or did it go deeper than that? For wasn’t part of her terrified of the masquerade of having sex with Luca and pretending that it was just sex, when she had grown to love him so much and wanted nothing but his love in return?
