The Italian's Love-Child. Sharon Kendrick

she exclaimed, as if he had proposed communication with Mars itself.

      He smiled again, his mouth quirking a touch wearily at the corners. ‘It was delightful to meet you.’

      He made his escape before she asked the inevitable. How long was he staying? Would he like her to show him around? Unless she was bold enough to replicate the incredible time he had met a woman and within two minutes she had asked him to take her to bed!

      The woman in green was still gazing out of the window and there was something intriguing about her stillness, the way she stood alone, part of the party and yet apart from it. Like a woman secure in her own skin. He made his way across the room and stood beside her, his eyes taking in the last rainbow spangles of the fireworks, set against the incomparable beauty of the sea.

      ‘Spectacular, isn’t it?’ he murmured, after a moment.

      She didn’t answer straight away. Her heart was beating hard. Very hard. Funny how you could react to someone, even if you told yourself you didn’t want to. ‘Utterly,’ she agreed, but she didn’t move, didn’t turn her head to look at him.

      Now he was a little intrigued. ‘You aren’t enjoying the party?’

      She did turn then, for it would have been sheer rudeness to have done otherwise, mentally preparing herself for the impact up close of the dark, glittering eyes and the sensual lips and it was as devastating as she remembered, maybe even more so. At seventeen you knew nothing of the world, nor of men—you thought that men like Luca Cardelli might exist in droves. It took a long time to realise that they didn’t, and that maybe that was a blessing in disguise. ‘Why on earth should you think that?’

      ‘You’re here all on your own,’ he murmured.

      ‘Not any more,’ she responded drily.

      His dark eyes glittered at the unspoken challenge. ‘You want me to go away?’

      ‘Of course not,’ she said lightly. ‘The view is for free, for everyone to enjoy—I shouldn’t dream of claiming a monopoly on it!’

      Now he was very intrigued. ‘You were staring at me, cara,’ he observed softly.

      So he had noticed! But of course he had noticed—it was probably as much a part of his life as breathing itself to have women staring at him.

      ‘Guilty as charged! Why, has that never happened to you before?’ she challenged mockingly.

      ‘I don’t remember,’ he mocked back.

      She opened her mouth to say something spiky in response, and then pulled herself together. He had been sweet and kind to her once, and just because a girl on the brink of womanhood hadn’t found that particularly flattering, you certainly couldn’t blame him. It wasn’t his fault that he was so blindingly gorgeous and that she had cherished a schoolgirl crush on him which hadn’t been reciprocated. And neither was it his fault that he was still so gorgeous that a normally calm and sensible woman had started behaving like a spitting kitten. She smiled. ‘So what do you think of the Hamble?’

      ‘It isn’t my first visit,’ he mused.

      ‘I know.’

      ‘You know?’

      ‘You don’t remember me, do you?’

      He studied her. She was not his type. Tall and narrow-hipped where he liked his women curvy, and soft and small. Her face was not beautiful either, but it was interesting. A strong face—with its intelligent grey-green eyes and a determined mouth and soft shadows cast by her high cheekbones.

      It was difficult to tell what colour her hair was, and whether its colour was natural, since she had caught it back severely from her face, and tied it so that it fell into a soft, silken coil on the base of her long neck. Her dress was almost severe too, a simple sheath of green silk which fell to her knees, showing something of the brown toned legs beneath. The only truly decorous thing about her was a pair of sparkly, sequinned sandals which showed toenails painted a surprisingly flirtatious pink, which matched her perfect fingernails.

      He shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I don’t remember you. Should I?’

      Of course he shouldn’t. ‘Not really.’

      She gave a little shrug and turned her head to the view once more, but he put his hand on her bare arm and sensation shivered over her.

      ‘Tell me,’ he murmured.

      She laughed. ‘But there’s nothing to tell!’

      ‘Tell me anyway.’

      Eve sighed. Why the hell had she even brought it up? Because she liked things straightforward? Because the probing nature of her job made her explore people’s feelings and reactions?

      ‘You came here one summer, a long time ago. We met then. We hardly knew each other, really.’

      Luca frowned for a moment, and then his face cleared. So it had not been a woman he had bedded and forgotten. There had been only one woman during that long, hot summer and she had been the very antithesis of this keen-eyed woman with her scraped-back hair. ‘Unfortunately, cara, I am still none the wiser. Remind me.’

      It had been a summer of making money, which had never really been in abundance in Eve’s life. Ever since her father had died, her mother had gone out to work to make sure that Eve never went without, but there had never been any surplus to buy the things that seventeen-year-old girls valued so much in life. Dresses and shoes and music and make-up. Silly, frivolous things.

      Eve had been overjoyed to get the summer job as waitress at the prestigious yacht club. She had never been part of the boating set—with their sleek boats and their quietly expensive clothes and all-year tans and glamorous parties. She’d had precisely no experience of waitressing, either, but she’d been known and liked in the village for being a hard-working and studious girl. And she’d suspected that they’d known she’d actually needed the money, as opposed to wanting the job in order to pick up a rich boyfriend.

      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