The Italian's Love-Child. Sharon Kendrick

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.’

      He shook his head. ‘Forgive me, but—’

      ‘You bought me a ticket for a dance.’

      Something stirred on the outskirts of his mind. A hazy recollection of a sweet, clumsy girl who was trying to look too old for her age. His eyes widened ever so slightly. How little girls grew up! He nodded slowly. ‘Yes. I remember now.’

      ‘And I never got the chance to thank you. So thank you.’ She smiled, the brisk, charming smile she used to such great effect in her professional life.

      ‘You’re welcome,’ he murmured, thinking how time could transform. Was this sleek, confident woman really one and the same person?

      His dark eyes gleamed and suddenly Eve felt vulnerable. And tired. She didn’t want to flirt or make small talk with him—for there was still something about him which spelt danger and unobtainability. A gorgeous man who was passing through, that was all, same as last time. Stifling a yawn, she glanced at her watch. ‘Time I was going.’

      Luca’s eyes narrowed in surprise. This was usually his line and never, ever had a woman yawned when he had been talking to her—not unless he had spent the previous night making love to her. ‘But it’s only nine o’clock.’ He frowned. ‘Why so early?’

      ‘Because I have to work in the morning.’

      ‘I am not sure that I believe you.’

      ‘That, of course, is your prerogative, Mr Cardelli,’ she returned sweetly

      He stilled. ‘So you remember my surname, too?’

      ‘I have a good memory for names.’

      ‘Unlike me.’ He glittered her a smile. ‘So you had better remind me of yours.’

      ‘It’s Eve. Eve Peters.’

      Eve. It conjured up a vision of the first woman; the only woman. It was a small, simple and yet powerful name. It spoke of things lush and coiling. Of a fallen woman, driven by lust and the forbidden. He wanted to make a mocking joke about serpents, but something in those intelligent eyes stopped him. ‘So what kind of job gets you up so early, Miss Peters? You’re a nurse?’ he guessed. ‘Either that, or you milk cows?’

      Eve laughed in spite of herself. ‘Wrong!’ She didn’t want to be charmed by him, or made to laugh by him. She wanted to get away and she wanted it now. He unsettled her, made her feel like the woman she wasn’t. She liked to be in control. She was calm, and considered and logical, and yet right now she was having the kind of fantasy which was more suited to the naïve adolescent she had abandoned that night along with the borrowed dress. Wondering what it would be like to be in Luca Cardelli’s arms and to be made love to by him.

      The filmy cream shirt meant that she could faintly see the whorls of hair which darkened the tight, hard chest and for one wild and crazy moment she imagined herself pressed against him, the strong arms enfolding her in a magic circle from which no woman would ever want to escape.

      Luca saw her green-grey eyes momentarily darken and he felt an unexpected answering ache. ‘Don’t go,’ he urged softly. ‘Stay a little while and talk to me.’

      His body had tensed and a drift of raw, feral male scent began to intoxicate her. ‘I can’t,’ she said, with a smile she hoped wasn’t weak or uncertain. She put her glass down on the window-ledge. ‘I really must go.’

      ‘That, of course, is your prerogative,’ he said mockingly.

      Her resolve was beginning to fail her. ‘Goodbye,’ she said. ‘It was nice to see you again.’

      ‘Arrivederci, cara.’ He stood and watched her weave her way through the room, his face giving nothing away. And maybe the blonde had been watching, for she reappeared by his side, looking like a tiny, overstuffed cushion in comparison to Eve’s slender height and suddenly her simpering presence was cloying and not to be endured.

      ‘I thought you were going to make a phone call, Luca,’ she pouted.

      Did she spend her whole life pouting? he wondered with a faint air of irritation.

      ‘I was distracted,’ he drawled. ‘But thank you for reminding me.’

      It hadn’t been what she had meant to happen at all, and the blonde’s mouth fell open in protest, but Luca had gone, pulling his mobile phone out of his pocket, and he went to stand outside, for privacy and for a better signal.

      And better to watch the shadowy figure of Eve Peters as she walked down the path with the moonlit water dappling in the soft night air behind her.

       CHAPTER TWO

      EVE knew that people thought that working in television