The Italian's Love-Child. Sharon Kendrick

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       CHAPTER THREE

      ONCE outside, Eve felt a sense of relief as the cool air hit her heated cheeks. Her pulse was racing and her stomach felt as churned as if she had been riding a roller coaster at the fairground. Though maybe that was because she had only picked at the delicious lunch at Lizzy and Michael’s.

      But deep down she knew that wasn’t true. It was simply a physical reaction to Luca, and in a way it was a great leveller. She wasn’t any different from any other woman and she defied any other woman not to react in that way, especially if he had been flirting with you. And he had, she was acutely aware of that. She might not be the most experienced cookie in the tin, but she wasn’t completely stupid.

      She walked over the rain-slicked cobblestones towards her cottage, listening to the sound of the masts creaking in the wind and thinking how naked they looked without their sails. It wasn’t that she didn’t meet men—she did—she just rarely, no, never met men like that. Which wasn’t altogether surprising. Outrageously rich, sexy Italians weren’t exactly turning up in the quiet streets of Hamble in their hundreds—or even in the TV studio.

      She would go home and do something hard and physical—something to bring her back down to earth and take her mind off him. What did her mother always used to say? That hard work left little room for neurotic thoughts!

      She changed into her oldest clothes—paint-spattered old khaki trousers and an ancient, washed-out T-shirt with ‘Hello, Sailor!’ splashed across the front. Then she put on a pair of pink rubber gloves, filled up a bucket with hot, soapy water and got down on her hands and knees to wash the quarry tiles in the kitchen.

      She had just wrung out the cloth for the last time when the doorbell rang, and she frowned.

      Unexpected callers weren’t her favourite thing. She liked her own space, and her privacy she guarded jealously, but that came with the job. One of the reasons she had never moved away from the tiny village she had grown up in was because here everyone knew her as Eve. True, local television wasn’t on the same scale as national—she had never been pestered by the stalkers who sometimes threatened young female presenters—but she was still aware that if your face was on television then people felt a strange sense of ownership. As if they actually knew you, when of course they didn’t.

      She opened the door and her breath dried her mouth to sawdust. For Luca was standing there, sea breeze ruffling the dark hair, his hands dug deep into the pockets of his jeans, stretching the faded fabric over the hard, muscular thighs.

      ‘Luca,’ she said. ‘This is a surprise.’

      ‘Is it?’

      The question threw her. Helplessly she gestured to her paint-spattered clothes, the garish pink gloves, which she hastily peeled from her hands. ‘Well, as you can see—obviously I wouldn’t have dressed like this if I was expecting someone.’

      The black eyes strayed and lingered on the message on her T-shirt and he expelled an instinctive little rush of breath. ‘And there was me, thinking that you had worn that especially for me,’ he murmured.

      ‘But you don’t sail much, any more, do you?’ she fired back, even though her breasts were tingling and tightening in response to his leisurely appraisal. ‘And strangely enough—the shop was right out of T-shirts bearing the legend: “Hello, Banker!”’ She wanted to tell him to stop staring at her like that and she wanted him to carry on doing it for ever.

      He laughed, even though he had not been expecting to, but it was only a momentary relief. His body felt taut with tension and he ached in a way which was as surprising as it was unwelcome. He did not want to feel like some inexperienced youth, so aroused by a woman that he could barely walk. And yet, when she had left the lunch party, she had left a great, gaping hole behind.

      ‘Are you going to invite me inside?’ he asked softly.

      She kept her face composed, only through a sheer effort of will. ‘For?’

      There was a pause. ‘For coffee.’

      It was another one of those defining moments in her life. She knew and he knew that coffee was not on top of his agenda, which made her wonder what was. No. That wasn’t true. She knew exactly what was on his mind; the flare of heat which darkened his high, aristocratic cheekbones gave it away, just as did the tell-tale glitter of his eyes.

      She could say that she was busy. Which was true. That she needed a bath. Which was also true. And then what would he do?

      ‘I need a bath.’

      ‘Right now?’ he drawled. ‘This very second?’

      ‘Well, obviously not right now.’

      He looked at her curiously. ‘What have you been doing?’

      ‘Scrubbing the kitchen floor,’ she answered and felt a sudden flare of triumph to see curiosity change to astonishment.

      ‘Scrubbing СКАЧАТЬ