The Italian’s Baby

‘Do you take diamonds from him?’ he demanded abruptly.

‘Luca, stop that. I’m not answerable to you.’

He scowled, and she wondered how long it had been since anyone stood up to him, and said no. A long time, she suspected, since he didn’t know how to cope with it.

‘It’s a simple question,’ he grated.

‘And I’ll give you a simple answer. Mind your own damned business. Who do you think you are to turn up in my life after fifteen years and take anything for granted?’

‘All right.’ He threw up his hands. ‘I’ve managed it badly. Let’s start again.’

‘No, let’s just leave it here. We met again and found that we’re strangers. There was no lightning flash. The past doesn’t live again and it certainly can’t be put right. Love dies, and once dead it can’t be revived.’

‘Love?’ he snapped. ‘Have I asked for your love? You flatter yourself.’

‘Well, you certainly wanted something in return for diamonds. And I don’t flatter myself, because it doesn’t flatter me to be pursued by a man who approaches a woman as though he were buying stocks and shares. I am not a piece of property.’

‘Aren’t you? Well, it sure as hell looked like it last night.’

‘What do you mean by that?’

‘They paraded you in front of me, didn’t they? First you sat next to me, then you led me out into the garden. Did you think I didn’t know what was going on? Sweet-talk him! That’s what they told you. Make his head spin so that we can milk him of his money. Wasn’t it something like that?’

She faced him defiantly. ‘It was exactly like that. What else would make me go out into the garden with you?’

It was cruel, but she was desperate to make him back off. He threatened the stability it had cost her too much to achieve.

But she was sorry when she saw the colour drain from his face, leaving it a deathly grey. She had meant only to stab at his pride, as a warning. She might have thought he was hurt to the heart, if she believed that he still had a heart.

‘Look, I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘That was cheap and unjust. I didn’t mean to hurt you-’

‘You can’t,’ he said curtly. ‘Don’t worry yourself.’

There was a knock on the door, and a faint call of, ‘Room Service.’

Luca made a sign that he would be back and went to the door. Left alone, Rebecca looked around for somewhere to leave the diamonds so that there would be no more arguing about them.

The door to the bedroom was open and she could see the small chest of drawers against the bed, with a heavy lamp on top. Luca was still at the front door, and she had time to slip into the bedroom and pull open the top drawer, ready to thrust the box inside.

She had to move some papers aside to make room for it. Some were in a large open envelope that spilled its contents as it was moved. What Rebecca saw made her stop dead.

A photograph had fallen out. It showed a young girl with windblown hair and a young, eager face. She was sitting on the top rail of a fence, laughing at the cameraman, her eyes full of love and joy.

Luca had taken it on the day she told him about the baby. Even if she had not remembered, she would have known that from the look on her own face. This was a girl who had everything, and was sure she could never lose it.

And Luca had kept this picture with him.

It was as though someone had given him back to her. Suddenly her anger at him melted and she wanted to find him and share the moment.

‘Luca…’

She turned eagerly and saw him standing, watching her, his face defenceless, possessed by a look that mirrored her own feelings. He was there again, the boy she had loved, and who still lived somewhere in this harsh, aggressive man.

‘Luca,’ she said again.

And then it was gone. The light in his eyes shut down, the mask was back in place.

‘What are you doing in here?’ he snapped.

‘I wasn’t prying-’

‘Then why are you here?’

She realised that he was really angry.

‘I was putting the diamonds in here for safety, but never mind that. You kept this picture, all these years.’

‘Did I? I hadn’t realised.’

‘You couldn’t have kept it by accident, or brought it all these miles by accident.’

‘There are a lot of papers in that drawer.’

‘Luca, please forget what happened a moment ago. We were both angry and saying things we didn’t mean-’

‘You, maybe. I don’t say things I don’t mean. I’m not a sentimentalist, any more than you are.’

She looked at the picture. ‘So you didn’t keep this on purpose?’

‘Good lord, no!’

‘Fine, then let’s dispose of it.’ She tore the picture in half, and then again. ‘I’ll be going now. The diamonds are there. Goodbye.’

Luca didn’t move until she’d walked out. But as soon as the door had closed behind her he snatched up the four pieces of the picture and tried to put them back together with shaking hands.

Nothing was going right. The look she had surprised on his face, before he could conceal it, had been his undoing. Without meaning to she had breached his defences, and he had instinctively slammed them back into place, bristling with knives.

Deny everything, the picture, its significance, the power it had over him! That was the best way. It was done before he could stop himself, and now he would give anything to call the words back.

He’d thought himself prepared in every detail, but the glamorous sophisticate she had become had taken him by surprise the night before, making him flounder. After that he had made one wrong move after another.

But it wasn’t his fault, he reasoned. Her stubbornness hadn’t been part of the plan.

He wanted to bang his head against the wall and howl.

CHAPTER FIVE

IN THE early hours of the morning Rebecca heard something being pushed under her door.

She looked down at the envelope without touching it. Then she lifted it and stared longer, while thoughts and fears clashed in her mind.

‘Destroy it, unread. If you read it you’re embarking on uncharted seas. Play safe.’

She opened the letter.

His handwriting hadn’t changed. It was big and confident, an assertion in the face of life. But the words held a hint of something else, almost as though he was confused.

You were right about almost everything. But the day your father arrived wasn’t our last meeting. If you want to know about the other one, I’ll tell you. Otherwise I won’t trouble you again.

Luca

He was playing mind games, was her first thought, but she dismissed it, in fairness. Mind games demanded a subtlety that he didn’t have.

She decided to go back to bed and think about it.

An hour later she was knocking on his door. He answered at once.

He was in a white shirt, heavily embroidered down the front, as though he’d spent the evening at a smart function. Now he’d returned and tossed aside his black jacket and torn the shirt open at the neck.