Back at the apartment, she went through the motions of bathing and changing—refusing all Luca’s offers of help—and she fed Oliviero in a simmering kind of silence.
Luca watched her, his antennae alerted to something, he didn’t know what—but there was something about Eve’s body language which told him that something was not right.
He waited until she had put the baby to bed, and then he looked up, noted the barely restrained fury on her face.
‘So are you going to tell me what the problem is?’
‘I should have thought that was perfectly obvious.’
‘I am not going to conduct an entire conversation in riddles, Eve!’ he snapped.
‘Well, then.’ She stared at him defiantly, hoping he wouldn’t see the great oceans of despair in her eyes. ‘I am clearly the problem.’
He didn’t react.
‘Go on.’
It all came tumbling out then—all the hurt and longing and the feeling that she was here only because she had trapped him and that, in a way, she had trapped herself, and not just by having a baby. For she had come to learn that the love she felt was not returned, and how could she ever be happy knowing that? And that this might be the cleanest
way to end it.
‘You slept with Chiara the very day I refused to make love to you!’ she accused. ‘What happened, Luca? Did you get so stirred up that you had to do it with someone, anyone—that you had to do it with her!’
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
LUCA’S voice was like cold, deadly ice. ‘Is that the opinion you have formed of me, then, Eve? A man so governed by his hormones that he is unable to control his sexual appetite? And surely if that were the case, then your theory contradicts itself—or no doubt I would have made more than one attempt to seduce you since you have been living here?’
Eve stared at him, her face warm with anger and confusion. Where was the remorse? The shame? The denial? ‘What other explanation can there be?’
‘Oh, I wonder,’ he mocked sardonically.
Amid the hot fires of jealousy and the aching awareness that he had not so much as laid a finger on her since long before their marriage, Luca’s look of disdain slowly began to seep into her fuddled brain and to make some kind of sense. She had judged him and found him wanting, choosing to believe the word of a woman she didn’t know, without even giving him a chance to defend himself.
‘So…you…you didn’t?’ Her voice sounded tiny, and the world seemed to hang on his answer.
He looked at her, and saw all the insecurity and fears written on her face. Had he been blind to them before? Or had he just chosen not to see? ‘Of course I didn’t,’ he said softly. But he might have done, he supposed. A man less fastidious might have done. Or a man less blown away by an unknown woman in England who had turned him down…
‘I guess I was angry that you wouldn’t make love to me,’ he admitted quietly. His arrogant sexual pride had suffered a wounding blow, but maybe it had needed to. ‘Maybe even angrier with myself for having come on so strong.’ He gave a half-smile. ‘It’s not my usual style, Eve.’
No, she couldn’t imagine that he needed to.
He remembered back to what now seemed like a lifetime ago, but, of course, it was. ‘I told myself that you meant nothing and so, yes, I agreed to see Chiara that night. I suspect that she tipped off the photographers, because when we came out of the restaurant the paparazzi were there. But nothing happened. I dropped her off and I went home. Alone.’
‘So why did she say those things?’
‘Because she wants me. Because she’s jealous of you.’
‘Of me?’ said Eve, in an empty little voice. If only she realised what little there was to be jealous of. ‘She said you’d had a wonderful relationship.’
‘We had a brief affair—that was all.’
‘Which is what ours should have been,’ she pointed out painfully. ‘Shouldn’t it?’
He stared at her, realising how important his next words were. Realising that the truth could hurt, but that didn’t mean you should avoid it. ‘Who knows?’ he said softly. ‘No one can see into the future and no one can change the past. But that wasn’t the way it turned out, was it, Eve? Things happened. Fate stepped in. We had a baby—’
‘And we got married,’ she finished. ‘A…farce of a marriage.’
‘Is that what you think it is?’