The Italian’s Baby

CHAPTER SEVEN

LUCA was away nearly a week, during which he called her ten times. She lived for those calls. It grew harder to pretend that she didn’t, and after a while she wasn’t pretending at all.

She didn’t know what to call this feeling. Somehow love did not seem the right word. The bond between them had mysteriously survived years and distance. Now she could think of nothing else but him. Her whole life seemed concentrated around the thought of him, his next call, the likely date of his return.

And yet, for reasons she did not understand, she resisted calling it love.

Two days before he was due home she was on duty at a hotel reception. It lasted only two hours, yet the time seemed interminable, because these days she could no longer take such occasions seriously. She wondered if she would ever do so again.

Smiling mechanically at someone who had claimed her attention and seemed determined to keep her forever, she managed to look around the room and, to her surprise, noticed Danvers on the far side. She hadn’t known that he was back, and that was strange because he was normally so punctilious.

The sight of him made her realise how little she’d thought of him while he was away, so absorbed had she been in Luca. If Danvers had not contacted her, neither had she contacted him. Soon she must see him and explain why their relationship, such as it had ever been, was over.

At last she managed to bring the present conversation to an end and made her way through the crowd, noticing that Danvers was deep in conversation with a young woman. When he became aware of Rebecca a sudden alert look came over his face, and she could almost believe that he met her with reluctance.

‘Rebecca,’ he said with a forced smile. ‘How nice to see you.’ As if she were a casual acquaintance.

‘Good evening, Danvers.’ She smiled at the young woman. A strange feeling was growing in her.

‘Ann, this is Mrs Hanley, the Allingham’s public-relations officer. Ann is my secretary at the bank.’

The two women greeted each other politely. Danvers looked around in the crowd.

‘Is Montese with you?’ he asked.

‘No. Why should he be?’

‘I just wondered. Ann, would you mind…?’

The other woman slipped away, leaving Rebecca looking at Danvers in a puzzled way.

‘Did you have a good trip?’ she asked.

‘Yes, it went very well.’

‘Have you been back long?’

‘Three days.’

Three days. And he hadn’t called her. That was more baffling than painful.

‘You normally don’t wait that long to call me,’ she said, trying to sound light.

‘Oh, please, Rebecca, don’t pretend. You know perfectly why I haven’t been in touch. Don’t tell me that you mind.’

She frowned. ‘Danvers, I-’

‘It would have been quite enough for you to tell me yourself, you know. You didn’t have to send in the heavy squad.’

‘I don’t know what you mean.’

‘I mean Luca Montese claiming ownership like some tribal warlord.’

‘Ownership of what?’

‘You, of course. What else? He left me in no doubt that unpleasant things would happen if I didn’t back off.’

‘What? Danvers, I don’t believe that. It can’t be true. You must have misunderstood.’

‘Believe me, when Montese sets out to make his point there is no misunderstanding. You belong to him. Keep off. That was the message.’

‘I most certainly do not belong to him.’

‘Tell him. He thinks you do.’

‘Danvers, are you saying he actually threatened you with physical violence?’

‘Nothing so obvious. He didn’t need to. He’s a man who knows everything.’

‘About what?’

‘About everything and everyone. He knew all about me, things I thought dead and buried.’

‘Things the bank wouldn’t like?’ Rebecca asked. It was a shot in the dark but she knew it had gone home when she saw his face tighten.

‘It was just a piece of foolishness and it was long ago. There was no harm done. Nobody lost out. The rules were laxer in those days anyway. But if it came to light now-well, anyway, I’m not taking chances.’

She regarded him curiously. ‘I suppose it didn’t occur to you to defend your right to me?’

‘Get real, darling. I’ve got a career to make. He’d never take his claws out of me. He had a complete dossier. Probably got one on you as well.’

‘Don’t talk nonsense,’ she said, but her voice was uncertain.

‘Rebecca, don’t be naïve. You don’t have the first idea what this man is really like. He’s hard, dangerous, ruthless. And whatever there is between you, he’ll be as ruthless to you as anyone else. Ann, darling! Over here.’

‘Yes, you’ve talked to me longer than is safe, haven’t you?’ Rebecca said with a touch of contempt, and walked away without a backward glance.

She had to wait two days for Luca to return, and they were the longest two days of her life. Sometimes she told herself that what she was thinking could not possibly be true.

Her recent time with him had been glorious, a brilliant light in the grey that was her normal life. But she knew that the bliss was due entirely to their blazing sexual compatibility.

There was always one more loving to come, one more fierce, shattering pleasure to fill her world and drive out thoughts she didn’t want to think.

Lost in a haze of physical delight, she’d had little time to consider the personality of the man. Or perhaps she had chosen to look away, secretly aware that she would find too many things that she would not like.

She had heard him on the phone, giving Sonia his instructions, talking of his associates or his rivals with a blunt disregard of anything except coming out on top. She had brushed the knowledge aside, telling herself that he swam in shark-infested waters, and must survive by using tough weapons.

She had refused to see what kind of man Luca had turned into, but the knowledge had always been there like an echo at the back of her mind.

Now, she knew instinctively that what Danvers had said was true. She waited only to hear it from Luca’s own lips.

She arranged with the desk to inform her as soon as he returned to the hotel, and the call came late in the evening. Two minutes later she was knocking at the door of his suite.

His face broke into a smile at the sight of her.

‘I was just calling you,’ he said. ‘This is wonderful.’

He drew her into the room, shutting the door behind her and taking her into his arms.

As always, the sheer physical explosiveness of his kiss changed the world, driving out everything that was not him. With his lips caressing hers purposefully it was hard to believe that anything else mattered. Why stir up trouble? Why not just give in to her body’s need?

She tried not to yield to such thoughts.

‘Luca…’

But he was already removing her clothes and she lacked the will to stop him. He could ignite her excitement with a gesture, a kiss, a touch of his finger on her face. After that it was like a chain reaction, flowing like liquid fire, unstoppable until it had reached the inevitable end.

When she was naked she saw a look in his eyes that melted her, as though he was seeing her nakedness for the first time, and was astounded by it. That was one thing about Luca, she realised hazily. He was never blasé. His delight in her now was the same as long ago. After nearly a week his urgency was almost uncontainable, and so was her own, she discovered, secretly shocked.

What she knew of him made no difference to her desire to have him, and that was the scariest thing of all. She gave him back pleasure for pleasure, delight for delight, knowing that her body was responding without her mind’s consent. It was like losing herself and being unable to prevent it. Then the thought was lost in the sexual release he could give her.

Luca, holding on to her quivering body, sensed something different about her. It confused him even while it obscurely pleased him. He had done the right thing in seeking her out, for she was like no other woman. What a life they would have!

When it was over he propped himself up on one elbow and looked down at her with frank pleasure. Rebecca had always enjoyed that expression in his eyes, but now the thoughts and fears that she had pushed aside came crowding back to her. And with them came the troubled knowledge that he had overcome her resistance without even trying. He had too much power over her, and if she didn’t resist now it would be too late.

‘I like you best when you’re like this,’ he said, smiling and running a hand over her nakedness.

‘No.’ She seized his hand and held it. ‘I want to talk.’

‘Can’t it wait?’

‘It’s waited too long. I meant to talk as soon as I arrived but-well-’

‘But we want each other too much for talking,’ he finished for her. ‘Does anything else matter?’

‘Yes, I think it does. Something’s happened that we have to discuss.’

‘All right. Tell me.’

‘I was at a hotel reception a couple of days ago, and I saw Danvers. He tried to avoid me.’

Looking into his eyes, she saw a look of wariness, and her heart sank.

‘Is it true what he told me? That you warned him off?’

He shrugged. ‘OK, OK. Yes, I did.’

With a violent movement she rose from the bed and began dressing quickly. Suddenly it seemed indecent for him to see her naked.

She had expected the answer, but somehow that didn’t prepare her for the brutal reality. Now she needed to set a distance between them. He too rose and dressed, glancing at her with a dark expression.

When she was finished she turned on him, her eyes kindling. ‘You dared to dictate who I could see or not see?’

‘I needed a clear field to get near you, so I drove off the competition. Don’t be so tragic about it. Men do it every day.’

‘But how many men are like you, Luca? Danvers said you threatened him with something in his past. You’d compiled a dossier. That must have taken some time. You knew about him before you ever came here, didn’t you? And not just him.’

He was watching her carefully, like a man trying to guess which way a cat would spring. How strange, she thought, that she had blinded herself to that calculating look in his eyes. How often had it been there, and she would not let herself see it?

‘The clue was there on the evening we met,’ she said quietly, ‘but I ignored it.’

‘What clue?’

‘You immediately called me “Mrs Hanley”. Of course, you might have worked out that that was my married name, or someone might have told you, but actually you already knew, didn’t you?’

He didn’t answer.

‘Tell me, Luca, was that meeting really a surprise to you?’

‘No,’ he admitted.

‘You knew who I was. You knew I’d been married, and my married name. You knew everything before I arrived at the house, didn’t you?’

‘Yes.’

‘In other words, you had a dossier on me too.’

He shrugged. ‘Does it matter?’

‘Does it-? Of course it matters. All this time I thought we just chanced to bump into each other, and you let me think it. But you’d planned everything. Calculated everything. You deceived me.’

‘I never deceived you,’ he shouted. ‘Not you.’

‘Just everybody else?’

He shrugged.

‘What does anyone else matter? I wanted to find you, and I found you.’

‘But how? You had me hunted down like a block of shares, didn’t you? Luca Montese, financier and predator, gets the prey in his sights and moves in for the kill.’

‘If you want to find someone you put it in the hands of an expert. What’s wrong with that?’

‘Nothing, if you’d told me. But you let me think it was just life working out naturally.’

‘Life never works out. You have to tell it where you want it to go, and then make sure it does. Your father would have said the same.’

‘Don’t. It makes you sound like him, and I don’t want that.’

‘Then tell me what you do want,’ he said.

‘I want to turn back the clock to before this happened,’ she said desperately. ‘You were never this kind of man before.’

‘You’re wrong,’ he said harshly. ‘I was always this kind of man. You just never saw it.’

‘Then I’m glad I never saw it,’ she cried. ‘Because I couldn’t have loved you as a bully and a schemer, twisting people, twisting facts, anything as long as you get your own way. That’s what my father used to do, and I can’t bear it. If you’ve turned into him, it spoils what we had then and I wanted to keep it.’

‘We can’t keep it,’ he shouted. ‘It was destroyed long ago. We’ve created something else, and that’s what we have to hold on to. Don’t endanger it by brooding about things that don’t matter.’

‘Don’t matter?’ she echoed. ‘You don’t know what matters and what doesn’t. You say we’ve created something else, but what have we created? What can it be when it’s based on lies?’

‘I had to find you, Becky. I had to. I couldn’t let anything stand in my way.’

‘No, nothing stands in your way, does it, Luca? Not honour or fair dealing or decent behaviour, or other people’s feelings. Nothing. I’m seeing a lot of things now.’

‘I had to find you,’ he repeated stubbornly. ‘It was more important than you’ll ever know.’

‘So why not be honest? All those pretty delusions you fed me, about fate! And it was a lie because you set it all up.’

She looked at him curiously.

‘Luca, just how much did you know about me, that night at Philip Steyne’s house?’

‘A good deal,’ he admitted unwillingly.

‘Did you know I was going to be there?’

‘I was pretty sure. I knew Jordan was going to be there, and you were seeing him, so it figured. I also knew you worked for the Allingham, so I was bound to find you sooner or later.’

‘You knew I worked for the Allingham?’ she echoed. ‘Is that why you bought shares?’

‘Yes.’

She gave a wild laugh. ‘All that, just to find me again?’

‘Does it matter how it happened, as long as we found each other again?’

‘But we haven’t found each other, can’t you see that? No, you can’t, can you? And that means we’re further apart than we ever were. At one time you would never have deceived me.’

He flinched, and she knew she’d struck home.

‘I would have told you the truth eventually,’ he growled. ‘But this was important. I couldn’t take chances. It has to be you, it can’t be anyone else.’

‘Don’t tell me you’ve been pining with love for me all these years. You married, remember.’

‘Yes, and it was no good.’

‘It must have been good for part of the time.’

‘She had a son by a damned hairdresser,’ he snapped.

‘So she was unfaithful, but that doesn’t mean-’

‘Six years and never a hint of a baby. Barren for me, fertile for him. Dear God!’

He said the last words violently, his face distorted. Rebecca stared at him, aghast. She had partly known this from Nigel Haleworth, but now a dreadful suspicion had come into her mind. It was impossible. She was imagining crazy things. In a moment he would say something that proved it couldn’t be true.

He was still talking, but more to himself than her.

‘I had a child once. She died, but she need not have done. She would have been fifteen.’

‘I know,’ she said, stony-faced.

‘Fifteen! Think of it.’

‘I think of it all the time,’ she cried. ‘I think of it every year on what would have been her birthday, and I never stop grieving. But we can’t bring her back to life.’

‘But we can create new life. You and I. What we’ve done once we can do again.’

‘Luca, what are you saying?’

He turned on her, eyes blazing with intensity.

‘I want a child, Becky. Your child.’

‘And that was in your mind when you searched for me?’ she asked slowly.

‘Yes. It’s important.’

‘I can imagine it would be. And now, of course, I realise why you didn’t tell me at once.’

‘I could hardly do that,’ he said, misled by her reasonable tone.

‘Of course not,’ she agreed. ‘It wouldn’t be easy to say, would it? “Good evening Rebecca, nice to see you after fifteen years, and will you be my brood mare?”’

‘It’s not like that-’

‘It’s exactly like that, you cold-blooded, insensitive, calculating machine. Luca, I’ll never forgive you for this, and if you can’t see why, then you’ve moved further down the wrong path than any man I’ve ever known.’

‘All right, all right, I haven’t handled it well, but-’

‘Listen to yourself!’ she cried, tormented beyond endurance. ‘Handled it! Do you know how often you use that phrase? That’s how life is to you, something to be “handled”. Do this, and everything will work out according to the Luca Montese book of sharp practice. Do that, and it’ll all go wrong, because you weren’t ruthless enough. Well, nobody could accuse you of not being ruthless enough, but I promise you it’s gone wrong. And it’ll never be right again.’

‘You’re determined to misunderstand everything I say.’

‘On the contrary, I’ve understood only too well. You want a son-’

‘I want your son. Yours. Nobody else’s. No other woman’s child would mean the same to me.’

But her face was unforgiving.

‘You mean,’ she said bitterly, ‘that I’ve already proved myself with you, so I’m a safer bet than a stranger?’

He paled. ‘That’s a hard way of putting it.’

‘Tell me another way that comes anywhere near the truth.’

She turned away and began to stride the room.

‘I can’t believe myself. To think I actually let you touch me after what I heard from Danvers.’

‘But you did,’ he said harshly. ‘Doesn’t that prove how strong the bond between us still is?’

‘No, it only proves we’re good in bed together. There’s no true bond between us now, Luca. Just sex, sex and more sex. And then more sex. You’re the most sexually exciting man I’ve ever known, or ever will know, and it makes quite a bond, I admit. In fact it’s such a wonderful bond that I’ve told myself fairy tales about it ever since we met again. I’ve tried so hard to believe that it was enough, and I suppose that for your purposes it is enough.’

‘Becky, don’t-’

‘Why not? It’s the truth. If you want to impregnate a woman so that you can flaunt her fertility to the world, then you don’t need love or emotional connection. Cold, heartless lust will do the job just as well, won’t it, Luca?’

‘Stop it, Becky,’ he said savagely.

‘Sure, I’ll stop it. I’ve made my point. Sex isn’t enough, even when it’s as good as ours. But it’s all we have. Perhaps it’s all we ever had.’

‘No!’ It was a cry of agony. ‘No, that isn’t true. Never say it, do you hear?’

‘Still giving me orders. Still trying to arrange everyone like pawns on your chess board. Don’t worry. You’ll never have to hear me say anything again.

‘Go away, Luca. Leave the Allingham, sell your shares, go back to Italy, and tell yourself that you’re well rid of that awkward woman who wouldn’t fall into line. Find a woman you can be honest with-if you can take the risk.’

She was gone while he was still too stunned to speak. The slam of the door was a deliberate act of contempt.

The phone rang. It was Sonia, with a mountain of problems that had sprung up the moment he left Italy. He suppressed the impulse to slam down the telephone and pursue Rebecca, and was glad, afterwards. In her present mood it would have been the worst thing he could have done.

Despite her words his mind persisted on the old fixed track. He had handled it badly. The best thing was to give her time to cool down, then they would talk. She would see things his way. It was all a question of how you handled it.

He worked until late in the evening, talking to Sonia, sending emails. By the time he logged off the internet he was about half a million richer than he had been at the start.

He was wondering if enough time had passed for him to call her when he heard a knock on his door. He opened it, only half believing that it could be her. But it was.

She gave him a half-smile, as though considering whether to tell him a secret.

‘May I come in?’

‘Of course.’ He stood back, trying to decipher her mood. ‘Does this mean you’re going to let me explain?’

‘No, let’s not bother. We both know the score.’ She shrugged and turned to him, laughing. ‘We were keeping score in different ways, that’s all.’

He grinned. ‘We can put that right.’

The phone rang. He muttered something under his breath as he snatched it up. ‘Sonia, not now-’

‘Finish what you have to do,’ Rebecca said lightly. ‘There’s no hurry.’

But he did hurry, because there was a note in her voice that was unfamiliar to him and he wanted to know more. He had no idea what she was up to, but he was willing to find out.

He disposed of the call fast, and turned to find that Rebecca had closed all the curtains. She was standing there, arms folded across the buttoned jacket of her trouser suit, smiling at him in a way that could have only one meaning.

He took her into his arms, feeling her lean towards him. As her arms went around his neck he began to unbutton her jacket and immediately realised that she wore nothing underneath.

He had never before known her so bold and daring, and accepted the implied invitation with eagerness.

When she was naked she took his hand and led him to bed, falling onto it and opening her arms. As soon as he went into them she closed them around him with a movement that was almost as predatory as his own.

Their times together had given her a new confidence, and now she could guide and even direct him, urging him on to what pleased her. Her own caresses were almost casual in their skill, arrogant in their assumption that power lay with her, and she could please him at will. She succeeded beyond his wildest expectations.

Rebecca had an eerie sensation of being two people. One of them was floating above all this, looking down at the woman who seemed so immersed in making passionate love with this man, and who was actually detached from him, from everything that was happening, and-terrifyingly-from herself.

And she was cold, so cold that it was a wonder that the man didn’t turn to ice in her arms.

Luca caught a glimpse of her eyes and thought he detected a look of desperation. Then it was gone and all he knew was that she was surging against him, crying incoherently with pleasure.

His own pleasure was shattering, driven to new heights by her responsiveness, and by the skills that had lain, hitherto unsuspected, in her slim body. He guessed that she was not making love, but making sex, and it left him gasping and close to exhaustion.

The end came when she decided. When she pushed him gently away from her he lay, his head turned on the pillow, unwilling to take his eyes from her.

She drew herself up in bed and sat there like a shameless nymph, letting him appreciate her glorious nakedness. She was laughing.

‘That was good,’ she said.

Failing to pick up the echo, he said, ‘Yes, it was.’

His cellphone rang. He grabbed for it, switched it off and tossed it away onto the floor. That made her laugh even more.

‘What is it?’ he asked, laughing with her but not knowing why.

‘Nothing, just a private joke.’

‘So tell me.’

‘Leave me my secrets.’

‘When will you tell me?’

She put her hands behind her head and lay back on the pillow. ‘You’ll know in time,’ she said. ‘Go to sleep.’

He did so, letting himself drift away in a blissful haze, until he fell into the deep sleep of total physical contentment.

Rebecca watched him, the laughter gone from her face. Now the look of desperation he’d briefly glimpsed was back in her eyes, and when her tears began to fall she did not wipe them away.