The Italian's Love-Child by Sharon Kendrick Read Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Sharon Kendrick
the actress flounced out.
‘Take me home—and quickly!’ he shot out, and the car pulled away again.
Eve tried not to think about Luca at all, though it took a bit of effort.
She never underestimated the cruelly dissecting power of the camera for it picked up on just about everything and then magnified it tenfold. A kilo gained made you look like a candidate for the fat camp and a spot seemed to dominate your face like a planet. And not just the external stuff, either. Doubt and insecurities became glaringly obvious under the lens. If you lost your nerve and your confidence, the audience stopped believing in you and started switching off, and once that happened, you didn’t have a job for long.
So she tried to put Luca Cardelli out of her mind by analysing it and putting it into context. It wasn’t as if it was anything major, after all. She had simply met a man she had once been mad about, and she was mad about him still. It just happened that he was living in another country, was the wrong kind of man to fall for, and had made a pass at her, clearly expecting her to fall into bed with him at the drop of a hat.
Thank heavens she hadn’t.
She decided that she needed to get out more. Meet more people. Spread her wings a little.
She signed up for an afternoon course in French and decided that the next time the crew went out forlunch on Friday, she would join them. And she would take Kesi out for the day on Sunday.
But when she arrived home from work a few days later there was a postcard sitting on the mat, its glossy colour photo providing welcome relief in between all the boring bills and circulars. She liked postcards, though people never seemed to send them much any more—she guessed that was the legacy of travel becoming so much more accessible and unremarkable, and the advent of the email, of course. But there was a magic about postcards which electronic stuff somehow lacked.
She sucked in a sharp, instinctive breath of excitement when she saw where the postcard was from.
Roma.
The photo was unusual and bizarre—it showed a sculpture of two boys and a rather threatening and grotesque animal.
She didn’t need to turn it over to know who it was from; she knew only one person who was there. And she didn’t need to see his name signed at the bottom to recognise the writing, because somehow she had guessed that he would write like that.
Like a schoolgirl with a crush, she let her gaze drift longingly over his handwriting, like someone discovering a lover’s body for the first time. In black ink, it curved sensuously across the card, like a snake.
It said: ‘I expect you know the cherished legend that Rome was founded by Romulus—here is a photo of him with his twin brother Remus, suckling on a she-wolf! Any time you’re in Rome, then please look me up. It was good to see you. Luca.’
And his phone number.
Eve read it and re-read it, her heart beating fast, feeling ridiculously and excessively pleased while trying to tell herself she shouldn’t. It was only a postcard, for heaven’s sake! And there was no way she would ever ring him.
But she propped the card against the kitchen window, with the backdrop of the sea behind it, and she looked at it, and smiled, because that simple and civilised communication made her able to put that whole passionate yet unsatisfactory scene out of her mind.
But Luca couldn’t get her out of his mind, though he did his level best to—that was when he wasn’t incredulously checking his phone messages.
She hadn’t rung him!
He shook his head in slight disbelief. Did she not realise the intense honour…? He frowned. No. Honour would be too strong a word, and so would privilege—but he wondered just what Miss Eve Peters would say if she realised that he never gave his phone number out to a woman he had only just met!
He stripped off his clothes and stepped into the shower, standing beneath the punishing jets of water with a grim kind of anticipation. Maybe
‘Take me home—and quickly!’ he shot out, and the car pulled away again.
Eve tried not to think about Luca at all, though it took a bit of effort.
She never underestimated the cruelly dissecting power of the camera for it picked up on just about everything and then magnified it tenfold. A kilo gained made you look like a candidate for the fat camp and a spot seemed to dominate your face like a planet. And not just the external stuff, either. Doubt and insecurities became glaringly obvious under the lens. If you lost your nerve and your confidence, the audience stopped believing in you and started switching off, and once that happened, you didn’t have a job for long.
So she tried to put Luca Cardelli out of her mind by analysing it and putting it into context. It wasn’t as if it was anything major, after all. She had simply met a man she had once been mad about, and she was mad about him still. It just happened that he was living in another country, was the wrong kind of man to fall for, and had made a pass at her, clearly expecting her to fall into bed with him at the drop of a hat.
Thank heavens she hadn’t.
She decided that she needed to get out more. Meet more people. Spread her wings a little.
She signed up for an afternoon course in French and decided that the next time the crew went out forlunch on Friday, she would join them. And she would take Kesi out for the day on Sunday.
But when she arrived home from work a few days later there was a postcard sitting on the mat, its glossy colour photo providing welcome relief in between all the boring bills and circulars. She liked postcards, though people never seemed to send them much any more—she guessed that was the legacy of travel becoming so much more accessible and unremarkable, and the advent of the email, of course. But there was a magic about postcards which electronic stuff somehow lacked.
She sucked in a sharp, instinctive breath of excitement when she saw where the postcard was from.
Roma.
The photo was unusual and bizarre—it showed a sculpture of two boys and a rather threatening and grotesque animal.
She didn’t need to turn it over to know who it was from; she knew only one person who was there. And she didn’t need to see his name signed at the bottom to recognise the writing, because somehow she had guessed that he would write like that.
Like a schoolgirl with a crush, she let her gaze drift longingly over his handwriting, like someone discovering a lover’s body for the first time. In black ink, it curved sensuously across the card, like a snake.
It said: ‘I expect you know the cherished legend that Rome was founded by Romulus—here is a photo of him with his twin brother Remus, suckling on a she-wolf! Any time you’re in Rome, then please look me up. It was good to see you. Luca.’
And his phone number.
Eve read it and re-read it, her heart beating fast, feeling ridiculously and excessively pleased while trying to tell herself she shouldn’t. It was only a postcard, for heaven’s sake! And there was no way she would ever ring him.
But she propped the card against the kitchen window, with the backdrop of the sea behind it, and she looked at it, and smiled, because that simple and civilised communication made her able to put that whole passionate yet unsatisfactory scene out of her mind.
But Luca couldn’t get her out of his mind, though he did his level best to—that was when he wasn’t incredulously checking his phone messages.
She hadn’t rung him!
He shook his head in slight disbelief. Did she not realise the intense honour…? He frowned. No. Honour would be too strong a word, and so would privilege—but he wondered just what Miss Eve Peters would say if she realised that he never gave his phone number out to a woman he had only just met!
He stripped off his clothes and stepped into the shower, standing beneath the punishing jets of water with a grim kind of anticipation. Maybe