The Italian's Baby

‘Don’t give me orders. I’ll ride as I please.’

‘And what happens next time, when I may not be there to come to your aid?’ he asked in the same language.

‘They’ll have gone by now.’

‘And if you’re wrong?’

‘That’s—that’s got nothing to do with it,’ she floundered, unable to counter the argument.

A faint smile appeared on his face. ‘I think it has.’

‘Oh, stop being so reasonable!’ she said crossly.

The smile became a grin. ‘Very well. Whatever pleases you.’

She smiled back ruefully. ‘You might be right.’

He refilled her cup and she sipped it appreciatively. ‘You make very good tea. I’m impressed.’

‘And I am impressed that you speak my dialect so well.’

‘My grandmother taught me. She came from here. She used to own the house where we live now.’

‘Emilia Talese?’

‘That was her maiden name, yes.’

‘My family have always been carpenters. They used to do jobs for her family.’

That was their first meeting. He walked home with her, coming into the house, instructing the servants to take good care of her, as if he’d been commanding people all his life.

‘Will you be all right?’ she asked, thinking of him walking back alone in the gathering dusk. ‘Suppose they’re waiting for you?’

His grin was answer enough. It said that such fears were for other men. Then he walked out, leaving behind only the memory of his brilliant self-confidence. It was as strong as sunlight, and he seemed both to carry it with him, and leave it behind wherever he had been.

CHAPTER TWO

NEXT day Becky left the house early and rode down to find him. She had gone to bed thinking of him, lain awake thinking of him, finally slept, dreaming of him, then awoke thinking of him. She saw his face, young yet forceful, the mouth that was too stern for his years, until he smiled and became suddenly charming.

His mouth haunted her. With everything in her she wanted to kiss it, and to feel it kissing her back. And his arms, as powerful as steel hawsers, belonged around her. She knew that, as certainly as she had ever known anything, knew it with the conviction of a girl who had never seriously been denied anything she really wanted.

She had never even kissed a man before. But now that she’d met Luca she wanted him completely, in every way. It was as though her body had come alive in an instant, sending a message to her brain: this is the one.

The only question was how and when. It was impossible that the world, or Luca himself, could deny her.

As she approached he heard the hoof beats and looked up. She jumped down from the horse, facing him, and she knew at once, with joyful certainty, that he too had lain awake all night. But he turned away from her.

‘You shouldn’t be here,’ he said. ‘I told you not to ride alone.’

‘Then why didn’t you come for me?’

‘Because the signorina did not give me orders to do so,’ he said proudly.

‘But I don’t give you orders. We’re just friends.’

She stood looking into his face, willing him to let her have her wish. He gave the slow smile that already made her heart beat strongly.

‘Why don’t you go and make the tea?’ he suggested.

She did so, and spent the rest of the day helping him work on the house. He made rolls with salami, which was the most delicious food she’d ever tasted. But she hadn’t given up her determination to make him kiss her. Sooner or later he would yield.

It took her three days to crack his resistance. During that time she came to know the man a little. He had a touchy pride that could make his temper smoulder, although he always reined it in quickly for her sake.

On the first day he had said, ‘Whatever pleases you,’ and that became his mantra. Whatever pleased her was right for him. This big man, who could be so ferocious to others, was like a child in her hands. It gave her a delicious sense of power.

But she couldn’t make him do the one thing she wanted above all else. She created chance after chance, and he wouldn’t take any of them, until one day he said, ‘I think you should go home now.’ He added in slow, awkward English, ‘It has been very nice knowing you.’

Her answer was to pick up a bread roll from the table and hurl it at him. He ducked, but didn’t seem disconcerted.

‘Why don’t you like me any more?’ she cried.

‘I do like you, Becky. I like you more than I should. That is why you must go, and not come back.’

‘That doesn’t make any sense!’

‘I think you know just what I mean.’

‘No!’ she cried, refusing to understand what didn’t suit her.

‘I think you do. You know what I want with you, and I can’t have it. I must not. You’re a child.’

‘I’m seventeen. Well, I will be in a couple of weeks. I’m not a child.’

‘You talk like one. What you want, you must have. For the moment you want me, but I’m a man, not a toy to be played with then cast aside.’

‘I’m not playing.’

‘But you are. You’re like a kitten with a cotton reel. You haven’t yet learned that life can be cruel and bitter, and God forbid that you should learn it through me!’

‘But you said you wanted me. Why can’t we—?’

‘Becky, my grandfather was your grandmother’s carpenter. I’m still a carpenter. Sometimes I make a little money repairing cars, getting dirty.’

‘Oh, nobody cares about that any more.’

‘Ask your father if he cares about it.’

‘This has nothing to do with my father. Just you and me.’

Suddenly he lost his temper. ‘Don’t be stupid!’ he shouted.

‘Don’t call me stupid.’

‘You are stupid. If you weren’t, you wouldn’t come down here and be alone with a man who desires you as much as I do. If you called for help there’s nobody to hear you.’

‘Why should I need help against you? I know you and—’

‘You know nothing,’ he said, in a rage. ‘I spend my nights lying awake, thinking of you in my bed, in my arms, naked. I have no right to think these things but I can’t stop myself. And then you come here, smiling and saying “Luca, I want you”, and I go insane. How much do you think one man can take?’

Out of all this only one thing made any impact.

‘You desire me?’

‘Yes,’ he said curtly, turning away to stare out of the window. ‘Now go.’

‘I’m not going,’ she said softly, almost to herself. It was more than a decision. It was a declaration that she had chosen her path and would follow it.

She went close behind him, slipping her arms about his body. As she had known he would, he turned instantly, and fell straight into her trap. She had removed her upper clothing and he found himself holding her bare skin, her arms, her shoulders, her breasts.

He made one last, agonised effort.

‘No, Becky—please—’

But the words were drowned by her lips on his, and then it was too late. It had always been too late.

He kissed her tenderly, then with increasing urgency, while his hands explored her and hers explored him. He was wearing a shirt, the front partly unbuttoned. It took her only a moment to rip open the remaining buttons so that she could press her breasts against his body. Inexperienced though she was, she knew at once that the sensation was too much for his self-control. When she moved to pull the shirt right off, he did it for her.

She was completely trusting, without caution or defences, and he seemed to know it even through his passion, for his movements were as controlled as he could make them.

At first all she felt was his tenderness, leading her forward gently. She was already in a fever for him, helping him remove the last of her clothes, then his, following his every move, trying to anticipate, so that he gave a shaky laugh, saying, ‘Don’t be in such a hurry.’

‘But I want you, Luca, I want you.’

‘But you don’t know what you want, piccina,’ he said hoarsely. ‘I have no right—we must stop—’

‘No! I’ll thump you in a minute.’

‘Little bully,’ he whispered.

‘You’d better let me have my own way, then, hadn’t you?’ she teased.

That was the end of his control. After that, no power on earth could have stopped him exploring her, enchanted by her sweetness and her young, blazing passion for himself.

As soon as he entered her she gave a little cry of excitement and began to move against him, urging him on. Her frank eagerness to make love and her lack of false modesty delighted him, and he gave everything without holding back.

It was a swift, unsubtle mating which came to a climax almost at once. Becky felt dizzy. One moment she was simply enjoying herself, and the next moment something tossed her up to the stars in a fine frenzy of pleasure, before sending her swooping back to earth, wondering which planet she’d landed on. Because it wasn’t the same one that she’d started on.

‘Oh, wow!’ she said breathlessly. ‘Oh, wow!’

The next moment she leapt on him again, ignoring his laughing protests. This time he loved her more slowly, or at least as slowly as she would let him, teasing her breasts with lips and fingers, until she wrapped her legs about him, demanding fulfilment, and he could do nothing but yield.

Afterwards they lay entwined while they drifted down from the heights, rejoicing to find each other still there.

‘Why did you try to warn me off?’ she whispered. ‘It was beautiful.’

‘I’m glad. I want everything to be beautiful and wonderful for you, always.’

‘It is wonderful, and you’re wonderful, and everything in the world is wonderful, because you love me.’

‘I didn’t say I loved you,’ he growled.

‘But you do, don’t you?’

‘Yes, I do.’ He tightened his arms, pulling her naked body hard against his. ‘I love you, piccina. I love you with my heart and soul, with my body—’

‘Yes, I know that.’ She giggled, letting her fingers run races over his skin.

‘Don’t tease me,’ he groaned. ‘I can’t endure it.’

‘I don’t want you to endure it, I want you to give in.’

‘Don’t I always give in to you?’ he asked with a touch of sombreness in his voice.

But that mood couldn’t last. She wanted him to make love to her again, and he could never deny her anything.

On the day of Frank’s return Becky drove to Pisa Airport to meet him in her own car, delivered as an early birthday gift during his absence.

‘I thought you wouldn’t want to wait,’ he explained now as she thanked him.

‘You spoil me, Dad.’

‘That’s what daughters are for,’ he said cheerfully. He was on a ‘high’ of success, as he told her during the drive home.

‘Got everything I wanted at less than I expected to pay. Yessir!’

Becky had heard him talk like this many times before, but now the memory of the Englishmen, and their desperation, made it sound different.

‘Will anyone be put out of work?’ she asked.

‘What was that?’

‘If you’re making such a profit, someone has to lose out, don’t they?’

‘Of course. Someone always loses out, but they’re the wimps, the people who deserve to lose because nature made them losers.’

‘But is it nature that makes them losers, or you?’

‘Becky, what is this? You’ve never had such ideas before.’

The thought flashed across her mind, Or any ideas at all! But all she said was, ‘You closed down a place in England, and some of the people who lost their jobs came out here to find you.’

‘The devil they did! What happened?’

‘They found me instead. I was out riding alone and three men appeared from nowhere.’

‘Did they hurt you?’

‘No, but only because a man appeared and saved me. His name’s Luca Montese and he lives near by. He was working on his cottage when he heard them shouting. He squared up to them, knocked one of them down and after that they all scurried away.’

‘Then I must meet this man and thank him. Where exactly did this happen?’

She described the spot and he frowned.

‘I didn’t know I had any tenants there.’

‘He isn’t a tenant, he owns that bit of land. He says you tried to buy him out but he wouldn’t sell.’

‘Montese?’ he muttered. ‘Montese? Good grief, that’s him? Carletti, my agent, told me of some fellow who’d been making trouble.’

‘He’s not making trouble, Dad. He just wants to keep his home.’

‘Nonsense, he doesn’t know what’s good for him. Carletti says the place is little more than a hovel. Squalid, unsanitary.’

‘Not any more. He’s done a wonderful job of rebuilding it.’

‘You’ve been there?’

‘He took me there after he rescued me, and made me some tea. It was nice and cosy. He’s worked so hard on it.’

‘Well, he’s wasting his time. I’ll get it in the end.’

‘I don’t think so. He’s determined not to sell.’

‘And I’m determined that he will, and I reckon I’m stronger than some peasant lad.’

‘Dad!’ she cried in protest. ‘A moment ago you were going to thank him for saving me. Now you’re planning to bully him.’

‘Nonsense,’ he said with his easy laugh. ‘I’ll just show him where his best interests lie.’

He visited Luca that same day, full of bonhomie, thanking him for his care of Becky while contriving to patronise him in a way that embarrassed her. Luca’s response was a quiet dignity.

Then Frank looked around.

‘Carletti tells me you’ve been holding out for more than this little place is worth,’ he said.

‘Then your agent has misinformed you,’ Luca said quietly. ‘This place is worth everything to me, and I will not sell.’

‘All right, look, here’s the deal. Because you helped my daughter I’ll double my last offer. I can’t say fairer than that.’

‘Signor Solway, my home is not for sale.’

‘Why make such a fuss about this tatty little place? It’s barely half an acre.’

‘Then why trouble yourself with it?’

‘That doesn’t concern you. I’ve made a more than fair offer and I don’t like being trifled with.’

Luca gave his slow smile. It drove Frank Solway mad.

‘Have I said something funny?’ he snapped.

‘Signor, I don’t think you understand the word no.’

This was so completely right that Frank lost his temper and bawled indiscriminately until Becky said, ‘Dad! Have you forgotten what he did for me?’

Frank scowled. He hated to be in the wrong, but neither could he back down. He stomped off without another word, yelling, ‘Becky!’ over his shoulder.

‘Go with him,’ Luca said gently when she didn’t move.

‘No, I’m staying with you.’

‘That will make it worse. Please go.’

She yielded to his quiet insistence where her father’s blustering only filled her with disgust.

The following day Frank said uneasily, ‘I may have gone a little too far with Luca yesterday.’

‘Much too far,’ Becky said. ‘I think you should apologise.’

‘No way. That would make me look weak. But you’re another matter. Why don’t you drop in on him and tell him I’m not such a bad fellow? Don’t make it sound like an apology but—well, keep on his right side.’

She left the house with a light heart. Now she could spend the day with Luca without having to think of an excuse.

He observed her approach from a distance, a quizzical expression on his face.

‘Does your father know you’re here? Don’t get into trouble for me.’

‘Are you telling me to go away?’ she demanded, hurt.

‘It might be better if you did.’

‘You sound as if you don’t care one way or the other.’

‘My back is broad, but yours isn’t. I don’t want you hurt.’

‘In other words you’re giving me the brush-off.’

‘Don’t be stupid,’ he growled. ‘Of course I don’t want you to go.’

She ran into his arms, kissing him again and again.

‘I’m not going, my darling. I’m not going to leave you.’

He kissed her long and deeply, and she responded with fierce, young passion. It was he who pulled away first, trembling with the effort it took to rein his desire back, but determined to do so.

‘I would die rather than harm you,’ he said in a shaking voice.

‘But, darling, you’re not harming me. Dad told me to come and see you.’

He looked at her wryly. ‘And why would he do that?’

She chuckled. ‘Can’t you guess? He wants me to soften you up for his next offer.’

He grinned. ‘And are you going to?’

‘Of course not. But he’s told me to keep on your right side, and while he thinks that’s what I’m doing he won’t make a fuss about me coming here. Aren’t I clever?’

‘You’re a cunning little witch.’

‘I’m only putting Dad’s own theory into practice. He says when you think someone’s acting for you they’re always pursuing their own agenda. Well, you’re my agenda, so come here and let me get on your right side.’

She took his hand and he went with her, unresisting, because neither then nor later could he deny her anything. It was to be the ruin of both of them.

‘Damn you, Luca! You duped me.’

Luca Montese’s face showed no relenting. ‘Nonsense! You sleepwalked into this without checking.’

‘I thought I could trust you.’

‘More fool you. I warned you not to trust me, and goodness knows how many of my enemies warned you.’

The man glaring across the desk was in a fury at the thought of the money he’d coveted and lost. His name was—well, no matter. He was the latest in a long line of men who had thought they could put one over on Luca Montese, and found that they were wrong.

‘We were supposed to be in this together,’ he snapped.

‘No. You thought you’d use me as a tool. I was to get the information, then you planned to make a deal behind my back. You should have been more suspicious. When you think a man’s acting for you he’s always pursuing his own agenda.’

Then a strange thing happened.

As Luca said the words a feeling of malaise came over him, so strong that he had to take a deep breath. It was as though the world had changed in a moment from a place where he was in control to a place where everything was strange and threatening.

‘Get out!’ he said curtly. ‘I’ll send you a cheque to cover your expenses.’

The man left fast, relieved simply to recover his expenses, which was more than anyone had got out of Luca for years. He wondered if the monster was losing his touch.

Left alone, Luca held himself still for a long time. The walls seemed to converge on him and suddenly he couldn’t breathe.

When you think a man’s acting for you he’s always pursuing his own agenda.

The words had come so naturally that he’d never doubted they were his own. Yet they had carried a sweetness so unbearable that it had almost destroyed him.

He was choking. He got up and opened the window, but the terrifying memory wouldn’t go away.

She had said it, and then she had pulled him down on the bed and loved him until his head was spinning. And he had loved her in return, making her a gift of everything that was in him, heart, body and soul, everything he was or hoped to be.

And that had been his mistake.

It was a mistake he’d never made again in the fifteen years since, when he had piled up money and power. He’d commanded his heart to harden until he could feel nothing, and he had been a success in that, as in everything else.

Now something frightening was happening. More and more the past was calling, tempting him back to a time when he was alive to feeling. But if he worked hard he reckoned he could kill it.

Only one person did not tread carefully when Luca was around, and that was Sonia, his personal assistant. Middle-aged, cool and efficient, she viewed her employer with eyes that were half motherly, half cynical. She was the only person he totally trusted, and with whom he could discuss his personal life.

‘Don’t waste time brooding,’ she advised him over a drink that evening. ‘You always said it was a weakness. You’ve got your divorce, so forget it, and marry again.’

‘Never!’ he snapped. ‘Another barren marriage for people to snicker at? No, thank you.’

‘Who says it’ll be barren? Just because you didn’t have a child by Drusilla doesn’t mean a thing. Some couples are like that. They can’t have a baby together, but each of them can have a baby by somebody else. Nobody knows why it happens, but it does.

‘This hairdresser is her “somebody else”. Now you have to find yours. It shouldn’t be hard. You’re an attractive man.’

He grinned. ‘Not like you to pay me compliments. Normally, according to you, I’m an impossible so-and-so with an ego the size of St Peter’s dome and—I forget the others but I’m sure you remember them.’

‘Selfish, monstrous and intolerable,’ she supplied without hesitation. ‘I’ve called you all those things and I don’t take back one word.’

‘You’re probably right.’

‘But it doesn’t stop you being attractive, and there are millions of women out there.’

He was silent for so long that she wondered if she’d offended him.

‘It could work the other way too, couldn’t it?’ he said at last.

‘How do you mean?’

‘Suppose there weren’t millions of women? Suppose there was only one woman with whom I had any hope of having children?’

‘I’ve never heard of it working that way round.’

‘But it might,’ he persisted.

‘Then you’d have to find her, and it would be like looking for a needle in a haystack.’

‘Not if you knew who she was.’

Understanding dawned.

‘You’ve already made your mind up, haven’t you? Luca, you don’t believe this because it’s true, you believe it because you want to. It’s rather comforting to know that you can be as irrational as the rest of us.’ She regarded him curiously. ‘She must have been very special.’

‘Yes,’ he said heavily. ‘She was special.’

He was a man of action. A few phone calls and a representative of the best private-enquiry firm that money could buy was in his office next morning.

‘Rebecca Solway,’ he said, speaking curtly to hide the fact that his stomach was churning. ‘Her father was Frank Solway, owner of the Belleto estate in Tuscany.

‘Find her. I don’t care what it costs, but find her.’

It was a successful evening. Philip Steyne, chairman of the bank, treated Rebecca with honour, and was clearly as impressed as Danvers had hoped he would be. When Rebecca left them for a moment Steyne said,

‘Congratulations, Jordan. She’ll do the bank credit. When can we expect the announcement?’

‘Any day, I hope. Nothing’s been said precisely, but of course she understands where we’re heading.’

‘Well, in good banking it pays to be precise,’ observed Steyne with a grin. ‘Don’t take too long.’

When Rebecca returned he said, ‘Rebecca, let me have the benefit of your expertise. You’re a quarter Italian, right?’

‘Yes, my father’s mother came from Tuscany.’

‘And you speak the language?’

She gave him her cleverest smile, a little bit teasing, but not too much. This was Danvers’ boss.

‘Which language do you mean? There’s la madre lingua, the official language that they use on radio and television, and in government. But there are also the regional dialects, which are languages in themselves. I speak la madre lingua, and Tuscan.’

‘I’m impressed. Actually Tuscan might be handy. This firm has its head office in Rome, but I believe it started in Tuscany, and it’s all over the world now.’

‘Firm?’

‘Raditore Inc. Property, finance, finger in every pie. Suddenly it’s buying a huge block of shares in the Allingham, and the bank’s interested in closer contact. I propose a dinner party at my house—you, Danvers, their top brass. Let’s see what there is to be gained from them.’

Driving her home, Danvers was lyrical in his praise.

‘You really impressed the old man tonight, darling.’

‘Good. I’m glad I was a help to you.’

She answered mechanically and he shot her a quick sideways look, thinking that this was the second time she’d been in a funny mood and he hoped it wasn’t going to become a habit.