Free The Italian's Love-Child by Sharon Kendrick

was a certain protocol to be followed. There were unspoken rules and he wondered if she understood them as well as he did. Rules about boundaries and expectations. He would not be owned. He had never been owned.
    ‘Come over here and kiss me,’ he murmured.
    But Eve had seen something in his eyes which had made the tiny hairs on the back of her neck pricklein apprehension. There was something very controlled about him this morning, no matter that she could see for herself the evidence that he wanted her very badly. Physically, in any case. But emotionally? Wasn’t there a cool kind of distance in the black eyes which were studying her as one would a horse that had not yet been broken? Waiting to see what she would do next, how she would react.
    Was he frightened that she was going to come on all heavy? Afraid that she would become clingy or needy or demanding or any of the other things which women sometimes instinctively did when a man had possessed and pleasured them? Well, he need not worry!
    She curved her mouth into a smile, so grateful then to the job which had allowed her to make a living out of hiding what was going on inside. Why, even after the death of her mother, she had been back in the studio within the month, her heart breaking inside and yet able to keep a calm and controlled exterior.
    True, a couple of the regular and more perceptive viewers had written in to ask if she was okay, and on the editor’s advice she had mentioned the death. Which had led to a whole programme on bereavement, after she’d been flooded with letters from people who had gone through exactly the same thing and were anxious to share their experience and the strength which had grown from it. Television taught you lots about controlling your emotions; very early on she had discovered that the camera could lie.
    ‘Why don’t you come here and kiss me instead?’ she suggested.
    He rolled towards her, a lazy smile on his lips. So she was not one who would festoon him with kissesand tell him that he was the most marvelous lover she had ever had?
    He lowered his mouth onto hers. ‘Like that?’
    The sweet, aching beauty of that kiss threatened to take her breath away. Eve closed her eyes.
    ‘Exactly like that,’ she whispered huskily.
    He made love to her for a long time, seeming to go out of his way to demonstrate his finesse as a lover, and twice she sobbed his name out loud. It had never been like this with a man. Never. But that was the kind of thing you should never admit to—especially to a man with an ego the size of Luca’s.
    He relaxed as he noted her smile of dreamy contentment, smoothing a few stray strands of hair away from her damp forehead. ‘How long can you stay?’
    ‘I’ll go after lunch. When’s your flight back?’
    ‘At five.’ He very nearly offered to change it, but he smiled as he touched his lips to hers. It was a very clever woman who made no demands on a man—someone ought to tell them that that was what kept interest alive!
    She didn’t leave until three and for the whole train journey home Eve was on a high. Her cheeks were rosy and flushed, her eyes bright and her hair very slightly mussed and she bore all the signs of a woman who had been very thoroughly made love to.
    He was gorgeous. Utterly, utterly gorgeous, but she hadn’t been stupid enough to go all gooey-eyed on him. She recognised that he was that hard, rare breed of man who was essentially a loner, living life on his terms and his terms alone—and why shouldn’t he? Wasn’t that exactly how she lived her own life?
    And as long as she remembered that, there was noreason why they couldn’t have a wonderful and mutually fulfilling love affair.
    The green fields rumbled by and she closed her eyes, recalling the lazy morning they had had, not getting out of bed until just after noon, and then strolling to a nearby pub for lunch, where Luca had been engaging and amusing company.
    It would be all too easy to fall for him, hook, line and