Happy Mother's Day! by Sharon Kendrick Page A

what to do—or, deep down, were they all flailing wildly and making up the rules as they went along?
    Gianluca watched her studying the menu-card as if it were an examination paper, flickering his eyes over her bent head with a slight ache of amusement—realising that this was the first time in a long, long time that he had been forced to endure a dinner for the sake of propriety. ‘What would you like?’
    ‘Oh, I don’t know—whatever it’s best known for. Isn’t there some kind of signature dish?’
    He spoke to the waiter in French, ordered them both some fish and wine and waited while their drinks were poured. Then he leaned back in his chair and studied her. ‘You do realise that you’re still a complete mystery to me? That I’ve known you for almost two years, we’ve had sex together and yet I don’t even know where you live?’
    ‘Gianluca!’
    ‘Doesn’t that strike you as strange?’ he questioned, ignoring her protest.
    ‘There’s never been a reason for you to know,’ she said. ‘There isn’t really one now.’
    He watched as she picked up her glass of water with a hand which wasn’t quite steady. ‘Being evasive won’t work,’ he said evenly. ‘I’m curious.’
    ‘Do you always interrogate when you’re out on a date, Gianluca?’
    ‘Is this a date, then,
cara?’
    Oh, but he managed to twist everything she said!
    In the circumstances, it seemed bizarre to give him a potted life history—it seemed the wrong way round, really. They’d done the bed bit, without any of the getting-toknow-you stuff. But how else were they going to endure a whole meal together, if he was determined to find out andshe was equally determined not to tell him? It would simply become a battle of wills, which she suspected he would win. ‘I live in Putney.’
    ‘By the river?’ he observed. ‘You must be doing well.’
    ‘I’m actually about ten minutes’ walk from the river and it’s only a one-bedroomed apartment—but I love it. I’ve been trading up ever since I got a foothold on the property market.’
    ‘And when was that?’
    ‘As soon as I could afford to. I saved up like mad for a deposit. I hadn’t really …’
    Her words tailed off and he pounced on the rare chink in her armour. ‘Hadn’t really what?’
    Surely if she made herself
sound
vulnerable, then she would make herself
seem
vulnerable? And what would
he
understand about savings, and deposits? Gianlucawasn’t just rich, he had been born rich—everyone knew that. How could a man like that possibly relate to her story? ‘I’d never lived anywhere that wasn’t rented before,’ she said reluctantly.
    He raised his dark brows. ‘Not even as a child?’
    How few people had experienced it in the world she now occupied, she thought wryly. These days, in the UK, home ownership was seen as a right rather than a privilege, and Aisling gave a brittle smile. ‘No, not even then,’ she agreed, glad that the waiter chose that moment to bring a basket of bread, and hoping that Gianluca might let it go.
    But he didn’t.
    ‘That’s unusual for this country,’ he said slowly.
    ‘Not that unusual,’ she contradicted. ‘It’s just that a lot of people never get out of the poverty trap and I was lucky that I did.’
    ‘What happened?’
    She hesitated. ‘My mother was a single parent, without a proper career of her own.’ ‘And your father?’
    ‘I never knew my father. He left before I was born.’ He frowned. ‘So no stable male influence when you were growing up?’
    ‘No.’
    He filed the fact away. Was that why she didn’t flirt and dress up like most women—because she didn’t trust men, or she just didn’t know how they operated? ‘You never felt the need to trace him?’
    ‘Never. I couldn’t see the point. There.’ She looked at him defiantly. ‘End of subject.’
    ‘That must have been hard for you,’ he observed slowly.
    But shewasn’t asking for his sympathy. ‘Put it this way—a few knocks on the way