"Interviews! What don’t you know already?”

That’s Tony Parker, getting frustrated that his new fiancée, Eva Longoria, is paying more attention to us than him. The couple is having their first dinner together in several days, Eva having just arrived in San Antonio to spend a little downtime with Tony before she has to jet back to the Desperate Housewives set in Los Angeles and NBA-star Parker’s San Antonio Spurs return to the road.

Haute-couture gown from the Versace Atelier collection available by special order at Versace Bal Harbour, price available upon request. Diamond cuff by Chris Aire available at chrisaire.com.

We sympathize, Tony, but give us just a few minutes. You get to have her for the rest of your life.

“He’s French through and through,” Eva explains with a laugh. We’re not really sure if she means that as a compliment, a warning or an apology. But whatever the case, the couple is clearly happy together.

“I love coming home, it’s like a minivacation,” coos Eva, 31, who reveals that she actually has been returning to her native state nearly every weekend since she and Parker, 24, started dating almost exactly two years ago. “Since my boyf—fiancé—lives in Texas…”

Longoria admits she’s having a hard time getting used to using that word. “It still makes me giggle.”

Despite her busy schedule, and impatient man, Eva is thrilled to be making time for Ocean Drive’s anniversary issue. “I love Miami—the people and the energy and the restaurants and the nightlife.” And though Cubans and Mexicans might not always see eye-to-eye, Eva is quick to add, “I love Cuban food and Cuban people, and I respect the journey of those who are here from Cuba.”

If that last remark sounds vaguely political, well, it is. While most of her headlines might revolve around her love life, Longoria has been showing many other facets lately, including her political and social activism. The proud Mexican-American recently came out against the border fence, is involved (through the Mexican American Legal Defense Fund) in a suit against Florida orange growers, and stays closely involved with Padres Contra el Cáncer (a nonprofit for families of cancer-stricken Latino children), National Council of La Raza and the Dolores Huerta Foundation (a social-justice advocacy group). She also takes pride in pointing out that her Housewives character Gabrielle is the first Latina in prime time with a white gardener!

And speaking of food, Longoria has another big partnership on the horizon, with celebrity chef Todd English in a restaurant called De Nada (Spanish for “you’re welcome”). Set to open this March in Hollywood, the Tex-Mex establishment is not just an investment for Eva, but a genuine collaboration.

	Haute-couture dress from the Versace Atelier collection available by special order at Versace Bal Harbour, price available upon request. Diamond earrings and ring, all by Chris Aire, available at chrisaire.com.

“I have a lot of passion for food,” she says. “I always cook at least two or three times a week in my house for my friends. So for me it’s an extension of what I already do, just in a bigger living room! (Don’t ask where the petite 5’1” beauty puts it—or the Godiva chocolates she reportedly pops before each scene she shoots).

Longoria is even contributing some of her own specialties. “I have a killer tortilla-soup recipe, a great guacamole recipe and a great enchilada recipe.” She knows enough about the business to know it’s a serious challenge—”I’d be very scared to do it myself”—but is dedicated none-theless. “It’s going to be something close to my heart.”

As for the day job, Longoria says season three of Housewives has lost none of the shock value that she enjoyed (or survived) in the first two.

“My mouth drops sometimes from the scripts,” she says. “Especially with what I’m shooting now. I can’t believe the story has turned this way. Every script is a page turner for me.” Her favorite days on set are the “luncheon” scenes, which are almost the only moments all five stars actually work together (Eva is particularly close to Marcia Cross and Felicity Huffman.) “But it’s a long day, because we screw around and all of us are not really focusing, we’re just trying to catch up.”

Still, Eva says, she and Gabrielle could not be more different. “I’m extremely opposite of her on everything.” As far as acting is concerned, though, Eva greatly prefers the bitchy scenes (“when Gabrielle has her Gabrielle-ness” as she puts it) to the sexy ones.

“I hate sex scenes and kissing scenes,” she says. “It’s just an uncomfortable situation for everybody. ‘Put your elbow over here, find your light here.’ It’s not really natural and just awkward.” Longoria reveals that she and Ricardo Chavira, who plays her on-again, off-again husband, Carlos, have such a brother-sister relationship that intimate encounters always leave them particularly “grossed out.”

“He tells me all the time—’People say, “You get to kiss Eva Longoria”—and he goes, ‘Yeah, whatever.’”

Eva also asked series creator and writer Marc Cherry to work away from the almost continual bath scenes of the early episodes, which forced her to be soaking, in full body makeup, for days at a time.

But don’t think any of that means Longoria is necessarily a shy person. After all, she’s been featured in Maxim, in which she topped its Hot List in 2005 and 2006—the second cover was blown up and spread across the Nevada desert big enough to be visible from space—and other men’s magazines, wearing little more than a smile. She’s also strutted her stuff with Las Vegas’ bawdy burlesque troupe The Pussycat Dolls.

“It’s a lot of fun,” Longoria says of her frisky photo shoots, though she also admits there’s another motivation at work. “As a television star, and a person who respects her audience, I like to do things that my audience will enjoy. You know, 50 percent of Desperate Housewives’ audience is male.”

And then there are some of the other tidbits she’s let loose with in the press, including her affection for Brazilian waxes and their effect on her love life—and prior to that (and Tony), her interest in sex toys.

Eva Longoria, with fiancé Tony Parker, is looking forward to a summer wedding in France.

Eva’s certainly come a long way from her childhood as the youngest of four daughters (including Elizabeth, Emily and Esmeralda) in a Mexican-American Catholic household in Corpus Christi, Texas. “My dad [Enrique] was extremely strict with us,” she recalls. “We couldn’t have boys over, we couldn’t talk to boys on the telephone, we weren’t allowed to talk on the telephone [at all]!” Longoria’s sisters are more Anglo looking, with fair skin and blue eyes, which left young Eva feeling she was the ugly duckling of the family. Her eldest sister, whom everyone calls “Lisa,” is “intellectually disabled,” as she puts it, which encouraged her mother Ella (who came up with the idea to give everyone the same first initial, by the way) to become a special-education teacher.

“I never wanted to grow up and become an actress,” Longoria explains. “My childhood dream was to go to college and get a job. And I really had a fascination with sports medicine and sports training.” Attending Texas A&M University-Kingsville, Longoria received a B.S. degree in kinesiology, the science of muscles and human motion, and planned to earn a graduate degree in exercise science and work with a major sports team.

As a student, “I was really focused,” Eva says, then admits she never missed a spring-break opportunity to hit South Padre Island and “definitely went through my phase of crazy partying.” But after “about one semester” her father set her straight. “Then I was over it.”

Fate intervened in the form of the Miss Corpus Christi, USA pageant, which she won, and then a talent contest that brought her to Hollywood. That was followed by a bit part on Beverly Hills, 90210 and other roles before a regular stint on The Young and the Restless and eventually, Housewives.

But Longoria never lost her interest in sports, particularly basketball, which is, naturally, how she met her point-guard fiancé. “I love the excitement of the game, and I love the actual tactics and strategy, and defense and offense, and players and competition,” she says.

Ironically, Eva admits she’s not exactly athletic herself—in fact, she’s quite clumsy. And though she doesn’t say so directly, it seems as if all the attention from the “laddie mags” (along with her contract as the face of L’Oréal) is more funny to her than flattering.

“Tony laughs. He says, ‘I can’t believe everybody in the world thinks you’re so sexy and glamorous,’ because he knows I’m so not glamorous in everyday life.”

Eva remains close with her family. Her parents live down the street from her current San Antonio home, though she and Tony are building a bigger house, which she insists will not be a “bling-bling” mansion. She also is proud that her eldest sister lives independently—Longoria also recently started Eva’s Heroes, a nonprofit organization aimed at helping similarly disabled people nationwide—while her other two sisters are successful computer programmers.

For the record, Eva clarifies her recent comments that she only wants to do film work after Housewives ends. “I love the medium of television, although after Desperate Housewives—we are contracted for seven years—I would like to explore more producing,” she says. Among her current projects is a documentary on immigrant farm workers, and she hopes to work on a docudrama about Huerta in the future—“and film obviously,” Longoria adds. “I have a lot of pet projects I’m producing, which will hopefully come to fruition before Desperate Housewives is over.”

	Haute-couture gown from the Versace Atelier collection available by special order at Versace Bal Harbour, price available upon request. Diamond cuff by Chris Aire available at chrisaire.com.

Longoria has also made great strides establishing herself as a worthy screen actor, appearing most recently in the urban cop drama Harsh Times, the political thriller The Sentinel, and the upcoming romantic comedy How I Met My Boyfriend’s Dead Fiancée. The latter may be the first time fans really get a chance to see Longoria stretch outside of her television persona, playing the title role opposite Paul Rudd (The 40 Year Old Virgin) and his new love interest, Lake Bell (The Practice/Boston Legal), which Eva tries to sabotage from beyond the grave. “It’s really funny, very physical, a lot of special effects with me floating and stretching and doing some fun paranormal stuff,” she says.

As for her latest project, the upcoming marriage, Longoria knows it’s no slam-dunk (she was married to General Hospital’s Tyler Christopher from 2002 to 2004). “Relationships are hard for anybody, whether you’re a dentist, a doctor, a lawyer, a secretary,” she says. “Whatever you do, relationships and particularly marriage is very hard, and you just have to work at it.”

Still, Parker clearly started the engagement on the right foot, showing up unexpectedly at Longoria’s home in L.A. after a game against the Utah Jazz, spreading rose petals and lighting candles before getting down on one knee.

“I was very surprised,” Eva says about the proposal. “We’ve talked about marriage, of course, so he didn’t surprise me in that sense, just in how he did it. He did a great job of planning it.” And despite rumors of a recent rift between the couple, Eva says she “immediately knew” her answer.

Parker sealed the deal with a reported five-carat emerald-cut diamond in a setting by Beverly Hills jeweler Jean Dousset that the basketball star helped design. The wedding will take place in France (Parker’s native home) this summer, but other details, Longoria insists, haven’t been worked out yet.

“I’ve got to feed Tony,” Eva says, her signal that it’s time to wrap up the interview. After dinner, the two have no more planned than a movie, Apocalypto. “We like to lay around and do nothing. We have really big lives, so for us, to spend time with each other is sacred.”

Photographer represented by Art House Management.
Styled by Paris Libby.
Hair by Ken Paves/Ken Paves Salon, Los Angeles.
Makeup by Francesca Tolot/cloutieragency.com.
Set Design by Chris Pearsons.

Special thanks to Versace Atelier for assistance with fashion for this story.