Exotic Affairs: The Mistress Bride\The Spanish Husband\The Bellini Bride (34 page)

‘Signor Bellini left for Milan ten minutes ago,
signorina
,’ she informed her. ‘He said to remind you about the party tonight and to tell you to drive carefully, for the summer traffic between here and Milan is reputed to be very bad.’

Antonia thanked the maid for the message, and
smiled in recognition of the routine. Marco was making himself scarce because he knew he had hurt her, but making sure he kept the lines of communication open as he went.

Why? Because for a big tough corporate leader, with a reputed heart of stone and a tongue of steel, when it came to her, he hated dissension. He might not love her the way she wanted to be loved, but he loved her enough to feel uncomfortable when he had upset her. And, being a very selfish man, Marco liked to be comfortable in his private life.

Hence the message telling her to drive carefully, and the reminder about the party tonight. This was Marco putting down the first stepping-stones back to his precious comfort. Other stepping-stones would follow at timely intervals, Antonia predicted as she sat down to eat breakfast, alone for the first time in the week they had just spent here doing very little but making love and sleeping.

A week he’d arranged as a surprise treat for her birthday—along with the natty red Lotus which now stood in the courtyard waiting for her to drive it back to Milan. Last year he had given her a sweet little Fiat to use to get around in. But she had only been with him for a month then, so the value of the gift had reflected that.

Like a bonus for time put in, she likened, and wondered what he would think a fitting bonus for her next birthday.

If
she was still around, she added, felt her heart give a tug, and got up from the table to go back upstairs to pack, refusing to answer that little sarcasm—or question why her heart had given that singular tug.

An hour later, dressed in a pair of slender white Capri
pants and a skimpy-red T-shirt, her hair stylishly contained on the top of her head, Antonia was sitting in the creamy interior of the red Lotus, reading the note Marco had left for her on the dashboard.

‘Respect the car’s power and it will respect you,’ it said. ‘I prefer you to arrive home to me in one beautiful piece.’

Antonia’s smile held a hint of softness this time—not at the message itself so much as the way that Marco had taken time to pause long enough to sit here and write this before climbing into his Ferrari and driving away.

It was another stepping-stone neatly laid, and she was still smiling when she put her new toy into gear, then began following his long journey back to Milan, idly pondering on what his next move would be.

He was nothing if not a brilliant tactician. He waited until she’d reached the outskirts of Milan before making contact again.

Then her mobile began to ring.

Glancing down to where it sat in its hands-free housing, Antonia pondered for a few rings whether to ignore it and just let him stew. But, in the end, irresistible temptation won over stubbornness and, with a flick of a button, she sanctioned the connection.

‘Ciao, mi amore.’
The deep dark tones of his voice filled the car-space, soft, warm and aimed to seduce, she felt tingles of excitement run down her spine. ‘You were, of course, too busy concentrating on your driving to answer the phone straight away.’

Not a question exactly, but more a remark loaded with satire. He knew she had hesitated over whether to speak to him.

‘What do you want?’ she demanded curtly.

‘That depends,’ he murmured suggestively, ‘on where you are right now…’

‘Walking naked down Monte Napoleon, living up to expectations,’ she promptly tossed back at him, naming a particularly classy area within Milan’s famous Quadrilatero.

As a direct hit back at what he had said to her this morning, it should have caught him on the raw. Instead, it was the turn of his appreciative laughter to coil itself all around her. Antonia wriggled in her seat and wished she could hate him. But what she was experiencing was far from hate, and it took a couple of risky manoeuvres through the heavy traffic to help dispel the sensation.

‘And to think,’ he said eventually, ‘I refused lunch at Dino’s just to talk to you.’

‘Bad move,
caro
,’ Antonia responded. ‘Dino’s was by far your better option.’

‘And you sulk like a prima donna,’ he smoothly threw back.

He was right and she did. But then she felt justified. Still, the remark held a warning she would be a fool not to heed. ‘You told me you had back-to-back meetings all day,’ she murmured with less sarcasm. ‘Lunch at Dino’s is usually an all-afternoon thing.’

‘I surprise myself sometimes with my own efficiency,’ was his light reply.

‘And your conceit,’ she added.

‘
Si
, that too,’ he had the arrogance to agree.

Despite not wanting it to, Antonia felt her mouth twitch into a grin. In truth, his arrogance and conceit were major parts of what made Marco the charismatic person he was. Plus his sensational dark good looks, she then wryly added as she sped off the
autostrada
and
headed for the city centre. Then there was his great body, and his prowess as lover, and the way he…

‘In truth, lunch at Dino’s was never an option.’ The sound of his voice grabbed her attention back again. ‘The morning meetings ran overtime. The first one of the afternoon begins in half an hour. So here I am, sitting at my desk, with a take-away sandwich to ease my hunger, a newspaper to feed my mind—and a desperate desire to hear you say something nice to me.’

‘Huh,’ was all she offered.

‘You really want me to grovel, don’t you?’ his rueful voice drawled.

‘Preferably on your knees,’ Antonia confirmed.

‘Mmm,’ Marco murmured. ‘Now this sounds interesting. There are so many—many ways I can beg your forgiveness from that position.’

Her impulsive burst of laughter refused to be held in check. Across the city haze, in his plush office, Marco leant back in his chair and smiled a satisfied smile. Then, with the charm of a master, he turned the conversation to more ordinary things, like the performance of the Lotus, what she intended to do with her afternoon, and what time they needed to leave the apartment this evening to attend the first wedding anniversary party being thrown by his best friend Franco and his lovely wife Nicola.

By the time he replaced the receiver, Marco was satisfyingly sure that this morning’s stupidity on his part had been carefully soothed away and he could begin to relax again.

Reaching out, he picked up his sandwich and removed it from its wrapping, then collected up his newspaper, he lifted his feet onto the corner of the desk, and settled back to enjoy a half-hour of leisure before his
next meeting began with a pair of young hopefuls who wanted his financial backing for their very good idea but fell short of his investment criteria by possessing the business skills of a pair of gnats!

Until five minutes ago he had been intending to send them away with the curt advice to learn how to run a business before attempting to start one. But now he felt much more amenable. Maybe he would even offer to oversee the project himself!

Then he opened the newspaper and any hint of amenability died a death in that moment. For there staring out at him was none other than—Stefan Kranst. He was standing inside one of Milan’s most respected private art galleries. And the full-page article was really a plug for the Romano Gallery, where the artist was planning to exhibit next week.

But that wasn’t the thing that was knotting up Marco. It was the unsavoury suspicion that if Kranst was in town then Antonia must know about it, but she hadn’t mentioned a word to him!

Did
she know?

Was she planning to meet up with him secretly? She had done it before at least once, to his knowledge.

Antonia might have left Kranst to come to live in Milan with him, but the ex-lovers had not parted enemies. During a trip to London earlier this year, he had discovered by pure accident that she had spent a whole day with Kranst.

‘Don’t tell me who I can and who I can’t see!’ she’d declared when he’d objected. ‘Stefan will always be very special to me, and if you can’t cope with that, then that’s your problem, not mine, Marco.’

It had been one of a very few times when she’d actually looked ready to walk away from him if he tried
to push the issue. He hadn’t pushed it. But, for the first time in his life, he’d experienced the ugly burn of jealousy, when he’d realised that Kranst held a power over Antonia that was a challenge to his own.

He didn’t like it. He didn’t like the knowledge that he’d backed down from taking up that challenge. And he didn’t like Kranst turning up in Milan just when Marco was having to do some serious thinking about his relationship with Antonia.

It was either immaculate timing on Kranst’s part or yet another bad omen. Either way, the sandwich never got eaten and the two young hopefuls lost all chance of meeting an amiable Marco Bellini that day. If it hadn’t been for the fact that Marco was still functioning clearly enough to recognise an unmissable opportunity in what they were proposing, he would have taken great delight in kicking them out!

Irritation alternated with disturbing bouts of skin-prickling restlessness throughout the rest of the afternoon. Sudden flashes of Antonia and Kranst holed-up somewhere secret played games with his head.

In the end he could stand it no longer and went back to the privacy of his office to pick up the phone. Her mobile was switched off. Irritation ripped through him, then he remembered her telling him she was going straight back to the apartment, so he rang there instead.

All he got was his own pre-recorded message telling him that no one was available to take his call.

Antonia was standing in a tiny backstreet in another, less fashionable part of the city, fitting a key into a door. Once inside, she walked the narrow hallway and began climbing bare-boarded flights of stairs, passing by small dingy offices belonging to the kinds of businesses
Marco looked down upon from his lofty position at the top of the corporate tree. Some of the tenants knew her, some didn’t, most looked curiously at her, smiled politely and left her alone. She liked it that way. For this place was her secret. A part of her life Marco didn’t control.

On the very top landing, she went to the only door there and fitted another key into its lock. Stepping inside, she carefully closed the door again and then, turning round, she looked about her and quite simply smiled…

W
ALKING
through the front door to the Milan apartment was always a pleasure. And the first thing Antonia did as she stepped into it some hours later was pause for a moment to reacquaint herself with surroundings that were a thousand times different from those she had just come from.

Occupying the entire top floor of a modern city block, Marco’s home was an interior designer’s idea of heaven. No detail had been skimped in an effort to achieve its harmonious ambience.

The hall was large and light and airy, the rooms leading off from it furnished with a clever mix of classical, old and new. Nothing offended the eye. There were formal rooms used only for entertaining, less grand rooms for when they did not. The kitchen was a cook’s paradise, all four
en-suite
bedrooms designed to co-ordinate with the pastel colours applied to the walls. And everywhere you went you walked on the very best in Italian ceramic, passing between priceless works of art that adorned the walls.

Like his famous art-collecting ancestors, Marco had inherited an eye for what was just that bit special. Both he and his mother were generous patrons of the arts. What either of them bought, others took particular notice of. And, as with his taste in décor, he thought nothing of mixing the totally unknown with old respected masters—and of course it had worked beautifully.

But she didn’t have time to stand here considering
all of this right now, Antonia told herself wryly. She was late and she knew it. Somehow, time seemed to have got away from her today, and she was aware that she’d only just made it back before Marco usually arrived home.

Live dangerously, why don’t you? she scolded herself as she headed directly for the bedroom, meaning to make it look as if she had been in there for ages getting ready for the evening when he did eventually get in.

It turned out to be a wasted effort for, as fate would have it, Marco didn’t appear until she was already dressed for the evening and beginning to wonder what had happened to him.

Then the bedroom door suddenly swung open and he came striding in.

‘You’re late,’ she immediately chided.

‘I have a watch,’ he clipped back, and walked right past her without even sparing her a glance.

Frowning slightly, Antonia watched him begin pulling off his jacket in a way that spoke volumes about his mood.

‘Bad day?’ she quizzed.

‘Bad everything,’ he said grimly.

‘Hence no welcoming smile for me, no kiss hello?’ Teasing though her voice sounded, she was serious. After the efforts he’d put in, sweet-talking himself back into her favour, this new attitude was threatening to send him right back to square one if he wasn’t careful.

Maybe he realised it because, after tossing the jacket onto the bed, he then stood for a moment flexing his wide shoulders as if he was trying to dislodge whatever it was that was bugging him. As she watched solid muscle move beneath pale blue shirting, Antonia felt the usual sprinkling of pleasure warm her insides, and
would have gone to him and helped ease those tense muscles—if he hadn’t released a sigh and turned to look at her.

The expression on his face held her stationary. His eyes were glinting with barely suppressed anger, his features hard and grim and unusually pale. In a single brief sweep he gave her appearance the once-over, then his mouth tightened and he turned away again.

Warning bells began to ring in her head. ‘What’s wrong?’ she asked sharply.

‘Nothing,’ he clipped out. Then on another short sigh added, ‘Give me ten minutes to make myself human and we will begin this conversation again, I think.’

‘Fair enough,’ she agreed. It wasn’t often she’d witnessed the darker side of Marco, but on those few occasions she had done so, she’d learned very quickly to tread warily around him until he had calmed down. But she was still frowning as she let herself out of the bedroom, wondering what could have happened this afternoon to put him in that kind of mood.

Bad meeting? A fortune lost on the Stock Exchange? she mused as she walked into the small sitting room and straight over to the drinks bar to mix him his favourite whisky sour while she waited for him to join her.

The ten minutes he’d allocated himself had obviously not been long enough, was her first observation when he joined her. He came into the room with his hair still slightly damp from his quick shower and his fingers impatiently tugging the white cuffs to his shirt into line with the black silk edges of his dinner jacket—and it was clear, by the look on his face, that he was feeling no better.

‘Here, try this. It might help,’ she drily suggested, offering him the prepared drink.

But, ‘No time,’ he refused. ‘And anyway, I’m driving.’ With that, he diverted over to the mirror and began messing with his bow-tie.

And the hand holding out the whisky sour sank slowly back to the drinks bar as it began to dawn on Antonia that his mood had nothing to do with a bad day at the office, but had something to do with her.

‘All right,’ she said, deciding to take him on so they could get whatever it was that was annoying him out of the way before the evening began. ‘Tell me what it is I’m supposed to have done to make you so angry.’

‘Who said you’d done anything?’ Bow-tie perfect, shirt-cuffs straight, he turned his attention to checking his watch. ‘If you’re ready, we should get going…’

If
she was ready… Dipping her eyes to look down at the slender red silk dress she was wearing—newly bought this afternoon with Marco in mind because he loved to see her in red—Antonia felt her own happy mood shatter. The dress, the way she’d done up her hair so only the odd fine silk tendril caressed her nape, and even the blush-red lipstick she was wearing, had all been chosen with his pleasure in mind.

And it hurt that he was deliberately ignoring that. That his voice might sound mellow but the message was cold. Cold like the silence he was now allowing to develop, even when he must know what she was thinking because he deciphered atmospheres in a room as easily as he deciphered a page full of figures.

The man was an accounting genius, it therefore went without saying that he wanted her to feel this hurt. But more painful was the knowledge that he had done this to her twice in one day.

What was the matter with him? What was he trying to tell her with these violent swings in his mood?

That he’d had enough? That she’d begun to irritate him so much that he couldn’t seem to look at her without taking a verbal swipe at her?

The idea wasn’t a new one. She had been suspecting it on and off for a while, though until this morning they had just enjoyed a whole week of near perfect harmony and she had begun to believe that she’d been imagining his growing irritation with her.

But now, as she stood here in this carefully orchestrated silence, the suspicion returned with a vengeance. Was she growing stale? Did he want out? Had the week away been arranged in an effort to recapture what he was no longer feeling for her?

Twice in one day, she repeated to herself. Twice he’d been deliberately hurtful.

‘Cara?’
he prompted her to answer.

The endearment made her insides wince. ‘Yes,’ she said quietly. ‘I’m ready.’

But, as she turned away to retrieve her little red purse from where she had left it, she found herself wondering exactly what it was she was ready for. Losing him?

A sharp pain caught her breath for a moment, holding her still while she waited for it to ease in much the same way she had done this morning. By that example the sensation should have dispersed quickly. But it didn’t. In fact, the more sure she became that he was tiring of her, the more it was beginning to hurt. Yet she had always known that this could only ever be a temporary affair, she tried to reason. And, as some people were always eager to tell her, she had lasted longer than most.

Those were usually the same people who were also quick to explain that when Marco Bellini married it
would be to a woman of his own social standing. Someone with money, someone with class, someone with a lineage to match the superior weight of his. And, most importantly, someone his parents would welcome with open arms.

Certainly not a little English nobody who had never known her father. A woman who wasn’t deemed fit to even be in the same room as any of his relatives. And, worse, a woman who didn’t mind exposing her body to the world.

‘What’s this?’ The questioning sound of Marco’s voice impinged on her bleak summing up of herself. Having to blink a couple of times before she could face him, she found him standing there with a gold-wrapped flat package in his hands.

‘Oh, it’s a gift for Franco and Nicola.’ Eyes still slightly glazed, she turned away again. ‘I realised we hadn’t got them anything, so I went shopping before coming on here…’

Shopping.

For several moments Marco couldn’t move a single muscle. Remorse was cutting into him for the second time that day. While he’d been suspecting her of meeting secretly with Stefan Kranst she’d been trawling the shops, looking for an anniversary gift for his own two closest friends.

He didn’t know what to do. He didn’t know what to say to put right the wrong he’d done her—yet again. ‘I’m sorry,
cara
,’ seemed the only thing to offer. ‘I should have thought about this myself.’

There was a double meaning to the last part, though he was relieved Antonia couldn’t know it. She winced at the
cara
, though, he noticed. Shrugged at the rest. ‘It doesn’t matter. Your money paid for it.’

With that she walked stiffly away, leaving her very derisive offering hanging in the air behind her. With a silent curse aimed at his own nasty suspicions, Marco followed, grimly deciding to keep his mouth shut since he was well aware that he had successfully managed to wipe her clean of all hint of good humour by now.

And she looked gorgeous, delectable, good enough to eat—though he knew he had left it too late to tell her that. The dress was short, red and very sexy the way it clung to every slender curve she possessed. It made him want to run his hands all over her, but that was just another pleasure he had denied himself with his lousy mood.

Antonia lifted the latch on the front door and stepped through, leaving Marco to set the alarm and lock up, while she called the lift. It arrived as he did. They stepped inside it. The lift took them down towards the basement with Antonia occupying one corner, he another, and the atmosphere was so thick he could have cut it with a knife.

If the English were brilliant at only one thing, then it would have to be their ability to freeze people out, he mused as he viewed her glacial expression.

‘Do you want me to apologise for taking my bad temper out on you?’ he sighed eventually.

‘What—again?’ she drawled. Then, ‘No, don’t bother,’ she advised, before he could answer. ‘No doubt you’ll be doing it again before too long, which renders your apologies pretty meaningless gestures.’

Perhaps he deserved that, Marco conceded. But irritation began to bite into him again. He didn’t like being treated like a leper just because he’d made a natural mistake.

Natural? He quizzed himself.

Yes, damn natural, he insisted arrogantly. He might no longer suspect her of spending the afternoon with Kranst, but that didn’t mean she didn’t
know
the man was here in Milan!

Well, he was damned if he was going to bring the subject up first, he decided, grimly aware that he didn’t really want to know the answer. For to know the answer meant dealing with it. And he didn’t want to deal with anything that could risk his relationship with Antonia. Not until he had made up his own mind where it was going to go, anyway.

So, with that niggling little confession to chew on, he let the atmosphere remain thick for the next thirty seconds it took the lift to sink. They left it side by side, to walk between the rows of parked cars towards his Ferrari, passing by her neatly parked red Lotus without either of them sparing it a glance.

Three days old and she doesn’t even see it. Which, in its own way, made the car just another wasted gesture on his part, he noted testily. She had been ecstatic when he took her away for a week as part of her birthday present, but the car had produced only the usual polite remarks people use when they’re given something they’re really not that impressed with.

With ingrained good manners that went back a lifetime, he opened the passenger door of the Ferrari and remained standing by it while Antonia slipped gracefully inside. For the briefest of moments only a few centimetres separated them. It was the closest they’d been since this morning on the balcony in Portofino, he realised, as her delicate perfume filled his nostrils and his senses reacted in their usual way.

Grimly, he ignored their message, when only yesterday
he would have been freely indulging every sense he possessed.

With his lips pressed together in a steadily darkening mood of discontent, he placed the gift for Franco and Nicola on her lap, closed the door, then rounded the car bonnet to get in beside her. As he settled himself into his seat he caught a glimpse of her icy profile, clenched his teeth together, and turned his attention to getting them moving.

And the silence between them was still so bad it murdered normal body functions like breathing and swallowing. He couldn’t stand it. ‘Are you going to tell me what’s in the parcel?’ he asked as lightly as he could in the circumstances.

‘A painting,’ she answered briefly.

Having already worked that part out for himself, by the shape and the feel of the gift, Marco took a deep breath for patience. ‘What kind of painting?’ he prompted.

‘Why?’ she flicked back. ‘Are you worried that I don’t have the right credentials to choose something acceptable for your friends?’

At which point he gave up. In this kind of mood she was impossible. Sinking back into stiff silence, neither spoke again for the rest of the journey.

Franco and Nicola de Maggio lived in a large house in one of the select residential areas out on the edges of the city. Arriving so late meant it was difficult to find a parking space in the long driveway. Cursing beneath his breath, Marco had to do some pretty deft manoeuvring to slot the long car in between two others already parked. By the time he switched off the engine the atmosphere between them was so tight you could have played an overture on its taut threads.