Exotic Affairs: The Mistress Bride\The Spanish Husband\The Bellini Bride (35 page)

It was no wonder Antonia was eager to escape from it.

Marco released a hard sigh as he watched her fumble in her rush to unlock her seat belt. ‘The filthy atmosphere remains here in the car,’ he bit out warningly. They were about to go amongst
his
friends, after all. He had no wish for them to witness his less than harmonious love life.

The false smile she turned on him set a nerve ticking in his jaw—and had other parts of him rising to its provocative bait. He could soften her in seconds, right here, in these cramped confines. He knew a few simple moves that would remind her as to
why
she was even sitting here at all!

‘Get out of the car,’ he growled at her before he replaced the thought with a very satisfying action.

Antonia didn’t need telling for she was already opening the door. Stepping out of air-conditioned coolness into the heat of an Italian summer evening, she stood there taking in a few deep breaths of that air in the vague hopes that it would help warm her up inside.

No chance. Now the suspicion that he was growing weary of her had set itself as cold hard fact in her head, the idea of feeling warm ever again was impossible to imagine.

In truth, she had almost refused to come tonight. For a few minutes, back there in the apartment, she had almost taken the mammoth step of taking the initiative and calling it a day. She had her pride after all. And
it
had no wish to cling on to something that was already dying, even if Marco was willing to hang on until the whole affair had finally strangled itself to death.

But then he’d brought her attention to the gift for Franco and Nicola and she’d changed her mind. The
couple might be Marco’s friends, but they had also become
her
friends over the last year—Nicola especially. Leaving Marco was one thing. Doing it on the night of Nicola’s wedding anniversary party would cast a black cloud over her friend’s special night, and she had no wish to do that.

And anyway, she admitted, as she waited for Marco to come and join her, she
wanted
to be here. She wanted to go out with a smile and her head held high, not slink off into the darkness like a pet dog that had lost favour with its master.

Tomorrow she would leave, she determined, as the master arrived at her side. His hand came to rest against her back. His jacket sleeve brushed her bare arm. Her flesh began to tingle as she absorbed the impact of a pure male magnetism that never ceased to excite her, no matter what the mood between them was like.

Her chin was level with his shoulder, her eyes with his mouth. If she turned her head just a fraction she would be able to see the perfectly honed contours that made up his handsome face. But she didn’t even need to move her head to pick up the tangy scent of him, because she was inhaling it with every breath that she took as they walked together towards the house.

Inside was awash with music and laughter. The moment they walked through the door it was like stepping into a different world. It came as a shock—the kind of shock that made Antonia pause and blink a couple of times in an effort to make the transition from hostility and darkness to merriment and light.

Then a cry of delight went up, and she saw their hostess separate herself from the group of people she had been with. In tow behind her was the man she had been married to for a year today.

Tall and dark, handsome and sleek, Franco de Maggio was very much of Marco’s ilk. It should have made the two men natural rivals—but the truth was the opposite. They had known each other since kindergarten and been close friends ever since.

With her long black hair, stunningly beautiful dark brown eyes and dressed in slinky black crêpe that moulded her sensational figure, Nicola de Maggio was everything that Antonia was not. She was Italian, she had money in her own right, and her place beside Franco or another man like him had never been in any doubt from the day she had been born into her privileged life.

She belonged here. To Nicola, being a part of this society came as naturally to her as the inner warmth she exuded, which defied anyone not to instinctively like her simply for herself.

Antonia had liked her from the first moment they met, she as Marco’s very new lover, Nicola as Franco’s new bride. Liking had deepened into real affection since then. They were now good close friends—much like Marco and Franco. Yet Antonia had never ceased to be aware that she was the cuckoo in the nest.

Their smiles were genuine, their greetings were warm—and gave Antonia the excuse to move away from Marco’s touch. On receiving their gift, their thanks were sincere. With a few teasing quizzes on what it might be, it was placed with all the other gifts waiting to be opened. ‘It feels like our wedding day all over again,’ Nicola sighed out happily. ‘Wait until it’s your turn, Antonia, and you will know just how blessed I feel.’

Marco stiffened, Antonia froze. Seeing their reaction, Nicola went quite pale. With a sharp glance at all three
of them, Franco swiftly stepped into the breach. ‘I think you should explain
how
blessed,
amore
,’ he murmured softly, placing an arm around his wife’s slender shoulders.

And it was a protective arm. An arm that said, It’s okay. Not your fault. I’m here to smooth this out for you. Antonia wanted to run away, because it was as clear as day that Marco wasn’t here to smooth anything out for her.

‘We are going to have a baby!’ Nicola suddenly announced in an anxiously rushed hush. ‘Only we weren’t going to say anything until later…’

She should be smiling, bubbling over with delight, but she couldn’t because she was feeling so uncomfortable after what she’d said. So, pulling herself together, Antonia did it for her. ‘Oh, that’s wonderful news!’ she exclaimed, and smiled—my God, how she smiled. She smiled as she hugged Nicola, and smiled as she kissed Franco’s rather grim cheek. She even smiled up at Marco, though she wanted to hit him rather than smile at him.

His arm found her waist and he drew her close again. It was such a brave gesture, considering Nicola had just turned him to stone in horror. He even found a light rejoinder. ‘Dinner next week,’ he insisted. ‘Just the four of us to wet the baby’s head.’

I won’t be here next week, Antonia thought, and smiled through that little knowledge also.

‘You do that
after
the baby is born!’ Nicola protested.

‘Then we will wet the waiting
mamma’s
head,’ Marco compromised, and kissed the waiting
mamma’s
now smiling mouth.

Between them all a nasty moment had been neatly smoothed over. Nicola was happy again, as she should
be. Franco on the other hand looked curious as to what was going on between Marco and Antonia but was willing to hold his tongue.

Thankfully, a new bunch of latecomers arrived, giving the happy couple an excuse to escape. Once again, Antonia moved away from Marco’s touch.

The worst of it was, he let her go.

So she threw herself headlong into the party to end all parties, as far she was concerned. For tomorrow I leave, was the chant playing over and over inside her head as she laughed and chatted happily away in Italian, the language being second nature to her, having spent the first five years of her life living here. And she danced, and ate very sparingly, and drank champagne by the glassful without knowing she was doing it.

Managing to corner her an hour later, Nicola demanded to know what was going on. ‘If you two are avoiding each other like this because of what I said, then I am so sorry!’ she cried. ‘I can’t tell you how awful I felt, setting you up in that dreadful way!’

‘Don’t be silly.’ Antonia tried to smile it off—again. ‘It really didn’t matter.’

‘If course it mattered,’ Nicola insisted. ‘I hurt you and infuriated Marco! He’s barely speaking to anyone while you are partying as if this is your last night on this earth!’

Many a true word, Antonia thought bleakly. ‘If Marco is still angry over an innocent remark, then shame on him and his overgrown ego,’ she said. ‘What did he think I was going to do? Jump in and ask him when I get to feel blessed?’

‘You’ve lasted longer than any of his other lovers.’ Nicola gently offered a phrase Antonia had grown very weary of hearing recently. Especially when it helped to
mark that the end was most definitely nigh. ‘That has to mean something, doesn’t it?’ Nicola pleaded.

Did it? ‘It means I must be good at my job,’ she provided, eyes hardening into cynicism. ‘Do you think I’ll be head-hunted when word gets around that I’m back on the market?’

Nicola’s beautiful mouth dropped open. Across the room, standing by the drinks bar, Marco saw it happen and wondered what the hell Antonia had said to make Nicola gape like that.

Nothing nice, he concluded as he watched Nicola search the room until her eyes made contact with his. In a definite flurry, she looked quickly away again. And his senses were suddenly on full alert.

He didn’t like this. He didn’t like any of it. The whole damn day had gone from bad to worse, seemingly without him having any control whatsoever over it. Now something else was happening here that he didn’t understand. Okay, Antonia was angry with him, he allowed. So he was a moody devil and probably deserved the way she was avoiding him like the plague. But whatever she’d just said to Nicola had been more than a complaint about his bad temper. His friend’s wife had actually looked shocked and horrified.

Nicola was talking to her urgently—telling her that he was watching them, he realised, when Antonia turned so he could see the cold cast of defiance in her beautiful face. Their eyes made contact. If looks could kill, he’d be dead now, Marco acknowledged, and raised his glass to her in a silent toast meant to convey that he really didn’t give a damn if she was hating him.

But it wasn’t true. And that was his biggest problem where Antonia was concerned. Even now, while exchanging metaphorical knives across a crowded room,
she lit him up so fiercely inside that if there was a polite way of doing it he would be getting her out of here and alone so he could demonstrate just how she affected him.

And that just about said it all as to why he was having these damned hard constant battles with himself. He wanted her. He
always
wanted her! Angry or not. Crowded room or not.

Why the hell should he give up something he still desired as much as this?

Almost as if on cue, the moment he planted that important point in his head, fate dealt him a lousy hand just to show to him that he wasn’t the only person with a choice in this relationship.

A slight disturbance by the door caught Antonia’s attention. She looked that way, Marco followed her gaze—then felt everything inside him close down completely when he found himself looking at none other than Stefan Kranst himself.

The moment Antonia saw him her beautiful face lit up, her gorgeous mouth broke into a sensational smile. And she struck out towards Kranst like a pigeon recognising home.

S
TANDING
on the sidelines, Marco watched them meet, watched them smile, watched them murmur to each other. He watched Antonia lift her hand to his shoulders and Stefan Kranst slide his hands around her waist—then their mouths came together in a tender soft kiss.

He tried telling himself that it was just a greeting—that it was as natural as any other kiss exchanged tonight. But it wasn’t true, and everyone knew it. Which was why conversations stopped, heads turned, and the whole room watched Marco Bellini’s mistress embrace her ex-lover with brazen ease.

Strikingly tall and fair, Stefan Kranst might be ten years older than Marco, but he had as little trouble as Marco securing any woman of his choice. And
Dio
, he had secured a few during the year since Antonia had left him, Marco recalled deridingly.

But this woman was now
his
woman. She lived in his home, she slept in his bed, and she clothed herself with his money. Which made that lush red-painted mouth Kranst was kissing
his
exclusive property.

The primitive heat of an age-old burn of possessiveness began to form blisters inside the wall of his chest, the urge to go over there and drag them apart holding him absolutely still while he fought to contain such an utterly crass act. Everyone was watching, waiting—hoping, in their cruel little way, that he was going to do exactly that and cause the kind of nice juicy scene they could dine out on for the next month.

And her dress was too short, her legs too long, and her slender ankles too sexily elevated by the heels of her shiny-red backless shoes, Marco observed—refusing to remember that he had thought the exact opposite before he had witnessed her wrapped in that particular man’s arms.

Had she done it for effect? Had she worn the dress because she’d known all along that Kranst would be here tonight and had wanted to please him? No bra, he remembered, dropping his eyes to the twin points of her breasts hovering a half centimetre away from Kranst’s chest. He knew what that felt like. He knew what was happening to Kranst right now, because the bastard also knew what it felt like to hold Antonia that close.

No proper panties, either, knowing her. His eyes moved lower, checking for a tell-tale panty-line and finding none, which meant she was wearing one of those sexy little g-strings she liked to favour now and then.

Usually for his exclusive pleasure. So, when he saw Kranst’s long artistic fingers splay over the slender curve of her hips, Marco took it as a personal insult to see her accept the intimacy as if the man still had every right to place his hands on her like that!

The sudden burst of soft laughter brought his hard gaze flicking upwards in time to catch that laughter animating just about every exquisite feature on her face. Then one of her hands curled around Kranst’s nape, and they began talking to each other as if it was perfectly acceptable for them to behave like this in public.

But it was not acceptable, and she should know it. She should know that such behaviour with a man everyone here knew had been her lover before Marco only made her look cheap and made him look a fool!

Was she doing it deliberately? Was this her way of letting him know that he wasn’t the only fish in her sea?

Sometimes he hated her. Sometimes he hated her so much he was bewildered as to how he could want her so badly, feeling the way he did. She wasn’t his type. She had
never
been his type. She was too young, too uncultured and just too damn flighty! Or why else would she choose to stand out like an exotic flower in flimsy red silk while the rest of the room wore classy black chic?

Someone slid up beside him. ‘Well,
caro
, she certainly knows how to make a man welcome,’ a very mocking female voice drawled.

Gritting his teeth together behind the determinedly relaxed line of his mouth, Marco ignored Louisa Florenza’s silken barb, and maintained his silence as the two of them stood watching Stefan Kranst begin edging Antonia backwards a few steps until he had put them both on the tiny dance floor.

Her hand remained curled around his nape. Both of his rested on her slender waist as he set them swaying to the music while they continued to talk. And their concentration on each other was so absolute that it was clear Antonia had completely forgotten all about the man she had actually come here with!

‘You know, you cannot fail to be impressed by her complete lack of guile.’ Louisa smoothly injected her next poisoned barb. ‘Most women would be dying of embarrassment if they were confronted by their ex-lover in a room packed full of the friends of her present lover. But she doesn’t seem to care at all!’

‘You are standing next to me,
cara
,’ Marco pointed out. ‘Do you see me dying of embarrassment?’

As a reply, Louisa linked her arm through the crook
of his arm. ‘We had some good times, Marco, hmm?’ she murmured wistfully.

Good times? Watching Antonia swaying sensually to the music, he promised himself that if the gap between their bodies grew any smaller he would go over there and… ‘You were a cat with claws, Louisa,’ he drily reminded her. ‘Which made the good times very few and far between.’

‘I purred like a kitten in your bed, though,’ she came back, with an example of that sensual purr.

It did nothing for him, which further annoyed him because it had used to do many things for him. But now all he could hear was another woman’s soft sighs breathing tremulous pleas that could drive him out of his mind.

‘And you liked to feel my claws now and again…’

‘I still bear the scars,’ he clipped.

‘Good,’ she said, but he sensed the knowledge getting through to her that his mind—and his body—was very much elsewhere right now. ‘I hope you will always bear them. For what you are feeling now, as you watch her make love to him on the dance floor, is what I feel every time I see you with her. And those scars will last for ever, Marco, I can assure you.’

The bitterness in her tone finally caught his attention. Turning his head, he looked down into the face of one of Italy’s most beautiful women—and smiled a very sardonic smile. ‘Any scars you retain from me,
bella mia
,’ he drawled, ‘belong exclusively to the loss of that intravenous drip you had attached to my money.’

Unfazed by the accusation, Louisa held his very mocking gaze. ‘Are you implying that
she
does not enjoy the same privilege?’

‘No,’ he conceded, and his smile began to tighten as
he returned his attention to the two closely linked bodies on the dance floor. ‘But she has yet to abuse that particular privilege.’

‘Clever girl,’ Louisa commended.

Not so clever, Marco countered silently as he watched her soft-blonde head give a small shake that set the paste diamonds decorating the clasp holding up her lovely hair shimmering in the lights. Then she put her hand across Kranst’s mouth to stop whatever it was he was saying to her.

Was he asking her to go back to him? Was he asking to paint her again? Was he talking sex to her just as Louisa was talking sex to him?

Intimacy was the absolute devil, he decided. A forsaken intimacy was even worse. It gave people you no longer felt a thing for a power over you you could never take back.

‘He still wants her.’ Louisa’s remark hit him dead centre, as if she could tap into his thoughts.

‘His desires don’t interest me,’ he answered dismissively. The real point was—did Antonia still want Kranst?

Then another thought slid silk-like into his head, filling him with something disturbingly like dismay. Could it be that Antonia was becoming tired of
him
?

The very suggestion was so alien to him that he couldn’t quite work out how to handle it. No woman in his memory had even considered walking away from him until he was ready to let them go!

Then—no. Marco dismissed that idea with a contempt even he recognised as arrogance. She adored him. She always had done. If he walked over there right now and took her in his arms she would become his loving
siren again within seconds, and Kranst would be the one left forgotten on the sidelines.

‘He has the looks,
caro
.’ Once again Louisa tapped into his thinking. ‘He has the body and the reputation of a great lover. And although he may not have the social standing you possess, he can claim star quality, which cancels out the proud Bellini name. In fact,’ she concluded tauntingly ‘the only thing you seem to have that he doesn’t are the financial resources you claim she doesn’t abuse. But it is interesting how it always comes back to the money, hmm?’

Even to his own surprise, Marco released a burst of laughter. Because he was seeing the new red Lotus Antonia had walked past tonight as if it wasn’t there. He was seeing a safe full of jewels she hardly ever asked to wear because she preferred to wear paste, like the clasp dressing her hair. And he was seeing an account in his own bank into which he paid a regular amount of money that she rarely spent.

So, no, avarice was not Antonia’s besetting sin. But at least Louisa’s peevish barb had put the humour back into his mood, so he repaid her by bending down to kiss her pouting mouth. She clung to him. He wasn’t surprised—only indifferent—which was a shame, really, because Louisa would be his mother’s idea of the perfect Bellini bride.

Shame—big shame—she wasn’t his own.

‘There,’ Antonia declared. ‘Didn’t I tell you?’

Antonia was seeing that kiss Marco had just bestowed on Louisa Florenza as the final proof she needed to confirm that he was tiring of her.

‘Men like Bellini do not replace old with older,’ Stefan drawled sardonically. ‘And you’ve just been
kissing me,’ he further pointed out. ‘I would be flattered to think it was because you wanted me as your replacement lover, but we both know it wouldn’t be true.’

‘I love you more than anyone else on this earth, and I wish I’d never met him,’ Antonia told him so tragically that Stefan had to sigh.

‘My darling, the man is besotted with you. One only has to look at the too-cool way he is handling this little scene you’re so carefully laying on for his benefit to know he’s paying you back by doing the same to you.’

‘If he loved me, he would be over here punching your lights out instead of laughing with her.’

‘Well, thanks a lot,’ Stefan drawled.

‘It’s all your fault, anyway,’ she informed him churlishly. ‘If you hadn’t put my likeness into your stupid paintings,
he
wouldn’t have bothered coming looking for me in the first place!’

‘I didn’t encourage you to fall for the rake.’ It was Stefan’s turn to laugh, and Marco’s turn to listen to him doing it. ‘You did that all on your own, Antonia. And I distinctly remember warning you off.’

It was such a painful little truth that she felt the tears suddenly flood into her eyes. Seeing them, Stefan released another sigh and pulled her just that little bit closer.

‘You’ve been with him for over a year,’ he gently reminded her. ‘That’s a whole lot longer than any other woman in his harem.’

‘And the next person to tell me that will probably receive a slap,’ she responded bitterly.

‘But it still has to count for something, my darling,’ he persisted. ‘Can you honestly swear that he’s actually said he no longer wants you?’

All Antonia did was smile cynically. For how many
hints did she need tossed at her to know what was going on inside Marco’s head? Even the week in Portofino was beginning to look like their swan-song to her. They’d had a row a few days before, over his intention to spend several days with his parents on their Tuscany estate. And she’d taken offence that even after a year together he was still refusing to let her meet them. ‘Anyone would think you were ashamed of me,’ she’d said.

‘My father is ill,’ he’d replied. ‘Show a little consideration for the plight of others.’

But he hadn’t denied the accusation that he was ashamed. And his face had closed up, just as it always did when they touched on the subject of his exalted family. So he’d gone alone to Tuscany. She hadn’t heard from him once in the three days he’d been there. And when he’d come back he’d been so moody and irritable that the sudden decision to spend a week together in Portofino had come as a complete surprise.

‘That depends on your definition of
want
,’ she said to Stefan with a bleak little smile. ‘He still
wants
me in his bed, but out of it I just irritate the hell out of him.’

‘Hence the hungry vamp act here with me, designed to
irritate
him even more so,’ Stefan heavily concluded. ‘Do you have a death wish or something, Antonia? Because, love you or hate you, Marco Bellini is not the kind of man you embarrass in front of his friends,’ he warned very seriously. ‘He’ll strike back so hard you won’t know what’s hit you.’

From the corner of her vision she saw Marco join them on the dance floor with Louisa clasped in his arms. As Stefan swung her around she caught sight of Nicola standing watching them with anxious eyes while, beside
her, Franco simply looked angry. And as it suddenly occurred to her that there was a lot of watchful tension eddying around in the atmosphere, she finally realised what had made Stefan issue the warning.

A calamity was brewing in Nicola’s drawing room and, in her eagerness to score points off Marco’s arrogant pride, she was unwittingly the cause of it.

‘How did you manage to get an invite to this party?’ she asked Stefan, suddenly realising that neither Franco or Nicola would be so insensitive as to invite him here, knowing his past relationship with their best friend’s current mistress.

He smiled a brief smile. ‘I came with Rosetta Romano,’ he explained, naming the famous owner of the Romano Gallery in the Quadrilatero. ‘I was good enough to step into the breach at short notice when her planned artist cancelled during a fit of temperament. So hawking me around Milan’s most fashionable is her way of buying a bit of free advertising before the show opens.’

‘Signora Romano obviously didn’t know she would be causing one hell of a gaffe putting you, me and Marco in the same air-space,’ Antonia said drily.