Exotic Affairs: The Mistress Bride\The Spanish Husband\The Bellini Bride (40 page)

It was like talking to a puppet. ‘I’ve never met him before in my life,’ she answered woodenly.

‘Don’t lie to me!’ he rasped. ‘He may have got your name wrong, but you knew each other all right. The mutual horror was all too revealing.’

‘I said I’ve never met him before!’ she shouted. It was so out of character that he threw a sharp look at
her. No puppet now, he noted. She was shaking so badly that it made the diamond at her throat shimmer. On a choked little gasp, she turned her face right away from him so he couldn’t read it. It was the act of someone caught in a lie.

Without another word, he turned his attention to getting through the traffic, while a new filthy suspicion began to tear into him. Anton Gabrielli was about the same age as Kranst. If she’d enjoyed Kranst as a lover then why not Gabrielli? After all, what did he actually know about Antonia’s life before Kranst?

Nothing, he realised. Absolutely nothing.

As the ugly green stuff began to replace his blood again, he finally managed to reach his goal and pulled them to a screeching stop in the basement car park of his apartment. He switched off the engine—then clamped a hard hand on Antonia’s thigh as she released her seat belt.

‘Stay,’ he gritted. It was a dire warning. She wasn’t going to make him kick his heels down here for a second time while she rode the lift alone.

The fingers fluttered, then went to rest on her lap, her body melting back into the seat. With a tight hiss of satisfaction he got out, swung round the car, opened her door then bent to help her alight.

The lift took them upwards, with her shaking like crazy and him with his fists clenched to stop him taking hold of her and shaking her some more! When they reached the apartment door it was Marco who opened it; Antonia didn’t seem capable. But, once inside, the few seconds it required for him to deactivate the alarm system gave her the chance to get away from him.

She headed straight for the bedroom. He stayed where he was long enough to utter a few choice curses
before grimly striding after her. If she’d locked the bedroom door on him then she was in for one hell of a shock! he vowed.

But the door wasn’t locked. And what he found when he tossed it back on its hinges stunned him to a complete standstill.

‘—WHAT the hell are you doing?’ he raked out incredulously.

But he could see what she was doing. A suitcase already lay open on the bed and she was tossing things into it like a criminal on the run.

‘Antonia!’ he demanded when she didn’t answer.

‘I’m l-leaving,’ she stammered, then froze within the midst of what he realised was full-scale panic to stand with body stiff, arms straight, fists tightly clenched, while she fought a battle with whatever emotion was suddenly trying to overwhelm her.

‘The hell you are,’ he grimly countered, but his own voice no longer sounded quite so steady.

He began striding towards her, and the act jolted her back from wherever she’d gone to and she turned on him, paste-white, stark-eyed—he had never seen an expression like it in all his life.

‘Cara…’
he murmured hoarsely. ‘For goodness’ sake…’

‘I’m leaving you, Marco!’ She almost screamed the words at him she was so out of control. ‘Now—tonight! I n-never want to see you again.’

The fact that he could see it had almost killed her to say that didn’t make him feel any better, because he could see she actually meant it—and that was scaring the life out of him.

She turned back to the suitcase. With a swipe of his hand he sent it flying to the floor. Clothes scattered
everywhere. Silly things like a couple of sets of underwear, a couple of skirts, a couple of simple cotton tops.

He tried swallowing and found he couldn’t. He tried making sense of the evidence he was looking at. He couldn’t do that either. For no woman—
no woman
! left Marco Bellini with only the clothes she’d come to him with!

No woman left Marco Bellini.

‘You aren’t going anywhere until you’ve answered some questions,’ he growled, and grabbed her hand. ‘Maybe once you’ve done that I’ll be glad to see the back of you!’ he threw in for furious good measure, and began trailing her behind him out of the bedroom and down the hall while she tried her best to get free of him.

No chance, he vowed silently. No damn chance.

Throwing open the door to his study, he strode them over to the locked door. Still holding her hand prisoner, he stabbed in the security pin-number, hauled her inside, then over to the
Mirror Woman
.

‘Now, let’s start right here,’ he gritted. ‘Who is
she
?’

Anastasia
, Antonia thought tragically, and began shaking all over again, fighting a battle with tears that reached right down to her abdomen. Sad, tragic—beautiful Anastasia.

‘Mirror—mirror,’ she whispered thickly.

‘What is that supposed to mean?’ Marco said harshly.

It was no use lying, no use trying to pretend that she didn’t know what he was talking about. The game was up. She had been exposed as the fraud she was.

‘This,’ she said, ‘is Anastasia…’

It took a few moments, then it hit him. ‘My God,’ he rasped. ‘Are you saying that she is your twin?’

A laugh left her throat on a strangled sob. Her amber eyes shimmered with tears and a pained kind of humour,
because Anastasia would have
so
loved to have been here to hear this big handsome Italian say that.

‘No, not my twin,’ she murmured softly. ‘She was my mother…’

My poor, wretched, haunted mother, she silently extended, while the silence grew thick all around her.

‘Mother,’ Marco repeated, as if he had to do so to understand the concept. ‘You mean, you and Kranst actually….’

The words stopped. Antonia turned to look at him. For once he was literally floundering on the rocks of shock. And he looked white. He looked horrified.

‘What?’ she snapped as anger began flooding up from the depths of a bitter knowledge of where they were about to go with this. ‘Did we collaborate to deceive everyone? Yes.’ She openly admitted the charge. ‘Did I pose nude for Stefan so he could pretend I was my mother? No, I did not,’ she denied that. ‘Stefan and my mother were lovers for ten years! He adored her. And no
again
, before the cogs inside your head start turning to something nasty,’ she sliced at him. ‘Stefan did
not
bed-swap between my mother and myself!’

‘I was not about to assume—’ Marco began stiffly.

But angrily she cut in. ‘You’ve
always
assumed!’ she cried. ‘From the very beginning you assumed we were lovers. But Stefan is my
friend
!’ she threw at him. ‘My dear, dear friend who arrived in our lives when we really needed someone warm and loving and endlessly giving like him! Between us, we nursed my mother through a long and miserable illness. And the result of those dark years?’ She gestured with a trembling hand towards the painting. ‘How my mother
wanted
Stefan to remember her. Not the withered and worn-out shell she became towards the end!’

Tears flooded her eyes. She looked away from him, her whole torso heaving with the fight for control.

‘So he painted a lie,’ Marco said grimly.

‘And what if he did?’ she replied. ‘What does it matter to anyone else that the image they see isn’t the gruesome reality?’

‘Hence the mirror.’ Oh, he was very good, she had to give him that.

‘It reflects what was,’ she confirmed. ‘Stefan could pick up a paintbrush even now and paint her looking exactly like this. He loved her so very much…’

‘Yet he was quick to sell these when opportunity knocked,’ Marco pointed out cynically. ‘And he was quick to let you masquerade as her to add a bit of juicy notoriety to the sales!’

‘I didn’t say he was perfect,’ she snapped. ‘And the paintings went on show
before
my mother died!’ she pronounced. ‘At
her
request! For
her
pleasure! It
amused
her when people mistook me for her! And
anything
that made her happy, Stefan and I gave her!’ Her eyes flashed, tear-bright but unrepentant.

His hardened into bitterness. ‘That’s all fine for everyone else. But don’t you think you owed it to me to tell me the truth?’

‘Why should I have done that?’ she gasped out in angry bewilderment. ‘You got what you came looking for, Marco,’ she told him. ‘You got the woman in the painting. You had no interest in me as a living breathing human being!’

Two streaks of colour hit his cheekbones, his whole body stiffened in affront. ‘That’s not true,’ he denied.

‘Yes, it is,’ she insisted. ‘Take away the kudos in being able to lay claim to Stefan Kranst’s notoriously
sexy model, and it would take away the desire; I always knew that.’

He didn’t answer. For her, his silence said it all. Looking back at her mother for one last time, Antonia touched a gentle finger to the tiny birthmark on her shoulder, smiled a sad ‘I love you’ smile, then withdrew again, curling her fingers into her palms as she turned for the door.

‘Where are you going?’

She paused, but didn’t look back. ‘Home,’ she whispered. ‘I’m going home. There’s nothing left for me here.’

‘I’m here,’ Marco murmured gruffly.

‘No, you’re not.’ Antonia shook her head. ‘You’re standing aloft in a place I can never reach you. It’s called the social ladder. You don’t mind coming down to the bottom rung to enjoy life with the masses now and then, but when it comes to elevating someone up to your top rung—no chance.’ She laughed. It was a bitter sound. ‘Élite marries élite. Darling Mamma expects it.’

‘Leave my mother out of this,’ he rasped back angrily.

‘But why should I?’ she spun round to demand. He looked so grim and remote it was almost as if he was already climbing back up that ladder and away from her. ‘In truth,’ she said, ‘I’m actually grateful for what your mother did tonight. Because she forced me to take a good look and see just how I had been wasting my life living here with you.’

‘Wasting it because I haven’t asked you to marry me?’ he threw back with contempt. ‘Is that what your year-long investment in me has really been about,
cara
? Give a man what you think he wants. Lie to him, cheat
him if necessary, in the wild hope that the dividend will give back the jackpot billionaire with all the luxury trimmings?’

He saw himself as the
jackpot
? ‘You arrogant bastard,’ she said scornfully. ‘I invested in
love
!’ she cried. ‘As in my love for you being strong enough to ignite some love back by return! But it never happened, did it, Marco?’ Her eyes began to shine like the diamond at her throat. ‘And even after a whole year of living together you can still freeze up in dismay when confronted with the disapproval of your mother,
and still stand here
and toss your contempt at me for actually daring to think myself fit to marry you!’

‘I did
not
freeze in shame because of
you
!’ he raked back angrily. ‘I froze in shame of my wretched mother!’

But he was shouting it to an empty space. Antonia had already walked away. For all of five seconds he remained where he was, wanting to just let her go and stew in her own dignity. But then he remembered the suitcase on the floor of the bedroom and calculated how quickly it would take her to repack it.

Anger shot through him. Curses rattled from his tense lips. But alarm set his feet moving. He hated it—
hated feeling like this
!

Sure enough she was in the bedroom, standing over the bloody case. ‘All right!’ he lashed out. ‘Marry me! If that is what it takes to stop this—craziness. Marry me—
marry me!’

She turned to look at him. It was like watching snow cover a mountain her skin turned so white. Then the rain came, flooding into those beautiful amber eyes and her lips erupted with an agonised quiver.

Shaken to the roots by his own proposal, stunned beyond movement by her response, he watched one of
her hands come out and give a flick in a bitter throw away gesture. Then she began walking towards him. His skin came alive to a million bee-stings; his heart lost the ability to beat. When she reached him she paused, and those awful tear-washed eyes looked right into his.

‘May you go to hell, Marco,’ she whispered thickly, then pushed him out of the way so that she could get past him.

It took him several moments to gain the will to move again. By then, a door further down the hallway had shut and the key had been turned. Staring round the chaos she had left behind her, he suddenly felt like a man standing in the middle of a ruin. Helpless, hopeless, unable to come to terms with how quickly it had all come tumbling down around him.

His legs eventually managed to take him forward, his feet picking their way through the debris of her clothes. Sitting down on the bed, he leant forward and clasped his head between long tense fingers.

He could have played an old scene again and gone charging after her, but it didn’t even come up as an option this time. She needed to cool off, and he needed to get a grip on what had just happened because at this precise moment he didn’t have a single clue!

One minute he had been the one with all the grievances, the next Antonia had been spilling hers out all over him. His sigh was heavy, shot with a residue of anger and frustration because so much of what she had thrown at him was true!

Her mother… he remembered, and got up with a swing of his body that responded to a sudden clutch of dismay. His feet took him back to his study, took him back to the
Mirror Woman
where he stood gazing into a face he’d believed he knew. But the differences were
already manifesting themselves, as if someone had come along and altered certain brushstrokes. The curve of her eyebrows, the tilt of her jaw, the way her slender neck blended into her slender shoulders. The birthmark he’d assumed was the artist’s carelessness with his paintbrush. All very subtle differences that only an expert eye would ever notice.

He’d thought he had that expert eye. He’d believed he was a great connoisseur, when in actual fact Antonia was right and he was merely one of many, seeing only what he wanted to see.

Now he could look at this sad creature and pick out a hundred differences between her and her beautiful daughter—if he could bring himself to look at the rest of her, that was. It felt like a sin to do so now. He’d always thought Kranst the voyeur in this painting, and it didn’t sit comfortably to realise that the real voyeur had been himself.

It made him want to turn the darn thing to the wall and forget he’d ever seen it. But—

This was Antonia’s
mother
, he reiterated bleakly. Antonia loved this woman. It had been there in every word that she spoke! To turn her to the wall would be a rejection of someone who was as precious to Antonia as his own mother was to him.

Though he didn’t want to think about his own mother right now, he accepted with an angry hardening of his jaw.

And Antonia had never been uncomfortable with the nudity in this painting. Her discomfort had been in looking at someone she had loved and lost, not the nudity itself.

Not her own nudity—or her mother’s, he extended, as many things began to make sense. She had lived for
ten years with an artist who specialised in the naked female form. He had a gift—no, a genius—for the genre, therefore it was only natural that she would learn to see nudity as something to appreciate in its own right, and not something to turn away from in shame. As it had been to him until he discovered who it was he was actually looking at!

Since when had he developed a bigot’s view of something this special? Marco asked himself. This was art! Master-class art! If he’d been in a better frame of mind, he would have been purchasing one of Kranst’s latest offerings. And not just for the investment, but because he
liked
what Kranst painted on the canvas!

But
who
had painted Antonia’s nude image? he then asked himself, and felt his whole sophisticated outlook tumble like a house of cards. Anger enveloped him, spewing forth from a strange place inside him that could now accept Kranst as her painter—but not some other man!

How the heck had she managed to divert him so thoroughly that he hadn’t demanded some answers about him? And there was Anton Gabrielli lurking in the shadows.

Behind Marco the telephone started ringing. If it did nothing else it diverted his attention away from what was beginning to flood his veins again.