HPre2224
The Bellini Bride 
Michelle Reid

CHAPTER ONE

THE BED was a sea of rumpled white linen. Tangled
amongst it Marco Bellini could see a long golden leg
bent at the knee and the smooth silken-curve of a hip
and thigh. The rest was covered by fine white sheeting
but for a slender arm and the rippling swathe of straw-
berry-blonde hair flowing away from the kind of profile
that would have launched ships in times gone by.

Only her name was not Helen, it was Antonia, and,
although her beauty might have launched many meta-
phorical ships in her time, there was no disputing to
whom she now belonged.

Leaning back against the balcony rail, Marco allowed
himself a smile as he brought his coffee cup to his lips.
It was still very early, but the sun was already hot
against his naked back. He had come out onto the ter-
race directly from his shower, and the white towel
draped low around his narrow hips was his only con-
cession to modesty, here, in his summer villa perched
high on the hill above Portofino, where the only eyes
to see him belonged to the seagulls soaring on the early
morning currents of air.

And Antonia, of course, if she bothered to wake up.
But, unlike him, she didn't have to be back in Milan
by nine o'clock, so she had no reason to rise this early.
Although... he then added ruefully to that, if she did
happen to awaken now, it would be the simplest thing
in the world for him to linger long enough to drop the
towel and join her back in the bed.

But not yet, Marco told himself as he took another
sip from his cup. The coffee was hot, .black and strong
and was just another pleasure he enjoyed lingering over
while he leant here watching his woman sleep.

In the year they had been together he had never seen
Antonia look anything but beautiful. Dressed to slay or
stripped bare to the exquisite skin nature had given her,
she exuded a beauty that by far outclassed any other
woman he had known. He was proud to be her lover,
proud that only he held the right to place a possessive
hand upon any part of her anatomy. Proud that she only
had eyes for him.

But did he love her? he asked himself.

No, he admitted heavily. He didn't love her. He loved
how she looked, and how she always made him feel.
And he would willingly have laid down his own life if
it meant him saving hers. But true love had to go deeper
than that. He had to love what she was, and he didn't.

A sigh caught in the depth of his chest. A cloud blot-
ted out the sun. A seagull shrieked in protest. The coffee
suddenly tasted bitter. Putting the cup aside he turned
to stare at the misted-blue waters of the Mediterranean
shimmering in the distance—and wished to hell he
knew what he was going to do about her.

Letting her go was out of the question. Letting her
stay meant trouble in more ways than one. Out there,
across hills and lush valleys that made up his beautiful
Italy, trouble was brewing. It came in the form of an
autocratic mother and an ailing father with an urgent
desire to see his son safely married and settled before
he died.

Marrying Antonia, even without the true-love bit,
would be the easiest thing in the world for him to do.
She was young, she was beautiful and she loved him
totally. But what parent would condone their only son,
and .the heir to the great Bellini fortune, marrying him-
self to a woman like Antonia?

A woman with the kind of past that was destined to
dog her for ever. A woman with the kind of past that
would reflect poorly on him and his family name.

A woman who made the perfect mistress—but could
never be the perfect wife for him.

Another sigh whispered from him. Maybe Antonia
heard it, because she began to stir. Recovering his cof-
fee-cup, Marco turned to watch her slide lazily onto her
back then, even before she bothered to open her eyes,
send an arm out to search the empty space beside her
in the bed. It was a gesture so familiar to him that he
actually felt the hairs on his chest prickle as if she had
reached out and touched him. The sensation placed the
smile back on his lips, because it pleased him to know
that the first thing she always thought about on waking
was him.

When she found no warm male body lying beside
her, her next move was to open her lovely eyes, pause
for a moment to allow the remnants of sleep to disperse,
then, in a single smooth graceful movement, she sat up
and began to search for him.

She found him almost instantly. A warm lover's
smile touched her lovely mouth. *C»ao,' she greeted him
softly.

His response was a lazy masculine gleam over the
rim of his cup, while inside he became aware of the
chemical responses already beginning to stir his blood.
She moved him in so many ways he didn't dare count
them.

Sliding out of the bed, she lifted her arms above her
head and indulged in a long lazy stretch that highlighted

every perfect contour of her very naked frame from
slender toes to delicate fingertips. Her light golden skin
shone like the finest silk ever created. Her wonderful
hair tumbled in loosely spiralling threads down her
arching spine. In all his life Marco had never known
any woman quite so perfect as Antonia. Her face, her
hair, her sensational body—the way she moved as she
began to walk towards him.

Like the world's most dangerous siren, she roused
the male senses without even having to try. Even the
sun worshipped her by coming out from behind its
cloud at the same moment she stepped onto the terrace,
pooling her in soft golden light as she continued her
slow graceful journey towards him.

It was no wonder Stefan Kranst had been so obsessed
with her, Marco thought with a sudden grimness. No
wonder he'd painted her every single way an artist
could paint an obsession. Seeing her like this, he could
easily understand why the man had felt so compelled to
preserve her naked image. For years Antonia had ap-
peared in all of his paintings, not always the main focal
point but always the slender naked figure you looked
for whenever you found yourself viewing a Kranst.

But in his desire to make Antonia immortal he had
turned her into every man's titillating fantasy. Her na-
ked form now adorned the walls of the rich and famous.
When she walked into a room those in the know
stopped and stared in intimate recognition.

Did she care? No. Did she blush with embarrassment
or hide her eyes in shame? Not this woman, who was
as comfortable with her body as she was comfortable
with those wretched paintings.

As for him? Marco was very much aware that
Antonia's notoriety as Stefan Kranst's famous nude

model gave him a certain kudos amongst his envious
peers. But it didn't mean he liked it, only that he had
learnt to accept it because, like Kranst in a way, he was
obsessed with the woman—though not the haunted
creature held captive in oils.

Coming to a halt directly in front of him, Antonia
said absolutely nothing but just held his gaze as she
folded slender white fingers over the strong brown ones
he had wrapped around his coffee cup. Her eyes
gleamed like topaz in the sun, his darkened into humour
as she guided the cup towards her own mouth and took
a few delicate sips at the coffee before just as silently
lifting the cup to his own mouth.

More than happy to play this little game the way she
wanted him to play it, Marco obediently drank while
their eyes remained locked in the beginnings of seduc-
tion. With both mouths moistened by warm black cof-
fee, she then guided the cup away, lifted herself up on
bare tiptoes, and replaced it with a kiss.

The aroma of coffee swirled all around them, its
erotic taste flavoured their mouths, the points of her
breasts hovered a soft-breath away from his chest and,
beneath the towel, his body began to respond.

This was making love on a different level, this was
intimacy so deep it touched parts of him never other-
wise touched.

As she drew away again, her eyes held a promise.
Maybe he would take her up on it in a minute, Marco
idly considered. But for now he was content to enjoy
the more simple pleasure of being the passive one while
she did the seducing.

She began it by touching a finger to the satin tight
hollow of his shoulder. 'You showered without me,' she
complained.

He smiled a lazy smile. 'You were asleep,' he re-
minded her.

She was not in the least bit impressed by that answer,
and her mouth took on a sulky pout. Taking the coffee-
cup from his fingers she put it aside, took possession of
both his hands and fed them round her slender waist,
then lifted her own up to curve his nape. One small step
and she was fitting her hips into the cradle of his hips
and pressing her wonderful breasts against him. Then
her head tilted back a little, her sulky mouth parted—
and claimed his with another kiss designed to devour.

He would have to be made of stone not to respond
to her. He would have to be half the man he actually
was not to want what was being offered to him. It was
special. She was special. He didn't want to lose it.

'What was that for?' she broke the kiss to demand
when she felt him shiver.

"The sun has gone in again,' he said.

And it had, he noticed. Like a bad omen, it had slid
behind another cloud the moment he'd begun thinking
about the future.

'Big softy,' she chided, her fingers tangling lovingly
into his hair. 'You want to try standing like this on an
English balcony. You would die of frostbite, being such
a thin-blooded Italian.'

He was supposed to laugh or come back with a light
counter-charge, Marco was well aware of that. But he
could do neither because he was suddenly seeing her
standing naked on that English balcony.

Seeing her exactly as she had once been caught for
posterity in a Kranst painting.

'You would know, of course,' was therefore the cyn-
ical taunt that slid from him.

Her sudden stillness was electric. If he'd slapped her

he couldn't have achieved a better response. Kiss-
warmed lips lost all of their softness. Warm topaz be-
came cold grey glass. With a single step she completely
separated herself from him and, without a single word,
she turned and walked back into the bedroom.

Remorse played havoc with his conscience as he
watched her sensual stride take her towards the bath-
room. The urge to go after her and apologise came a
couple of short seconds too late. The door closed, he
heard the bolt slide home and knew he now had one
hell of a task on his hands to put right the wrong he
had just done.

'Damn,' he cursed as he spun away.

The sun crept out from behind its cloud again. He
scowled at it. Scowled at the seagull soaring overhead.
Then he scowled at himself because he knew that put-
ting right a wrong would not solve the dilemma that
was sitting right on his doorstep waiting to be ad-
dressed.

On the other side of the bathroom door, Antonia stood
with her eyes closed, waiting for the hurt contracting
the muscles around her heart to ease. It hadn't been the
words but the way he had said them, with derision, de-
liberately aimed to cut.

Stefan, she thought wearily. It always came back to
Stefan, and Marco's inability to accept the life she had
led before she met him. For a man who prided himself
on his fast-track modem sophistication, he harboured
some truly archaic principles.

One of these days she would find the strength to stand
firm and challenge those principles, and this right he
felt he had to speak to her like that, she promised
herself.

But not yet, she conceded heavily. She just didn't
have that kind of strength yet. Because to challenge him
meant challenging their whole relationship, and the day
she did that Antonia knew would be the same day she
lost Marco for good.

Though that moment was coming closer, she recog-
nised, as the hurt began to fade much sooner than it
usually did after one of his well-aimed barbs. And she
found she could open her eyes and actually look at her-
self in the mirror opposite without wincing at what she
saw.

And what did she see?

She saw a scarlet woman, she grimly mocked that
reflection. A woman who was a mistress to a man who
wasn't even married but who still classed her as a mis-
tress not a lover. In her view, there was a very important
difference between the two titles. To be a man's lover
carried a certain amount of moral equality. To be his
mistress showed a distinct lack of moral value. And was
there such thing as a master to level out the playing
field? No, of course not. He remained simply the lover,
with no stigma at all attached to the title. You could
have a pair of lovers but you could not have a pair of
mistresses—not in this context anyway. No, that unen-
viable tide belonged exclusively to her own fair sex.

Sex being the operative word here. She lived in his
home, she slept in his bed, and she relied on his finan-
cial generosity for her day-to-day survival. In return she
gave him her absolute loyalty 'and her body—the true
definition of a mistress, in other words.

Not a bad life for a girl who came from nothing, she
supposed. In fact, it would be pretty much a perfect
life—if she didn't love him as desperately as she did.
Loving Marco made it a miserable life.

How had Stefan described Marco when he'd tried to
talk her out of coming to Italy to live with him? 'He's
one of life's elite,' he'd said. 'He might want your body,
but he will never want you the way you want him to
want you. You're not of the fellowship, my darling. It
is a simple fact of life that elite marries elite.'

Tough but wise words, as she'd found out the hard
way. And if she had any sense at all she would get out,
she told her reflection. She would gather up what little
bit of pride she had left, and go, before he cleaned her
out completely.

And maybe she would do—soon, she resolved.

But she turned away from the mirror as she thought
it, knowing that it would take more than the occasional
cruel remark on his part to make her leave him. She
loved him too much and had stuck with him too long
to give up so easily.

Which didn't mean she was going to forgive him, she
determined as she stepped into the shower cubicle.
Forgiveness came at a price, and Marco was going to
have to pay that price with some serious grovelling.

A smile touched her mouth, the very idea of making
the arrogant Marco Bellini grovel doing wonders for her
mood.

He was gone from the bedroom by the time she reap-
peared. Gone from the villa too, she discovered when
she came downstairs to find Nina, the maid, clearing
away what looked like a hastily eaten breakfast.

'Signer 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 re-
puted 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 com-
fortable 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 pre-
cious 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 birth-
day—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 won-
dered what he would think a fitting bonus for her next
birthday.  '

Jfshe 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 con-
tained 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 hous-
ing, 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-aftemoon thing.'

'I surprise myself sometimes with my own effi-
ciency,' was his light reply.

'And your conceit,' she added.

'A', 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, sit-
ting 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 inter-
esting. 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 con-
versation to more ordinary things, like the performance
of the Lotus, what she intended to do with her after-
noon, 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 sat-
isfyingly 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 re-
moved it from its wrapping, then collected up his news-
paper, 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 be 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 amen-
ability 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 ene-
mies. 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 ac-
tually 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 bum of jeal-
ousy, 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 after-'
noon. 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 po-
litely 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 in-
side, she carefully closed the door again and then, turn-
ing round, she looked about her and quite simply
smiled...

CHAPTER TWO

WALKING 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 modem 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 lead-
ing off from it furnished with a clever mix of classical,
old and new. Nothing offended the eye. There were for-
mal rooms used only for entertaining, less grand rooms
for when they did not. The kitchen was a cook's para-
dise, all four en-suite bedrooms designed to co-ordinate
with the pastel colours applied to the walls. And every-
where 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 no-
tice of. And, as with his taste in decor, he thought noth-
ing 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

21

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 ar-
rived 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 pull-
ing 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 mus-
cle 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 wit-
nessed the darker side of Marco, but on those few oc-
casions 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 bed-
room, wondering what could have happened this after-
noon 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 fa-
vourite 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 driv-
ing.' 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,
shut-cuffs straight, he turned his attention to checking
his watch. 'If you're ready, we should get going...'

.//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 de-
velop, 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 with-
out 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 orches-
trated 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 sdll 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
i 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 meet-
ing secretly with Stefan Rranst 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 comer, he an-
other, 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 irri-
tation 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 life-
time, he opened the passenger door of the Ferrari and
remained standing by it while Antonia slipped grace-
fully 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 yester-

day 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 mur-
dered normal body functions like breathing and swal-
lowing. 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 manoeuvr-
ing 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.

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 atmo-
sphere remains here in the car,' he bit out wamingly.
They were about to go amongst his friends, after all. He
had no wish for them to witness his less than harmo-
nious 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 re-
placed the thought with a very satisfying action.

Antonia didn't need telling for she was already open-
ing 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 be-
come 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 mo-
ment 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 Mareo'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 crepe 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 bom into her privi-
leged 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 Mareo'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 Mareo'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 shoul-
ders.

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 an-
nounced 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 uncom-
fortable after what she'd said. So, pulling herself to-
gether, 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 bom!' 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 will-
ing to hold his tongue.

Thankfully, a new bunch of latecomers arrived, giv-
ing 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 comer her an hour later, Nicola de-
manded 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 with-
out him having any control whatsoever over it. Now
something else was happening here that he didn't un-
derstand. Okay, Antonia was angry with him, he al-
lowed. 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 ex-
changing 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 im-
portant 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'ii
attention. She looked that way, Marco followed her
gaze—then felt everything inside him close down com-
pletely when he found himself looking at none other
than Stefan Kranst himself.

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

CHAPTER THREE

STANDING 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 to-
night. 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 bum of possessive-
ness 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.

37

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 be-
fore 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 an-
imating 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 every-
one 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 cer-
tainly 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 withi

'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, coro,' 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 ot
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 foi
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 en-
joy 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 par-
ticular 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 for-
saken 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 dismis-
sively. The real point was—did Antonia still want
Kranst?

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

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 con-
tempt 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 ac-
count 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 sur-
prised—only indifferent—which was a shame, really,
because Louisa would be his mother's idea of the per-
fect 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 be-
stowed 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 replace-
ment 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 tragi-
cally 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 churl-
ishly. '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 re-
leased another sigh and pulled her just mat 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 consid-
eration 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 to-
gether 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 comer 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 arro-
gant 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.

'Of course she knew.' Stefan grinned. 'How much
free publicity do you estimate she'll get from setting up
this potentially explosive scene?'

'And not just for the Romano Gallery,' she added,
meaning that Stefan Kranst wasn't opposed to using no-
toriety to alert interest in his work.

His shrug was an arrogant acknowledgement of that.
'I'm a painter, not a diplomat. And anyway,' he added,
looking into her eyes again, 'I wanted to see you, but
trying to reach you through normal sources is virtually

impossible. I've been leaving messages with your
housekeeper all week, Antonia. Did you actually receive
any of them?'

His meaning was clear. But Antonia shook her head
at it. 'We've been away on a week's holiday,' she ex-
plained. *And only arrived back late this afternoon.
Today is the housekeeper's day off. I haven't seen
Carlotta, had a chance to check messages or do anything
other than get ready to come here.'

'So the guy hasn't resorted to censoring your mes-
sages yet?' He smiled a trifle cynically. 'I did begin to
wonder when I couldn't get to speak to you personally,'
he admitted. 'Because you can bet your sweet smile,
my darling, that the moment I agreed to show in Milan,
then Mr Patron of the Arts knew about it.'

He was implying that Marco had known about him
being here in Milan and had deliberately kept the in-
formation from her! It seemed an appropriate moment
for the music to stop. Stefan walked her to the edge of
the floor and said nothing while she came to terms with
the ugly possibility that he could well be right. For if
anyone knew exactly what was happening on the art
scene, here in Milan, then it was most definitely Marco!

The rat, she fumed. He might no longer want her for
himself, but his inflated ego wouldn't sanction him hav-
ing to witness her with a man who would always want
her!

'Here.' Stefan offered her a glass of champagne.
'Drink this. You might feel better.'

Stubbornly dismissing the knowledge that she'd
probably had more than enough champagne for one
wretched night, she accepted the glass and drank the
whole lot in a couple of determined gulps.

Champagne bubbles began to mix with anger in her
blood. It was a dangerous combination. 'I think I hate
him,' she announced with a deep sense of satisfaction
for having said the words out loud.

'Well. in that case the next few minutes should be
interesting,* Stefan murmured levelly. Dropping his
eyes from a point somewhere over her left shoulder, he
mocked her vehemence with a wry challenge. "This may
be a good moment for you to decide how much you
hate him,' he suggested. 'Because war is about to be
declared, my darling.*

He had to mean Marco, she realised, and felt the
champagne bubbles start to pop. Her soft mouth parted,
her eyes grew dark, and a helpless kind of indecision
sent her hand out to swap her empty glass for his full
one.

On a sigh, Stefan gave a shake of his head. 'You
sweet idiot,' he murmured. 'Didn't it occur to you even
once that you might not be ready for a showdown with
him?'

An astute question, and a painful one, because she
had considered and accepted only this morning that she
wasn't ready for any kind of showdown with Marco.
Now here she was, standing on the very threshold of
one hell of a row—and in a room packed full of his
loyal supporters.

Cuckoo in the nest didn't even cover what she sud-
denly began to feel like.

'Be brave, my friend,' Stefan softly encouraged.
Then— 'Good evening, Marco.' He smiled. 'It's a plea-
sure to see you again...'

But it wasn't a pleasure for any of them. Standing
close to Stefan still, Antonia was assailed by the famil-

iar scent of Marco before she was assailed by the full
impact of his physical presence. He arrived at her side,
his shoulder level with her chin. As usual her skin began
to shimmer at the near contact, her fingers curling
tensely round the glass while she waited for him to say
something totally unforgivable.

Yet all he did was offer Stefan his hand to shake and
return the polite greeting without any obvious sign of
animosity. 'You're showing at Romano's all next week,
I believe.' As smoothly as that, Marco informed
Antonia that he had known Stefan was here in Milan
but had not bothered to tell her.

"The doors open on Saturday,' Stefan confirmed. 'I
was just asking Antonia if you were both coming to my
private viewing on Friday evening,' he added, with ly-
ing ease.

'And of course she assured you that we wouldn't
miss it,' Marco returned in the same lying vein.

'Of course,' Stefan smoothly confirmed. 'Especially
when I told her I have something for her to collect from
me while she's there.' The smile at her puzzled frown
and the teasing brush of a finger to her jutting chin were
done, she was sure, simply to annoy Marco. 'Let's call
it a belated birthday surprise,' he suggested. 'If you still
have my Mirror Woman, Marco, then it may have some
interest to you too,' he added lightly.

It was a baited hook.

'Sounds intriguing.' Marco smiled, but Antonia stiff-
ened at the mention of the painting that had given
Stefan his fame—and herself her notoriety.

She had only seen it once since the first evening she
had arrived in Marco's apartment a year ago. The paint-
ing had been hanging in his study. When he'd shown it

to her she hadn't been able to hide her dismay, because
she hadn't realised that Marco actually owned the paint-
ing.

Marco had since moved it to a secure room connected
to the study where he kept his more—personal invest-
ments.

Now Stefan was implying that he had another one
just like it. And though she knew he was quite capable
of producing a hundred paintings exactly the same,
without needing the live model to do it, it disturbed her
deeply to hear Stefan taunting Marco with the sugges-
tion that he had returned to putting her in his paintings.
Which led her straight to another question that set her
trembling a little as she looked into his lean smooth
indolently smiling face.

Had Stefan gone back on his promise to her?

Her eyes begged the question but Stefan refused to
notice. Beside her Marco was playing it so casual she
wondered if he even cared. But then, if she was on her
way out, why should he care? she then asked herself.
And, like this morning, she simply turned and walked
away, with no stomach to play this game.

Only this time Marco didn't let her get far before his
hand was capturing one of hers. She tried to tug free.

'Stop it,' he said, turning her round until he could
see her face. Her eyes were too dark, her cheeks too
pale, and her soft mouth was trembling. Marco knew
the look, he knew she was hurting, but the knowledge
that it wasn't him who had done the hurting this time
didn't help to lighten his mood one little bit

One part of him wanted to beat the hell out of Kranst
for being so insensitive as to mention the Mirror
Woman, when Marco was sure he must know the way

it could upset her. While another part wanted to blast
her to smithereens for still being so vulnerable to some-
thing she had, after all, posed for in all her naked glory!

'You reap what you sow, cara,' he told her grimly,
took the glass from her fingers and put it aside, then
pulled her the few steps needed to bring them onto the
dance floor and folded her into his arms. 'Now dance,'
he commanded, holding her close even while she tried
to strain away from him. 'Remember where you are and
who you will be hurting if you cause a scene here.'

As if on cue. Franco and Nicola danced in close to
them. 'Ci'ao,' Nicola greeted awkwardly. 'You two en-
joying yourselves?'

She had to know that enjoyment was the last thing
either he or Antonia were experiencing. 'We're having
a wonderful time,' Antonia answered smilingly, coiling
an intimate hand around Marco's neck—and dug her
nails in. 'I love it when Marco comes over all macho.'

Franco flashed him a sardonic look, Nicola avoided
eye contact completely. 'So long as you're happy,' their
poor hostess mumbled, and looked relieved when her
husband manoeuvred them away again.

'She hates scenes,' Marco sighed. 'She always has
done.'

'I hate you,' Antonia responded. 'Does that mean I
get a sympathetic sigh too?'

One part of him wanted to grin, the other part was
furious. 'No,' he retaliated. 'You get to go home with
the guy you hate and receive your just reward in pri-
vate.'

With that he reached up and undipped her nails, held
onto the hand and trapped it between their bodies. 'Now

look at me and smile/ he gritted. 'Or I think I might
just kiss you senseless.'

If he expected the threat to subdue her, he soon
learned otherwise when she had the absolute audacity
to pull out one of her secret weapons that she kept under
wraps for most of the time. Her head tipped backwards,
her eyes grew sultry, and, setting the pink tip of her
tongue between her even white teeth, she snaked up on
her toe-tips and licked the thin line of his angry mouth.

Fire engulfed his body at the speed of lightning.
Erogenous zones came alive with an urgency that stung.

Had she kissed Kranst like this? Made him feel like
this?

Madre di Dio, he couldn't deal with the green streak
of furious jealousy that went rampaging through him.
'We're leaving,' he announced.

'I want to stay,' she pouted, playing the seductress
for all she was worth now, with sensual eyes and prom-
ising mouth and the inviting sway other beautiful body.

In one comer of his consciousness he was totally en-
grossed in her, loving it—loving her defiance, her will-
ingness to take him on, her deliberate public seduction.
But another part was wondering if Kranst had incited
this. With the flat of an angry palm pressed to her lower
body he felt the smoothness of naked flesh beneath the
clinging red fabric, and remembered Kranst's hand
grazing the same area.

She quivered for him. Had she quivered for Kranst?
From the periphery of his vision he could see Kranst
standing there watching them. He felt a bloody black
fury begin to throb with his heartbeat, and he bit out
silkily, 'I'm game if you are.'

Lips gone so dry they were fused together, Antonia

felt the sheer heat of that challenge bum right down to
her tingling toes. In any mood Marco was a breathtak-
ing study of male beauty, but bad tempered and aroused
he was awakening senses she hadn't known existed be-
fore she met him. Weak, sensual, female senses. The
one which made man the aggressor and woman his
more than willing slave.

She hated it—hated all of it.

'Okay,' she whispered unsteadily. 'We can leave...'

CHAPTER FOUR

THE drive back to the apartment was achieved in si-
lence. Both tense, both angry for their own reasons.
Both so sexually on edge that the atmosphere almost
sizzled.

Antonia was out of the car even as Marco was still
parking it. Making straight for the lift, she then com-
mitted the ultimate sin of not waiting for him before
sending it up to the top floor. Having to kick his heels
in the basement waiting for the lift to come back for
him did nothing to improve his temper.

He arrived in the bedroom to discover that she had
already locked herself into the bathroom. He could hear
the shower running, and her red dress lay like a stain
on the bright white tiling, the scrappy red shoes lying
discarded beside it.

With frustration attacking him from all angles, he
dragged off his jacket and had to really fight the temp-
tation to slam it down beside the red dress and shoes in
a counter-declaration.

It was realising the childishness in the act that made
him stop to wonder bleakly what was happening to him.
Anger, frustration, childish acts of temper? These were
not the scenes he expected to fill his home with! They
lacked the sophistication with which he liked to run his
private life.

And, on top of that, he was beginning to feel like a
jealous husband without the official bit of paper that
said he had to put up with this. Hot anger suddenly

53

turned to ice, the mere suspicion that Antonia was dig-
ging her claws into him deeply enough to make him
feel that way, literally horrifying the heat out of him.

Marco was draping his suit jacket on a hanger when
Antonia came out of the bathroom. Wide shoulders,
long body, tight behind, powerful legs and a sleek olive
hue to his skin that made her fingers itch to stroke it.
She wished so much he had the face of a Gorgon to
offset the perfect rest of him.

But he didn't. So when he turned to face her. even
looking as coldly remote as he did, her body stirred
beneath the silk robe she was wearing.

She wanted to hate him for being able to do that to
her. Especially when all he did was freeze her with a
look of contempt before turning away again.

'You've been working with Kranst again,' he de-
clared flatly.

Without bothering to answer, she walked over to pick
up the red dress and shoes from where she'd stepped
out of them, and carried them over to the wardrobe next
to the one he was standing by.

She opened one of the doors as he flicked one shut.
" 'Answer me,' he commanded coldly.

'I wasn't aware you'd asked a question,' she tossed
back with equal cold. 'It sounded more like a statement
of fact to me.'

From the comer of her eye she saw his mouth tighten,
ignored the stinging warning in his eyes, and placed the
shoes on the shoesrack before reaching up to pluck a
hanger from the rail and begin hooking the thin shoulder
straps of the dress onto it.

'Explain to me, then, what he was implying tonight,
when he talked about something interesting.1

She shrugged as she re-hung the hanger on the rail.

*I have absolutely no idea.' Though she certainly had a
few worrying suspicions.

'You must do,' Mareo insisted. *You know the man.
You lived with him for over five years.'

Ten, she wanted to correct, but held back the infor-
mation. 'And I've lived with you for all of one,' she
pointed out as she closed the wardrobe door. 'But
knowing what makes you tick is beyond me.'

'Oh, very trite,' he mocked. 'Now, answer my first
question and tell me if you've been secretly working
with him again.'

'For a man famed for the sharpness of his intelli-
gence, you can be really dense sometimes,' she derided.
'Ask yourself—when?' she suggested. 'Have I had the
opportunity to work or do anything else with Stefan?'

He didn't like the derision, his eyes darkened. 'For
all I know the man might have a secret studio set up
right here in Milan where the two of you meet on a
regular basis.'

'So, I'm keeping the two of you happy?' Her laugh
was scornful. But even Antonia was aware that her ex-
pression was suddenly guarded, because Marco had un-
wittingly drifted too close to a carefully kept secret of
her own.

He saw the change. Of course he did. Reaching out
with a hand, he drew her across the few feet separating
them. His eyes were hard, his features grim and his grip
on her wrist was firm. 'You're hiding something,' he
gritted.

She refused to answer, her mouth set in a defiant
pout. Marco formed his own conclusions, his expression
darkening some more. 'If the two of you are plotting
my embarrassment on Friday, then I'm warning you,
you will regret ever knowing me!'

'Why won't you listen?' she snapped. 'I don't know
what Stefan is planning for Friday!'

"Then why the shifty look?'

'You don't own the right to know my every secret!'
she hit back bitterly. 'I'm your mistress, not your wife!'

This came hard on the fact that he had just reminded
himself of the same thing, and his expression hardened
into steel. "The way the two of you were lost in deep
conversation while you clung to him like a vine says to
me that you were discussing something important while
you made love to each other in front of everyone. And
I want to know what that something is!'

'We were discussing you!' she flashed. 'And whether
it was time for me to leave you or not!'

The claim had hit a nerve. Antonia actually saw it
flick like the tip of a whip across his taut cheekbones.
'Are you saying he wants you back?' he demanded
thinly.

'He will always have me back!' she flung at him
recklessly. 'And when I'm ready to leave you, then I
probably will go back to him!'

With that, she gave a tug at her wrist to free herself
and walked proudly away, trying not to show how badly
shaken she was feeling at this, the worst row they'd had
to date.

Needing something to do in the drumming silence
that followed her, she sat down on the stool in front of
the dressing table and began to let down her hair.

'If there was the remotest possibility of you actually
walking out on me, you would have done so without
the warning,' Marco drawled in a voice loaded with
derision.

'You think I'm a real push-over, don't you?' she mut-
tered, tossing hairpins in an angry scatter across the

dressing table top. 'You think that because you're as
sexy as hell and so dam wealthy you can afford to buy
anything, that I should be grateful that you decided to
buy me!'

'I did not buy you,' he denied. *I chose you. There
is a definite difference between the two.' His arrogance,
she noted, really showed no bounds. 'Whether or not
you sold yourself to me, though, is a question I have
no wish to hear the answer to.'

'Why not?' she challenged, via his reflection in the
mirror. 'Are you afraid to discover that maybe your
wealth is more appealing to me than your body?'

About to undo his bow-tie, she watched him stop and
stiffen as if something really nasty had just stepped into
the room. Antonia was very pleased to watch him do
it. The man could be so insufferably conceited some-
times that it made her want to hit him where it would
hurt the most!

'I sit here swathed in the finest silk,' she continued,
to compound his momentary disconcertion, 'with my
flesh pampered by the finest beauty products money can
buy. I live in the kind of luxury most people only see
between the pages of glossy magazines, and downstairs
in the basement sits the kind of car most women only
dream about owning—'

'The car belongs to me,' he inserted. 'You are merely
permitted the use of it'

'Permitted—!' A choked gasp brought her twisting
round on the stool to stare at him. Then, 'Ah...' she
said. 'So now we get down to the nitty-gritty. The car
is yours. The luxury accommodation is yours. The ex-
pensive clothes I wear belong to you, as does the won-
derful array of priceless jewels you keep carefully
locked away in your safe until I require the use of them.

So—yes,' she acknowledged, 'I suppose it is natural for
you to believe that I sold myself to you.'

*I never said that,' he snapped, a deep frown suddenly
darkening his features as fresh irritation flicked into life.

"Then let's just clarify the point, shall we, so that it
can be done with once and for all?' Getting up, she went
to stand right in front of him. Confrontation wasn't in
it. 'If, let's say, I decided to walk out on you right here
and now, what would I be allowed to take with me?'

"This is stupid,' he sighed, sliding the strip of black
silk out from under his shirt collar. 'When we both
know you have no intention of walking anywhere.'

"The car? No,' she continued, regardless. "The jew-
els? Definitely no. What about all the designer clothes,
then? Have I performed well enough to cam the right
to take those, Marco?' she questioned provokingly. 'Or
do you intend to let me walk out on you naked? If so,'
she added, without giving him a chance to answer, 'then
you surely can't say that I sold myself to you. For what
exactly is it I am supposed to have gained from doing
so?'

'A year of great sex?' he suggested nastily.

'Oh,' she pouted. 'I was hoping you would have the
good taste to leave the sex thing out of this.'

'Why?' he asked tauntingly. 'When it is all I—'

Marco stopped himself—but not soon enough. And
the black anger went flooding through him again as he
watched her annoyingly provocative face blanch.

'You asked for that,' he insisted, wishing to hell he
had never started this.

'Yes,' she agreed, 'I surely did.' But the fight had
disappeared from her tone, and his jaw felt so tight it
was in danger of snapping.

She went to turn away from him. It was sheer frus-

tration with the whole sordid scene that made him stop
her, he told himself. It had nothing to do with the sud-
den suspicion that if he let her turn away she would
never turn back to him again.

So his hands found her shoulders and drew her
against him, then, simply because he needed to do it,
he lowered his head and his mouth took her mouth by
storm.

At least she didn't fight him, but neither did she re-
spond. She just stood limp and lifeless against his body
while his mouth ravaged hers without receiving any
feedback at all.

Not liking what was happening here, and liking even
less the knowledge that she could stand there lifeless
while his own body was reacting as fiercely as it always
did to her, he went for the kill with a pride-staking
vengeance aimed at demolishing her resistance.

For he knew this woman, he consoled himself grimly
as he began covering her face with the kind of small
light teasing kisses guaranteed to drive her wild. Her
cheeks, her jaw-line, her firmly closed eyes, the length
of her small straight nose. His kisses found all the right
'pleasure points while carefully avoiding her mouth even
when, with a helpless whimper, she slackened its tense
little line in sensual expectation.

Yes, he confirmed triumphantly. He knew her so
well. The way her breathing quickened, and she began
to vibrate to the feather-light stroke of his fingers. It
was easy to urge the silk from her shoulders and leave
it to slither down her body until the only thing holding
it up was the belt knotted around her waist.

As she released a gasp in startled surprise he at last
captured her mouth again. She fell into his kiss like a
woman with a fever. When her fingers came up to

clutch at his rock-solid biceps, he stroked her hair,
stroked her body, and stroked her beautiful breasts with
their sensitive points that simply begged for his further
attention.

He gave it willingly, knowingly—ruthlessly, arching
her over his arm so far that she had no choice but to
reach up and hook her hands around his neck to main-
tain some control over her own balance.

Within seconds she was groaning. Eyes closed, head
lilted right back so her long silken hair swung in a rip-
pling swathe over his arm as he grimly tore through
every veil of rejection she had dared to pull on against
him. When the groans became hot Hide gasps of plea-
sure, he consolidated his success by gliding a hand
along a silken thigh until it found the cluster of golden
curls that shrouded her sexuality. The robe was no bar-
rier; it had already slid apart to give him easy access.
But the real triumph came when her thighs parted for
him in all-out invitation.

The battle, in his mind, was surely over. Having won
it, as abruptly as he had started it, he brought it to an
end and watched with a grim detachment as she leaned
weakly against him, dizzy and disorientated enough to
find it impossible to support herself.

'You want me, Antonia,' he declared in a tough cold
voice that made her shiver. Try dangling another man
in front of me in an effort to improve on what we have,
and you will find yourself having to learn not to want.'

It was an outright warning.

Standing there in his arms, Antonia said absolutely
nothing. He'd done this to her merely to make a point.
It was humiliating.

After a moment, he sighed and let go of her. She
swayed a little, but found her balance, and remained

exactly as she was while he strode for the door. And
what was the picture he took with him? Antonia asked
herself as she watched him go.

His suitably chastened mistress standing there with
her seduction-red silk robe still hanging from her waist
by the belt, and her breasts still taut and alive and throb-
bing. Like her mouth—like her sex.

She had never felt so sickened in all her life.

Sickened by herself—sickened by him. Sickened by
the knowledge that really they were both as bad as each
other. For Marco might take and take and take, but she
liad let him do it

'I hate you,' she whispered, not sure if she was telling
herself that or the wretched man striding out of the door.

Whichever, he heard it, paused and turned. There was
contempt in that lean hard handsome face of his.
Enough contempt to make her skin crawl.

'Take my advice, cara, and think carefully about on
which side your bread is buttered. Beautiful women
come in disposable packs of ten these days.' The cut of
his cynicism was deep enough to draw blood. 'A poor
performer can therefore be tossed onto the scrap heap
and replaced as easily as—that.'

The snap of his long brown fingers made her flinch.
Marco gave a curt nod of his dark head to acknowledge
it, then left the room.

But he took with him the sight of her standing there
still half stripped of her robe. It made him sigh again
as he slammed into his study. For, no matter how ruth-
lessly he had just set out to demolish her, the way she
had refused to cover herself seemed to give her the last
word that was strangely demolishing him.

What was it exactly he had been trying to prove? he

asked himself as he made directly for the whisky bottle.
That she had to love him more than she loved Kranst?

She'd left the handsome bastard for him, hadn't she?
Marco argued with his own angry head. And why bring
the love thing into it when he had never asked or wanted
love from any woman?

But neither do you want to believe she could have
the capacity to love another man, his conceited side
answered the question. You're an arrogant swine,
Bellini, he told himself. You want it all. You always
have done. But you're never going to give that much
back in return.

Snatching up the bottle and a glass, he took them over
to his desk then threw himself down into the chair.
Whisky splashed into the glass. He tipped it down his
throat, swallowed, then sat back to glower darkly at
nothing.

He'd never felt like this before, and he didn't want
to feel like this now! Angry and guilty and—yes, he
admitted it—riddled with confusion and jealousy. It
creased his insides every time he heard Kranst's name
leave her lips in that oh, so tender way she always said
it. And seeing her clinging to the man tonight had
forced him to trawl whole new depths of jealous re-
sentment.

'He still wants her,' Louisa had said.

Well, so do I!

Another splash of whisky burned its way down to his
stomach.

And he wasn't giving her up just to watch her walk
straight into the arms other ex-lover as if Marco Bellini
had never even been there!

Was that it? he thought suddenly. Was that what was
really bugging him? The idea that if he did send her

packing she would simply go back to where she had
been before she met him and pick up where she'd left
off. with hardly a tear to say she was sony to do it?

To hell with Kranst. Antonia was his woman! And
Kranst could go and look elsewhere for his inspiration.

Which reminded him about the painting the guy had
been taunting him with tonight. Getting up, he stag-
gered, frowned down at the whisky bottle, and was
amazed to discover how much of it had gone.

Drunk. He was drunk. Well, that was a first since his
reckless youth, he thought with a grimace. Would;

Antonia be pleased to know what she had driven him'
to?

Concentrating on walking in a straight line, he went
over to a door and punched a set of numbers into the -
security console, heard the lock shoot back and pushed
the door open on the investment side of his art collec-
tion—the Rembrandt, the Titian, the Severini and the
Boccioni, which his insurers insisted he kept housed in
a secure room.

Would Antonia be pleased to know what else he had
in here? he mused as, with glass in hand, he walked
right past the masters, his attention fixed only on Stefan
Kranst's Mirror Woman.

It was only one of a series the artist had produced
over several years. Bach painting was different, but the
theme was always the same—perfection seen through
the eyes of the artist via a mirror reflection.

What had Kranst really been trying to say when he'd
painted Antonia like this? Marco pondered thoughtfully.
That the mirror reflected her perfection where reality
did not? Or had Kranst merely been the voyeur, cap-
turing on canvas something he knew he could never
have any other way?

Marco frowned as he always did when he tried to
understand what Kranst had been trying to relay here,
No suggestion he could come up with ever truly fitted.
The idea of Kranst as the mere voyeur, for instance,
was shot to pieces the moment you saw the two of them
together. They knew each other intimately. Touch, taste,
sight, sound. In fact he had never experienced intimacy
like it between two people, unless he included himself
with her.

As for the mirror-perfection versus reality: the paint-
ing didn't lie. Antonia was as perfect in real life as
Kranst had portrayed her here.

The Mirror Woman was easily the best of the se-
ries—which was why Marco had bought it. It was also
the most disturbing, because this was the only painting
where Antonia stood in full focus. She was standing on
a balcony—an English balcony, he mused with a gri-
mace. Long and slender, naked and sleek, with an eariy-
monung sunrise caressing her skin with pale gold silk.
She was looking back over her shoulder towards the
mirror with a terrible—terrible sadness in her beautiful
eyes.

Frowning, be reached out to absently graze a fingertip
over an unusually careless brush-mark blemish that
shouldn't be there on her left shoulder. Then her eyes
were drawing his attention again. Those dreadful,
empty, haunted eyes. What was she supposed to be see-
ing when she looked into the mirror like that? Herself?
The artist? Something else unseen by anyone else from
this angle?

He'd once asked Antonia why the look. 'Life,' she'd
answered flatly. 'She's seeing life.' Then she'd shud-
dered and walked away and never asked to see the
painting again.

It had been an unexpected response from someone
who refused to reveal any hint of embarrassment when-
ever she came up against her own nudity in one of the
many other forms it had taken since Kranst had painted
her. The signed prints, the calendars, greetings 'cards,
etcetera, being the mediums by which the artist earned
his real fame and fortune,                     i   .

Only this painting upset her. Or was it the fact that
he owned it that made her walk away? She refused to
talk about it, and would be appalled to find out that to
acquire it he'd had to convince his own mother to sell
it to him.                                    '') , (

The irony in that put a smile on his lips. 'Stefan
Kranst is a worthy investment,' his mother had saidi *He
has a gift for catching the inner soul of his subject.'This
poor creature, for instance, is dying inside that beautiful
outer casing. I feel for her. I feel for the artist because
he so clearly loves the inner woman.'            ', '

The word dying was a disturbing description. He pre-
ferred the word empty, because it soothed some part of,
him to know that Antonia had never looked empty while
she had been with him.                        , ', '

But his mother had admired the woman in the paint-1
ing before she had known Antonia had moved in with
him. Now all she saw was a woman willing to expose
herself for all to see and who possessed no conscience
about doing it. She also despaired, because her son had
not yet assuaged what she saw as his obsession with
both the painting and the woman.                , i

The smile turned itself into a sigh, because he was
aware he hadn't assuaged anything where Antonia was
concerned. Not his desire for the woman or his fasci-
nation with this painting.                         |

Now Kranst was implying that there was another

painting, like this one. Which meant what, exactly? That
Kranst hadn't painted out his obsession with Antonia?
That this new painting was going to tell him things he
didn't want to know?

If that was Kranst's motive, then Marco didn't want
to find out, but he knew he needed to. He didn't want
to go to Kranst's damned private viewing, but he would
have to go.

And he didn't want to lose Antonia, but he had a
horrible feeling he was going to lose her one way or
another. By his own stupid actions or with the help of
exterior forces like Kranst or his mother or the com-
pelling pull of his sick father's need.

The whisky no longer had any flavour. The painting
of Antonia suddenly did nothing for him. He wanted
the real woman. The one he had just hurt for no other
reason than a need to reassure his own ego.

But she was still the warm and pliant woman prob-
ably lying fast asleep in his bed now, he then added,
with yet another kind of smile as he left the room and
closed the door behind him. Then, with a walk that was
almost unwavering, he rid himself of his glass and went
to join her.

The bedroom was in darkness, the bed a mere shadow
on the other side of the room. Making as little noise as
possible, he stepped into the bathroom, silently closed
the door to spend a few minutes trying to shower off
the effects of the whisky, before going back into the
bedroom and over to the bed.

He meant to surprise her awake with some serious
kisses in some very serious places. She would be sulk-
ing, of course, but he could deal with that. She would
fight him too, he would expect nothing less. And he
would grovel a little because she deserved to have him

grovel—before he drowned himself in the sweetest
pleasure ever created for a man to share with a woman.
Then he stopped and frowned when he found him-
self staring down at the smooth neatness of an'un-
touched bed.

CHAPTER FIVE

A SHAFT of alarm went streaking down his backbone
and massed deep in his abdomen. He spun, sharp eyes
piercing the darkness to scan the room for a sign of her
shadowy figure—curled in a chair, maybe, or standing
by the window.

She wasn't there. The alarm leapt up to attack his
heartbeat. She wouldn't, he told himself. She couldn't
have quietly dressed and left him while he'd been busy
drowning his sorrows—could she?

No, he wouldn't have it. He might have behaved like
a rotten bastard, but Antonia would never just walk out
and leave!

But then there was Kranst waiting on the sidelines,
he remembered, and started moving, unsure, so damned
unsure of himself that the uncertainty was actually mak-
ing his legs feel hollow with fright!

It was the whisky, Marco told himself. -But he was
still going to kill her when he found her for scaring him
like this, he vowed, as he began striding round the
apartment opening doors and closing them until he
came to the locked door belonging to one of the spare
bedrooms.

Relief shuddered through him, followed by a shaft of
white-hot fury at her whole attitude. Stubbornly forget-
ting his own bad behaviour, he banged hard on the door.
'If you don't unlock this door I'll break it down!' he
shouted threateningly.

And kept on banging until the door flew open.

68

Antonia was already walking away from it even as it
swung back on itself. Her hair rippled about her naked
shoulders and his body almost screamed as it responded
to the carelessly sensual sway of hers. And it was the
turn of the red silk wrap to lie in a discarded blot, on
the floor.                                       ' i

'Don't ever lock me out of a room in my own home
again,' he ground out as he strode forward,       i

'I have nothing to say to you,' she replied in a voice
meant to freeze a man's nether parts.            , '

A willingness to grovel was forgotten—ousted by a |
much more satisfying desire to remind her just who
called the tune around here.                       i

Arriving at the bed, she prepared to climb back into
it. In two long strides he stopped her, by the economical
act of scooping her off her feet. Her protesting shriek
was ignored, as were her wriggling attempts to get her-
self free. Without a single word from his tightly
clamped lips, he turned and began carrying her out of
this bedroom and down the hall to his bedroom.   

'You are such a primitive underneath the layers of
breeding,' she sliced at him disgustedly.          

He stopped dead and kissed her—so hot and so hard
she was gasping for breath by the time he lifted his head
again.                                            

'Is that primitive enough?' he asked, not in the least
bit insulted she'd called him that. In fact he liked the
whole scenario, since he was feeling very primitively
aroused right now.

Marco shut the door behind them with a very satis-
fyingly primitive kick. The bed waited. He dumped her i
on its pale blue cover, then followed with the long hard
length of his body in a very primitive man-on-top-of-'
woman pinning down.                             

Her angry eyes shot amber bright warnings at him.
Her beautiful hair streamed out above her head, and her
clenched fists made a puny but determined effort to do
him some damage. 'Get off me,' she insisted. 'You're
just a big brute—and you taste of whisky!'

'And you taste of champagne and woman—my
woman,' Marco growled back, enjoying this new prim-
itive role that allowed him the rare luxury to completely
dominate.

Her breasts heaved against the solid wall of his chest
and her slender hips writhed delightfully beneath the
pressure of his. She felt the rise of his passion and spat
her utter contempt at him, while the mocking arch of
his eyebrows asked her who was to blame.

She hit back with more than her fists, 'Stefan was
right about you,* she lashed. 'You are a—'

Ducking between the nailing fists, he stopped the
words with his mouth. Discussing Kranst was not going
to happen in his bed! he grimly determined, and kept
on kissing her until her hands stopped punching and
began to anxiously knead his shoulders instead.

Triumph sizzled through his system; the red-hot heat
of desire spun through his blood. He made love to her
as if there was no tomorrow and, because there was still
the heat of an angry fear burning behind the passion,
he drove her to the edge more than once before ruth-
lessly drawing back again.

'I hate it when you do this to me,' she sobbed in
frustration.

'You would hate it more if I didn't do it at all,' he
threw back.

Her breath broke on a whimper because she knew he
was right. The helpless little sound did things to him
no woman could ever begin to understand. He thrust
into her with the force of absolute possession,    

'You belong to me. Just remember that next time you
feel like wrapping yourself around another man.'

If he'd expected her to respond at all, it was not the
way she did. With the slick roll of her body he suddenly
found he was the one pinned down and she the one most
definitely on top. For the next few minutes he experi-
enced what it was like to be utterly seduced by a woman
hell-bent on making him embarrass himself.

It didn't happen. He was no one's easy victim. But
Antonia in this mood was irresistible. She was the true
sensualist bom to pleasure man. She kissed him and
stroked him and rode him towards heaven. And when
his body began to tighten and his heart began to pound,
she gave him back a taste of his own medicine by pull-
ing away to rise up and stand over him.         

Feet planted either side of his body, hands resting in
the delicious groove of her slender waist, and her won-
derful long golden hair spiralling around the face of an
absolute wanton, she asked, 'And who do you belong
to, Marco?'                                      

The little minx. The beautiful, outrageous little minx!
he thought, and, with a laugh of appreciation, he jack-
knifed into a sitting position, clamped his hands to her
hips—and gave his mouth the pleasure of bringing her
to heel again.

The battle progressed to a different level. She gasped
and protested and tugged at handfuls of his hair in an
effort to dislodge him, and eventually lost the ability to
stand. She was groaning and trembling but still in there 
fighting, matching him kiss for kiss, caress for caress,
intimacy for exquisite tortuous intimacy, which had
them crossing a few boundaries they'd never attempted 
to cross before in their quest to get the better of the
other.

By the time he was back where he belonged—on top
and deep inside her—he had lost the will to pull back
again. Hot, bathed in sweat and no longer on this planet,
they rode the fiery dragon with a focused compulsion
that blocked out everything else.

He climaxed first—she was so damned determined to
make him do that. But she followed a half-second later,
urging him on with the convulsing tug of her muscles
towards the kind of prolonged orgasm that laid them
both to waste for long minutes afterwards.

Yes! he thought with a deep satisfaction as he lay
heavy on her, fighting for breath. This was it, the elixir
of life, and to hell with the covetous Kranst. To hell
with his disapproving mother! he added fiercely to
that—he couldn't bring himself to repeat the dismissive
curse regarding his father, but inside he was aware that
the need to hold on to what he had here was beginning
to overshadow everything else.

Lying there beneath him, almost completely engulfed
in his body and his scent and the glorious weight of his
utter satiation, Antonia wondered ruefully if she would
ever find the energy to move again. Her bones felt like
liquid and certain muscles were trembling in the after-
math of something pretty spectacular, even for them.

What she couldn't understand was how it could be
like that after what had gone before it. She should have
been repulsed by his touch. She should have lain like a
stone beneath him. But she hadn't—she hadn't...

Weak, you're weak, she derided herself miserably,
and made a move to remind him that she was still here,
just in case he'd forgotten while he basked in sexual
bliss.

With a kiss to her brow, he acknowledged ner pres-
ence, then relieved her of his weight by rolling them
onto their sides so he could wrap her against him.

'You move me like no other woman,' he murmured
huskily.                             

Did he think that was a compliment? she asked her-
self. Because it wasn't. She had no wish to be tagged
and sorted according to performance. In fact, if she had
the energy she would take serious offence and get up
and leave!                            

But she didn't have the energy. And, in truth, lying
here against him in the soft darkness of the summer
night, with one of his hands gently stroked the curve of
her hip while the other absently grazed over her left
shoulder, she could think of no other place she would
rather be.                                   

Weak, she repeated. It was her biggest problem. She
needed to be with him though she didn't want to need.
He was arrogant, self-motivated, insensitive and...

Her sigh warmed his throat. Dipping his dark head,
he caught the sigh with the kind of kiss that squeezed
the heart dry. When it was over she reached up to (touch
his lips with her fingertips, unable to believe that a
mouth could be so tender and not feel something deeper
than desire for her.                           

'I wish I'd never met you sometimes,' she quietly
confided.                                 

'Only sometimes?' he threw back.          

Tipping her head, she expected to find him smiling.
But he looked quite sombre as he gazed down at her
through swirling smoke-blue eyes set between kohl
black lashes in a polished bronze framework no gifted
sculptor could improve upon.                 

'You want me to apologise for my earlier behaviour?' 
he asked her. Huskily spoken, sincerely meant.
No, she thought sadly. I want you to love me. Then had
to swallow the lump of tears in her throat as she gave
a shake of her head. 'I just want you to promise never
to do that to me again,' she replied.

Smoke-blue eyes darkened with repentance. '0n my
life,' he vowed, and sealed it with a kiss, then repeated
it again and again until both the vow and the kiss be-
came yet another seduction.

It was his way, a willingly humble side to his proud
character, which had the power to demolish her resis-
tance far more easily than the ruthlessness he had meted
out before.

Her fingers began trailing tender caresses across hair-
peppered, muscle-hard, satin-tight flesh. He was built to
worship, she thought mistily. Built to make any woman
melt with desire. It was she who deepened those soft
penitent kisses into one long sensual banquet. She who
slid onto her back and drew him over her, then slowly
relaxed her thighs so he would settle between. In a won-
derful intimacy that had her long legs tangling with his
and her body arching to a sensual rhythm, they indulged
in a different kind of kiss.

His mouth left hers to taste other parts of her, and
she sighed in pleasure as it closed on her breast. Fingers
trailed into his hair, stretched out to glide down the satin
smoothness of his back. He shuddered in response and
drew on her nipple until she felt the needle-sharp plea-
sure reach deep down into her very core.

As quickly as that, it all began again. No tormenting
this time, no battle of wills. In only seconds he was
feeding his powerful arms beneath her so he could lift

her into closer contact with the pulsing length of
his sex.

Dragging his mouth from her breast, he requested,
'May I?'

'Oh, yes,' she invited, aware that they were both
more than ready for this.

This time he came into her with the gentle force of
a man who was very mindful-of his own power. She
willingly accepted him, and wasn't surprised to hear
them both utter those exquisite sighs of pleasure be-
cause, quick though this was, they were perfectly in
tune.

Can I walk away from him? Antonia found herself
questioning as not just her senses but her whole world
began to quicken. Can he really want this to end?

As if he could sense that her mind had strayed, Marco
was suddenly rearing up and over her. His eyes were
like two dark circles of passion, his mouth warm and
moist and hungry for hers. "This is special,' he said
roughly. 'And it is ours.'

'Sometimes it feels as if you hate me,' she whispered.

'No, never,' he denied, and crushed her mouth be-
neath his and crushed all thoughts from her head by
other means.

The next morning, the light brush of his lips on her
cheek awoke her. Opening her eyes, she smiled sleepily
at him.

Clean-shaven and smelling deliciously vital, he was
already dressed for his busy day in a dark grey suit and
pale blue shirt that did sensational things to his golden
features.

'Get up, get dressed and come and join me for break-
fast,' he invited. 'I have a surprise for you.'

'A surprise?' she repeated, yawning while stretching.

'Mmm,' he murmured, and it was the sexiest murmur
Antonia had ever heard in her entire life.

It brought an invitation to her eyes and a hand reach-
ing up for him. 'Show me now,' she commanded in a
tone which was demanding something else entirely.

He caught the hand, kissed it, then firmly replaced it
back on the .bed. 'Not on your life.' He grinned. 'You
have to come downstairs looking prim for this surprise.'

And with that thoroughly intriguing statement he
turned and strode out of the room. Antonia watched him
go with a smile in her eyes, quietly amazed at how a
night of loving could turn their relationship around. The
man was an enigma of complicated mood codes: one
minute looking as if he wished to see the back of her,
the next almost dying with pleasure in her arms. Now
he wanted to please her with surprises—though how
he'd found the time to come up with anything to sur-
prise her with at—she checked the bedside clock—
seven o'clock in the morning was completely beyond
her.

Innovative, that was what Marco was, she thought
indulgently as she climbed out of the bed and went off
to shower and dress, as instructed, in something prim.
Her choice was a white tailored linen suit teamed with
amber accessories that almost matched the colour of her
eyes.

On her way to the breakfast room, she popped her
head into the kitchen and was surprised to find no
housekeeper there to exchange the usual morning greet-
ings. Still frowning' slightly at Carlotta's absence, she
entered the sunny breakfast room to find her favourite
breakfast bowl of fresh fruit and a steaming pot of hot
coffee waiting for her on the table—and her favourite

man reclining in his chair reading his morning news-
paper.

But he paused to watch her walk towards him with
his eyes narrowed in male appreciation. 'Perfezione,' he
murmured, as she leant down to press a morning kiss
to his ready lips.

'Grozie,' she returned in mocking relief. 'For this is
about as prim as I get.'

The sun caught the strawberry highlights threading
through her neatly pleated hair, and played sultry games
with the amber colour of her conservatively, styled silk
blouse. On her feet she wore classically plain court
shoes and a simple string of pearls she had owned for
ever and didn't warrant locking away in Marco's safe
circled her slender throat. Her make-up was so natural
there was barely any sign of it and her smile said ev-
erything was right in her world.

'Where's Carlotta?' she asked as she sat down next
to him.

'Called in sick,' Marco explained. 'I found her mes-
sage waiting with our answering service, along with a
hundred and one others...'

Antonia's hand froze momentarily on its way to pick
up the coffee pot. Stefan, she remembered. Stefan had
said he'd been leaving messages for her all last week.
A small silence began to vibrate with the hum of ex-
pectancy while she waited for what Marco was going
to say next.

But he said absolutely nothing, and when she dared
a glance at him, he was behind his newspaper again.
He wasn't going to mention Stefan's calls, she realised.
And she was damned if she was going to mention them
and put at risk all this wonderful harmony they had
managed to recapture.

So, 'Did Carlotta say what was wrong?' she enquired
instead.

The newspaper twitched, long brown fingers flexed
slightly, as if he was aware that she was aware of
Stefan's calls and those fingers were reacting to the fact
that she too was going to pretend they had never hap-
pened.

'Summer flu,' he replied. 'She does not wish to pass
it on, so she expects to be away for the rest of the
week.'

'Poor Carlotta. I must send her a get-well card,' she
murmured, and finished pouring her coffee before trans-
ferring her attention to her bowl of fruit. 'Did you pre-
pare this?' she asked.

'Mmm.' It was not quite the sexy Mmm of before.
Was he angry? Was he annoyed that she wasn't going
to ask about Stefan's calls?

'Moiti grave, mi, amante,' she returned, determinedly
keeping her tone light. "This unusual act of servility is
most definitely your biggest surprise to date.'

The husky dark tones of a very male laughter flipped
her heart over, then it flipped again with relief when he
folded the paper away and she was able to see the hu-
mour also reflected on his beautiful face.

He wasn't brooding about Stefan. He wasn't going to
let this newly attained harmony spoil because of a few
silly messages. 'Eat your fruit. Drink your coffee,' he
advised indulgently. 'We have approximately ten
minutes before we have to leave.'

'Leave?' She frowned. 'Why? Where are we going?'

'Just going to Venice,' he replied as he got to his feet.
'And you, mi bellisima, are coming with me.'

With that, he dropped a casual kiss onto the top of
her head and began to stroll arrogantly for the doorway.

But this time no warm smile followed him. No feel-
ing of delight that he was planning to take her along on
one of his business trips for the first time since she'd
entered his life.

So much for protecting harmony, she mused grimly
as she felt it all wither away. 'When did you decide
this?' she fed quietly after him. 'Before or after you
played back the messages?'

He stopped walking and turned, an almost saturnine
figure with his features suddenly cast in bronze. 'Be-
fore,' he replied, earning himself a flash of scepticism.
'It was learning that Carlotta would not be around to
play chaperon that clinched your fate for you,' he an-
swered that scepticism. 'For no woman plays Marco
Bellini false while he is safely ensconced elsewhere,
capisce?'

Oh, she understood all right. He didn't trust her to be
alone in Milan with Stefan in the same city. 'So the
surprise you promised was never intended as a pleasant
surprise,' she concluded, and smiled cynically. 'How
typical of you to give with one hand and take back with
the other.'

'On the contrary,' he argued. "The trip to Venice
could be a pleasure for both of us. It really depends on
whether you want to make it so.'

'Or not, if I decide to stay here instead,' Antonia
pointed out.

The threat had him walking back to her. When he
reached her side, he bent to place one hand on the back
of her chair, the other flat on the table. The way he
loomed over her hinted at menace. Placing her fork in
the bowl of fruit, Antonia refused to let her fingers
shake as she placed them down on her lap, then sat back
in the chair to face his hard gaze squarely.

'You prefer to stay here?'

His eyes held hers, and were loaded with challenge.
Answer yes and she would be lying, not to mention
confirming his suspicions about her motives. Answer no
and she would be feeding his ego with something she
had no wish to feed him now.

She went for the compromise. 'Stefan is my friend.
Why can't you accept that?'

His eyes didn't waver, not for a second. 'Do you
prefer to stay?' he repeated.

Hers did, though; they flickered away on a frown of
irritation. 'Of course I would rather be with you,' she
sighed. 'But not under duress, and not because you feel
it's your only option!'

'I could throw you out. That's another option.'

'I could walk!' she lashed back. "That's an even bet-
ter one!'

'Are you coming?' The wretched man wasn't fazed
in the slightest.

'Yes!' she snapped, and dislodged his hand by push-
ing back her chair and shooting to her feet with a jolt
of anger.

He just sent her a mocking look. "Then eat your fruit
and drink your coffee,' he suggested, and with a wave
of a hand walked away again. 'Come and get me from
my study when you're ready to leave.'

'I'll need longer than ten minutes to clear up here
before we go,' she threw impatiently after him.

'For you, mi amante, I will delay our flight!'

Magnanimous in victory, he left her standing there
not sure whether to smile or scowl. The smile won,
twitching impulsively at the comers other mouth as she
sat down to finish her fruit. Twenty minutes later she
was annoyed again because he hadn't told her until just

before they were leaving that they were going to stay
over in Venice, so she hadn't bothered to pack a bag.

'Shop for what you need when we get there, said
the man to whom money had a different meaning.

'For want of a further five minutes it seems terribly
extravagant,' she complained.

'Time is money to me, cara,' he pointed out.

"Then I'm sony for costing you money while you
waited,' she said primly. 'What a problem I am to you.'

Sarcasm or not, he slashed a grin at her. 'My biggest
problem is going to be keeping my mind on business
when I know you're within easy reach of me,' he mur-
mured lazily.

"Then I hope you spend your meetings in a state of
permanent distraction.'

'While you do what?'

'Spend your money as fast as I can produce the credit
cards,' she answered.

He laughed, and kissed her until the lift arrived. After
that it didn't really matter any more that he was only
doing this to keep her and Stefan apart. The harmony
was back, and she was happy to bask in it. Happy to
bask beneath the amount of care and attention he paid
her throughout their short flight to Venice and the en-
suing journey along the canals until they came to their
hotel.

Heads turned, people stared. She basked in that also.
For being with a man like Marco Bellini was a bit like
walking alongside royalty: paths were smoothed, people
deferred. He was rich, he was known, he was handsome
and single. Women envied her place in his life. Men
envied all his many advantages.

Having safely delivered her to their hotel, he left her
to her own devices while he went off to keep his ap-

pointments. She shopped till she'd dropped, and spent
the rest of her time trailing around some of the tourist
sites amongst the thick summer crowds and the heat that
melted.

By the time she arrived back in their suite she was
so exhausted it was all she could do to run a bath and
sink into it. On the bed lay the smart designer bags to
go with her new smart designer purchases. On the floor
lay the scatter of her discarded clothes.

Letting himself in a few minutes later, Marco smiled
at the evidence of her occupation. Antonia was untidy
by nature, though she would make the effort to try not
to be because she thought it must irritate him. Being
brought up to strict rules set by a succession of nannies
meant that regimental neatness had become second na-
ture to him.

But it didn't irritate him. In truth, he liked to walk
into a room and see instant proof of her presence. The
bathroom door stood ajar, and from behind it he could
hear the lazy slap of water which told him what she was
doing now.

It was the easiest thing in the world to strip off his
clothes and go in there to join her. Up to her neck in
bubbles, she smiled as he approached, lifted her knees
to allow him room to sit down opposite her, then, on a
contented sigh fed her feet up his chest as he stretched
his long legs on either side of her.

'Long day?' he enquired.

'Spent your money. Played tourist. Got too hot.
Killed my feet. Came back here to die peacefully. And
you?' she returned the enquiry.

'Made a few lira, invested a few lira.' His accom-
panying shrug said it was par for the course. "Threw
my impressive weight around a bit. Came back here to
make love to this woman I know.'

Her eyes began to gleam. 'Is she any good?'

So did his. 'Moiti bellisima,' he softly confided, and
picked up one of her feet to begin an expert massage
to its slender sole. She liked that. Closing her eyes, she
simply lay back and let him indulge her.

In fact Marco indulged her in many ways during the
next few days. They dined in quiet out-of-the-way
places where the tourists didn't go, walked hand in hand
through narrow streets like dark caverns, and made love
for most of the night. When he had to leave her to attend
his meetings he made it brief, and secondary to what
was really going on here in Venice.

Which was the steadily strengthening realisation that
she was becoming more and more important to his hap-
piness than he had ever allowed himself to believe be-
fore.

By the time they caught the flight home to Milan, on
Friday afternoon, he knew he was almost ready to make
the ultimate commitment. Only—

He wanted to see what Kranst had planned before he
laid himself open. Antonia hadn't mentioned Kranst. He
hadn't mentioned him. But had she been in touch with
him? Did she know what Kranst was up to? Did she
know that Marco was worrying about it?

Did she care?

He needed to know the answers before he made any
kind of commitment because, damn it, he had his pride
to protect here!

It was a hesitation that was going to cost him, though
Marco couldn't have any way of knowing it then.

They arrived back at the apartment late on Friday
afternoon, to find Carlotta back at her post and smiling
her usual welcome. She thanked them for the postcards
Antonia must have sent her, then went on to relay a
series of messages, most of them business, but some
from his mother wanting him to call her as soon as he
got in.

'My father?' he questioned sharply.

But Carlotta shook her head. 'I asked,' she said.
'Your mama assured me he was pleasingly well.'

So he nodded, and decided to leave any calls home
until after this evening was over.

That was another mistake.

There were also several calls for Antonia from Stefan
Kranst which, from their content, told him that Antonia
had held faith and not attempted to contact Kranst while
they'd been away. He wanted to wrap her in his arms
and kiss her for that, but good sense warned him not to
make an issue of it—just as she was sensibly asking no
questions about that other taboo subject, his parents.

Franco rang as they were sharing a pot of coffee
while relaxing for an hour in front of the TV before
they needed to start getting ready to go out. Marco felt
fine, very at peace with himself and the beautiful crea-
ture curled up beside him. He and Franco chatted as
best friends do. He was thanked for the painting they'd
given the de Maggios as an anniversary present, and for
the thought which had gone into it, and tried to pass the
whole thing off as if he knew exactly what Franco
meant But he didn't, and his gaze was sardonic when
he remembered how easily he had let Antonia off with-
out answering that little bone of contention between
them. Then he suggested dinner somewhere after the
Kranst showing.

It was at that moment that the tension began to creep
in. Antonia sat up and away from him. Studying her
profile, he heard Franco telling him that he and Nicola
were not going tonight because they were spending the
weekend up at Lake Como with her parents. Franco
suggested Wednesday instead. Marco agreed, then hur-
riedly rang off.

'What's wrong?' he asked instantly.

'Nothing,' she replied. 'I think I'll go and get my
shower now—'

But he wasn't so easily fooled. 'Kranst can only hurt
you if you let him,' he said quietly.

'It isn't me Stefan hurts, Marco,' she replied, smiled
a sad smile and walked away.

She was referring to him, of course, and it was a
strange experience to acknowledge that she was right.
Kranst did have the power to hurt him. He hurt Marco's
pride and his ego, because the artist had a part of
Antonia he had never been able to touch. What part that
was exactly he had not been able to work out, but it
had something to do with the way she refused to accept
any hint of criticism where Kranst was concerned,
whereas Marco she could find fault with very easily.

CHAPTER SIX

THE Romano Gallery claimed prestige position in the
famous Quadrilatero. It was double-fronted in plate
glass, with black steel framework, and Rosetta
Romano's name made its point with eye-level modesty
in black lettering on the door.

Class wasn't in it. Only people of substance dared
place their fingers on that door. A black-suited lackey
did it for Marco and Antonia, pulling it inwards with
panache and a crisp, 'Biion giomo. Signer Bellini—
signorina.''

The interior was an artistic exhibit in its own right—
white walls, white floor and a white stairway leading
up to the main gallery rooms. Its only decoration was
a single black spot, strategically placed on one wall to
offer perspective.

Marco's hand at the base of her spine kept her mov-
ing towards the stairway. They took it together, climb-
ing towards the two black-clothed waiters stationed at
the top, holding trays loaded with glasses of cham-
pagne. Neither took a glass. To swallow right now
would be an impossibility, with the tension rising
steadily since they'd left the sitting room back at the
apartment.

She had thought of ringing Stefan and insisting he
explain about the painting so she could then decide
whether to come or not. But two things had stopped
her. One had something to do with a complicated thing
called loyalty. To speak to Stefan just now seemed to

86

be putting her loyalty to Marco into question. And the
second was because she knew Marco would insist on
coining here tonight no matter what she wanted to do.
It was a male pride thing. Stefan had thrown him a
challenge and Marco would rather slit his own throat
than decline it.

But that didn't mean she hadn't spent time on her
own, going over every painting from her days living
with Stefan, looking for the one he had not shown in
public before. As far as she could recall there wasn't
one—which worried her all the more, because he had
to have something up his sleeve or he wouldn't have
thrown down that teasing gauntlet to Marco in the first
place.

Dressed from neck to toe in black, at least she
blended in with the status quo tonight, she then ob-
served, as her gaze nicked around a semi-packed ante-
room that fed into the main viewing rooms. Her hair
was up, caught in a twist of black velvet, and her only
adornment was a gold chain necklace with a single tear-
drop diamond that Marco had placed around her throat
just before they left the apartment. The diamond nestled
against the black of her-dress and sparkled as she
moved.

'Stunning,' Marco had called her. 'Too lovely to re-
sist. Too perfect to touch.'

But she still didn't deserve his surname, she mused,
with a mockery that was a long way from humorous.

'Ah, buona serai' Rosetta Romano came to greet
them with all the extravagance of an Italian hostess.
'Marco, mi amore...' Both elegant hands touched his
face, then were replaced with kisses to both cheeks. 'Do
you realise it must be over a year since you visited me
here?'

It was a scold issued in the nicest possible way.
While Marco said all the right things in reply Antonia
studied Rosetta Romano, who had been a legend in her
time for choosing husbands by the size of their wallets.
Now that her beauty was fading she preferred to be
known for her artistic eye. All the big names had ex-
hibited here. Two years ago Stefan would not have
stood a chance. Now—?

Rosetta turned her attention to Antonia. Her eyes
sharpened, then narrowed searchingly. 'Yes.' She nod-
ded. 'I see it. Stefan assured me I would. Buona sera,
Signorina Carson,' she greeted with a slightly wry
smile. 'It is a pleasure to meet you at last.'

Kisses on both cheeks were compulsory in Milan.
The whisper Rosetta placed in her ear was most defi-
nitely not. 'Stefan is such a wicked man. I do hope you
are prepared for this.'

No, she wasn't, and keeping that from showing on
her face took a lot of self-control. But she wasn't able
to stop the small anxious shiver from chasing down her
spine. Marco felt it, and his hand moved on her waist
to draw her closer to his side.

'What did she say to you?' he questioned when
Rosetta floated away to greet her next arriving guests.

Antonia didn't even try to dress it up. 'She wanted
to know if I was ready for whatever is coming,' she told
him.

'And are you?' he asked curtly.

She flashed him a look. "The point is, are you?' she
coolly countered. 'Since you seem to believe that any-
thing to do with me and Stefan is deliberately engi-
neered to reflect badly on you.'

She was right and he knew it. A muscle flexed in his
jaw. Then he was forced to offer an amiable smile to
some friends who immediately accosted them. After that
it was other friends. Progress towards their main objec-
tive became a laboriously slow affair. With his hand
never leaving contact with her, Marco conversed lightly
with acquaintances while Antonia stood beside him,
eyes constantly looking around the steadily thickening
crowd in search of Stefan. But still he hadn't put in an
appearance.

What was he up to? Why was he piling on the tension
like this?

People began filtering off into the adjoining rooms.
With the smoothness of a man in no kind of hurry,
Marco manoeuvred them into doing the same.

Antonia held her breath, Marco's hand pressed her
just the bit closer to his side as they stepped through to
the main gallery. Together they paused, together they
took stock of what was presented—and together they
began to frown.

For there was nothing on these walls that could war-
rant the challenge with which Stefan had lured them
here—if you didn't count the evidence that Stefan had
seemingly found himself a new subject to occupy his
genius.

She was tall, she was dark, she was exquisitely dif-
ferent, and her rich African beauty could not have been
further removed from what had gone before her. The
long slender line of her body laid bare a sensuality that
curled around the senses, the silken quality of her skin
set fingers twitching with a need to reach out and touch.
But, as usual, with Stefan, it was her eyes that drew
you.

No hint of mirrors or ghosts anywhere, but a luxu-
rious darkness that seemed to hold all the secrets of the
universe.

Understanding came, trailing gentle fingertips over
her emotions in the heart-rippling realisation that here,
in these frames, was Stefan's salvation.

He had set himself free.

'Are you all right?' Marco asked gruffly.

'Yes,' she whispered. But he knew that she wasn't.
He could feel her fighting a battle with tears as they
walked from frame to frame. 'She's incredible, don't
you think?'

'Bellisima,' Marco quietly agreed. And he knew he
should be pleased by what he was seeing, but in truth
he wanted to wring Kranst's selfish neck for choosing
this way to tell her he had finally found someone else
who drew this depth of emotion from him.

'I presume by your response that you knew nothing
about her?'

'Not a thing,' she replied, having to swallow the tears
again.

'Maybe you should ask him,' he suggested, and drew
her attention to where Stefan Kranst was standing, not
far away, watching her responses with an intensity that
made Marco's blood boil.

Her head twisted round, her breath caught for a sec-
ond, then her slender waist was sliding away from his
hand. Without another word to him, she crossed the
room towards a man who had always held too much
power over her for Marco's peace of mind. Grimly he
watched her pause a step away, watched her head tilt
to one side as it tended to do when she asked a question.
He saw Stefan Kranst's handsome face break into a rak-
ish grin, and wanted to hit the self-obsessed bastard!

'Who is she?' was the question Antonia had put to
Stefan.

'My saviour,' Stefan had grinned.

'Her name?' she demanded.

'Tanya,' he provided.

'Tanya...' Antonia repeated, and let her gaze drift to
the nearest painting, where Tanya's smile held the rich
knowledge of all men's needs. 'It suits her,' she mur-
mured, then on a burst of soft laughter she went into
his arms. 'Oh, I'm so happy for you!' she cried.

Across the room, Marco turned away from that em-
brace to continue to view the painting in front of him
as if he had no problem at all with his woman falling
into her ex-lover's arms once again. Someone sidled up
beside him.

Of course it had to be Louisa. 'I do admire your
confidence in those two, Marco,' she drawled lightly.
'Now, if, for argument's sake, he belonged to me, I
would be over there scratching her eyes out by now.'

'But he doesn't belong to you—he belongs to her,'
he said, indicating the beautiful black woman whose
naked form exuded sexual contentment from every
gifted brushstroke. 'And Antonia,' he then added very
softly, 'belongs to me.'

With that he walked away, in no mood to play tit-
for-tat word games tonight. He wanted his woman back,
and he wanted her now!

'When do I meet her? Where is she?' Antonia was
demanding of Stefan.

'Back in London, hiding away from you,' he drawled
lazily. 'Just in case I was wrong about you, and you are
secretly in love with me.'

Catching her soft burst of laughter as he approached,
Marco also heard Antonia's amused reply. 'Of course
you told her that I will always love you?'

'Hello, Marco,' Stefan greeted, a trifle drily. 'Come
to claim Antonia?'

The man could read minds.

'We have to be leaving soon,' Marco answered
smoothly. 'Another engagement, I'm afraid,' he in-
vented with bland ease.

The moment he began speaking Antonia moved to
his side and slipped her hand into the crook of his arm.
She was making a point here, Marco recognised. And
it should feel good.

So why did he feel as if she was taking second best
by coming to him like this?

Irritation flicked to life. What the hell was he talking
about? He scorned his own crazy imagination. He had
never played second best to anyone in his life!

'Dare I ask the expert for an opinion?' Kranst re-
claimed his attention. His expression was slightly wry,
slightly challenging Marco to do his worst.

But Marco found he no longer wanted to play tit-for-
tat games with Kranst, either. He just wanted to get
Antonia somewhere private so he could make her forget
Stefan Kranst's name!

So, 'You must know you've done it again,' he said
easily. 'Have you sold the reproduction rights yet?'

'Still negotiating.' Stefan smiled. Then, "Thank you,
Marco,* he added seriously. 'Your opinion means a lot
to me.'

And to your reputation, Marco added silently.
Though anyone with eyes should be able to see that the
man was about to make his second killing here.

Glancing down, he found Antonia was smiling up at
him as if he had just bestowed the greatest accolade he
possibly could. It made him want to shake her for still
caring so much about Kranst's precious ego when it was
clear the man didn't give a damn about hers!

'It's time we were leaving,' he told her, wishing they
hadn't bothered to come here at all. The man was a
menace—to him and to Antonia!

'Before you do that,' Stefan Kranst inserted, looking
at Antonia, 'I have something for you, my darling, if
you remember...'

Beside him, Marco felt her stiffen. 'You mean this
isn't surprise enough?' she laughed, in a voice strapped
by strain.

'No.' The artist's smile was rueful. 'Special gifts
come in solid form.'

Marco frowned at the answer, because it wasn't true.
Not where Antonia was concerned. It was a lesson he
had learned himself only last week via the red Lotus.
Then he remembered Kranst's remark about the Mirror
Woman, felt his own tension rise up to meet Antonia's,
and realised that she had remembered a whole lot
sooner than he had done.

'I have it waiting in Rosetta's office,' Stefan Kranst
said smoothly, and turned away to stride purposefully
towards Rosetta Romano's private office.

It really left them with no choice but to follow. "This
had better be worth the build-up,' Marco muttered, un-
able to stop himself.

'I hope not,' Antonia mumbled in reply, which just
about said it all for both of them.

Rosetta Romano's office was a large white space of
modem stylism. The only thing, therefore, that stood
out in the room, was the giant black easel holding a
large frame covered by a piece of fine black muslin.

The moment she saw it Antonia released a gasp of
recognition, 'Stefan...no!' she shot out.

But Stefan was not willing to listen. He was already
standing beside the easel and, with an agonising
smoothness he trailed away the fine sheet covering.

Total silence arrived in starbursts of pain-bright rec-
ognition. Antonia began to tremble. Marco simply left
her standing there and moved on legs suddenly in dan-
ger of collapsing to stand right in front of the painting.

It could have been a copy of the Mirror Woman.
Certainly it was the same balcony, the same morning
half-light touching that same sensual hint of gold to her
silk-smooth skin. And it was certainly Antonia standing
there naked, looking back over her shoulder in much
the same way as the Mirror Woman did.

But it wasn't the same painting. For this was no mir-
ror reflection, there was no emptiness in her beautiful
eyes. Instead they were filled with the truth.

Antonia was held paralysed by exposure, static eyes
fixed on Marco's hardening profile, static heart threat-
ening to burst in her breast. She wanted to run, but she
couldn't. She wanted to say something in her defence,
but she couldn't do that because the evidence was so
terribly damning.

Stefan came to stand beside her. His hand took hold
of her hand and gave it a comforting squeeze. But she
didn't feel comforted. Standing here watching the man
she loved grimly coming to terms with the knowledge
that she had been deceiving him filled her with the kind
of dread that made every nerve-end she possessed
scream in agony.

'I can't believe you've done this without my ap-
proval,' she managed to breathe out frailly.

'If I had asked, you wouldn't have given it,' Stefan
gently replied.

'But why have you done it?' It seemed such a be-
trayal from the one person in this world she trusted
completely.

'It was time he knew,' he said simply. 'You've let it
go on too long. You must know that by now, my dar-
ling.'

Knowing it and wanting this were two separate is-
sues! 'You should not have done it,' she whispered, and
felt her eyes start to bum as Marco reached out to touch
the painting. A long finger gently grazed across a per-
fectly formed, blemish-free shoulder. Antonia felt that
graze as if he'd reached out and touched her. Response
shuddered through her on an electric spasm.

'I'll never forgive you,' she told Stefan, and stepped
away from him with the intention of going to this other
man who was so very important to her—

Only to freeze yet again, when Marco chose the same
moment to turn.

His face looked as if it had been chiselled out of
marble. 'You didn't paint this.' He honed his cold eyes
directly on Stefan.

It was a clearly denned accusation. "There speaks the
voice of an expert,' Stefan smiled. Then, 'No,' he ad-
mitted. "This was—'

'Mine,' Antonia put in unequivocally. 'It belongs to
me!' She looked at Marco for understanding. 'It isn't
even Stcfan's to give to me! I own it! No one is sup-
posed to—'

Marco's hard-eyed narrowed look silenced her: 'Who
painted it?' he demanded.

'Does it matter?' she begged. 'It has never been put
on public display and it never will be, Marco! I
never—'

'I didn't ask if it had been shown,' he cut in. 'I asked
you who the hell painted it!'

His fury was spectacular. Antonia drew back a step
in dismay. 'I think you're missing the point, Marco,'
Stefan put in quickly. *I didn't show you this to—*

It happened so quickly that Stefan had no time to
react to it. With a smoothness of movement that gave
no indication whatsoever of what he was intending to
do, Marco took two strides and, with a lightning move
of his long lean body, he floored Stefan with a punch
to his jaw.

With a grunt, Stefan landed in a sprawl in front of
him. Antonia's cry as she lurched towards them filled
his ears. 'Why did you do that!' she choked as she bent
down beside Stefan.

'For messing with your life. For messing with my
life!' he ground out violently, then just turned and
strode out of the door. .

Antonia watched him go with her heart in her eyes.
On a groan, Stefan sat up and put a hand to his jaw.
He was shaking his head as if he couldn't quite believe
he had allowed that to happen.

'What have you done to me?' Antonia sobbed out.

'Fulfilled one of your dearest wishes and got him to
punch my lights out,' Stefan very drily replied.

Not the least bit in the mood for his kind of dry
humour, she came upright then bent to help him get up.
'Has he hurt you?' she asked.

'Don't sound so sympathetic.' He mocked her frosty
enquiry. 'Split my lip, that's all,' he then answered, only
to really infuriate her by suddenly beginning to laugh!

'Stop it!' she choked. 'How dare you laugh at a time
like this? What have you done to me, Stefan? Why have
you done it?' The tears began to swim as she stared at
the closed office door. 'He's never going to forgive me
for this. You do know that,' she told him thickly. 'He's
even left without me!'

'Not that man,' Stefan stated confidently. 'Give me
a minute to put some ice on this, and we'll go out there
and find him. I promise you,' he assured her pained
white expression, 'he's going to be there...'

But Marco didn't want to be found for having
walked out on one ugly scene, he now found himself
standing outside Rosetta Romano's door, flexing his
abused fist and staring directly at the looming threat of
yet another scene.

His mother had arrived. God alone knew where she
had come from—and God alone knew why, when he'd
believed her safely ensconced in Tuscany. But there she
was, holding court in the middle of the ante-room sur-
rounded by a host of delighted old friends and acquain-
tances.

In the black mood he was in, he actually contem-
plated pretending he hadn't seen her and getting the hell
out of there before she saw him.

Only he was not leaving without Antonia, he deter-
mined, with a grimness that promised a glimpse at hell
for someone. And it took only a thin sliver of common
sense to get through his anger, to tell him that he
couldn't avoid speaking to his own mother, for good-
ness' sakel

But a meeting between her and Antonia? His blood
ran cold at the very idea of it. It was a sensation that
forced him to work hard at pulling a smooth mask down
on his bubbling anger and then striking out towards his
mother with the grim intention of getting the mother-
son reunion out of the way before Antonia decided to
put in an appearance with her famous ex-lover in tow!

But lady luck was not working in Marco's favour
tonight. The room was pretty crowded with Milan's
best. People who more or less knew each other on first-
name terms. Isabella Bellini was known and liked by
many. Her son even found an amused smile as he ap-

proached and saw just how many people were gathered
around her slender form.

She saw him coming, and her lovely face broke into
a welcoming smile. His smile became a rakish grin as
he took this beautiful, delicate creature he adored into
his arms and let her shower kisses all over his face.

Hands replaced kisses, followed by remarks to the
crowd on how handsome he was, how cruel he was to
his mother for not returning her calls. It was the Italian
way. He accepted it and even enjoyed it. His apologies
were profuse, his enquiries about his father sincere.

*He is having a good week,' his mother informed
him—and the smiling circle. 'So he threw me out and
told me not to come back for at least two days. He says
I fuss too much, but in truth,' she confided, 'he plans
to play cards, drink wine and gamble with his friends
without me around to disapprove.'

The laughter was warm and appreciative. From the
comer of his eye Marco saw the door to Rosetta
Romano's office open; his skin began to prickle.

Isabella looked back at her son. 'And this one,' she
announced, 'cannot even find the time in his busy life
to answer his mother when she calls to him! I get his
housekeeper,' she informed her audience.

Antonia was approaching him from his right. She
looked pale, she looked anxious. She had no idea what
she was going to walk into.

'I get the message service,' his mother was continu-
ing. 'I have to ring his friends to discover where he
might be this evening!' Marco smiled the expected rue-
ful smile, and wondered which friend it was who had
dropped him in this mess.

Antonia had now come to within a few paces of his
right. Beside her was Stefan Kranst, wearing a bruise
on his lip and a crooked smile. It was decision time,
Marco accepted heavily. He either drew Antonia to-
wards him, introduced her to his mother and risked of-
fending his mother's outdated ideas on what was ac-
ceptable in polite society, or he ignored Antonia
standing there and offended her. It was a lousy, choice
to have to decide.

Someone arrived at his left side, diverting his
mother's attention. Her face broke into a beatific smile.
*Ah, Louisa,' she greeted. "There you are! And looking
so beautiful, as always. I was just telling everyone how
I had to call you up to discover where my own son
would be tonight...*

Louisa. It had to be Louisa, Marco noted grimly. The
knowledge tipped the balance of his decision away from
his mother. For no one had the right to try manipulating
either him or his life, and maybe it was about time that
his mother and Louisa realised that?

Louisa was being welcomed with the usual kisses
from his mother when Marco turned the half-inch it
required to catch Antonia's gaze. He saw the uncer-
tainty there, the knowledge that she had recognised'
whom it was holding centre stage. His heart turned over.
She was so beautiful. So much his woman, no matter
what secrets she had been keeping from him, that it was
suddenly no decision at all to smile and hold out his
arm in invitation for her to come to him.

Her relief shone like the diamond at her lovely throat
as she took the final irrevocable step which brought her
beneath the protection of his arm and into the smiling
circle.

Slender-boned, exquisitely turned out in matt-black
crepe, her satin-black hair sleek to her beautiful head,
Isabella Bellini was just emerging from her embrace
with Louisa when she observed this little interplay—
and her eyes began to cool.

'Mother,' Marco said formally. 'I would like you to
meet—'

As if he hadn't spoken, and Antonia wasn't there,
Isabella Bellini simply turned her back on them. The
deadening silence that followed was profound.

It was such a blatantly deliberate act, that it was all
Antonia could do to remain standing there, with her
stinging eyes lowered, hiding the deep gouge of humil-
iation that was tearing into the very fabric her pride was
made of.

While Marco emulated a pillar of stone.

How many people actually witnessed what had just
happened, Antonia didn't know. But it really didn't take
an audience for her to understand that the cuckoo had
just been devastatingly exposed.

The hum of conversation suddenly rushed into over-
drive as people attempted to cover up the dreadful mo-
ment. Someone gently touched her arm. It was Stefan.
"That—' he growled, 'was unforgivable.'

She began to shake. Stefan glanced angrily at Marco,
who still hadn't moved a single muscle. Then, 'Come
on,' he murmured gruffly. 'Let's go back to
Rosetta's—'

'No,' a hard voice countermanded. And with it Marco
broke free from his stone-like stasis. 'We are leaving,'
he announced.

The hand tightened on her shoulder. Antonia could
feel the anger in its biting grip and clenched the muscles
beneath it.

'I'm coming with you,' Stefan declared, still gripping
Antonia's arm. 'I have no wish to—'

'No.' Once again Marco cut him short. 'We appre-
ciate your concern, but this is not your problem.'

'It is when it's Antonia who has been insulted,'
Stefan said angrily.

'And my mother who did the insulting,' Marco coldly
pointed out.

'Excuse me,' Antonia whispered, and broke free from
both of them. She needed to get away from here, and
she needed to do it now. Fighting tears, fighting the
crawling worms of humiliation, fighting to keep her
head up high as she went, she walked quickly for the
stairs.

If she'd cared to look back, she would have seen that
Marco's mother was already feeling the discomfort of
what she had done. She was touching her son's arm,
trying to get his attention. But Marco didn't even offer
her a glance as he strode after Antonia. His hand found
her waist and clamped her close. Together they started
down the stairs. In her haste Antonia tripped over her
own spindly shoes. Marco grimly held her upright, and
kept her moving while the throb of his anger pulsed all
around her like the heartbeat pound of a drum.

They reached the plate-glass door at the same time
as the doorman pulled it open. Neither realised the door
was being opened to allow someone outside to come in.
There was a bump of bodies.

'Seme signor—signorina,' a deep, quietly modulated
voice apologised.

It was automatic to glance up. Automatic to attempt
the polite reply to the apology. Antonia looked into the
stranger's face, he looked into hers, and any attempt to
speak was thoroughly suffocated beneath yet another
thick layer of appalled dismay.

Black hair spiked with silver, grey eyes with a hint
of green. As tall as Marco, but more slender than
Marco, he was a man in the autumn years of his life.

Still, she knew exactly who it was she was staring
at—and, worse, he knew that she knew.

'Madonna mia,' he breathed in shaken consternation.
'Anastasia.'

Anastasia... It was too much in one short evening
for Antonia to deal with. It was all she could do to
shrink back into the only solid thing she could rely on
right now.

Marco might be immersed in the red tide of anger,
but he saw the exchanged looks, heard the name shud-
der from the other man's lips. Knew there was yet
something else going on here that he wasn't privy to,
and felt his anger switch from his mother and back to
the woman now shrinking into his side.

'You are mistaken,' he clipped at the other man.
'Please excuse us,' he added coldly, then got them the
hell out of there before anything else smashed into
them.

Outside, the Quadrilatero was busy with window-
shoppers. Marco's car was parked in a side street not
far away. Holding on to his temper until he got them
there was a case of clamping his mouth shut and saying
nothing.

Opening the passenger door, he helped her into the
plush black leather seat, then squatted down to lock
home her seat belt. She didn't seem to notice. With yet
another lash of anger, he grabbed her chin and made
her look at him. Her eyes were almost black, her skin
paste-white and her lovely mouth completely bloodless.
She looked as fragile as a piece of fine Venetian glass,
likely to shatter without careful handling.

But he didn't feel like handling anything carefully.

In fact, he wanted to shatter her into little pieces so he
could reach the real woman, because this one had be-
come a complete stranger to him!

With a harsh sigh he released her chin, stood up and
closed the car door. He got in beside her, then fired the
engine. Jaw locked, teeth clenched, he set them moving,
bullying his way into the nose-to-tail traffic clogging up
Milan's crazy one-way road system, then took an
amount of pleasure in doing the same thing in his quest
to forge them the most direct route home-
Car horns blared at him in protest. Headlights flashed.
Abuse was thrown at him in colourful Italian. He didn't
care. He was so angry! Angry with Kranst and his little
party piece. With his mother and her unforgivable be-
haviour! And he was angry with Antonia for allowing
him to believe the painting he had in his apartment was
of her?

And then there was the man in the gallery doorway,
he added to his long list of grievances because, despite
appearing otherwise, he'd recognised him. His name
was Anton Gabrielli, a wealthy industrialist turned re-
cluse, who had rarely been seen in public since his wife
died several years ago.

And he might have called Antonia Anastasia, but the
error had been irrelevant. He knew her! And, more to
the point, Antonia had recognised him!

'How do you know Anton Gabrielli?' he demanded.
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 get-
ting 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 sec-
ond 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 morel 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 bed-
room 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 com-
plete standstill.

CHAPTER SEVEN

'—WHAT the hell are you doing?' he raked out incred-
ulously.

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 1-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 ex-
pression 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

106

everywhere. Silly things like a couple of sets of under-
wear, 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 in-
side, 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—beau-
tiful 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 land of hu-
mour, 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 ex-
tended, 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 ac-
tually....'

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 re-
ally 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 wom-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 mat-
ter to anyone else that the image they see isn't the grue-
some 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 any-
thing 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 whis-
pered. '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, 'elite marries elite. Darling Mamma ex-
pects it.'

'Leave my mother out of this,' he rasped back an-
grily:

'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, Tm 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 bas-
tard,' 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 con-
fronted 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 ofyou!' 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, hope-
less, 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 griev-
ances, 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 tn^

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 dam 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 look-
ing 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 leam
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 some-
thing 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 thor-
oughly that he hadn't demanded some answers about
him? And there was Anton Gabrielli lurking in the shad-
ows.

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.

He walked over to his desk and stood there making
no attempt to pick up the receiver. His mother? he won-
dered. Wanting to voice her disapproval in more detail?
Kranst, wanting to know if Antonia was still alive?

He let his answering service take over. By the time
it had silenced the telephone ring he had closed the door
on the study. He didn't want to talk to anyone, and he
certainly didn't want to listen to them prose all
over him.

What he wanted was Antonia. But not yet, he grimly
reiterated. And not at all tonight, until all of these ugly
feelings rattling around inside him had been given a
chance to calm down.

Antonia's insides were shaking, the fight to hold back
the tears strangling the ability to breathe. Without really
knowing what she was doing, she walked over to the
bed and began tugging at the back zip to her dress as
if it was perfectly natural to undress—when in actual
fact she should be getting away from here. Not hiding
behind a locked door which only extended the agony!

The zip snagged between her shoulderblades. She
struggled with it for a while, with her head lowered and
her eyes concentrated on the diamond at her throat. The
zip wouldn't budge. It seemed a kind of justice, after
the night she had just had, that it should do so at a point
where she had no hope of wriggling out of the dress.
On a trembling sigh of frustration she diverted her fin-
gers to the necklace, removed it, then just stood there
staring at nothing.

Had he really had the gall to offer to marry her, then
stand there looking as if he'd just committed a mortal
sin?

'Oh.' She choked on a tear that managed to escape.
I should hate him. I should hate him for saying it the
way he did, she told herself. But it wasn't hate she was
feeling, it was hurt, because he hadn't meant it. He had
merely been determined to grab the higher ground in aa
argument which made little sense to begin with! What
a dreadful night, she sighed out bleakly. What a terrible,
eye-opening, miserable night.

Beginning with Stefan springing that painting on
them without warning. Then moving on to Marco's
mother's neat little snub that was still managing to
crease her up with pained mortification.

And, if all of that wasn't enough, she had to come
face to face with Anton Gabrielli. A shiver ripped
through her as something hard and cold turned pain to
anger. How he dared to even whisper her mother's name
after what he had done to her, she would never know!

But to do it in front of Marco of all people, was the
ultimate sin she would never forgive Gabrielli for. He
had been the final ruin of everything. He was the reason
she had to leave here or risk the kind of scandal Marco
would never forgive her for.

Did Anton Gabrielli know? Had he guessed by now
that he had just come face to face with his daughter?

Then—no. She denied that. She was not his daughter.
His was merely the seed which had formed the base of
her conception. She'd never known him, never met him
and didn't want to. In fact, she would rather remain the
notorious Mirror Woman than lay claim to a father who
had deserted her mother as soon as he'd known she was
pregnant.

And what immortal words had he used to do it? 'Men
like me don't marry their mistresses. It is not your func-
tion.'

God, she hated him.

Therefore she should hate Marco too, since he had
used similar words to her not that long ago. What would
his mother say if she knew about Anton Gabrielli? 'The
sins of the mother,' would be oh, so appropriate. The
same looks, the same paintings, the same attraction to
tall dark handsome Italian billionaires!

Bitterness welled. Tears still cut her throat in .two.

She turned for the door with the intention of keeping to
her original decision and just getting away from here!

Yet when she reached the door she just couldn't do
it! Oh, what was to become of her if she couldn't even
bring herself to walk away now, when there was noth-
ing left for her here? Nothing!

'I'm here,' Marco had said to her.

Wrapping her arms around her body, she hugged that
gruffly spoken statement to her for all she was worth as
her restless feet took her the other way, over to the huge
floor-to-ceiling windows which gave access out onto the
terrace.

Sliding one of them open, she stepped outside in th&
vague hopes that some fresh air would clear her con-
fusion. But it was stifling out here after the air-
conditioned interior. Still, rather than go back inside,
she moved over to one of the sun loungers, slipped out
of her shoes, sat down and curled her knees up so she
could rest her chin on them.

The terrace was a very impressive part of the apart-
ment, which wrapped round two full sides of the build-
ing. When Marco threw one of his extravagant parties
all the doors would be opened so ever}' room leading
in from the terrace could be used for one function or
another. And the sound of music and life and laughter
would follow you everywhere.

But tonight it was more silent than she'd ever known
it. Even Milan's constant traffic way down below her
seemed to have stopped running.

Or maybe it's me who's stopped, Antonia mused •
bleakly. The way fate had come along and hit her with
just about everything tonight, it could be its way of
making her stand still and face reality..

But she didn't want reality, she thought with a sigh
that sent her brow onto her knees. She wanted things
back the way they used to be—lies, uncertainties and
all...

CHAPTER EIGHT

IT WAS around two o'clock in the morning when Marco
slid open the door to the terrace and stepped outside.
Behind him lay the rumpled bed he had just given up
on. He couldn't sleep. The bed felt strange without
Antonia sharing it with him. So he'd pulled on a thin
black robe and gone to the kitchen to raid the fridge
before deciding to come out here to eat his sandwich,
drink a glass of soothing red wine—and brood.

Making for one of the loungers, he adjusted the back-
rest into its upright position, sat down, then stretched
out his long legs with an accompanying sigh.

It was a hot humid night, but anything was preferable
to that bed without Antonia in it with him. In fact, he
might Just spend the rest of the night out here.

It was either this or he convinced Antonia to open
her door for him. And since he'd lasted this long with-
out giving in to that particular urge, he could last until
dawn, he told himself, and made his shoulders more
comfortable against the cushions, took a sip at the wine,
then closed his eyes.

It was peaceful, he noticed. Pleasant, if you didn't
count the heat. And the darkness was acting like a
shroud, holding at bay all of those things he didn't want
to think about.

Shame a soft sound had to disturb him. In fact he
would have ignored it if there hadn't been something
very familiar about it, like one of those sensual soft

119

sighs Antonia had a habit of making when she was
sleeping.

Opening his eyes again, he turned his head.

She was less than ten feet away, lying on her side
with her back towards him. If it hadn't been for the
oatmeal colour of the lounger cushions he wouldn't
have seen her through the darkness, but the black dress
outlined her slender shape.

The muscles around his heart contracted, knocking
its even rhythm onto a different beat. Getting up, he put
the plate and the wineglass down on a nearby table then
began walking towards her with the silence of bare feet.
Rounding the end of the lounger, he stood for a moment
gazing down at her. There was a painfully vulnerable
look about the way she was lying on her side, with her
arms crossed over her breasts and her head turned
downwards so her hair covered her lovely face.

Squatting down beside her, he gently lifted her hair
up and brushed the silken spirals over her shoulder. The
first thing he noticed was how hot she felt to the touch;
the next was the evidence of tears on her cheeks.

His heart pulled a different trick by actually hurting.
He didn't like to think she had been alone out here
crying. He didn't like to know that she had probably
been crying because of him.

She must have sensed his presence because her eye-
lashes fluttered, her soft mouth parted on another one
of those sighs. Then her eyelids lifted to reveal sleep-
darkened beautiful eyes—and she smiled at him.

When had she ever opened her eyes and not smiled
at him like this? Marco asked himself painfully. And
those eyes were awash with love for him. Always love.
Why did he find it so impossible to return the words?
Because he felt the emotion—Dio, he felt it. In fact he
had been feeling it for ever, only he'd refused to ac-
knowledge it to himself.

A set of slender white fingers came up to touch his
cheek. They moved to his eyebrows then dropped, to
run the length of his half-smiling mouth. For a man who
had been used since birth to having his face lovingly
touched like this, this was touching like no other touch-
ing he had ever experienced. It was like being anointed
with the sweetest blessing ever.

Lifting his hand to capture those fingers, he made his
own loving gesture by pressing a kiss to her palm. Her
eyes flooded with warmth and his began to gleam. They
had always been able to make love with the smallest of
intimacies. It was what made their relationship so spe-
cial.

'Hi,' he murmured softly. 'What are you doing sleep-
ing out here?'

It was then that she realised where she was—and,
more to the point, why she was out here. The hand was
withdrawn, along with the smile and fhe love. Looking
away from him, she slid her feet to the floor so she
could sit up. It was his cue to stand up and give her
some space, but he was damned if he was going to
withdraw now he had her within touching distance. So
he remained squatting there in front of her while she
made a thing of finger-combing her hair and trying, he
supposed, to regroup her defences.

•What time is it?' she asked.

Irritation sparked to life. What did it matter what time
it was? 'You didn't answer my question,' he prompted.

"The zip caught on my dress,' she replied, as if that
should explain everything.

But it didn't. 'And you couldn't come to me for help
with it?'

Of course she couldn't, and her expression told him
that. On a sigh he stood upright. So did she, then went
to move around him, but he stopped her with a hand on
her shoulder.

'Don't go, cara,' he said. 'At least not until you have
asked me what I am doing out here.'

The prompt made her hesitate. She glanced up at him
warily. He smiled a wryly self-mocking smile. "The bed
was too empty without you in it beside me,' he con-
fessed. He felt the tension easing 'out of her shoulder
and added huskily, 'Come back there with me?'

She wanted to. He saw it written in her eyes before
she lowered them again with a small shake of her head.
'I don't think it would be a good idea,' she murmured.

'Because we argued?' he said. 'We always argue. It
is a part of who we are.'

But this was different. He knew it was different. And
by the shake of her hair, Antonia did too. 'Too much
has happened...'

'Nothing we cannot work out, cara mia,' he gently
certified. And if she shook her head again, he swore he
would use other methods to persuade her!

She didn't shake her head. 'I don't want to talk about
it—'

'I never mentioned talking,' he murmured drily.

Her eyes came back to his. 'I don't want to do that
either,' she flashed.

That assumption earned her a lazy grin—until he felt
her begin to tense up again. 'Sleep,' he offered. 'Where
we both prefer to be. In our bed, curled around each
other. Nothing more, nothing less. What do you say,
cara, hmm?'

What did she say? Antonia asked herself wistfully.
She said yes to him because she had never been able to

say no. And she was tired and miserable, so she might
as well be miserable curled up against him than mis-
erable out here on her own, she justified her weakness.

So with a small nod of her head she gave him his
answer. His arm came about her shoulders. It felt so
good to feel it there that she released a sigh, gave in
and leaned closer. They didn't speak again as they
walked the terrace towards their bedroom. Marco was
keeping silent because he had got what he wanted and
didn't want to chance spoiling it. Antonia was silent
because she knew she should not be letting him this
close again, yet couldn't bring herself to turn away.

He was her weakness. He always would be.

The first thing she noticed when they stepped through
the open window was the room had been swept clean
of her clothes and suitcase. The next was the rumpled
bed, which told its own story.

Still maintaining the silence which this short truce
had been built upon, when they reached the bed Marco
turned her so he could deal with the snagged zipper on
her dress. Her hair was in the way. She reached up to
gather the silken tresses over one shoulder. It was as
dark in the bedroom as it had been out on the terrace.
The dress was black, the zipper was black, so it took a
little while for him to untangle the teeth from the
snagged piece of fabric. By the time he sent the zip
sliding free Marco had a feeling Antonia had stopped
breathing. And the first moment she could she stepped
away from him, to remove the dress herself.

He grimaced, and contained the urge to finish a job
he had always found a pleasure. Instead he turned his
attention to straightening out the crumpled evidence of
his restless hours alone in here. When he turned back
to her again the dress had gone, to reveal black silk
underwear that did wonderful things to her pale skin.
And, though he couldn't be sure in the darkness, he had
a suspicion she was blushing, which made him frown,
because he could not remember a time that she'd ever
been shy in front of him, other than the first time they'd
made love. And then, if he hadn't known better, he'd
have sworn he'd been her first ever lover.

But there was worse to come when she actually tried
to get into the bed without removing anything else. The
fault of those paintings? His mother? Or was it his fault
that she wanted to hide what she had always been so
comfortable with?

'No,' he said. Then, 'No,' again, with a completely
different meaning placed in the word. The first had been
a protest, the second a plea.

When she hesitated, he used the moment to step be-
hind her and unfasten her bra strap. Black silk fell away
from pale satin flesh, her beautiful breasts were set free.
She removed the rest herself without comment then
slipped between the sheets—all without once letting
him see her face.

Grimly he stripped off his robe and joined her. In
silence he drew her into the curve of his body. She
settled as she always did, but he could feel the guard
she had placed on herself that was stopping her from
melting against him.

The urge to say something got the better of him, even
at the risk of causing yet another scene. 'I don't like to
fight with you,' he admitted as he nuzzled his lips into
the scented flow of her hair.

'I know,' she replied. And she did, he realised. He
found it rather disturbing to have to admit that she knew
him a whole lot better than he actually knew her. 'But
this changes nothing, Marco,' she obviously felt com-
pelled to add.

Was she talking about leaving him? On that dark
thought, one of his hands found her breast, one of his
legs hooked over hers to keep her close, with the curve
of her lower body nestling into the cradle of his hips.
*Go to sleep,' he said on a heavy sigh, while willing
himself not to challenge that final statement and just
take his own advice and go to sleep.

It was a crazy idea. You didn't sleep when you'd both
been through the emotional mill as they had tonight.
You didn't sleep when it was all still churning round in
your head.

And you didn't sleep when the woman in your-arms
was implying that she intended to leave you.

What you did was move closer to that same woman.
You let your hand increase its pressure on what it was
holding. You buried your face in the sweet scent of her
hair.

Beneath his palm he felt the tightening of her nipple,
lower down, his own natural response caused the mus-
cles in her body to flex sensually. He allowed his thumb
to replace his palm and began a slow circling of that
pretty rosebud tip. Her pulse began to quicken, her
breathing altered pace. On a muffled groan he nuzzled
deeper into silken tresses until he found her nape.

Her response was to twist around until she was facing
him. They eyes met. He knew what his were saying,
but hers were still trying to fight it.

'You don't play fair!' she protested.

'Grazie,' he replied, as if she had just paid him a
great compliment, and claimed her mouth with a kiss
aimed to kill any kind of argument.

What followed was an in-depth demonstration as to

why what they had was too special to throw away. It
was hot and it was good, and as his body hardened with
masculine arousal hers began to soften to a sensual pli-
ancy that invited any intimacy.

She was beautiful. He adored her. No other woman
had ever made him feel this deeply. He kissed every
sweet sensational inch of her until she gave up trying
to hate what he was doing and, on a helpless sigh, began
to join in. What she found she couldn't reach with her
mouth, she touched with tender knowing fingers. By the
time he took final possession she was his entirely; there
was no doubt about it. He watched her build towards
her climax, he watched her reach and tumble into it,
and he held her there. With gritted teeth and burning
loins he held her, held her in magical suspension for as
long as he could possibly manage it. Only when she
eventually opened her eyes to look at him in dazed
astonishment did he surrender and give her back what
she had just given him.

Himself. He gave himself.

It really was the perfect moment to glide past every-
thing that had gone before it and just be content to drift
into sleep on the soft cloud of knowledge that neither
of them was going to throw this away.

Lying there, with her cheek resting in the hollow of
his shoulder and her hand covering the steady beat of
his heart, escape into sleep was certainly all that
Antonia wanted to do.

But Marco didn't agree. He was basking in self-
confidence again, and that set his brain working. 'Tell
me what Anton Gabrielli is to you,' he said, and very
effectively shattered the peace.

'You just can't stop yourself, can you?' she snapped,
pulling away. from him to sit up with a sigh.

'I don't like mysteries,' he explained. 'And you knew
the man, cara, no matter what you try to say.'

Knew him? A short laugh accompanied the weary
shake of her head. Well, she mused bleakly, did she tell
him and get it over with, or was this one secret better
kept to herself? *My mother was his mistress years ago.'
She went for the compromise with part of the truth. 'He
set her up in an apartment in Naples, visited her regu-
larly, and took her out with his friends. He adored her
on the face of it—but forgot to tell her he was married.
When she found out, she left him.' That seemed the
simplest way of saying it.

'You were around to witness this?' Quiet though it
was, huskily gentle though it was, Antonia knew what
he was thinking.

Learn by example.

'Yes, I was around,' she answered, while her fingers
plucked at pale blue sheeting. Then, with a toss of her
head, she made herself look at him. 'So you see, it was
just another case of mistaken identity,' she explained
bitterly.

"Then we will make it a priority tomorrow to correct
the mistake.'

It was just so typically arrogant of him. 'Are you
planning to put an ad in the newspaper, Marco, an-
nouncing to the world that your mistress is not the
Mirror Woman? And do you honestly think anyone will
believe you if you do?'

'We can at least try to set the record straight.'

'For what purpose?' she asked. 'To make you feel
better? Your mother? Me? Don't you see? It doesn't
matter who the model is; people will always look at me
and see the same woman! I can't change that. I look
like her! In every way but name I could be her! Either
you have to learn to accept it or we have nothing left
here to—'

Finn hands toppled her back down to him. 'Shut up,'
he gritted. 'I know what you were going to say, so just
shut up.''

'You started it,* she sighed.

'And I am finishing it!' And he did, by launching
into a second seduction.

It was all very fierce, intense and possessive, but sex
didn't solve everything. Okay, so in bed they were as
compatible as any two human beings could be. But out
of it?

Nothing could change. He wanted to fix what
couldn't be fixed. Which was why she hadn't told him
the full truth about Anton Gabrielli. She might love
Marco, but some secrets you could only trust to some-
one who would love you enough not to care what you
had to tell them.

And Marco didn't love her that way.

This time her drift from satiation to sleep was al-
lowed to happen uninterrupted. But Marco lay awake,
frowning into the darkness until dawn eventually began
to filter into the room, when, carefully untangling him-
self from Antonia, he slid out of the bed.

Two hours later he was in a helicopter heading for
his parents' Tuscany home, intent on an interview with
his father. And Antonia was just awakening to find the
place beside her empty—if you didn't count the written
note waiting on the pillow.

'Don't worry mee, cara,' it said. 'Be here when I re-
turn.'

Don't worry me, she read again. Be here...

Such emotive words, she thought sadly. But what did
they tell her, except that he didn't want her to go? They
didn't solve anything. They didn't put right what his
mother had done to her self-esteem. She would have to
be really brazen to go amongst his friends after last
night's public humiliation and boldly outface their new
perception of her.

And she wasn't that brazen. Though she didn't think
Marco would understand if she tried to explain it to him.
He would probably think she was angling after another
marriage proposal. When in actual fact the one he'd
given her had been more than enough for her.

So was she going to *be here' when he got back?

Her indecisive sigh told its own story. She just
couldn't make up her mind. To go was going to hurt.
To stay was going to hurt. Her problem was deciding
which one was going to hurt more.

Getting out of bed, she showered and dressed in a
simple dusky-mauve skirt and a cerise top, then went
to search out Cariotta to see if she knew where Marco
had gone.

It was Saturday, after all, and she had rarely known
him to work on Saturdays. He preferred to laze around
and do as little as possible.

Cariotta was just placing a pot of coffee, a bowl of
freshly sliced fruit and some toast down on the table for
her when she arrived in the sunny breakfast room.

No, she didn't know where Marco had gone.

The smell of the toast made Antonia realise that with
last night's drama she hadn't eaten a scrap since late
afternoon yesterday and she was hungry, which was a
much simpler problem to solve.

Or was it that she didn't really want to look for the
answer to where Marco had gone? she wondered as she
sat down. He'd threatened to go and see Anton
Gabrielli. He also had to smooth things out with his
mother. Who else? she asked herself. Confront Stefan
with what she had told him? Demand his money back
for the Mirror Woman'! The list could go on and on.

Any interview between Marco and Anton Gabrielli
did not sit comfortably with her, although the man could
only tell Marco more or less what she had already said.
she attempted to reassure herself.

As for an interview with his mother—the outcome of
that depended entirely on which one of them was the
more committed to his or her offended senses. Either
way, it did not promise to be a pleasant conversation.
Nor did it sit comfortably with her that she was the
cause of dissension between mother and son.

Then there was Stefan. Annoyingly unpredictable
Stefan. who was likely to say anything if Marco pushed
hard enough. And, since he knew just about everything
about her, it was yet another confrontation she would
prefer didn't take place.

Which leaves you with what? she asked herself as
she poured a second coffee. All of these people dis-
cussing you as if you didn't have a voice of your own?
When all it would take is for you to face the man and
tell him everything, warts and all, then stand back and
see what the full truth brings you back by return.

Maybe she would. Maybe she would wait around af-
ter all, do just that, and tell Marco everything.

Cariotta appeared. 'A Signer Gabrielli is in the foyer,
signorina, she informed her. 'He is asking if you can
spare him a few minutes of your time?'

Signor Gabrielli. Her stomach turned over. The cof-
fee suddenly lost flavour. He couldn't know—could he?
No, she told herself firmly. He couldn't know. He was
here to ask about Anastasia, probably. Wanting to find
out how his ex-mistress had faired in the twenty-five
years since they'd last met!

Well, she was ready to tell him that, Antonia re-
solved, and came to her feet. 'Let him come up and
show him into the small sitting room, Carlotta, if you
please.'

The sheer formality other words set the housekeeper
frowning. The way Antonia's face had suddenly turned
so cold caused a hesitation before Carlotta turned away
without saying whatever had been on her mind.

Alone again, Antonia made herself sit down, made
herself sip at the coffee and eat a piece of toast. And
she made herself ready for a meeting that was coming
twenty-five years too late.

CHAPTER NINE

HE WAS wearing a dark suit, white shirt and dark tie.
And Antonia's first impression as she stepped into the
room was—stiff. In the single grainy newspaper cutting
she had of him he didn't look stiff. He looked young
and vital—very much as Marco looked.

But that had been taken twenty years ago. In twenty
years maybe cynicism with life could change Marco
into this man's image. Though she hoped to goodness
that it didn't, she thought with a distinct shiver.

'Good morning, signor,' she greeted him in cool
English. 'I believe you wanted to see me?'

Gracious, polite, giving no hint that she knew any-
thing at all about him. She was leaving it up to him to
give away as much—or as little—as he knew about her.

He didn't return the greeting. In fact he didn't do
anything but narrow his eyes and look her over like
something in a specimen jar. Her nerve-ends began to
tighten. He had a face cast from iron and a thin-lipped
mouth that appeared to have forgotten how to smile.
Already predisposed to dislike him, what she was feel-
ing bouncing back from him gave her no reason to alter
that view.

'You are Anastasia's daughter,' he eventually an-
nounced, as if he'd needed that detailed scrutiny to
make absolutely sure before he committed himself to
the statement.

'Yes,' she confirmed. 'Is it about my mother that you
wish to see me?'

132

He shifted his stance. It wasn't by much but it was
enough for her to know that he was intensely uncom-
fortable at being here. 'Si,' he replied. 'And—no,' he
added. 'By your response, I have to assume that you
know about me?'

'Your affair with my mother? Yes.' She saw no rea-
son to hide it.

He nodded in acknowledgement. 'It was perhaps un-
fortunate that we should meet as we did last night.'

Unfortunate? 'I think I shocked you,' she allowed.
'And I'm sorry for doing that.'

His eyes contained a distinctly cynical glint at her
apology. 'Until I saw you I believed the Stefan Kranst
paintings were your mother. But then,' he said curtly,
'I did not know that you existed.'

For the first time someone had made the correct as-
sumption about Stefan's model. It was ironic that he
was now changing his mind to suit what everyone else
believed.

'We were extremely alike,' she said. *Few people
could tell the difference.'

'Were—?' he picked up sharply.

'My mother died two years ago,' she explained.

'I'm sorry for your loss,' he murmured politely.

"Thank you,' she replied. This couldn't become any
more formal if they tried.

Shouldn't she be feeling something? Antonia asked
herself curiously. Shouldn't she at least sense a genetic
bond, even if it was only a small one? Realising she
was still standing by the door, she began to walk for-
wards, gauging his tensing response as a man very
much on his guard. What did he think she was going
to do—physically attack him?

'You even walk like her,' he uttered.

Antonia just offered a brief smile. He wasn't telling
her anything she didn't already know. She looked like
her mother. She moved like her mother.

'Would you care to sit down?' she invited politely.
'Can I offer you a drink—espresso or—?'

'I am your father,' he ground out brusquely, bringing
her to a breathtaking stop. Then, with a slash of a hand,
"There,* he said. 'It is now in the open between us. So
we may stop this civility. What do you want?'

'I b-beg your pardon?' Antonia blinked in astonish-
ment.

'You heard me,' he said. 'I want to know your price.'

Antonia could not believe she was hearing this. 'But
you came to see me,' she reminded him. 'I didn't—'

'It is called pre-empting your intentions,' he cut in.
'I decided that it would only be a matter of time before
you came after me. So here I am.' He gave a shrug.
'All I want to know is how much your silence is going
to cost me.'

Her silence? Antonia stared at him in disbelief. He
had come here to face her because he thought she was
about to start blackmailing him? 'But I don't w-want—'

'Your kind always want.'

Suddenly it hurt to breathe. His voice held contempt.
His eyes held contempt. He hated the sight of her! He
didn't even know her yet he was judging her to be mer-
cenary. And, her kind. A flashback came to her of
Marco's mother wearing the same expression, showing
the same arrogant superiority that they thought gave
them the right to treat her like this!

Glancing up, he caught her expression; his own
turned graven. 'Anastasia let me down,' he ground out
bitterly. 'You should not be here. It is most unfortunate
that we have to have this conversation at all.'

Was he saying what she thought he was saying?
Sickness began to claw at her stomach. 'You thought
my mother would go back to England and rid herself
of me simply because it was what you expected her to
do?'

'Anastasia demanded money,' he explained. 'I auto-
matically assumed she meant to use it to—rectify the
problem.'

The problem^ *I was not my mother's problem!' she
cried. 'You were that! She needed money to survive!'
God, she felt so disgusted. 'You walked away, closed
the lease on her apartment, bank accounts, everything'.'

*It is the way these things work.' He was callously
unrepentant. 'As you will find out yourself, no doubt,
when your moment arrives.'

Was this how he had treated her mother on that final
confrontation? Was this the reason why she never really
recovered her self-esteem? How could she have loved
this man? How could she have not seen through him?

'You make me feel sick,' she breathed.

'Don't take the high moral ground with me, signo-
rina.' he suddenly barked at her. 'For here you are,
living with a man who makes you the scornful talk of
all Milan!' His face was hard again, his accent cold and
his opinion of her set in stone. "Think before you speak,
whether you would prefer me to announce to the world
that Marco Bellini's mistress is Anton Gabrielli's bas-
tard daughter! And the Mirror Woman is actually her
cheap slut of a mother!'

She slapped him—hard. For which part she wasn't
sure, but the hand flew out when he insulted her mother.
Standing there facing each other, both emanated intense
dislike, and she did not feel even a small hint of remorse
for that slap. His hand came up to cover his cheek and
his eyes burned vows of revenge on her.

*I heard what Isabella Bellini did to you last night,'
he said. "The whole gallery was buzzing with talk of
the incident.' And he smiled that thin smile again when
she turned white. 'Do you think you will still be here
if this situation ever becomes public?' he posed. 'Do
you think because you can lay claim to a father worth
as much as the Bellinis they will turn a blind eye to
what you actually are?'

'How can you stand there and preach over me when
your own sins are staring right at you?' Antonia gasped.
'And why come here at all, if you don't care if I speak
out? You have a wife. Don't her feelings count for any-
thing?'

'My wife is dead,' he said. 'You cannot hurt her. But
I can most certainly hurt your present position here in-
this place of luxury if you dare to make our connection
public.'

'But I don't understand why you should think I'd
want to!' The whole thing had become so bewildering,
she couldn't follow his logic at all.

'I don't,' he said. 'I merely wanted to be sure that
you understand your position here. For you don't have
one.' He made the point plain. 'I am no use to you as
a lever towards marriage to Bellini. In fact I am most
probably your biggest danger to that goal. But I am
willing to accept you possess a certain right to lay em-
barrassment at my doorstep,' he conceded. 'And, bear-
ing in mind that one day in the future Bellini is going
to tire of you, I accept I owe you some—incentive to
keep your silence about me when that time comes.'

'I want you to leave,' she announced, beginning to
shake on the inside.

"This is not your home to order me out of,' he replied,
and at last his thin lips did what she suspected they had
been wanting to do since he arrived here and twisted
into bitter dislike.'Just name your own figure...' 

Staring at him, she realised he'd had the absolute gall
to reach into his inside pocket and take out his cheque^
book! He was expecting to pay her off! Anger returned,
and she was glad to feel it rise up inside her because it
saved her from bursting into tears.

He was standing there with book and pen, waiting ,for
her to say something. So she did. It was really too 
irresistible not to. 'Everything you're worth,' she an-
nounced, then folded her arms and watched his face turn
to plastic. Money, it seemed, was all-important to him. 
Oh—and his reputation, she added, since he really 
couldn't cope with the idea of having a twenty-five-
year-old mistake come back to haunt him!      

Irritation flashed across his face. *I don't think you 
understand—'                            
       
*My own worth?' she put in. 'Or how much you are 
worth, signor? She took delight in watching him stiffen.
'Well, let me put that question straight before there is 
any more confusion here. You are worth precisely noth-
ing to me—capisce? She even used Marco's way of 
saying it. 'So you may write on your cheque "I give 
my illegitimate daughter Antonia Carson exactly noth-
ing!'" Her eyes flashed with disgust. 'Now excuse me,'
she said, and turned and left the room.               

If Marco had been there to watch her do it. he would
have recognised the move as Antonia showing her con-
tempt.

But Marco wasn't here. And neither did she intend
to be by the time he arrived home. If her own father
could view her like that, what hope did she ever have
of gaining the respect of anyone while she continued to
stay with Marco?

She had to go—and right now, she decided. Before
Marco had any chance of convincing her otherwise!
And the saddest thing was she knew he could do it. One
word, one touch, and she was as weak as a kitten where
it involved him.

Carlotta was hovering in the hallway. Her face looked
concerned, which made Antonia wonder if the house-
keeper had overheard what had been said in the sitting
room.

But, 'Will you see Signor Gabrielli out for me,
please?' was all Antonia said to her. Then walked past
her and into the bedroom...

At about the same time that she was confronting her
father, Marco was confronting his own across the desk
in the family library. All around them stood the results
of centuries of time-honoured collecting. The house it-
self was a national treasure. And out beyond the win-
dow spread a whole valley strung with the vines which
made the wine the Bellini name was as famous for as
its centuries-old corporate leadership.

'I need your support,' Marco was saying grimly. 'I
have no wish to feud with my own parents, but push
me and I will.' It was both a threat and a warning.

'You are expecting me to dictate to your mother?'
the older man asked, then released a laugh of fond de-
rision. 'Sorry, Marco. But I am too sick and too wise
to accept the task.'

But he wasn't as sick as Marco had expected to find
him. 'You're looking better,' he remarked—perhaps be-
latedly.

"Thank you for noticing.' His father thought it belated
too. In height, in looks, in every way there could be,
Marco was his father's son. But a few months ago a
virus had sucked the life out of Federico Bellini. By the
time the doctors had managed to stabilise him he had
halved his body weight, lost the use of one lung and
damaged his heart, liver and kidneys.

'New drugs,' the older man dismissed with the same
contempt with which he had always treated the medi-
cation which kept him living. 'Who is this woman your
mother sees as such a threat that she publicly offends
her?'                               

Subject of his health over, Marco noted. It was his
father's way. It would be Marco's way, given the same
circumstances. 'You know who she is,' he sighed.
'She's been living with me for the last year.'    

'You mean you're still with the same one?' Federico
pretended to be shocked, but Marco wasn't taken in by
it. Though he did allow himself a wry little smile of
appreciation for the thrust. 'No wonder your mother is
in a panic.'

'It isn't her place to panic.'                      

'Then I repeat,' his father incised, 'who is she?' And
the accent was most definitely on the who.       

Dipping his hand into his inside pocket, it was not a
chequebook that Marco retrieved, but a photography
taken at his best friend's wedding. He dropped it on the
desk in front of his father. Federico picked it up, studied
it.                                          
'Your good taste has never been in question,' he
drawled.                                        ; |
'But—?' Marco prompted,                      i
'I might have been out of circulation for the last year,
but I have seen the painting,' Federico said. 'She has
an exquisite body and sad eyes.' The photograph came
back across the desk.

Odd, Marco noted, that when he could have chal-
lenged that comment with the truth he did nothing of
the kind.

Because Antonia was right, he realised. Look at the
naked mother and you see the naked daughter. So it
didn't really matter what people were told.

And anyway, there was a point of honour here he
was determined to hold on to. He had a right to choose
his own future, and Antonia had a right to be accepted
for that choice. If his parents could not bring themselves
to do that, then...

Then what? he asked himself.

'Nice to own. Nice to sip,' his father murmured. 'But
that's about all, Marco...'

It was a refusal of support. Marco picked up the pho-
tograph and placed it back in his pocket. 'Is that your
final word?'

His father sent him a grim look as he stood up to
leave. 'Is she pregnant?' he asked.

Now there was an interesting concept, Marco mused
cynically. A Bellini child, bom out of wedlock. A wry
smile touched his mouth 'No,' he replied. 'But I could
easily make it so.'

Ah—now he was actually being taken seriously, he
saw with grim satisfaction as his father's expression
sharpened dramatically. 'Sit down,' Federico com-
manded.

Marco complied, but only because it was what he had
expected to be told when he'd stood up in the first place.
'Now, explain to me why this woman, when you
could have any woman you wanted?'

Arrogance abounded. Antonia would have just loved
to hear his father say those words. 'She's what I want.'
He stated it simply. Then he sat forward and looked his
father directly in the eye. 'She is what I intend to have,'
he extended with deadly seriousness. 'Comprende...?'

The silence lasted for all of thirty seconds, the sabre
fight with their eyes an evenly matched thing. Then
Federico Bellini sat back in his thick brown leather
chair, huffed out a short laugh, gave a shake of his head
and said, 'Next weekend. Here, I think. We will keep
this official, above-board and on the right side of the
sheets, if you don't mind.'

'Grave,' Marco thanked him, and not by a flicker did
he wallow in his triumph.

But his father hadn't finished. His eyes suddenly took
on a devilish gleam. 'Now all you have to do is get
your mother to see things your way...'              i

Carlotta had already been in and returned the bedroom
to its usual pristine smoothness, Antonia found. Nothing
out of place, nothing to show that the room had been
used at all. Walking over to a built-in closet, she took
out the small leather suitcase again. She wasn't really
surprised to find that Marco had neatly returned her
clothes to their appropriate places in the room. It was'
the way of the man. The way of his housekeeper. I
Everything neat and in its place. This bedroom was
Antonia's place. Last night should have reminded her
of that.

This time no angry male strode in to halt the process
of packing. The suitcase closed with a snap. But as she
set the case down on the floor a knock sounded on the
door and Carlotta stepped inside.

Of course, she had to see the suitcase. Her eyes shot
to Antonia's. 'No, signorina, you—'

Something stopped her. An awareness of her place in
the order of things? Acceptance that, for Antonia at any
rate, leaving was perhaps the wise thing for her to do?

Looking away again, she walked forward. 'Signer
Gabrielli asked me to give you this,' she said, and
handed Antonia a cheque, then turned and left again
without uttering another word.

It kind of said it all. Without so much as glancing at
the cheque to see how much money her father consid-
ered his daughter's silence worth, she ripped it into
small pieces and deposited it in the waste-paper basket,
then, simply because she needed to do it, she walked
over to the terrace window and stepped outside.

Milan shimmered in the blistering heat of yet another
hot summer's day. Way down there below her the traffic
made up for its unusual silence of the night before. And
one of the first things her eyes fell upon was the imprint
of Marco's body still hugging the cushions on the
lounger he must have used. Carlotta had obviously not
got around to coming out here yet, because a sandwich
and a glass of red wine were standing on a table close
by.

When he hadn't been able to sleep last night, he must
have gone to the kitchen to make himself a late night
snack and brought it out here to enjoy. But he'd seen
her lying asleep on the other lounger. Food and wine
had been forgotten in favour of other forces.

Like the recovery of his woman, she mused. The put-
ting her back where she belonged, in his arms, and in
his bed.

Her eyes glazed over. She had to turn away to stop
the tears from flowing. It was then that she remembered
the tear-drop diamond necklace, and set her feet moving
further down the terrace to find it still lying exactly
where she had placed it beneath the lounger. Recovering
it, she took it back into the bedroom and was about to
put it down on her dressing table when she noticed the
note from Marco folded there.

'Don't worry me, cara,' it said. 'Be here when I re-
turn.'

It came without warning. The first sob, followed
quickly by another—and another. Dropping onto the
dressing stool, she covered her face with her hands then
simply let go and sobbed her heart out.

When it was over, she stood up. Took a moment to
compose herself and decide what she needed to do be-
fore she left here for the last time...

Marco was standing alone in his father's library, using
the landline telephone to connect him with the Romano
Gallery. He wanted Stefan Kranst. He got Rosetta
Romano.

'Where is he?' he demanded.

'He flies home to England this afternoon,' Rosetta
told him. 'I thought you must know that he never meant
to stay longer than the first-night viewing. What do you
want me to do with Signorina Carson's painting?' she
asked. 'Stefan never said, and Signorina Carson rang
off before I could ask her when she called looking for
Stefan not ten minutes ago.'                     

The painting. Marco frowned. He'd forgotten all
about it. 'Have it packed up and delivered to my apart-
ment,' he instructed. 'Did Antonia say why she wanted
Kranst?'

'No. She just asked where he was staying and rang
off, that was all.'

Marco rang off too. It wasn't that he was worried any
longer about Stefan Kranst, he told himself. But his feet
took him in search of his father to wish him a quick
farewell before he was heading outside and to the wait-
ing helicopter. It didn't occur to him, until he was in
the air again, that he could have rung Antonia before
leaving, just to check that she was okay.

Okay, he then repeated drily. You want to check that
she's actually there! He didn't trust her. Could he trust
her? "This changes nothing,'- she had told him in the
depths of a night of loving. Impulsively he fished out
his mobile. One glance from his pilot and he was re-
luctantly putting it away again.

Antonia was arguing with Stefan. 'You have to do this
for me, Stefan—please,' she begged him. 'You owe it
to me after last night's fiasco!'

'Isabella Bellini was contrite afterwards, if that helps
you any,' he told her.

'I don't care what she was!' It was almost a sob. 'It
doesn't make any difference. My mind is made up. I'm
leaving Milan.'

'And Marco?' he included.

She swallowed and nodded. "These are the keys.' Her
fingers shook as she held them out to him. 'All you
need to do is pay off the lease then get my things and
bring them with you back to London.'

Stefan refused to take the keys. 'What in heaven's
name happened after you left with him?' he demanded
impatiently.

But she shook her head. 'I'll tell you another time. I
have a plane to catch.'

'Does he know you're going?' Stefan asked.

She didn't answer. He released a sigh. 'My darling,
I've told you something like this before but I am going
to say it again. Marco Bellini is not a man to cross
swords with.'

Her chin shot up, jewel-bright eyes sparkling with
something he had never seen there before. It was bitter,
blinding, gut-wrenching cynicism. 'Is that your way of
saying that you don't want to cross swords with him?'

'My God,' Stefan breathed, and took the keys. 'Go,'
he said. 'Go!' he repeated. 'I'll follow on tomorrow if
I can get a flight. But go if you must.'

"Thank you,' she whispered, kissed his cheek and left
his hotel suite without looking back again. If she had
done she would have hesitated, because Stefan was
wearing a look fit to slay any dragon that might be
threatening her.

And she didn't want Marco slayed. She needed to
know he was alive and happy. In fact, it was essential
to her own sanity that he remained exactly the way she
wanted to remember him. Tall and lean and suave and
sophisticated, but wearing one of those lazy grins that
oozed sex appeal. She wanted to remember him laugh-
ing with his friends. Talking seriously about art. Or ly-
ing on a sun lounger in the middle of the night with a
glass of red wine and a sandwich—missing her.

Oh, yes, she needed him to miss her, she admitted,
as her taxi began a battle with Milan's mad Saturday
traffic.

She had managed to reserve a seat on a flight out of
Linate airport, which was only four miles outside Milan.
But it was tourist season and the roads to the airport
were as busy as she had ever seen them. As the taxi
eventually made it to the perimeter of the airport com-
pound she glanced outside in time to catch the sun spar-
kling on a helicopter as it hovered just before landing.

Marco's preferred form of transport to his parents'
home, she recalled, with a sad little smile, and turned
away quickly, not wanting to think about Marco right
now when she could still weaken and change her mind.

Marco saw the traffic as he came in to land, and cursed
it. It was going to take an age to get back into the city
through all of that. With a quick thanks to his pilot he
got out of the helicopter and strode off towards the air-
port building. Any other time he would be heading for
the executive car park and jumping into his car. But the
Ferrari had been booked in for a service this morning,
so he'd had to come here by taxi. Which meant he now
had to walk right across the airport concourse to find
the nearest taxi rank.

If he'd thought about it, he could have used the Lotus
and saved himself a lot of hassle, because he had things
to do, people to see, before he could get back to
Antonia.

Which reminded him. Taking out his mobile, he tried
getting a signal. It was only when nothing happened that
he realised he'd forgotten to put the battery on charge
the night before. The damn thing was dead. Sighing, he
pocketed the phone again.

It was beginning to turn into one of those days.

The airport lounges were busy, packed to bursting
with newly arriving tourists. Taking the direct route to-
wards the exit doors, he had to squeeze between people
and their luggage. There was a moment when he paused
though, half considering going to check in the other
lounge to see ifStefan Kranst was there. But he decided
he didn't have the time and kept on going towards the
exit.

Outside again, the queue for taxis was long.
Frustration bit into his patience while he waited with
the rest of them. As one cab drove off another took its
place. The constant circling of people to and from Milan
must be a very good earner, the banker in him decided.

At last he got his turn. Diving into the back of the
cab, he gave his destination, then closed the door. As
he sat back, he experienced the strangest sensation when
he picked up the scent of Antonia's perfume.

On his clothes, on his skin? he wondered. Or was it
so impregnated into his senses that it was always there?
He liked that idea. It made him smile and relax while
he let the driver take on the battle to get him where he
needed to go.

To Buccellati's first, to find something that bit special
for Antonia to wear on her finger. Then the less palat-
able task of taking on his mother...

By the time Antonia discovered that her flight had been
delayed she was beginning to have second thoughts
about running away like this. She didn't want to go.
She didn't want to stay. She didn't know what she
wanted to do!

Yes, you do, she told herself. You want to have ev-
erything go back to how it was. But it can't. Too much
has happened.

I love him, though!

She lowered her head, glad she'd left her hair down
because it helped to hide the tears swimming in her
eyes. Her bag lay across her lap. She opened it up to
hunt for a paper tissue. But what she came up with was
a photograph taken at Nicola and Franco's wedding.
She was standing next to Marco and he had his arm
around her. She looked so happy. So did he, though not
in the same way. Her happiness shone through with
love, his shone with—

Sexual contentment.

She was right to go, she told herself.

But her mouth began to quiver, and the tears were
beginning to spread.

Stefan thought she was making a mistake. He had
been angry—disappointed with her, even. 'He'll strike
back hard,' he'd warned her before at the de Maggio's
anniversary party.

Oh, yes, please let him do that, she prayed, like the
weak little fool that she was. Let him come for me, lock
me up and throw away the key—I don't care! I like
being his mistress! It's everyone else the job seems to
offend!

Think of your mother, she grimly told herself. Think
of Anton Gabrielli and how you could actually see
Marco becoming like him in years to come! Then, no,
she denied. That isn't true. If I was pregnant Marco
wouldn't—

How do you know he wouldn't?

She didn't know, and that was the ugly little truth
which kept her pinned to the chair in the airport lounge
instead of getting up and running back to him. Anton
Gabrielli had planted a lot of ugliness into her heart,
she realised. The contempt, the accusations, the auto-
matic belief that she must .be out for all she could get.
He'd despised her mother just for being\ He despised
her in the same way. So did Marco's mother.

Her chin jerked up. It was a strange sensation, but
her heart suddenly felt as if someone had walked past
and wiped it clean as a slate!

Only a mother could do that. Only a mother had the
power to wipe another woman clean of any aspirations
towards her son. So maybe it was because of Isabella
Bellini's contempt that she was still sitting on this chair.

For, without her blessing, any relationship with Marco
would be sordid from now on.

It hadn't felt sordid last night. It had been beautiful
last night. It had been special. Marco had made it spe-
cial. 'Don't worry me,' he'd written. 'Be here when I
return.'

Her heart gave a squeeze. As the muscles relaxed
again, all the warmth and feelings of love came flooding
back in. Glancing down, she saw the photograph still
clutched in her hands. The tears came back. The inde-
cision. She wished they would call her flight. She
needed to go—get away from here!

Marco strode into the apartment building and headed
directly for the lift. He'd had a good day in a lot of
ways. A real coup d'6tat\ But it had taken too much
time, and now he was anxious to see Antonia, begin to
put things on a proper footing for them at last.

As the lift took him up with its usual smoothness he
found himself smiling when his hand coiled round the
small ring box in his pocket. The lift stopped, the doors
slid open. He strode out This was it, he told himself as
he opened the apartment door. The most important few
minutes of his life were about to happen!

Strangely, he'd never expected it to feel this good.

Stepping inside, the first thing he saw was the large
brown cord-wrapped package leaning against the wall—
Antonia's portrait he'd had delivered from the Romano
Gallery. The next thing was Carlotta. She was standing
there wringing her hands. Ice cold struck right through
to his heart.

•Antonia?' he rasped. 'Where is she?'

The housekeeper's eyes were filled with dismay.
'She's gone, signer,' she whispered. 'She's gone...'

CHAPTER TEN

His legs took him down the hall, into the bedroom and
straight to the built-in cupboard. The suitcase had gone.
Through the eyes of a man who was still not prepared
to take in what was happening to him, he turned to scan
the rest of the room.

What had once pleased his eye, with its uninterrupted
use of space, now looked cold and Spartan, as if some-
one had come along and wiped it clean of its heartbeat.

So the few small items carefully placed on the
smooth bed caught his attention. Walking over to them,
he just stood staring down at the set of keys to this
apartment, the tear-drop diamond necklace, the stack of
credit cards and the mobile telephone.

His skin suddenly felt as if it didn't fit his body any
more. Was that all she felt she was worth to him? Even
the bed was playing its part here. He began to feel sick.
If she'd tossed down a set of scarlet underwear she
could not have made her feelings more clear.

The phone gave a beep. He looked at it, saw there
was a message written on it in text. Picking it up he
stared at the words she had left for him. 'I'm sony,'
was all that it said.

In English too. He sometimes forgot she spoke
English, her Italian was so good. But, maybe in this case
I'm sorry said it better for her than mi despiace did.

It didn't for him, because sorry wasn't enough! He
wanted to know more. He wanted to know why. Could
she not have held faith with him for just one more day?

150

'When did she leave?' He was aware of Carlotta
standing in the doorway, watching him with anxious
eyes. She obviously had something to tell him or she
wouldn't be there invading his private moment like this.

'Just after the signor left,' the housekeeper answered.

Signor. Marcos swung round. 'Signer Kranst?' he de-
manded.

But Carlotta shook her head. 'A Signer Gabrielli,' she
informed him. 'I think they argued,' she added, looking
uncomfortable for saying so. "The signorina had me see
him out. It is when he gave me the cheque to give to
Signorina Antonia.' Her eyes flickered, then dropped to
the waste-paper basket standing by the dressing table.
'She was very upset,' she added, as Marco's gaze fol-
lowed hers to the basket.

A bell sounded then, saying that someone was in the
foyer wanting to come up. 'I don't want to see anyone,'
Marco grimly instructed.

With a nod, Carlotta left, leaving him alone to walk
over to the waste-paper basket.

About the same time that Stefan was using tough talk
on Carlotta to gain his way into the apartment,
Antonia's flight was being called at last.

It was now two hours late and her nerves were com-
pletely frazzled. Gathering her things together, she
stood up, then paused to take in a careful breath. This
was it, she told herself. She could leave now. No more
arguing with herself. No more agonising over what she
really wanted to do. It had to be better to go while she
still had the strength to do it, rather than wait until she
was thrown out then spend five years pining for his
return, as her mother had—wasn't it?

So move, Antonia, she told her feet. Follow the gen-
eral exodus towards the gate as if you're just another
tourist on her way back home.

'No luggage slip, signorina.

She looked down at the cabin-weight suitcase which
suddenly seemed a pathetic judgement on her year in
Milan. When she'd packed it, in London, she had meant
to send for her other things once she was settled with
Marco. But he had done away with the need by buying
her new things. Anything else of value to her would be
coming back to London with Stefan.

She shook her head at the attendant who was check-
ing her boarding pass. "This is all I have,' she said. And
a heart full of tears, she added silently.

Marco was leaning against the open window, which led
out onto the terrace, when Stefan Kranst had the arro-
gance to stride into the room.

*I want words with you,' he insisted grimly. 'I don't
know what happened last night after you left Romano's
with Antonia. But—'

'Anton Gabrielli happened,' Marco inserted, without
bothering to turn.

The name met with silence. Not the blank, who-are-
you-taudng-about kind of silence. But the dear-God-in-
heaven kind, that throbbed with grim recognition.

'What did he want?' Stefan asked him.

'I see you know the man,' Marco drily responded.

'What did he want?' Stefan repeated harshly.
His anger jolted Marco enough for him to wave a
hand towards the bed. 'See for yourself,' he invited.
And turned to study Stefan Kranst's face as he walked
over to look down at the neat row of items set out on
the bed. The diamond, the keys, the credit cards, the
phone still displaying its message. And the cheque,
carefully pieced back together. Stefan stared at it for a
long time before he spoke.

'I saw him at the gallery last night,' he admitted. *I
hoped you'd got Antonia away before he arrived.'

"They came face to face. He called her Anastasia...'

Other than for a tightening of his lips, Stefan made
no comment. 'When did this arrive?' he asked grimly
instead.

"The man delivered it himself this morning,' Marco
told him, 'while I was out,'

'No wonder she left in a huny. He threatened her,
didn't he?' Hard eyes lifted to Marco. 'Do you know
who he is?'

The question earned him a grimace. 'Her father, at a
guess.'

'She told you that?' Stefan looked so surprised that
Marco couldn't hold back the wry smile.

'No,' he admitted. *I managed to work it out.' She
didn't feel able to trust me with it, he added silently,
and sent his gaze flicking back to the view beyond the
terrace. She hadn't really trusted him with anything,
when he came to think about it. Not the truth about the
Mirror Woman. Not the father he hadn't known she had.
Even her innocent relationship with Kranst had been
kept a titillating secret.

Out there, above the city, he saw a flash of light as
the sun caught the tips of a plane as it took off. 'Do
you know where she is?' he asked quietly.

'Not on that flight, if that's what you're thinking,*
Stefan Kranst replied. 'She left for England hours ago,
Marco,' he added almost gently.

The gentleness was almost his undoing. Moisture
dared to slide across his eyes. He stiffened up, shoved
his hands in his pockets, heaved in a deep breath. Felt
the ring box, felt some other emotion wreak havoc with
the wall of his chest.

'I'm going after her,' he announced, keeping his face
turned away from Kranst as he shifted towards the bed-
room door.

'I came here for a reason,' Stefan reminded him.
Marco paused. 'To gloat?' he suggested.
Stefan released a heavy sigh. 'Give me a break for
once, Marco,' he begged wearily. 'I care about Antonia
more than her real father does. That means I care about
what's been happening here! She came to see me before
she left,' he went on tightly. 'I didn't like the way she
looked. Now I know why, if Gabrielli's been here,' he
added cynically. 'But the point is, she gave me some-
thing I think you should know about...'
Marco spun around.

'Keys.' Stefan took them out of his pocket. 'And an
address in Milan. I came to see if you were as interested
as I am in finding out what the hell she has been keep-
ing from both of us!'

She couldn't do it.

Standing here at the departure gate, with her boarding
pass in her hand and only a short walk to freedom, she
couldn't take another single step!

Tears clogged her throat, burned her eyes, hurt her
stomach. I love him! she cried inside, and just couldn't
go!

'Are you all right?' someone asked her. Someone else
pushed impatiently past. 'You don't look well, signo-
rina...'

I'm not. I'm sick with love. 'I've just r-remembered
s-something,' she murmured shakily. 'I have to go back
to Milan.' She swallowed at the attendant's shocked ex-
pression. 'Can you take my name off the f-flight reg-
ister, please? I have my luggage here with me so you
d-don't have to have it removed from the plane.'

Maybe that was why she'd used the smallest suitcase
she could find. Maybe she never intended leaving
Marco. Maybe she'd needed to get this far before she
could finally accept that the man was her other half!
You couldn't go anywhere with only half of you! It just
wouldn't let you.

Dropping the tickets and the boarding pass on the
attendant's desk, she turned and started running. She
needed to get back to him—fast! 'Don't worry me,'
he'd said. 'Be here when I return!'

He wanted her. What more could she ask of him, for
goodness' sake? He cared that his mother had upset her!
He had even asked her to many him so that she
wouldn't leave!

Oh God, why did clarity have to come this late? Why
couldn't she have just waited until he got home and then
faced him with Anton Gabrielli, instead of running
away without giving him a chance to respond? And he
wasn't like Gabrielli! How dared she compare the two
of them?

The taxi queue was huge. Strange therefore, after a
half-hour wait, she should get the same driver that had
brought her to the airport. She gave the address for the
apartment. He raised his eyebrows at her via the mirror
as he drove off. 'It is a popular address today, signorina.
I collected you from there this morning,' he remem-
bered. "Then I took another person there this afternoon.
Now I take you back. Do you think the gentleman will
be waiting to catch my taxi for the return journey here?'

He thought it was funny. Antonia didn't. 'Do you
know the man's name?' she questioned huskily.

'Sure,' he shrugged. 'Everyone knows Signer Bellini.
He tips well too...'

Marco paid off the driver and got out of the taxi to wait
for Stefan to join him. The Ferrari wasn't back from its
service and he was damned if he was going to drive
Antonia's Lotus. That was staying exactly where it was
until she came back to claim it.

'What the hell has she been doing in a place like
this?' he demanded.

Stefan didn't answer. Going to the door, he used the
key, then stepped inside. With Marco crowding behind
him he took the stairs floor by floor, passing by the
doors bearing nameplates of a suspect nature.

'You do know that this is part of the red-light dis-
trict?' Marco growled into Stefan's back.

'I do now,' the other man answered and, though he
had a fair idea what it was that Antonia did here, he
was beginning to feel a trifle edgy—just in case he was
wrong.

They arrived on the top landing. Neither spoke as
they stepped up to the only door. Stefan turned the key,
the tension riding high as he walked inside first.

Therefore he had those few split seconds to just stand
looking around him before murmuring, 'Well, that's a
relief.' Then he added a rueful grin.

Not for Marco it wasn't. How long had he known
this woman? he asked himself as he stood there beside
Stefan Kranst and stared at what might euphemistically
be called an artist's studio. Light streamed in through
a wall of windows, setting dust motes dancing in the
air. The room smelled of old wood and oil and turpen-
tine thinner, and everywhere you looked stood the
paintings. Some drying, some framed, some waiting to
be framed. Piazza del Duomo. La Scala. Pusteria di
Sant'Ambrogio. The bustling Brera, with its trendy little
shops and people, and the gardens at Villa Reale.

Over by the window stood a huge trestle bench
stacked with pencil sketches. On the easel waited a half-
finished view from his own terrace, looking out over
the top of Milan.

Marco hadn't known Antonia had ever picked up a
paintbrush, never mind possessed the capacity to pro-
duce work like this.

'Look at these,' Stefan murmured. He had moved to-
wards the window and was now sifting through the
sketches.

Sketches of life drawn with a quick sure -hand.
Sketches of people going about their business.
Something caught in Marco's chest as he had a sudden
vision of her sitting on a bench or a low stone wall just
sketching—sketching while he had been safely out of
the way in his office playing in the big league, believing
her to be doing what the women of wealthy men did,
which was basically nothing.

Then—no. He amended that notion, and didn't like
himself for admitting that he hadn't really given much
thought to what Antonia did when he wasn't there.

Stefan lifted a sheet of paper to one side, then went
still enough to catch Marco's attention. Marco's own
face looked back at him. It almost took his breath away,
at the accuracy with which she had caught his mood of
the moment.

The shark on his way to hunt prey, he named it with
a wryness that didn't hold any humour. Picking it up,
he found another—and another. All revealing his dif-
ferent moods in accurate detail.

Then something else caught his eye to divert his at-
tention. It was a half-finished painting of Franco and
Nicola about to leave on their honeymoon. Antonia
clearly had not been pleased with the result because she
had tossed it onto the bench and left it there. But that
wasn't why the painting held him. It was the realisation
that, in size, it would have fitted exactly the painting
she had wrapped for the anniversary gift.

Yet she hadn't thought to show him, ask his approval.
In fact she hadn't sought his approval on anything she
had been doing in here.

And it hurt. 'Why not tell me?' he murmured out
loud.

Turning from where he had wandered off to, Stefan
Kranst looked at him—just looked—and he knew the
answer. She would have had to feel safe from his mock-
ery to tell him about all of this, and she hadn't.

'I am no ogre,' he growled out angrily—angrily be-
cause this was just another area she hadn't trusted him
with.

Antonia had changed her mind at the very last minute.
She didn't know why she had done it, but some instinct
had suddenly spoken to her and said. Better stop Stefan
from emptying your studio if you're intending to stay
here. So she'd redirected the driver and realised only
after she had let him go that she no longer had any keys
to get into the building.

Fortunately another tenant was just coming out. He
recognised her and, with a smile, stood back to allow
her inside. 'You have visitors,' he told her.

Stefan. She smiled. 'Grazie,' she said, and let him
close the door behind her.

Her case wasn't heavy, but she was puffing a bit by
the time she reached the top landing. The door was open
a little. Pushing it wider, she paused to put down her
suitcase just as Marco growled out harshly, 'What did
she think I was going to do—laugh in her face?'

Her breathing changed from an out-of-breath pant to
a trembling stammer, her mouth ran dry, her eyes
glazed. Marco was here, with Stefan, of all people. It
felt as if fate was still controlling her actions like a
puppet on a string.

'Well,' she managed to whisper, 'are you?'
He spun round to face the' doorway. Silence roared,
tension sung, the sunlight shone on his black silk hair.
He was wearing slate-grey. Slate-grey suit, slate-grey
shirt, darker slate-grey tie. His skin had a polished gold
cast to it, and his eyes were the same colour as his tie—
dark with anger and passion and hurt pride.

She wanted to break down and weep at the sheer
beautiful sight of him. She wanted to go to him, wrap
her arms around his neck and cling so tightly that he
would never ever be able to shake her free.

But instead her chin went up, it simply had to. No
matter how desperate she was to feel his touch, or how
shaky she was feeling inside, or even how afraid she
was of hearing his answer to the question—she had to
challenge him with it. It was a matter of her own pride.

'You're on a plane,' he said. It was really stupid. It
was the very last thing she'd expected him to say.
'I couldn't go.'

'I'm not laughing.' He answered her question.
'What I do here is important to me,' she told him.
'I can see that,' he answered. 'Why couldn't you go?'
Her eyelashes flickered. Everything felt as if it was
coming to her through a confused mist. She wet her lips
with her tongue, linked her fingers together in a trem-
bling pleat across her trembling stomach.

*Y-you didn't want me to,' she murmured unsteadily.
'Y-you trusted me to stay but I didn't trust you to...'
The words trailed away on a wash of distraction. "Th-
that s-sketch you're holding isn't a good likeness.' Her
fingers unpleated so she could point to what he was
holding in his hand.

He looked down at it like someone who had no idea
that he was holding anything. 'You think I'm a shark,'
he murmured as he looked back at her.

'Sometimes.' She nodded.

'Are you coming in, or are you thinking of running
again?'

'Oh.' It was her turn to glance down as if she didn't
know where she was or what she was doing. She was
still standing on the threshold, with her case sitting be-
side her and her bag swinging from one of her shoul-
ders.

She went to pick up the case. The moment she
moved, so did Marco. He came across the bare-board
floor at the speed of lightning. The case was lifted out
of her reach. Her arm was imprisoned in long fingers.
Before she knew what he was about she was fully inside
the room and the door was being firmly closed behind
her.

That was when she saw Stefan, leaning against a wall
with his arms casually folded and his expression—in-
terested. 'Hi,' she murmured self-consciously.

'Hi, yourself,' Stefan softly replied. 'I don't suppose
you would like to explain what's been going on here?'
he drily requested.

'She doesn't need to explain anything,' Marco put in
tensely, and his hand tightened on her arm as if he ex-
pected her to break free and run, when in actual fact
she was already hanging on to his shirt at his waistband
and had no intention of letting go of it.

Stefan sent the dry look Marco's way. 'She does if
you want me to get out of here,' he replied, without
bothering to hide his meaning.

Marco grimaced and remained silent, conceding
Stefan's right to demand an explanation.

Still shaking too much, and not thinking straight, it
needed a few attempts at breathing properly before
Antonia could find some semblance of intelligence.

'Y-you know I paint. You taught me to do it,' she
reminded Stefan.

'You taught yourself,' he drily corrected. 'By being
a pain in the neck and insisting on placing your easel
next to mine every time I worked so you could copy
my every damn brushstroke.*

'I learned from you then.' She sighed at the play with
semantics.

'Not this kind of stuff,' he said with derision. "This
is chocolate-box art they sell on street comers.'

'It's art,' Marco sliced back at him in her defence. 

It was sweet of him, but Stefan was right. 'Shops,'
she corrected. 'I sell them to the shops on the Brera.
They sell them to the tourists. It—it makes me a nice
little living...'

'So that's why you hardly ever touched the money I
gave you,' Marco said bleakly.

'And your serious work?' Stefan asked, refusing to
be sidetracked.

She tensed up; so did Marco. 'What serious work?'
he demanded.

'You saw an example of it last night,' Stefan in-
formed him, without taking his eyes off Antonia's sud-
denly angry face.

'Dio mio,' Marco breathed, his eyes wide with sur-
prise as he stared at her. 'You mean you painted your
own nude study?'

'Sometimes I hate you,' she hissed at Stefan.

Stefan just shrugged, moved out of his lazy stance
against the wall and began walking towards them. 'Ask
her about the one she has stashed against the wall over
there,' he suggested to Marco as he passed by them.
Then he paused, leaned over to kiss Antonia's angry
cheek. 'Pack the chocolate-box stuff in before you ruin
yourself with it,' he warned seriously, then pulled open
the door and left them to it.

Or left Antonia to stand there on her own while she
watched Marco stride across the room to the large can-
vas Stefan had so kindly pointed out to him.

Her cheeks began to heat, her body to stiffen in read-
iness for what was to come. She tried to divert him.
'Marco, we need to talk...'

But it was already too late. 'Now, just look at what
we have here,' he drawled lazily. And with a deft flick
of his hands he scooped the painting up and took it over
to her easel.

She struggled not to gasp. Her cheeks were on fire.
Standing back, he proceeded to study the nude painting
of himself with the all-seeing eye of the complete con-
noisseur.

When he started to grin, she felt like following
Stefan. But the way he reached out and touched the lean
shape of a sleek male thigh was pure infuriating conceit.

'It's all wrong,' she snapped. "The proportions are out. 
Your nose looks like Caesar's and your torso is too
long!'

'I think it's perfect.'

He would, she thought with an angry frown. 'I hate
people looking at my work until it's finished!'

'You mean you hate me looking at it!' His mood
changed so swiftly she wasn't prepared for it. From lazy
conceit he was suddenly pulsing with fury. 'Why? he
demanded, walking back to her. 'Why couldn't you tell
me that you can paint like this? I thought I knew you!
But I've been living with a stranger! Your mother sits
on my wall but you don't bother to tell me that! Your
ex-lover has never been your ex-lover! In fact, I bet you
never even had a lover before me—did you?' She
blushed and shook her head, which only infuriated him
more. He continued heatedly. 'You have a rat for a fa-
ther. And you have a gift at your fingertips that I would
have thought you would have been proud to let me see!'

'You own a Rembrandt!' she fired at him defensively.

'I own a Kranst!' he threw right back. 'Many works
by totally unknown artists. And the Rembrandt! Are you
saying I am an art snob on top of all my other failings?'

'Your opinion meant too much to me!' she cried. 'So
it was safer not to seek it!'

He grabbed her and kissed her. And about time too,
she thought as she fell into the kiss like a woman
starved.

'Dio mio,' he rasped against her clinging lips. 'Do
you have any idea what it did to me to come back and
find you gone today?'

'I cried all the way to the airport,' she confessed, as
if that should make it easier for him.

It didn't. 'Don't ever leave me like that again!'

'I won't,' she promised.

He sunk them into another hot deep hungry kiss that
didn't last long enough before he was pulling right
back. 'No, you won't,' he agreed. 'Because I am going
to make sure that you don't!'

His hand went into his pocket and came out again,
holding a small black leather box.

The moment Antonia saw it she knew what it was.

'And on a choke of dismay, she said, 'No,' and snapped
her hands behind her back. 'You don't have to do that.'
She even started backing away.

He followed. 'Of course I do.' He reached for her.

'No!' she cried, and almost bounced as her shoulders
hit the wall behind her.

Marco started frowning. 'Amore, this is what I want.
It is what we both want!'

But she kept on shaking her head. 'I came back,' she
repeated. 'I don't need this to keep me here! A ring will
just make everything more complicated! I would
rather—'

'It's okay,' he said soothingly. 'I squared it with my
father. He—'

Her eyes shot to his. Her mouth trembled. 'You told
your father about me?' She looked so horrified it hurt.
'But you had no right to upset him with this when he's
ill!'

'Ill,' Marco agreed. 'Not incompetent! And it is out
of respect for his illness that I sought his approval. But
do you honestly think I am the kind of man who re-
quires the approval of anyone?'

'You require mine,' she pointed out. 'And I am not
prepared to come between you and your parents. I don't
need to do that. I am perfectly happy with things as
they were.'

'Well, I'm not,' he announced, his eyes narrowing on
the sudden leap of anxiety that claimed her eyes. His
teeth began to glint like a tiger preparing to take his
first bite. 'So I made my father an offer he couldn't
refuse,' he slid in silkily—and followed her until his
arm could rest against the wall near her head. 'I said it
was either done this way—' he lifted the box close to
her nose *—or I used less—conventional methods.'

"There aren't any.'

In reply he swooped on her mouth. She died for that
kiss. Of course she did. 'An illegitimate Bellini child is
just not acceptable,' he murmured as he drew away
again. 'My father saw my point and—'

'You mean you threatened to make me pregnant?'
she gasped. Then her expression hardened. 'Do you
honestly think I would allow you to do that to me?' His
eyes began to gleam with a taunting message: You
haven't got the will-power to stop me.

But she had. On this point, if on no other, she had
the power to say no to him. 'A child isn't a pawn,
Marco,' she said, stepping sideways and away from
him. 'You don't play Russian roulette with its future
just to win an argument.'

'Is that the voice of experience?' His expression had
tamed curious. She flashed him a wary look. 'Anton
Gabrielli,' he announced. 'And a cheque for a serious
amount of lira. He was either paying off a mistress or
buying your silence,' he explained with a shrug. 'And
as I was sure you've only ever been my mistress, I came
to the conclusion he was buying the silence. You won't
believe how good I felt about it.'

He might but she didn't. She was seeing the glimmer
of a chance at an old Italian name making the difference
between unacceptable and acceptable. 'I won't ac-
knowledge him as my father, you know,' she warned
him. 'If he announced it to the world I would deny the
charge. He will not be walking me down any church
aisle just to make me respectable. And if he left me his
millions, I would give them straight back again. So if
this—' she flicked an expressive hand at the ring box
'—honour you are now prepared to bestow on me is
built on those assumptions, you're backing a losing
horse here, Marco.'

'His billions will go to his son and heir,' he informed
her levelly, and saw her flicker of surprise. 'I see you
didn't know about him.' Marco smiled. 'Handsome guy.
Likes the ladies. Plays the field with relish—much like
his father did. Married,' he added succinctly. 'Two chil-
dren—a boy and a girl. The wife lives with her father-
in-law on their private estate on the island of Capri,
while her husband enjoys himself elsewhere. As for the
Gabrielli name, he can keep it since you will be taking
the Bellini name. And if you don't want him as a father,
then fine.' He shrugged. 'Because I have one worthy of
taking on that role for you. And, despite your natural
opinion of both my parents, they are really quite nice
people. Their biggest problem is that they love me too
much. But in time I am hoping to spread that around a
bit to other; newer members of the family.'

'Your mother hates me—'

'My mother.' Marco took up. 'Was so repentant
when I saw her this afternoon that she wanted to come
back to the apartment to tell you so. Fortunately—' he
grimaced '—I talked her out of it. Or she would have
been witnessing her son's complete downfall. Interested
in that?' he quizzed her softly.

Her eyes filled with guilty tears. Her mouth began to
tremble. He wanted to kiss it until it was warm and red
and too full of him to tremble ever again. Instead, he
pocketed the ring. She watched him do it, and he was
very pleased to see her eyes darken and the way she
had to turn and walk away in an effort to hide her dis-
appointment. She might make all the claims in the
world about not wanting the ring but she was lying;
she wanted it almost as much as she wanted him.

But now she could wait. He had handled it badly
anyway. And this was not the setting in which he pre-
ferred to commit himself to marriage. So they were
leaving—now, he decided. Except first...

He spotted everything he required and went over to
collect a sheet of brown paper and a roll of sticky tape.
She was standing by the window, staring out on the kind
of view of Milan that gave this scruffy room reason.
Ignoring her, he went over to the nude portrait of him-
self and, with the efficiency of one who knew exactly
how to handle an unframed canvas, he started to pack-
age it ready for transportation.

Glancing at him over her shoulder, she didn't even
attempt to protest at what he was doing other than to
say quietly, 'It isn't finished.'

'You may have all the time in the world to do so
back at the apartment,' he replied. Sticky tape screeched
as he stretched it over brown paper. 'We will convert
one of the guest bedrooms into a studio.' Sharp white
teeth neatly sliced through the tape, long fingers
smoothed it into place.

'Marco—'

'Is there anything you want to take with you now, or
can the rest wait until we are more able to receive it?'
he cut in smoothly, then lifted the canvas down and
finally looked at her.

Although the sunlight might be wearing the warm-
gold of the late afternoon, the way it touched her hair
and her skin reminded him of her own self-portrait. But
the expression in her eyes could have been her
mother's. Sad. It was sad. She didn't believe there was
any hope for them.

'You came back, cara,' he reminded her soberly.
'But you did so to a new order of things. That order
cannot be returned to what it used to be because you
are afraid of what the change may mean.*

'It can if you let it,' she argued.

But he shook his dark head. 'I no longer want what
we used to have,' he explained, so succinctly that
Antonia had no choice but to understand his meaning.

Her eyes grew so.dark that his heart hit his ribcage.
It was obvious she saw the choice he was giving her—
between leaving him again or facing their future with
all its complications—as equal to standing between a
black hole and oblivion.

But she had come back, he grimly reminded himself.
It was the only thing that stopped him from going over
there and promising her anything so long as she agreed
to stay with him.

It was a strange sensation, this fear of losing her, he
noted as his eyes—and his bluff—held firm. 'Ready?'
he prompted.

She lowered her eyes, turned away, ran her fingers
up her arms to her shoulders as if she was trying to hug
something to her. Courage? The chill of fear? The love
he knew she felt for him? The need to believe that he
felt the same about her?

It was time she began trusting in that word 'love', he
thought grimly. Time she began to trust him.

'Yes, I'm ready,' she said quietly.

Relief almost floored him. He had to turn away to
grimace at the way his legs had just turned to nothing.

'Let's go, then.' Still holding the painting, he went
to collect her bit of luggage. As she approached he si-
lently handed over her shoulder bag, then just as silently
turned to the door.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

THE apartment had a hushed air about it after the taxi
ride across the noisy city. A large flat brown card pack-
age leant against one of the walls with the Romano
Gallery name printed on it. Marco went to place his
new find beside it, then walked away down the hall and
into their bedroom with her suitcase.

He was making some statement about ownership,
Antonia recognised that as she followed him. Strange,
then, that stepping into the one room where she'd al-
ways believed she truly belonged she should suddenly
feel as if she was entering alien territory. Yet nothing
had changed, the room looked exactly as it should do—
if you didn't count the absence of her few personal pos-
sessions.

Marco was already putting the case away in the cup-
board. There was a statement in the way he did that,
also, because the case had not been unpacked and he
was shutting the door, turning the key in the lock and
even went so far as to remove the key and pocket it

Try running off with only what you came here with,
now, the action yelled at her.

Unsure how to respond, Antonia was still considering
her options when he came back towards her, shut the
bedroom door with one hand and removed her bag from
her shoulder with the other then simply let it drop. And
every action was so deliberate that he set her nerve-
ends tingling. Her hand was caught next. He used it to
trail her behind him over to the window where he

170

touched the switch that sent the vertical blinds sliding
across the glass.

The room became shrouded in a soft half-light.
Seduction suddenly eddied in the air. Turning her to-
wards to him, he looked down at her, searched her
whole face as if he had forgotten what it looked like,
then sighed a small sigh.

'Why the closed blinds?' she asked him. He had
never bothered to do that before.

'Ambience,* he replied. 'A desire for your full atten-
tion,' he added. 'And the need to shut the rest of the
world out while we remind each other what it was we
almost lost.'

'I'm sorr,' Antonia said. 'I—'

'Don't ever use those words to me again,' he cut in
harshly. 'Especially not in English.' He even shuddered.
"They will always represent to me the coldest little
goodbye a man could experience.'

He was talking about her text message. Her heart
found her throat and blocked it as she gazed into his
pain darkened blue-grey eyes. I'm sorry hovered on her
lips again. She converted the words into a tender-sweet
kiss meant to convey the meaning for her.

Pain-dark changed to passion-dark. 'Si,' he whispered
in approval. The kiss was most definitely preferable to
words for him.

So one tender kiss led to another, until tender became
hungry and hunger converted itself into desire. Desire
stripped clothes away in a slow precious reacquainting
with what she had put at risk today.

This was it. All she needed, she told herself. This
man looking at her like this, touching her like this—
needing her like this. Anything else he cared to bestow
was merely a bonus. Because she could feel the love
emanating from him even though he had never said the
words to her.

But, as she had just demonstrated, words weren't nec-
essary when there were other ways to relay your feel-
ings. It was special. What they had was special. So they
made love as if this was their first time. And as one day
slipped harmoniously into another, Antonia began lik-
ening it to a honeymoon, where neither was seemingly
prepared to allow anything to spoil what they had to-
gether.

Who wanted a betrothal ring? Who wanted a mar-
riage proposal? This was so much more comfortable.
So much more her perception of what real love was
about.

On Monday, Marco slipped back into his work rou-
tine without so much as hinting that he couldn't trust
her to be there when he came home again. And Antonia
began converting one of the guest bedrooms into her
studio. Tuesday was the day she remembered the two
paintings that had disappeared from the hallway and
made a note to ask Marco where they had gone, only
to forget completely when he arrived home that evening
with a letter from Anton Gabrielli. It was an acknowl-
edgement that she was indeed his daughter, apologising
for his behaviour, and offering to announce her as such
if she wished him to do so.

'Did you bully him into this?' she asked Marco.

'I merely made him see the error in his judgement of
you,' he replied. *I thought you deserved that. What you
do about him now is, of course, your own decision.'

'So you aren't going to persuade me into making his
relationship to me public?'

It was a challenge, and Marco recognised it as such.
*I don't need him, cara, he stated it quietly. 'But I
wondered if you might feel the need to know him better
one day.'

'I won't,' she said adamantly. 'It turns me cold just
to look at his name.'

"Then put the letter away,' Marco advised, 'and for-
get about him. He won't trouble you again, I promise
you.'

Which made her wonder what influence he had
brought to bear on a man like Anton Gabrielli that he
could sound so sure about that. But she didn't ask,
didn't want to spoil her new grasp on happiness by con-
taminating it with questions she really didn't want the
answers to.

Wednesday, they went out to dinner with Franco and
Nicola, who were just back from their visit to Lake
Como. Nicola looked radiant. Her eyes shone with plea-
sure because it was so very obvious that Antonia and
Marco had sorted out their differences. Everyone en-
joyed themselves. It was just as it used to be.

Thursday and Friday she devoted to overseeing the
transfer of her artist's studio to its new location, and
not once... Well, maybe once or twice she found herself
thinking wistfully back to a certain ring box she had
last seen disappearing into Marco's pocket never to see
again. But then she would pull herself together and get
on with whatever it was she was doing. She was con-
tent. She was happy. Marco was making her a perma-
nent part of his life and he loved her, she was sure of
it. Or becoming more sure of it as the days went by.

Then he ruined it.

It came so unexpectedly that it just hadn't occurred
to her how she had been living the last week, cocooned
in her own sweet dream-world constructed around a
comfortable self-denial, until, over breakfast on
Saturday, he murmured casually, 'We are going out to-
night. A party. I think we will go shopping for some-
thing really special for you to wear...'

A party, she repeated. A party meant people. People
meant facing her public humiliation from the week be-
fore. She couldn't do it 'No,' she breathed.

Lifting his eyes from his ever-present morning news-
paper, he narrowed them on her paling face. 'Red,' he
murmured softly. 'I think we will go for something truly
outrageous in red. Long. Slinky. Strapless and backless
to show off your wonderful skin.'

'I'm not going, Marco,' she announced more firmly.

'Wear your hair up,' he continued as if she hadn't
spoken. 'Let everyone see your beautiful neck and know
that the only man allowed to put his lips to it is me...'

'I said, I'm not going!' She jerked to her feet.  -

'And I will drip you in diamonds.' He refused to take
any notice of her. 'Ears, throat, wrists—even a sexy
anklet sounds really irresistible.'

'Why don't you just hang a sign round my neck say-
ing Scarlet Woman. she flashed at him angrily.

Sitting back in his chair, he grinned at the image.
'Red-painted mouth. Lots of black mascara. And I think
a red carnation in your hair might just make the whole
ensemble perfect.'

He even kissed the tips of his fingers. Antonia had
never felt so hurt in all her life. 'I can't believe you're
talking like this to me, when you know what happened
the last time you took me into company!'

She was pulsing with hurt, with fright, with indig-
nation, Marco observed ruefully. But he didn't question
any of those emotions. In fact he absolutely understood
her right to feel them.

But as for the rest? 'Are you ashamed of who you
are, cara? he queried curiously.
Her chin went up. 'No,' she denied.
'Ashamed of being my woman, then?'

*I won't be pilloried a second time.'

Which was a neat way of getting out of giving him
the answer to his question. He stood up. She made to
spin away. He held her in place with the firm grip of
his hands on her waist. Trapped by the table, their
chairs, and his hands, she had no choice but to remain
exactly where she was. But the tension in her body was
enormous, the need to run again so palpable he could
actually feel it dancing along every muscle she pos-
sessed.

'We made a deal a week ago,' he reminded her.

*Deal?' Her eyes flickered restlessly to his, then away
again. 'I don't know what you're talking about.'

Liar, he thought grimly. 'You returned to me wanting
the same as what you almost left behind.' He spelled it
out to her anyway. 'I told you you couldn't have that.'

'But we've been so happy this week!' she cried.
'Why do you want to mess with something that's work-
ing fine!'

"This week I've played it your way. I've allowed us
to hide and pretend everything is fine because you
seemed to need to do that. But I don't want fine. I want
perfect,' he added. 'And perfect comes at a price, cara.
The point is, are you prepared to pay it?'

She clearly didn't like the sound of the word. It was
like holding a tiger by its tail. 'And what is this price?'

'Your trust,' he announced. *I want you to trust me
to make this work for us. And, just so you understand
how serious I am, I must warn you that I will accept
nothing less than your total trust.'

Nothing less—as in nothing. No Marco at all was
what he was saying here. Antonia shivered at the mere
prospect. 'And this trust comes in the colour red.' Her
sigh turned itself into a grimace.

'In your face, knock them dead red,' he confirmed.
•Will you do it?'

Trust him not to hold her up as an object of scorn?
No, she didn't For you didn't dress your woman up, as
he had just described, without having some ulterior mo-
tive for doing it But to demand to know what that mo-
tive was had now been denied her by that word trust.

So. 'Yes,' she said.

His soft laugh said he was aware of how difficult
she'd found it to say that word. But, 'Good,' was all he
replied. 'Because I've seen the perfect dress on Via
Monte Napoleon. Let's go and buy it...'

It was certainly red, Antonia confirmed, as she stood
looking at herself in the bedroom mirror. In your face
and knock them dead. A quiver of anxiety went shiv-
ering through her. In fact, Marco had described it per-
fectly. Long and slinky, with a heart-shaped boned bod-
ice that defied gravity and a back that wasn't there at
all. Pinched-in waistline, a long skirt that clung
smoothly to every detail of her shape as it made its way
down to her ankles, and a kick-back pleat that began at
the back of her knees to give her the ability to walk—
and her figure an hourglass shape that was so damn sexy
it couldn't be more 'in your face'.

Her hair was up, as requested, and she truly did drip
with diamonds. Diamond choker, diamond bracelet at
her wrist, diamonds dangling from her ears. Glancing
down at her high-heeled strappy red shoes, she caught
a glimpse of the diamond anklet he had insisted she
wear. In fact the only thing she had been able to refuse,
and get away with it, was the red carnation to dress up
her hair.

Her lipstick was red, her eyeliner so much more pro-
nounced than she would usually wear it that, as she
looked into her own eyes, she didn't recognise them.
She looked lush, she looked sexy, and she looked like
a wealthy man's possession.

Which she was, she acknowledged.

And if this wasn't dressing up to brazen out whatever
was coming, then she didn't know what was.

*If I come near, will you attack me?' a deep voice
quizzed her.

Her eyes flashed to him via the mirror. Big and lean,
too dam handsome for his own good in conventional
black dinner suit and bow-tie, he was looking at her as
if he wanted to eat her alive as she stood there.

*I wonder how many propositions I will get tonight?'
she mused by way of getting a hit back at him without
the suggested physical attack.

Stepping behind her, he slid his hands around her
narrow waist, his thumb-pads gently stroking against
her bare skin. She quivered in response, despite not
wanting to. The sensation centred itself deep in her ab-
domen and refused to budge.

Sex, it was called. Give it to me. He saw it reflected
in her eyes. "They can try, mi amante, but we both know
to whom it is that you belong, hmm?'

Yes, she thought, and for a moment actually hated
him for being so sure of himself. It could not go un-
challenged, though. So she turned in his grasp and
stroked a hand up his dress shirt, found his warm throat,
trailed her fingers up to his ear. This man might know
her inside out, but she knew him also. The pleasure
point behind his ear only needed the lightest of caress
to send a shudder through him.

'And you know to whom it is that you belong, hey,
mi amore?

He caught the trailing fingers, kissed them with a
wryly mocking bow, his eyes dark with promises as he
straightened again. It was only then that she saw the
colour of his jacket lining. It was glossy silk, matador-
red.

He was mostdefinitely out to make a very big state-
ment tonight, she realised. 'Where are we going?' She
frowned up at him.

'So you thought to ask at last,' he smiled. 'Well, wait
and see. It's a surprise.'

Opening her red-painted mouth to tell him that she
didn't like surprises, she felt the dark eyes challenge
her. She held her breath, thought about that wretched
word trust, and closed her mouth again.

He rewarded her with a kiss that required his mouth
to be wiped clear of lipstick later and her to do a quick
refurbishing job on her own.

After that they left the apartment and went downstairs
to climb into the back of a chauffeur-driven limousine,
which meant that Marco intended to enjoy a drink to-
night. It wasn't late, which was unusual here in Milan,
where most parties tended to begin way after ten. But
she didn't begin to understand why they had set out so
early until they arrived at Linate airport, to a waiting
helicopter.

'Tell me where we are going,' she pleaded, unable to
stop herself.

Helping her into the rear of the helicopter, and mak-
ing sure her dress was neatly folded around her ankles
as she sat down, he joined her, closed the door, gave
the pilot the nod to get them into the air, then turned
and announced very casually, *We are going to my par-
ents' home in Tuscany...'

Nothing—nothing had prepared her for that an-
nouncement. Marco could see that as her face went per-
fectly white. She didn't speak, didn't even gasp in
shocked horror; she just sat beside him and died a
thousands deaths in total silence.

His instincts were telling him to say something—any-
thing to reassure her that this night was going to be
fine. But that word fine wasn't enough for him. And the
word trust was demanding he make her give him that
unequivocally. It was a pride thing; he knew that. For,
although he might have forgiven her for keeping so
much of herself hidden from him, he still hadn't come
to terms with how little she had trusted him with any
of the important issues in her life.

Shallow. She'd thought him shallow. An arrogant
snob who was quite capable of loving a woman sense-
less in his bed but could actually despise her for what
she was. Well, tonight, she was going to leam a few
harsh lessons. And one of them was to spend the next
hour stewing in her own anxieties. He felt she owed
him that.

And anyway, he was excited. He was out to make an
impact tonight, and not just on his family and friends
but on Antonia too. So, with the smoothness taught to
him from the cradle, he began talking, filling in the trip
with innocuous discussion about innocuous subjects that
forced her to think and answer but did not detract from
the tense expectancy that built up the longer they were
in the air.

They arrived as darkness was falling. It was the per-
fect time to get her first glimpse of the Casa Bellini.

The vine-covered valley, the house in its centre lit from
the inside by electric lighting while the final drape of
the sun coloured a blush against its outer walls.

Waiting for the helicopter blades to go sdll before he
jumped out, Marco turned to lift Antonia down. She slid
through his grasp like smooth bone china, no weight,
no substance, nothing but fairness and beauty and an
anxiety that kicked at his gut.

'I love you,' he murmured, and placed a kiss on her
brow.

It was the first time he had said it out loud. Impact
was what he had been out for; impact was what he got.
Her eyes washed with moisture, and he felt his own
want to do the same.

'I just wanted to be sure you knew that before we
went inside,' he added very huskily—so huskily, in fact,
that he didn't know his own voice.

She didn't say anything. He didn't think she could.
So he took her hand and walked her towards his par-
ents' house and in through the huge French windows
left open to the evening air. Her fingers clung so tightly
to his he knew—knew this woman, this beautiful
woman was his for ever now.

The first people they saw as they entered were his
mother and father, waiting to greet them on the huge
expanse of brown and white chequered floor that gave
their home such a grand entrance that led right from the
front to the back of the house.

This was it, he thought. Show time...

Dressed in statutory black, but breathtakingly elegant in
it, Signora Isabella Bellini walked forwards. She was
smiling at her, Antonia noticed. It was an uncertain,
slightly wary smile, but at least it was a smile. She tried
a smile in return.

'Welcome,' Marco's mother greeted, and leaned for-
ward to place a kiss on each of her cheeks.

Her fingers tightened their grip on Marco.

"Th-thank you.' Antonia wasn't sure why she offered
those words in English. It simply seemed appropriate.
'It was good of you to invite me here.'

'No.' Signora Bellini did not accept that. 'It should
have happened a long time ago. I apologise for my rude-
ness and hope you can leam to forgive me for it. We
Bellinis can be too arrogant for our own comfort some-
tunes.'

It was so gracious, so kind, Antonia felt the tears
threaten again. 'I understood, really I did,' she assured
the older woman. Well—maybe it was a lie, but it was
a kind lie.

It was a good point for Federico Bellini to step
smoothly into the breach. 'Now I see why my son lays
threats at a sick man's door,' he remarked, softening the
censure with a lazy grin which hit Antonia right in her
solar plexus because it was so like Marco's smile.

He was tall like his son, dark-haired like his son—if
a little peppered with silver. But it was also clear that,
beneath the sophistication of formal black and white
clothing, the rest of Signer Bellini had seen better tunes.

Opening her mouth to voice her concern for his ill-
ness, the man himself pre-empted her by bending to-
wards her. 'Don't say it,' he confided. 'It is not neces-
sary.' Then he kissed both her cheeks, raised his head
and smiled his son's smile again. 'It's an honour to meet
you at last, Miss Carson.'

Then he turned his attention to Marco. "This is your
night, Marco. Your guests await. Therefore I suggest
you get this started.'

With that hand still firmly clasped in his, Marco felt
Antonia's instant tension, the shock in realising that this
was more than just a formal introduction to his parents.

His father's eyes were glinting with sardonic knowl-
edge. His mother was displaying no expression at all.
She had not been against what he had set up here, but
she had not been sure it was the right way to go about
settling the issue of Antonia.

'Hurt her with this and she will never forgive you,'
she'd warned him only yesterday.

'You don't know her as I do,' he'd replied. 'I have
confidence in her. I trust her to understand.'

Trust. Dio, but that word was playing a major role in
his life right now, he acknowledged as he started walk-
ing towards the doors which led into the family's formal
reception room.

Antonia clung to his side. His parents fell into step
behind them. As they reached the doors a waiting ser-
vant smoothly pushed them open to reveal a vast room
lit by huge mountains of crystal. Marco paused on the
threshold, so he could give Antonia a moment to absorb
the sheer grandeur of the room and the people who were
already present and waiting for their entrance.

The hum of conversation dropped into silence. Faces
turned, people stared. Beside him, Antonia's pulse be-
gan to quicken as she took in the full impact of the
whole assembly. And Marco did nothing, just waited
for her restless eyes to finish making a full inventory of
what he had set up for them here tonight.

Then at last she saw them, standing out like a pah" of
statements. Bold, brash, utterly scorning any hint of dis-
comfort. Her warm. soft red-painted mouth slackened,

her ensuing gasp audible only to him. Surprise tingled
from her fingers into his, then she simply stood there
so breathless and still that he actually began to wonder
if he had made a big mistake.

This just wasn't happening, Antonia tried to tell her-
self. She was having a dream. A very weird dream. She
had to be. In a minute all of these people were going
to start laughing in gruesome mockery, telling her to
get out and never come near them again, which was
how dreams like these usually finished. It was the only
answer she could form to what it was she was looking
at.

But it wasn't a dream. She knew it because she could
feel Marco literally vibrating with waiting tension be-
side her. She tried swallowing and found she couldn't.
She tried turning to look at him. but she couldn't do
that either because her eyes were refusing to move from
what they had frozen on.

For right there, hanging on his parents' wall for
everyone to see, were two nudes painted in oils and
mounted in matching frames. One was herself, looking
slender and sleek and coyly seductive. The other was
Marco, looking as bold and arrogant in his nakedness
as she'd always perceived him to be.

Heat roared into her cheeks, then faded away'again.
Her heart began to thunder on the total shock of seeing
the two of them so brazenly presented like this. And
suddenly the dress began to make sense, the desire to
drip her in diamonds. Marco was taking them all on—
his parents, his friends, all those mocking doubters who
didn't believe he could love (his woman who could ex-
pose her body like this.

If you can't beat them, join them, he was saying. If
I can't make them believe, then—what the heck? Throw
these two paintings in their faces and let them think
what they like!

'If you can hack it then I can too,' Marco murmured
beside her, and his voice was soft, layered with warmth
and humour and a lazy challenge.

She found the strength to look at him, saw the hu-
mour reflecting in his eyes, plus something else—a plea,
maybe, for her to understand what it was he had been
trying to achieve when he'd decided to do this.

A short laugh rippled from her. It spilled into her eyes
and turned his smile into a grin. She looked frontward
again—and continued to smile, because she understood.
She knew. This was his way of levelling the differences
in them. It was him coming down his lofty ladder. It
was her climbing up to meet him.

The hand he placed on her lower spine threaded elec-
tric sensation across her naked skin as it began drifting
up her spine to her slender nape in an act of sensual
possession.

'More to come,' he warned softly, and urged her into
movement again.

Her legs felt like rubber. Her pulse was racing, and
her mind was lost in a haze of shock and some dismay
and a whole lot of sinfully delicious elation. He took
them past smiling faces, past rueful faces, past familiar
faces like Franco and Nicola. She saw, through what
felt like a misted glaze, Stefan grinning knowingly at
her, while the woman at his side looked on curiously.
She was tall and dark and so beautiful it made Antonia
halt for a second to offer her a warm smile.

'Tanya.' She whispered the woman's name.

'Later,' Marco advised, and pressed her into move-
ment again.

At the other end of the room, he finally paused. It
was a staged arrival, which placed them exactly in be-
tween their naked images. Lights sparkled, diamonds
flashed, faces observed curiously as he turned her to-
wards him.

Holding the whole room captive, he looked deep into
her eyes, then dropped his gaze to her mouth and al-
lowed it to linger there until the pulse of anticipation
became an energy charge all of its own.

'Right,' he said huskily, 'now, this is the deal...'

'Another one?' she whispered back, aware that he
was deliberately holding her balanced on a pin-head of
expectation with the warmth of his eyes and the promise
of his kiss, and the touch of his fingers on her—

She glanced down and had to blink several times be-
fore she could focus on the ring he was carefully sliding
onto her finger. Made of gold and platinum, it was an
intricate twist of finely worked metals forming the clasp
for a diamond. And not just any old diamond, she real-
ised, as she watched its flawless quality sparkle with a
deep yellow lustre which told her instinctively that this
was a very rare diamond indeed.

'What do you think?' Deep, dark, disturbingly husky,
his voice made her senses sparkle like the diamond.

'It's—beautiful,' she breathed.

'At the risk of sounding really corny, it reminded me
of your eyes,' he drily confessed. 'But it comes with a
price-tag attached to it,' he then added.

'Another one of those also?' she murmured in an at-
tempt to mock. But it didn't come off, for she was just
too filled with the wonder in what he was creating for
her.

It was pure romance tied up in bows of spicy sen-
sation. The kind of thing you remembered for ever and
relayed to your children and your grandchildren.

'Mnun,' he murmured, and it was one of the really
sexy murmurs that she loved so much. 'Because with
this ring, mi amore, I am about to commit you to a
solemn promise that you will trust me to love you for
the rest of your life...'

It was too much. Without a care for who was watch-
ing, she reached up on tiptoe and kissed him. Not shy
and light, or tender and sweet, but with every ounce of
love she had in her.

A camera bulb flashed. They were caught for poster-
ity locked in a heated embrace with two oil paintings
framing why they were kissing like that...

The villa in Portofino was the ideal setting for their
honeymoon, Marco thought with a sense of warm sat-
isfaction. They'd flown in by helicopter direct from
their wedding reception at his family estate in Tuscany.
And though it was dark outside the air was fresher here,
so close to the ocean, so Marco had no problem leaning
against the balcony rail while he watched his bride
come towards him.

She was naked, of course. But then so was he—if
you didn't count the rich cream-satin waistcoat she had
made him put back on before she would allow him to
make love to her. It was meant to make a statement,
like the fine tulle veil she still had pinned to her beau-
tiful hair, that floated around her exquisite face and
shoulders as she moved towards him.

Sexy. Very sexy. He allowed himself a lecherous
grin. 'When are you going to take it off?' he asked
lazily.

'When I feel married,' she replied.

He arched a brow. 'And you don't feel married yet?'

'No.' The pout was very spoiled and sumptuously
kissable. And, since they'd already made love several
times since they'd arrived here, it was also a slight on
his virility.

'Watch it,' he warned.

She had the audacity to look down. He laughed—
what else could he do when he was being bewitched by
a teasing little temptress with only one thing on her
mind.

Dio, she made him feel good. She made him feel like
the only worthy man on this earth.

Her fingers came out, stroked the cream satin lapel
up to his shoulders, then made their way back down
again. When she reached the open buttons she began to
slowly close them. The cutaway edges of the waistcoat
suddenly put a whole new meaning on erotic fantasy.

'If you're looking so intent because you're thinking
of painting me like this, then take my advice, cara, and
change your mind,' he advised.

Lightly said, lazily delivered, but still he meant every
word of it. Her chin came up. The pout had gone; the
seductress had switched back on. Stepping that tiny bit
closer to him, she held his eyes for a long moment and
caught his mouth with a kiss aimed to take the legs from
under him—while her hands went in search of other
weaknesses.

His eyes drew shut, his breath escaped on a thickened
sigh as she unleashed her magic upon him. If he died
right now, at least he would go taking this image with
him.

Man and wife, belonging to each other.

'You have no inhibition,' he censured darkly.

'I love you,' she answered simply. 'It is uninhibited.'

She was right, and it was. The warm, red, kiss-
swollen mouth he claimed with his own mouth. The
woman he claimed in other ways.