Читать книгу Michelle Reid Collection - Michelle Reid - Страница 30

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 strawberryblonde 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 metaphorical 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 terrace directly from his shower, and the white towel draped low around his narrow hips was his only concession 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 blotted 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 himself 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 coffeecup, 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. ‘Ciao,’ 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 appeared 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 naked 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 seduction. With both mouths moistened by warm black coffee, 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 otherwise 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 reminded 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 cynical 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 became 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 bathroom. 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 putting right a wrong would not solve the dilemma that was sitting right on his doorstep waiting to be addressed.

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, deliberately 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 modern 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 recognised, 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 herself 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 mistress 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 unenviable title 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 financial 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 élite,’ 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 élite marries élite.’

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 appeared. 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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Then her mobile began to ring.

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

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

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

‘What do you want?’ she demanded curtly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘And your conceit,’ she added.

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

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

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

‘Huh,’ was all she offered.

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

‘Preferably on your knees,’ Antonia confirmed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Did she know?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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