Читать книгу Michelle Reid Collection - Michelle Reid - Страница 31

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘You’re late,’ she immediately chided.

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

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

‘Bad day?’ she quizzed.

‘Bad everything,’ he said grimly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Cara?’ he prompted her to answer.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Shopping.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Natural? He quizzed himself.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘A painting,’ she answered briefly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The worst of it was, he let her go.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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