Читать книгу Michelle Reid Collection - Michelle Reid - Страница 32

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 tonight. But it wasn’t true, and everyone knew it. Which was why conversations stopped, heads turned, and the whole room watched Marco Bellini’s mistress embrace her ex-lover with brazen ease.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘And you liked to feel my claws now and again…’ ‘I still bear the scars,’ he clipped.

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

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

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

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

‘Clever girl,’ Louisa commended.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Shame—big shame—she wasn’t his own.

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Well, thanks a lot,’ Stefan drawled.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘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 notoriety 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 explained. ‘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 messages 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 information 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 having 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 suddenly began to feel like.

‘Be brave, my friend,’ Stefan softly encouraged. Then—‘Good evening, Marco.’ He smiled. ‘It’s a pleasure to see you again…’

But it wasn’t a pleasure for any of them. Standing close to Stefan still, Antonia was assailed by the familiar 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 lying 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 stiffened 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 painting 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 painting.

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

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 suggestion 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 something 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. ‘Ciao,’ Nicola greeted awkwardly. ‘You two enjoying 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 private.’

With that he reached up and unclipped 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 promising mouth and the inviting sway of her beautiful body.

In one corner of his consciousness he was totally engrossed in her, loving it—loving her defiance, her willingness 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 burn right down to her tingling toes. In any mood Marco was a breathtaking study of male beauty, but bad tempered and aroused he was awakening senses she hadn’t known existed before 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…’