Читать книгу Michelle Reid Collection - Michelle Reid - Страница 40

THE apartment had a hushed air about it after the taxi ride across the noisy city. A large flat brown card package 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 always 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 possessions.

Marco was already putting the case away in the cupboard. 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 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 towards 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 attention,’ 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 sorry,’ 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 necessary when there were other ways to relay your feelings. 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 likening it to a honeymoon, where neither was seemingly prepared to allow anything to spoil what they had together.

Who wanted a betrothal ring? Who wanted a marriage 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 routine 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 acknowledgement 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 forget 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 contaminating 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 pleasure because it was so very obvious that Antonia and Marco had sorted out their differences. Everyone enjoyed 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 content. She was happy. Marco was making her a permanent 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 tonight. A party. I think we will go shopping for something really special for you to wear…’

A party, she repeated. A party meant people. People meant facing her public humiliation from the week before. She couldn’t do it. ‘No,’ she breathed.

Lifting his eyes from his ever-present morning newspaper, 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 saying 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 indignation, 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 possessed.

‘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 working 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 motive for doing it. But to demand to know what that motive 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 shivering through her. In fact, Marco had described it perfectly. Long and slinky, with a heart-shaped boned bodice 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 pronounced 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 darn 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 abdomen 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 unchallenged, 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, matadorred.

He was most definitely out to make a very big statement 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 tonight. 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 making 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 parents’ home in Tuscany…’

Nothing—nothing had prepared her for that announcement. Marco could see that as her face went perfectly 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—anything 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 senseless in his bed but could actually despise her for what she was. Well, tonight, she was going to learn 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 perfect 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 still 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 parents’ 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 forward 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 rudeness and hope you can learn to forgive me for it. We Bellinis can be too arrogant for our own comfort sometimes.’

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 Signor Bellini had seen better times.

Opening her mouth to voice her concern for his illness, the man himself pre-empted her by bending towards her. ‘Don’t say it,’ he confided. ‘It is not necessary.’ 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 knowledge. 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 walking 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 servant 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 began 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 pair of statements. Bold, brash, utterly scorning any hint of discomfort. 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 herself. 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 beside 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 this woman who could expose 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 humour 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 electric 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 movement again.

At the other end of the room, he finally paused. It was a staged arrival, which placed them exactly in between their naked images. Lights sparkled, diamonds flashed, faces observed curiously as he turned her towards him.

Holding the whole room captive, he looked deep into her eyes, then dropped his gaze to her mouth and allowed 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 before 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 realised, 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 attempt 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 sensation. The kind of thing you remembered for ever and relayed to your children and your grandchildren.

‘Mmm,’ 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 watching, 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 posterity 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 satisfaction. 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 beautiful 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.