Exotic Affairs: The Mistress Bride\The Spanish Husband\The Bellini Bride (36 page)

‘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…’

T
HE
drive back to the apartment was achieved in silence. Both tense, both angry for their own reasons. Both so sexually on edge that the atmosphere almost sizzled.

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

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

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

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

And, on top of that, he was beginning to feel like a jealous husband without the official bit of paper that said he had to put up with this. Hot anger suddenly
turned to ice, the mere suspicion that Antonia was digging her claws into him deeply enough to make him feel that way, literally horrifying the heat out of him.

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

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

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

‘You’ve been working with Kranst again,’ he declared flatly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘I have absolutely no idea.’ Though she certainly had a few worrying suspicions.

‘You must do,’ Marco insisted. ‘You know the man. You lived with him for over five years.’

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

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

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

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

‘So, I’m keeping the two of you happy?’ Her laugh was scornful. But even Antonia was aware that her expression was suddenly guarded, because Marco had unwittingly drifted too close to a carefully kept secret of her own.

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

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

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

‘Then why the shifty look?’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘You think I’m a real push-over, don’t you?’ she muttered, tossing hairpins in an angry scatter across the
dressing table top. ‘You think that because you’re as sexy as hell and so darn wealthy you can afford to buy anything, that I should be grateful that you decided to buy me!’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘A year of great sex?’ he suggested nastily.

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

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

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

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

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

She went to turn away from him. It was sheer frustration
with the whole sordid scene that made him stop her, he told himself. It had nothing to do with the sudden suspicion that if he let her turn away she would never turn back to him again.

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

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

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

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

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

As she released a gasp in startled surprise he at last captured her mouth again. She fell into his kiss like a woman with a fever. When her fingers came up to
clutch at his rock-solid biceps, he stroked her hair, stroked her body, and stroked her beautiful breasts with their sensitive points that simply begged for his further attention.

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

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

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

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

It was an outright warning.

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

After a moment, he sighed and let go of her. She swayed a little, but found her balance, and remained
exactly as she was while he strode for the door. And what was the picture he took with him? Antonia asked herself as she watched him go.

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

She had never felt so sickened in all her life.

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

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

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

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

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