Exotic Affairs: The Mistress BrideThe Spanish HusbandThe Bellini Bride

by Michelle Reid

  The hum of conversation suddenly rushed into overdrive as people attempted to cover up the dreadful moment. Someone gently touched her arm. It was Stefan. ‘That—’ he growled, ‘was unforgivable.’

  She began to shake. Stefan glanced angrily at Marco, who still hadn’t moved a single muscle. Then, ‘Come on,’ he murmured gruffly. ‘Let’s go back to Rosetta’s—’

  ‘No,’ a hard voice countermanded. And with it Marco broke free from his stone-like stasis. ‘We are leaving,’ he announced.

  The hand tightened on her shoulder. Antonia could feel the anger in its biting grip and clenched the muscles beneath it.

  ‘I’m coming with you,’ Stefan declared, still gripping Antonia’s arm. ‘I have no wish to—’

  ‘No.’ Once again Marco cut him short. ‘We appreciate your concern, but this is not your problem.’

  ‘It is when it’s Antonia who has been insulted,’ Stefan said angrily.

  ‘And my mother who did the insulting,’ Marco coldly pointed out.

  ‘Excuse me,’ Antonia whispered, and broke free from both of them. She needed to get away from here, and she needed to do it now. Fighting tears, fighting the crawling worms of humiliation, fighting to keep her head up high as she went, she walked quickly for the stairs.

  If she’d cared to look back, she would have seen that Marco’s mother was already feeling the discomfort of what she had done. She was touching her son’s arm, trying to get his attention. But Marco didn’t even offer her a glance as he strode after Antonia. His hand found her waist and clamped her close. Together they started down the stairs. In her haste Antonia tripped over her own spindly shoes. Marco grimly held her upright, and kept her moving while the throb of his anger pulsed all around her like the heartbeat pound of a drum.

  They reached the plate-glass door at the same time as the doorman pulled it open. Neither realised the door was being opened to allow someone outside to come in. There was a bump of bodies.

  ‘Scuze signor—signorina,’ a deep, quietly modulated voice apologised.

  It was automatic to glance up. Automatic to attempt the polite reply to the apology. Antonia looked into the stranger’s face, he looked into hers, and any attempt to speak was thoroughly suffocated beneath yet another thick layer of appalled dismay.

  Black hair spiked with silver, grey eyes with a hint of green. As tall as Marco, but more slender than Marco, he was a man in the autumn years of his life.

  Still, she knew exactly who it was she was staring at—and, worse, he knew that she knew.

  ‘Madonna mia,’ he breathed in shaken consternation. ‘Anastasia.’

  Anastasia… It was too much in one short evening for Antonia to deal with. It was all she could do to shrink back into the only solid thing she could rely on right now.

  Marco might be immersed in the red tide of anger, but he saw the exchanged looks, heard the name shudder from the other man’s lips. Knew there was yet something else going on here that he wasn’t privy to, and felt his anger switch from his mother and back to the woman now shrinking into his side.

  ‘You are mistaken,’ he clipped at the other man. ‘Please excuse us,’ he added coldly, then got them the hell out of there before anything else smashed into them.

  Outside, the Quadrilatero was busy with window-shoppers. Marco’s car was parked in a side street not far away. Holding on to his temper until he got them there was a case of clamping his mouth shut and saying nothing.

  Opening the passenger door, he helped her into the plush black leather seat, then squatted down to lock home her seat belt. She didn’t seem to notice. With yet another lash of anger, he grabbed her chin and made her look at him. Her eyes were almost black, her skin paste-white and her lovely mouth completely bloodless. She looked as fragile as a piece of fine Venetian glass, likely to shatter without careful handling.

  But he didn’t feel like handling anything carefully.

  In fact, he wanted to shatter her into little pieces so he could reach the real woman, because this one had become a complete stranger to him!

  With a harsh sigh he released her chin, stood up and closed the car door. He got in beside her, then fired the engine. Jaw locked, teeth clenched, he set them moving, bullying his way into the nose-to-tail traffic clogging up Milan’s crazy one-way road system, then took an amount of pleasure in doing the same thing in his quest to forge them the most direct route home.

  Car horns blared at him in protest. Headlights flashed. Abuse was thrown at him in colourful Italian. He didn’t care. He was so angry! Angry with Kranst and his little party piece. With his mother and her unforgivable behaviour! And he was angry with Antonia for allowing him to believe the painting he had in his apartment was of her!

  And then there was the man in the gallery doorway, he added to his long list of grievances because, despite appearing otherwise, he’d recognised him. His name was Anton Gabrielli, a wealthy industrialist turned recluse, who had rarely been seen in public since his wife died several years ago.

  And he might have called Antonia Anastasia, but the error had been irrelevant. He knew her! And, more to the point, Antonia had recognised him!

  ‘How do you know Anton Gabrielli?’ he demanded.

  It was like talking to a puppet. ‘I’ve never met him before in my life,’ she answered woodenly.

  ‘Don’t lie to me!’ he rasped. ‘He may have got your name wrong, but you knew each other all right. The mutual horror was all too revealing.’

  ‘I said I’ve never met him before!’ she shouted. It was so out of character that he threw a sharp look at her. No puppet now, he noted. She was shaking so badly that it made the diamond at her throat shimmer. On a choked little gasp, she turned her face right away from him so he couldn’t read it. It was the act of someone caught in a lie.

  Without another word, he turned his attention to getting through the traffic, while a new filthy suspicion began to tear into him. Anton Gabrielli was about the same age as Kranst. If she’d enjoyed Kranst as a lover then why not Gabrielli? After all, what did he actually know about Antonia’s life before Kranst?

  Nothing, he realised. Absolutely nothing.

  As the ugly green stuff began to replace his blood again, he finally managed to reach his goal and pulled them to a screeching stop in the basement car park of his apartment. He switched off the engine—then clamped a hard hand on Antonia’s thigh as she released her seat belt.

  ‘Stay,’ he gritted. It was a dire warning. She wasn’t going to make him kick his heels down here for a second time while she rode the lift alone.

  The fingers fluttered, then went to rest on her lap, her body melting back into the seat. With a tight hiss of satisfaction he got out, swung round the car, opened her door then bent to help her alight.

  The lift took them upwards, with her shaking like crazy and him with his fists clenched to stop him taking hold of her and shaking her some more! When they reached the apartment door it was Marco who opened it; Antonia didn’t seem capable. But, once inside, the few seconds it required for him to deactivate the alarm system gave her the chance to get away from him.

  She headed straight for the bedroom. He stayed where he was long enough to utter a few choice curses before grimly striding after her. If she’d locked the bedroom door on him then she was in for one hell of a shock! he vowed.

  But the door wasn’t locked. And what he found when he tossed it back on its hinges stunned him to a complete standstill.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  ‘—WHAT the hell are you doing?’ he raked out incredulously.

  But he could see what she was doing. A suitcase already lay open on the bed and she was tossing things into it like a criminal on the run.

  ‘Antonia!’ he demanded when she didn’t answer.

  ‘I’m l-leaving,’ she stammered, then froze within the midst of what he realised was full-scale panic to stand with body stiff, arms straight, fists tightly clenched, while she fought a battle with whatever emotion was suddenly tryi
ng to overwhelm her.

  ‘The hell you are,’ he grimly countered, but his own voice no longer sounded quite so steady.

  He began striding towards her, and the act jolted her back from wherever she’d gone to and she turned on him, paste-white, stark-eyed—he had never seen an expression like it in all his life.

  ‘Cara…’ he murmured hoarsely. ‘For goodness’ sake…’

  ‘I’m leaving you, Marco!’ She almost screamed the words at him she was so out of control. ‘Now—tonight! I n-never want to see you again.’

  The fact that he could see it had almost killed her to say that didn’t make him feel any better, because he could see she actually meant it—and that was scaring the life out of him.

  She turned back to the suitcase. With a swipe of his hand he sent it flying to the floor. Clothes scattered everywhere. Silly things like a couple of sets of underwear, a couple of skirts, a couple of simple cotton tops.

  He tried swallowing and found he couldn’t. He tried making sense of the evidence he was looking at. He couldn’t do that either. For no woman—no woman! left Marco Bellini with only the clothes she’d come to him with!

  No woman left Marco Bellini.

  ‘You aren’t going anywhere until you’ve answered some questions,’ he growled, and grabbed her hand. ‘Maybe once you’ve done that I’ll be glad to see the back of you!’ he threw in for furious good measure, and began trailing her behind him out of the bedroom and down the hall while she tried her best to get free of him.

  No chance, he vowed silently. No damn chance.

  Throwing open the door to his study, he strode them over to the locked door. Still holding her hand prisoner, he stabbed in the security pin-number, hauled her inside, then over to the Mirror Woman.

  ‘Now, let’s start right here,’ he gritted. ‘Who is she?’

  Anastasia, Antonia thought tragically, and began shaking all over again, fighting a battle with tears that reached right down to her abdomen. Sad, tragic—beautiful Anastasia.

  ‘Mirror—mirror,’ she whispered thickly.

  ‘What is that supposed to mean?’ Marco said harshly.

  It was no use lying, no use trying to pretend that she didn’t know what he was talking about. The game was up. She had been exposed as the fraud she was.

  ‘This,’ she said, ‘is Anastasia…’

  It took a few moments, then it hit him. ‘My God,’ he rasped. ‘Are you saying that she is your twin?’

  A laugh left her throat on a strangled sob. Her amber eyes shimmered with tears and a pained kind of humour, because Anastasia would have so loved to have been here to hear this big handsome Italian say that.

  ‘No, not my twin,’ she murmured softly. ‘She was my mother…’

  My poor, wretched, haunted mother, she silently extended, while the silence grew thick all around her.

  ‘Mother,’ Marco repeated, as if he had to do so to understand the concept. ‘You mean, you and Kranst actually….’

  The words stopped. Antonia turned to look at him. For once he was literally floundering on the rocks of shock. And he looked white. He looked horrified.

  ‘What?’ she snapped as anger began flooding up from the depths of a bitter knowledge of where they were about to go with this. ‘Did we collaborate to deceive everyone? Yes.’ She openly admitted the charge. ‘Did I pose nude for Stefan so he could pretend I was my mother? No, I did not,’ she denied that. ‘Stefan and my mother were lovers for ten years! He adored her. And no again, before the cogs inside your head start turning to something nasty,’ she sliced at him. ‘Stefan did not bed-swap between my mother and myself!’

  ‘I was not about to assume—’ Marco began stiffly.

  But angrily she cut in. ‘You’ve always assumed!’ she cried. ‘From the very beginning you assumed we were lovers. But Stefan is my friend!’ she threw at him. ‘My dear, dear friend who arrived in our lives when we really needed someone warm and loving and endlessly giving like him! Between us, we nursed my mother through a long and miserable illness. And the result of those dark years?’ She gestured with a trembling hand towards the painting. ‘How my mother wanted Stefan to remember her. Not the withered and worn-out shell she became towards the end!’

  Tears flooded her eyes. She looked away from him, her whole torso heaving with the fight for control.

  ‘So he painted a lie,’ Marco said grimly.

  ‘And what if he did?’ she replied. ‘What does it matter to anyone else that the image they see isn’t the gruesome reality?’

  ‘Hence the mirror.’ Oh, he was very good, she had to give him that.

  ‘It reflects what was,’ she confirmed. ‘Stefan could pick up a paintbrush even now and paint her looking exactly like this. He loved her so very much…’

  ‘Yet he was quick to sell these when opportunity knocked,’ Marco pointed out cynically. ‘And he was quick to let you masquerade as her to add a bit of juicy notoriety to the sales!’

  ‘I didn’t say he was perfect,’ she snapped. ‘And the paintings went on show before my mother died!’ she pronounced. ‘At her request! For her pleasure! It amused her when people mistook me for her! And anything that made her happy, Stefan and I gave her!’ Her eyes flashed, tear-bright but unrepentant.

  His hardened into bitterness. ‘That’s all fine for everyone else. But don’t you think you owed it to me to tell me the truth?’

  ‘Why should I have done that?’ she gasped out in angry bewilderment. ‘You got what you came looking for, Marco,’ she told him. ‘You got the woman in the painting. You had no interest in me as a living breathing human being!’

  Two streaks of colour hit his cheekbones, his whole body stiffened in affront. ‘That’s not true,’ he denied.

  ‘Yes, it is,’ she insisted. ‘Take away the kudos in being able to lay claim to Stefan Kranst’s notoriously sexy model, and it would take away the desire; I always knew that.’

  He didn’t answer. For her, his silence said it all. Looking back at her mother for one last time, Antonia touched a gentle finger to the tiny birthmark on her shoulder, smiled a sad ‘I love you’ smile, then withdrew again, curling her fingers into her palms as she turned for the door.

  ‘Where are you going?’

  She paused, but didn’t look back. ‘Home,’ she whispered. ‘I’m going home. There’s nothing left for me here.’

  ‘I’m here,’ Marco murmured gruffly.

  ‘No, you’re not.’ Antonia shook her head. ‘You’re standing aloft in a place I can never reach you. It’s called the social ladder. You don’t mind coming down to the bottom rung to enjoy life with the masses now and then, but when it comes to elevating someone up to your top rung—no chance.’ She laughed. It was a bitter sound. ‘Élite marries élite. Darling Mamma expects it.’

  ‘Leave my mother out of this,’ he rasped back angrily.

  ‘But why should I?’ she spun round to demand. He looked so grim and remote it was almost as if he was already climbing back up that ladder and away from her. ‘In truth,’ she said, ‘I’m actually grateful for what your mother did tonight. Because she forced me to take a good look and see just how I had been wasting my life living here with you.’

  ‘Wasting it because I haven’t asked you to marry me?’ he threw back with contempt. ‘Is that what your year-long investment in me has really been about, cara? Give a man what you think he wants. Lie to him, cheat him if necessary, in the wild hope that the dividend will give back the jackpot billionaire with all the luxury trimmings?’

  He saw himself as the jackpot? ‘You arrogant bastard,’ she said scornfully. ‘I invested in love!’ she cried. ‘As in my love for you being strong enough to ignite some love back by return! But it never happened, did it, Marco?’ Her eyes began to shine like the diamond at her throat. ‘And even after a whole year of living together you can still freeze up in dismay when confronted with the disapproval of your mother, and still stand here and toss your contempt at me for actually daring to think myself fit
to marry you!’

  ‘I did not freeze in shame because of you!’ he raked back angrily. ‘I froze in shame of my wretched mother!’

  But he was shouting it to an empty space. Antonia had already walked away. For all of five seconds he remained where he was, wanting to just let her go and stew in her own dignity. But then he remembered the suitcase on the floor of the bedroom and calculated how quickly it would take her to repack it.

  Anger shot through him. Curses rattled from his tense lips. But alarm set his feet moving. He hated it—hated feeling like this!

  Sure enough she was in the bedroom, standing over the bloody case. ‘All right!’ he lashed out. ‘Marry me! If that is what it takes to stop this—craziness. Marry me—marry me!’

  She turned to look at him. It was like watching snow cover a mountain her skin turned so white. Then the rain came, flooding into those beautiful amber eyes and her lips erupted with an agonised quiver.

  Shaken to the roots by his own proposal, stunned beyond movement by her response, he watched one of her hands come out and give a flick in a bitter throw away gesture. Then she began walking towards him. His skin came alive to a million bee-stings; his heart lost the ability to beat. When she reached him she paused, and those awful tear-washed eyes looked right into his.

  ‘May you go to hell, Marco,’ she whispered thickly, then pushed him out of the way so that she could get past him.

  It took him several moments to gain the will to move again. By then, a door further down the hallway had shut and the key had been turned. Staring round the chaos she had left behind her, he suddenly felt like a man standing in the middle of a ruin. Helpless, hopeless, unable to come to terms with how quickly it had all come tumbling down around him.

  His legs eventually managed to take him forward, his feet picking their way through the debris of her clothes. Sitting down on the bed, he leant forward and clasped his head between long tense fingers.

  He could have played an old scene again and gone charging after her, but it didn’t even come up as an option this time. She needed to cool off, and he needed to get a grip on what had just happened because at this precise moment he didn’t have a single clue!