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. Glanci
ng 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 gues
ts 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.
Exotic Affairs: The Mistress BrideThe Spanish HusbandThe Bellini Bride Page 49