with gifts and took her on exciting dates, not to mention one who initiated her into the heady pleasures of the flesh. It was all like a dream come true to a shy country girl from the Outback of Australia.
Claire had always been so careful with men in the past. She hadn’t wanted to repeat the mistakes of her mother, pregnant and abandoned at a young age, spending most of her life looking for love in all the wrong places, and going on to have two other children, none of whose fathers had stayed around long enough to have their names registered on the birth certificates.
Claire hadn’t slept around like most of her peers. Instead she had saved up the money from the three part-time jobs she’d juggled in order to put herself through hairdressing college. She had graduated as student of the year, and spent the next year or so saving for a holiday abroad, wanting to see the world before she settled into an upmarket salon.
But then she had met Antonio.
He had come in for a haircut, and as Riccardo, her flamboyant boss, had been double-booked due to a mistake one of the apprentices had made, he had asked her to wash and cut Antonio’s hair for him.
Claire had smiled up at the tall, gorgeous-looking man, introducing herself shyly. ‘I am so sorry about the mistake in the appointment book,’ she said. ‘Riccardo has spoken to you about me filling in for him?’
Antonio smiled. ‘It is not a problem,’ he said. ‘You are from England, si?’
‘No.’ She felt herself blushing and gushing. ‘I’m actually Australian, from Sydney…well, really the country, not the city…a rural district…you know…cows and sheep…that sort of thing.’
‘Ah, Australia,’ he said, taking the chair she held out for him. ‘I have distant relatives there. In fact my younger brother has been there several times. I have been promising myself a trip out there some time. It is the land of opportunities, si?’
Claire draped the cape around his impossibly broad shoulders, her nerves fizzing as her fingers accidentally came into contact with the raspy skin along his jaw. ‘Um…yes…I guess so. If you’re prepared to work hard,’ she said, trying to avoid meeting his coal-black eyes in the mirror.
‘Do you speak Italian?’
‘Non parlo Italiano,’ she said with an apologetic grimace. ‘But I would like to learn. I’ve been thinking about taking some classes.’
He met her eyes in the mirror and held them. ‘I will give you a lesson for free if you agree to have dinner with me tonight.’
Claire’s fingers stilled amongst the silky strands of his sooty black hair. ‘Um…I’m not sure if Riccardo agrees with his staff fraternising with clients,’ she faltered.
‘He will agree when it comes to me,’ Antonio said, with the sort of easy confidence that would have presented itself as arrogance in anyone else.
‘Would you like to come over to the basin?’ she asked, trying for cool and calm but not quite pulling it off.
Antonio rose from the chair, his height yet again dwarfing her. ‘Riccardo must think a lot of your skill if he has shunted one of his best clients into your hands,’ he said. ‘Will I be safe?’
Claire responded to his flirting as any other young woman would have done. ‘Only if you behave yourself, Signor Marcolini,’ she said with a smile. ‘I make a habit of keeping all of my customers satisfied—even the most demanding ones.’
‘I am sure you do,’ he said, and put back his head so she could wash his hair.
Claire had to drag herself out of the past to concentrate on the here and now. She didn’t want to remember how it had felt to run her fingers through his hair, to massage his scalp for far longer than any other client before or since. She didn’t want to remember how she had agreed to have dinner with him—not just that night but the following night as well. And she certainly didn’t want to remember the way he had kissed her on their third date, his mouth sending her into a frenzy of want that had led to her lying naked in his arms only moments later, his body plunging into hers, her muffled cry of discomfort bringing him up short, shocked, horrified that he had inadvertently hurt her…
No. Claire shoved the memories back even further. It had been the first time he had hurt her, but not the last. And there was no way she was going to think about the last.
‘I find it hard to believe you have been without a regular bedmate for the last five years,’ she said, voicing her doubts out loud.
‘Believe what you like,’ he said. ‘As in the past, I have no control over the unfathomable workings of your mind.’
Claire ground her teeth. ‘You know, you are really going to have to dig a little deeper on the charm front to get me back into your bed, Antonio.’
He gave her an imperious smile. ‘You think?’
She took a step backwards, her hands clenched into fists by her sides. ‘What do your parents and brother think of your dastardly little scheme to lure me back into the fold of the Marcolini family?’
A shadow passed through his dark eyes. It was just a momentary, almost fleeting thing, and Claire thought how she could so easily have missed it. ‘My father unfortunately passed away a couple of months ago,’ he said, with little trace of emotion in his voice. ‘He had a massive heart attack. Too many cigarettes, too much stress, and not enough advice taken from his doctors or his family to slow down, I am afraid.’ He paused for a moment, his dark eyes pinning hers in a disquieting manner. ‘I thought you would have read about it in the press?’
‘I…I must have missed it,’ she said, lowering her voice and her gaze respectfully. ‘I am so sorry. Your mother must miss him greatly. You must all miss him…’
‘My mother is doing the best she can under the circumstances,’ he said after another slight pause. ‘My brother Mario has taken over my father’s business.’
Claire brought her gaze back to his in surprise. ‘What? You mean your father didn’t leave you anything in his will?’
An indefinable look came into his eyes. ‘Mario and I are both partners in the business, of course, but due to my career commitments I have by necessity left most of the corporate side of things to him.’
‘I am sure your brother was shocked to hear of your intention to look me up while you are here,’ Claire commented with a wry look.
Antonio continued to hold her look with an inscrutable one of his own. ‘I have spoken to my brother, who told me rather bluntly he thinks I am a fool for even considering a rematch with you. But then he has always been of the philosophy of one strike and you are out. I am a little more…how shall I say…accommodating?’
Claire could just imagine his playboy younger brother bad-mouthing her to Antonio. His parents had been the same—not that Antonio would ever believe it. That last degrading scene with his mother had been filed away in Claire’s do-not-go-there-again-file in her head. She had kept the cheque in her purse for weeks, folded into a tiny square, frayed at the edges, just as her temper was every time she thought of how she had been dismissed, like a servant who hadn’t fulfilled the impossible expectations of her employer. But then she had finally cashed it, without a twinge of conscience. As far as she was concerned it had been money well spent.
‘How
