‘And what about you?’ he demanded, through gritted teeth, as their vehicle drew to a halt outside the concert hall. ‘Exactly how are you planning to spend the evening? Standing outside my friends’ box for three hours, until the end of the performance, doesn’t sound much fun.’
‘I’m not being paid a great deal of money just to have fun,’ she retorted dismissively, before opening the car door, and he found himself being swiftly escorted inside the large dome of the Albert Hall.
‘Hi, there! We were just beginning to wonder if you’d make it here tonight,’ Giles Harding called out, hurrying through the crowd towards him.
‘O, ye of little faith.’ Lorenzo grinned at his old friend, before turning to greet Giles’s wife, Susie Harding.
Busy chatting to Susie, and catching up with their family’s news, he just about managed to temporarily forget Antonia. However, if he’d hoped to have seen the last of her—for a few hours, at least—he was doomed to disappointment.
‘Aha! You lucky dog! I might have known that you’d turn up with a gorgeous girlfriend in tow,’ Giles murmured with a grin, giving him a sharp dig in the ribs as he spotted the tall girl standing behind the tall Italian.
‘I’m so glad you could join us,’ Giles said, taking her arm with a beaming smile, before Lorenzo had a chance to explain that Miss Simpson was most definitely not his girlfriend.
‘There’s no problem with seats, since two of our guests had to cancel at the last minute,’ Giles added, handing her a drink, before quickly introducing her to his wife.
Chatting idly with his friends’ guests—a rather boring banker and his wife—amidst the noise of loud voices and laughter in the large bar, Lorenzo realised that there was virtually nothing he could do about the situation.
It placed him in an awkward position, of course. On the other hand, he certainly didn’t want to have to go into long, tedious explanations of why he apparently needed protection. Especially as he was almost certain that his old friends would find the highly embarrassing, humiliating fact that he was being forced to put up with a female bodyguard absolutely hilarious.
Initially surprised to find herself being greeted as his girlfriend, Antonia had glanced enquiringly at Lorenzo, indicating her willingness to go along with the scenario.
In her job, she’d frequently been called upon to act the part of a devoted wife or loving fiancée—especially when engaged in undercover work, such as trailing a suspect. So assuming the role of Lorenzo’s girlfriend wasn’t likely to be too difficult.
And maybe…maybe, if he’d made even the slightest effort to act his part, she might not have lost her temper with the foul man. But, after clearly deciding to let Giles Harding believe that she was his latest popsy, Lorenzo had proceeded to totally ignore her, turning his back and chatting to his friends and their guests as if he’d never even heard of her existence.
Goodness knows, she’d already had to put up with quite enough of his nonsense this evening. Besides, she wasn’t stupid. She could easily understand why he hadn’t corrected his friend’s mistake. But there was no excuse for him to behave in such a boorish fashion.
In fact, it was the way he was trying to have his cake—and eat it too—which finally tipped her over the edge.
As the bell rang, signalling that the performance was about to start, and the crowd began moving out of the bar towards the auditorium, she adroitly moved up behind Lorenzo’s tall figure, before casually slipping her arm through his.
‘Sweetie! You weren’t thinking of leaving me behind, were you?’ she exclaimed with a light ripple of laughter, before raising her head to give him a wide, beaming smile.
Rewarded by the sudden tensing of his tall body, and the brief look of horror flickering over his handsome, tanned face, Antonia turned to smile at the Hardings and their guests.
‘I’m so pleased that darling Lorenzo brought me here tonight. I’ve been longing to see this opera for ages. Such a treat!’ she told them, with another warm, happy smile, maintaining a firm grip on his arm as they entered the box.
Swiftly glancing around the red plush interior, which hadn’t changed since the days of Queen Victoria, Antonia quickly identified the perfect position for her client. Letting go of Lorenzo’s arm, she casually edged a nearby chair into a position which would shield him from any possible assassin in the audience—while still allowing him a good sight of the large stage below.
‘Why don’t you sit here, darling?’ she murmured with a soft, winsome smile.
‘No, thank you,’ he retorted through gritted teeth, clearly furious at having to maintain a fixed, pleasant expression on his face, solely for the benefit of his hosts and their guests. ‘I’m sure one of the other ladies would prefer to…’
‘Don’t be silly, darling—I insist that you sit there,’ she told him firmly, accompanying her words with another simpering, entirely false smile. A smile which had those present gazing indulgently at what they, quite mistakenly, assumed to be a loving couple.
As Lorenzo stood glaring down at her, his body taut and rigid with anger at finding himself totally outmanoeuvred, she thought for one, wild moment that he might throw caution to the winds and indulge in a spectacular loss of temper. However, after what appeared to be a massive inner struggle, he finally managed to bring himself under control.
‘Why don’t you go to hell!’ he ground out savagely under his breath as, very reluctantly, he lowered himself into the chair.
‘Only if you lead the way, sweetie!’ she retorted with a grin, before seating herself just behind his tall figure.
As the house lights dimmed and the orchestra began playing the overture, Lorenzo leaned back in his comfortable red plush seat, a bland expression on his face—and murder in his heart!
He’d never, in the whole of his life, been tempted to even think of using violence of any kind against a woman. Which made it all the more shocking to now find himself actively contemplating—with considerable pleasure!—the untimely demise of Miss Antonia Simpson.
Right from the moment that bossy, thoroughly irritating young woman had marched so confidently into his hotel suite, earlier this evening, he’d suspected that she was likely to be up to no good. And how right he’d been. Because the brazen hussy had turned out to be nothing but trouble, with a capital T!
What had he ever done to deserve such a fate? Lorenzo asked himself grimly as, on the stage below the box, the chorus and orchestra wound themselves up for the grand entrance of Otello—returning home to Venice in triumph, after soundly beating the Turkish Navy.
Living most of the year in Milan, he’d regularly visited La Scala—in his opinion, the greatest opera house in the world. And he had, of course, seen many productions of Verdi’s tragic opera, based on the play Othello, by William Shakespeare.
But only now did it occur to him that the story of a man driven out of his mind by external forces and culminating in his murder of his wife, Desdemona, seemed strangely appropriate to his own current predicament.
Don’t be ridiculous! It’s time you got a grip on the situation! Lorenzo lectured himself sternly.
The fact that Antonia Simpson
