the rest of her, that was. It felt like a sin to do so now. He’d always thought Kranst the voyeur in this painting, and it didn’t sit comfortably to realise that the real voyeur had been himself.
It made him want to turn the darn thing to the wall and forget he’d ever seen it. But—
This was Antonia’s mother, he reiterated bleakly. Antonia loved this woman. It had been there in every word that she spoke! To turn her to the wall would be a rejection of someone who was as precious to Antonia as his own mother was to him.
Though he didn’t want to think about his own mother right now, he accepted with an angry hardening of his jaw.
And Antonia had never been uncomfortable with the nudity in this painting. Her discomfort had been in looking at someone she had loved and lost, not the nudity itself.
Not her own nudity—or her mother’s, he extended, as many things began to make sense. She had lived for ten years with an artist who specialised in the naked female form. He had a gift—no, a genius—for the genre, therefore it was only natural that she would learn to see nudity as something to appreciate in its own right, and not something to turn away from in shame. As it had been to him until he discovered who it was he was actually looking at!
Since when had he developed a bigot’s view of something this special? Marco asked himself. This was art! Master-class art! If he’d been in a better frame of mind, he would have been purchasing one of Kranst’s latest offerings. And not just for the investment, but because he liked what Kranst painted on the canvas!
But who had painted Antonia’s nude image? he then asked himself, and felt his whole sophisticated outlook tumble like a house of cards. Anger enveloped him, spewing forth from a strange place inside him that could now accept Kranst as her painter—but not some other man!
How the heck had she managed to divert him so thoroughly that he hadn’t demanded some answers about him? And there was Anton Gabrielli lurking in the shadows.
Behind Marco the telephone started ringing. If it did nothing else it diverted his attention away from what was beginning to flood his veins again.
He walked over to his desk and stood there making no attempt to pick up the receiver. His mother? he wondered. Wanting to voice her disapproval in more detail? Kranst, wanting to know if Antonia was still alive?
He let his answering service take over. By the time it had silenced the telephone ring he had closed the door on the study. He didn’t want to talk to anyone, and he certainly didn’t want to listen to them prose all over him.
What he wanted was Antonia. But not yet, he grimly reiterated. And not at all tonight, until all of these ugly feelings rattling around inside him had been given a chance to calm down.
Antonia’s insides were shaking, the fight to hold back the tears strangling the ability to breathe. Without really knowing what she was doing, she walked over to the bed and began tugging at the back zip to her dress as if it was perfectly natural to undress—when in actual fact she should be getting away from here. Not hiding behind a locked door which only extended the agony!
The zip snagged between her shoulderblades. She struggled with it for a while, with her head lowered and her eyes concentrated on the diamond at her throat. The zip wouldn’t budge. It seemed a kind of justice, after the night she had just had, that it should do so at a point where she had no hope of wriggling out of the dress. On a trembling sigh of frustration she diverted her fingers to the necklace, removed it, then just stood there staring at nothing.
Had he really had the gall to offer to marry her, then stand there looking as if he’d just committed a mortal sin?
‘Oh.’ She choked on a tear that managed to escape. I should hate him. I should hate him for saying it the way he did, she told herself. But it wasn’t hate she was feeling, it was hurt, because he hadn’t meant it. He had merely been determined to grab the higher ground in an argument which made little sense to begin with! What a dreadful night, she sighed out bleakly. What a terrible, eye-opening, miserable night.
Beginning with Stefan springing that painting on them without warning. Then moving on to Marco’s mother’s neat little snub that was still managing to crease her up with pained mortification.
And, if all of that wasn’t enough, she had to come face to face with Anton Gabrielli. A shiver ripped through her as something hard and cold turned pain to anger. How he dared to even whisper her mother’s name after what he had done to her, she would never know!
But to do it in front of Marco of all people, was the ultimate sin she would never forgive Gabrielli for. He had been the final ruin of everything. He was the reason she had to leave here or risk the kind of scandal Marco would never forgive her for.
Did Anton Gabrielli know? Had he guessed by now that he had just come face to face with his daughter?
Then—no. She denied that. She was not his daughter. His was merely the seed which had formed the base of her conception. She’d never known him, never met him and didn’t want to. In fact, she would rather remain the notorious Mirror Woman than lay claim to a father who had deserted her mother as soon as he’d known she was pregnant.
And what immortal words had he used to do it? ‘Men like me don’t marry their mistresses. It is not your function.’
God, she hated him.
Therefore she should hate Marco too, since he had used similar words to her not that long ago. What would his mother say if she knew about Anton Gabrielli? ‘The sins of the mother,’ would be oh, so appropriate. The same looks, the same paintings, the same attraction to tall dark handsome Italian billionaires!
Bitterness welled. Tears still cut her throat in two. She turned for the door with the intention of keeping to her original decision and just getting away from here!
Yet when she reached the door she just couldn’t do it! Oh, what was to become of her if she couldn’t even bring herself to walk away now, when there was nothing left for her here? Nothing!
‘I’m here,’ Marco had said to her.
Wrapping her arms around her body, she hugged that gruffly spoken statement to her for all she was worth as her restless feet took her the other way, over to the huge floor-to-ceiling windows which gave access out onto the terrace.
Sliding one of them open, she stepped outside in the vague hopes that some fresh air would clear her confusion. But it was stifling out here after the air-conditioned interior. Still, rather than go back inside, she moved over to one of the sun loungers, slipped out of her shoes, sat down and curled her knees up so she could rest her chin on them.
The terrace was a very impressive part of the apartment, which wrapped round two full sides of the building. When Marco threw one of his extravagant parties all the doors would be opened so every room leading in from the terrace could be used for one function or another. And the sound of music and life and laughter would follow you everywhere.
But tonight it was more silent than she’d ever known it. Even Milan’s constant traffic way down below her seemed to have stopped running.
Or maybe it’s me who’s stopped, Antonia mused bleakly. The way fate had come along and hit her with just about everything tonight, it could be its way of making her stand still and face reality.
But she didn’t want reality, she thought
