Michelle Reid Collection. Michelle Reid

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began it by touching a finger to the satin tight hollow of his shoulder. ‘You showered without me,’ she complained.

      He smiled a lazy smile. ‘You were asleep,’ he reminded her.

      She was not in the least bit impressed by that answer, and her mouth took on a sulky pout. Taking the coffee-cup from his fingers she put it aside, took possession of both his hands and fed them round her slender waist, then lifted her own up to curve his nape. One small step and she was fitting her hips into the cradle of his hips and pressing her wonderful breasts against him. Then her head tilted back a little, her sulky mouth parted—and claimed his with another kiss designed to devour.

      He would have to be made of stone not to respond to her. He would have to be half the man he actually was not to want what was being offered to him. It was special. She was special. He didn’t want to lose it.

      ‘What was that for?’ she broke the kiss to demand when she felt him shiver.

      ‘The sun has gone in again,’ he said.

      And it had, he noticed. Like a bad omen, it had slid behind another cloud the moment he’d begun thinking about the future.

      ‘Big softy,’ she chided, her fingers tangling lovingly into his hair. ‘You want to try standing like this on an English balcony. You would die of frostbite, being such a thin-blooded Italian.’

      He was supposed to laugh or come back with a light counter-charge, Marco was well aware of that. But he could do neither because he was suddenly seeing her standing naked on that English balcony.

      Seeing her exactly as she had once been caught for posterity in a Kranst painting.

      ‘You would know, of course,’ was therefore the cynical taunt that slid from him.

      Her sudden stillness was electric. If he’d slapped her he couldn’t have achieved a better response. Kiss-warmed lips lost all of their softness. Warm topaz became cold grey glass. With a single step she completely separated herself from him and, without a single word, she turned and walked back into the bedroom.

      Remorse played havoc with his conscience as he watched her sensual stride take her towards the bathroom. The urge to go after her and apologise came a couple of short seconds too late. The door closed, he heard the bolt slide home and knew he now had one hell of a task on his hands to put right the wrong he had just done.

      ‘Damn,’ he cursed as he spun away.

      The sun crept out from behind its cloud again. He scowled at it. Scowled at the seagull soaring overhead. Then he scowled at himself because he knew that putting right a wrong would not solve the dilemma that was sitting right on his doorstep waiting to be addressed.

      On the other side of the bathroom door, Antonia stood with her eyes closed, waiting for the hurt contracting the muscles around her heart to ease. It hadn’t been the words but the way he had said them, with derision, deliberately aimed to cut.

      Stefan, she thought wearily. It always came back to Stefan, and Marco’s inability to accept the life she had led before she met him. For a man who prided himself on his fast-track modern sophistication, he harboured some truly archaic principles.

      One of these days she would find the strength to stand firm and challenge those principles, and this right he felt he had to speak to her like that, she promised herself.

      But not yet, she conceded heavily. She just didn’t have that kind of strength yet. Because to challenge him meant challenging their whole relationship, and the day she did that Antonia knew would be the same day she lost Marco for good.

      Though that moment was coming closer, she recognised, as the hurt began to fade much sooner than it usually did after one of his well-aimed barbs. And she found she could open her eyes and actually look at herself in the mirror opposite without wincing at what she saw.

      And what did she see?

      She saw a scarlet woman, she grimly mocked that reflection. A woman who was a mistress to a man who wasn’t even married but who still classed her as a mistress not a lover. In her view, there was a very important difference between the two titles. To be a man’s lover carried a certain amount of moral equality. To be his mistress showed a distinct lack of moral value. And was there such thing as a master to level out the playing field? No, of course not. He remained simply the lover, with no stigma at all attached to the title. You could have a pair of lovers but you could not have a pair of mistresses—not in this context anyway. No, that unenviable title belonged exclusively to her own fair sex.

      Sex being the operative word here. She lived in his home, she slept in his bed, and she relied on his financial generosity for her day-to-day survival. In return she gave him her absolute loyalty and her body—the true definition of a mistress, in other words.

      Not a bad life for a girl who came from nothing, she supposed. In fact, it would be pretty much a perfect life—if she didn’t love him as desperately as she did. Loving Marco made it a miserable life.

      How had Stefan described Marco when he’d tried to talk her out of coming to Italy to live with him? ‘He’s one of life’s élite,’ he’d said. ‘He might want your body, but he will never want you the way you want him to want you. You’re not of the fellowship, my darling. It is a simple fact of life that élite marries élite.’

      Tough but wise words, as she’d found out the hard way. And if she had any sense at all she would get out, she told her reflection. She would gather up what little bit of pride she had left, and go, before he cleaned her out completely.

      And maybe she would do—soon, she resolved.

      But she turned away from the mirror as she thought it, knowing that it would take more than the occasional cruel remark on his part to make her leave him. She loved him too much and had stuck with him too long to give up so easily.

      Which didn’t mean she was going to forgive him, she determined as she stepped into the shower cubicle. Forgiveness came at a price, and Marco was going to have to pay that price with some serious grovelling.

      A smile touched her mouth, the very idea of making the arrogant Marco Bellini grovel doing wonders for her mood.

      He was gone from the bedroom by the time she appeared. Gone from the villa too, she discovered when she came downstairs to find Nina, the maid, clearing away what looked like a hastily eaten breakfast.

      ‘Signor Bellini left for Milan ten minutes ago, signorina,’ she informed her. ‘He said to remind you about the party tonight and to tell you to drive carefully, for the summer traffic between here and Milan is reputed to be very bad.’

      Antonia thanked the maid for the message, and smiled in recognition of the routine. Marco was making himself scarce because he knew he had hurt her, but making sure he kept the lines of communication open as he went.

      Why? Because for a big tough corporate leader, with a reputed heart of stone and a tongue of steel, when it came to her, he hated dissension. He might not love her the way she wanted to be loved, but he loved her enough to feel uncomfortable when he had upset her. And, being a very selfish man, Marco liked to be comfortable in his private life.

      Hence the message telling her to drive carefully, and the reminder about the party tonight. This was Marco putting down the first stepping-stones back to his precious comfort. Other stepping-stones

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