not mine, Marco.’
It had been one of a very few times when she’d actually looked ready to walk away from him if he tried to push the issue. He hadn’t pushed it. But, for the first time in his life, he’d experienced the ugly burn of jealousy, when he’d realised that Kranst held a power over Antonia that was a challenge to his own.
He didn’t like it. He didn’t like the knowledge that he’d backed down from taking up that challenge. And he didn’t like Kranst turning up in Milan just when Marco was having to do some serious thinking about his relationship with Antonia.
It was either immaculate timing on Kranst’s part or yet another bad omen. Either way, the sandwich never got eaten and the two young hopefuls lost all chance of meeting an amiable Marco Bellini that day. If it hadn’t been for the fact that Marco was still functioning clearly enough to recognise an unmissable opportunity in what they were proposing, he would have taken great delight in kicking them out!
Irritation alternated with disturbing bouts of skin-prickling restlessness throughout the rest of the afternoon. Sudden flashes of Antonia and Kranst holed-up somewhere secret played games with his head.
In the end he could stand it no longer and went back to the privacy of his office to pick up the phone. Her mobile was switched off. Irritation ripped through him, then he remembered her telling him she was going straight back to the apartment, so he rang there instead.
All he got was his own pre-recorded message telling him that no one was available to take his call.
Antonia was standing in a tiny backstreet in another, less fashionable part of the city, fitting a key into a door. Once inside, she walked the narrow hallway and began climbing bare-boarded flights of stairs, passing by small dingy offices belonging to the kinds of businesses Marco looked down upon from his lofty position at the top of the corporate tree. Some of the tenants knew her, some didn’t, most looked curiously at her, smiled politely and left her alone. She liked it that way. For this place was her secret. A part of her life Marco didn’t control.
On the very top landing, she went to the only door there and fitted another key into its lock. Stepping inside, she carefully closed the door again and then, turning round, she looked about her and quite simply smiled…
CHAPTER TWO
WALKING through the front door to the Milan apartment was always a pleasure. And the first thing Antonia did as she stepped into it some hours later was pause for a moment to reacquaint herself with surroundings that were a thousand times different from those she had just come from.
Occupying the entire top floor of a modern city block, Marco’s home was an interior designer’s idea of heaven. No detail had been skimped in an effort to achieve its harmonious ambience.
The hall was large and light and airy, the rooms leading off from it furnished with a clever mix of classical, old and new. Nothing offended the eye. There were formal rooms used only for entertaining, less grand rooms for when they did not. The kitchen was a cook’s paradise, all four en-suite bedrooms designed to co-ordinate with the pastel colours applied to the walls. And everywhere you went you walked on the very best in Italian ceramic, passing between priceless works of art that adorned the walls.
Like his famous art-collecting ancestors, Marco had inherited an eye for what was just that bit special. Both he and his mother were generous patrons of the arts. What either of them bought, others took particular notice of. And, as with his taste in décor, he thought nothing of mixing the totally unknown with old respected masters—and of course it had worked beautifully.
But she didn’t have time to stand here considering all of this right now, Antonia told herself wryly. She was late and she knew it. Somehow, time seemed to have got away from her today, and she was aware that she’d only just made it back before Marco usually arrived home.
Live dangerously, why don’t you? she scolded herself as she headed directly for the bedroom, meaning to make it look as if she had been in there for ages getting ready for the evening when he did eventually get in.
It turned out to be a wasted effort for, as fate would have it, Marco didn’t appear until she was already dressed for the evening and beginning to wonder what had happened to him.
Then the bedroom door suddenly swung open and he came striding in.
‘You’re late,’ she immediately chided.
‘I have a watch,’ he clipped back, and walked right past her without even sparing her a glance.
Frowning slightly, Antonia watched him begin pulling off his jacket in a way that spoke volumes about his mood.
‘Bad day?’ she quizzed.
‘Bad everything,’ he said grimly.
‘Hence no welcoming smile for me, no kiss hello?’ Teasing though her voice sounded, she was serious. After the efforts he’d put in, sweet-talking himself back into her favour, this new attitude was threatening to send him right back to square one if he wasn’t careful.
Maybe he realised it because, after tossing the jacket onto the bed, he then stood for a moment flexing his wide shoulders as if he was trying to dislodge whatever it was that was bugging him. As she watched solid muscle move beneath pale blue shirting, Antonia felt the usual sprinkling of pleasure warm her insides, and would have gone to him and helped ease those tense muscles—if he hadn’t released a sigh and turned to look at her.
The expression on his face held her stationary. His eyes were glinting with barely suppressed anger, his features hard and grim and unusually pale. In a single brief sweep he gave her appearance the once-over, then his mouth tightened and he turned away again.
Warning bells began to ring in her head. ‘What’s wrong?’ she asked sharply.
‘Nothing,’ he clipped out. Then on another short sigh added, ‘Give me ten minutes to make myself human and we will begin this conversation again, I think.’
‘Fair enough,’ she agreed. It wasn’t often she’d witnessed the darker side of Marco, but on those few occasions she had done so, she’d learned very quickly to tread warily around him until he had calmed down. But she was still frowning as she let herself out of the bedroom, wondering what could have happened this afternoon to put him in that kind of mood.
Bad meeting? A fortune lost on the Stock Exchange? she mused as she walked into the small sitting room and straight over to the drinks bar to mix him his favourite whisky sour while she waited for him to join her.
The ten minutes he’d allocated himself had obviously not been long enough, was her first observation when he joined her. He came into the room with his hair still slightly damp from his quick shower and his fingers impatiently tugging the white cuffs to his shirt into line with the black silk edges of his dinner jacket—and it was clear, by the look on his face, that he was feeling no better.
‘Here, try this. It might help,’ she drily suggested, offering him the prepared drink.
But, ‘No time,’ he refused. ‘And anyway, I’m driving.’ With that, he diverted over to the mirror and began messing with his bow-tie.
And the hand holding out the whisky sour sank slowly back to the drinks bar as it began to dawn on Antonia that his mood had nothing to do with a bad day at the office, but had something to do with her.
‘All
