smiled. She smiled as she hugged Nicola, and smiled as she kissed Franco’s rather grim cheek. She even smiled up at Marco, though she wanted to hit him rather than smile at him.
His arm found her waist and he drew her close again. It was such a brave gesture, considering Nicola had just turned him to stone in horror. He even found a light rejoinder. ‘Dinner next week,’ he insisted. ‘Just the four of us to wet the baby’s head.’
I won’t be here next week, Antonia thought, and smiled through that little knowledge also.
‘You do that after the baby is born!’ Nicola protested.
‘Then we will wet the waiting mamma’s head,’ Marco compromised, and kissed the waiting mamma’s now smiling mouth.
Between them all a nasty moment had been neatly smoothed over. Nicola was happy again, as she should be. Franco on the other hand looked curious as to what was going on between Marco and Antonia but was willing to hold his tongue.
Thankfully, a new bunch of latecomers arrived, giving the happy couple an excuse to escape. Once again, Antonia moved away from Marco’s touch.
The worst of it was, he let her go.
So she threw herself headlong into the party to end all parties, as far she was concerned. For tomorrow I leave, was the chant playing over and over inside her head as she laughed and chatted happily away in Italian, the language being second nature to her, having spent the first five years of her life living here. And she danced, and ate very sparingly, and drank champagne by the glassful without knowing she was doing it.
Managing to corner her an hour later, Nicola demanded to know what was going on. ‘If you two are avoiding each other like this because of what I said, then I am so sorry!’ she cried. ‘I can’t tell you how awful I felt, setting you up in that dreadful way!’
‘Don’t be silly.’ Antonia tried to smile it off—again. ‘It really didn’t matter.’
‘If course it mattered,’ Nicola insisted. ‘I hurt you and infuriated Marco! He’s barely speaking to anyone while you are partying as if this is your last night on this earth!’
Many a true word, Antonia thought bleakly. ‘If Marco is still angry over an innocent remark, then shame on him and his overgrown ego,’ she said. ‘What did he think I was going to do? Jump in and ask him when I get to feel blessed?’
‘You’ve lasted longer than any of his other lovers.’ Nicola gently offered a phrase Antonia had grown very weary of hearing recently. Especially when it helped to mark that the end was most definitely nigh. ‘That has to mean something, doesn’t it?’ Nicola pleaded.
Did it? ‘It means I must be good at my job,’ she provided, eyes hardening into cynicism. ‘Do you think I’ll be head-hunted when word gets around that I’m back on the market?’
Nicola’s beautiful mouth dropped open. Across the room, standing by the drinks bar, Marco saw it happen and wondered what the hell Antonia had said to make Nicola gape like that.
Nothing nice, he concluded as he watched Nicola search the room until her eyes made contact with his. In a definite flurry, she looked quickly away again. And his senses were suddenly on full alert.
He didn’t like this. He didn’t like any of it. The whole damn day had gone from bad to worse, seemingly without him having any control whatsoever over it. Now something else was happening here that he didn’t understand. Okay, Antonia was angry with him, he allowed. So he was a moody devil and probably deserved the way she was avoiding him like the plague. But whatever she’d just said to Nicola had been more than a complaint about his bad temper. His friend’s wife had actually looked shocked and horrified.
Nicola was talking to her urgently—telling her that he was watching them, he realised, when Antonia turned so he could see the cold cast of defiance in her beautiful face. Their eyes made contact. If looks could kill, he’d be dead now, Marco acknowledged, and raised his glass to her in a silent toast meant to convey that he really didn’t give a damn if she was hating him.
But it wasn’t true. And that was his biggest problem where Antonia was concerned. Even now, while exchanging metaphorical knives across a crowded room, she lit him up so fiercely inside that if there was a polite way of doing it he would be getting her out of here and alone so he could demonstrate just how she affected him.
And that just about said it all as to why he was having these damned hard constant battles with himself. He wanted her. He always wanted her! Angry or not. Crowded room or not.
Why the hell should he give up something he still desired as much as this?
Almost as if on cue, the moment he planted that important point in his head, fate dealt him a lousy hand just to show to him that he wasn’t the only person with a choice in this relationship.
A slight disturbance by the door caught Antonia’s attention. She looked that way, Marco followed her gaze—then felt everything inside him close down completely when he found himself looking at none other than Stefan Kranst himself.
The moment Antonia saw him her beautiful face lit up, her gorgeous mouth broke into a sensational smile. And she struck out towards Kranst like a pigeon recognising home.
CHAPTER THREE
STANDING on the sidelines, Marco watched them meet, watched them smile, watched them murmur to each other. He watched Antonia lift her hand to his shoulders and Stefan Kranst slide his hands around her waist—then their mouths came together in a tender soft kiss.
He tried telling himself that it was just a greeting—that it was as natural as any other kiss exchanged tonight. But it wasn’t true, and everyone knew it. Which was why conversations stopped, heads turned, and the whole room watched Marco Bellini’s mistress embrace her ex-lover with brazen ease.
Strikingly tall and fair, Stefan Kranst might be ten years older than Marco, but he had as little trouble as Marco securing any woman of his choice. And Dio, he had secured a few during the year since Antonia had left him, Marco recalled deridingly.
But this woman was now his woman. She lived in his home, she slept in his bed, and she clothed herself with his money. Which made that lush red-painted mouth Kranst was kissing his exclusive property.
The primitive heat of an age-old burn of possessiveness began to form blisters inside the wall of his chest, the urge to go over there and drag them apart holding him absolutely still while he fought to contain such an utterly crass act. Everyone was watching, waiting—hoping, in their cruel little way, that he was going to do exactly that and cause the kind of nice juicy scene they could dine out on for the next month.
And her dress was too short, her legs too long, and her slender ankles too sexily elevated by the heels of her shiny-red backless shoes, Marco observed—refusing to remember that he had thought the exact opposite before he had witnessed her wrapped in that particular man’s arms.
Had she done it for effect? Had she worn the dress because she’d known all along that Kranst would be here tonight and had wanted to please him? No bra, he remembered, dropping his eyes to the twin points of her breasts hovering a half centimetre away from Kranst’s chest. He knew what that felt like. He knew what was happening to Kranst right now, because the bastard also knew what it felt like to hold Antonia that close.
No
