slave.
She hated it—hated all of it. ‘Okay,’ she whispered unsteadily. ‘We can leave…’
CHAPTER FOUR
THE drive back to the apartment was achieved in silence. Both tense, both angry for their own reasons. Both so sexually on edge that the atmosphere almost sizzled.
Antonia was out of the car even as Marco was still parking it. Making straight for the lift, she then committed the ultimate sin of not waiting for him before sending it up to the top floor. Having to kick his heels in the basement waiting for the lift to come back for him did nothing to improve his temper.
He arrived in the bedroom to discover that she had already locked herself into the bathroom. He could hear the shower running, and her red dress lay like a stain on the bright white tiling, the scrappy red shoes lying discarded beside it.
With frustration attacking him from all angles, he dragged off his jacket and had to really fight the temptation to slam it down beside the red dress and shoes in a counter-declaration.
It was realising the childishness in the act that made him stop to wonder bleakly what was happening to him. Anger, frustration, childish acts of temper? These were not the scenes he expected to fill his home with! They lacked the sophistication with which he liked to run his private life.
And, on top of that, he was beginning to feel like a jealous husband without the official bit of paper that said he had to put up with this. Hot anger suddenly turned to ice, the mere suspicion that Antonia was digging her claws into him deeply enough to make him feel that way, literally horrifying the heat out of him.
Marco was draping his suit jacket on a hanger when Antonia came out of the bathroom. Wide shoulders, long body, tight behind, powerful legs and a sleek olive hue to his skin that made her fingers itch to stroke it. She wished so much he had the face of a Gorgon to offset the perfect rest of him.
But he didn’t. So when he turned to face her, even looking as coldly remote as he did, her body stirred beneath the silk robe she was wearing.
She wanted to hate him for being able to do that to her. Especially when all he did was freeze her with a look of contempt before turning away again.
‘You’ve been working with Kranst again,’ he declared flatly.
Without bothering to answer, she walked over to pick up the red dress and shoes from where she’d stepped out of them, and carried them over to the wardrobe next to the one he was standing by.
She opened one of the doors as he flicked one shut. ‘Answer me,’ he commanded coldly.
‘I wasn’t aware you’d asked a question,’ she tossed back with equal cold. ‘It sounded more like a statement of fact to me.’
From the corner of her eye she saw his mouth tighten, ignored the stinging warning in his eyes, and placed the shoes on the shoesrack before reaching up to pluck a hanger from the rail and begin hooking the thin shoulder straps of the dress onto it.
‘Explain to me, then, what he was implying tonight, when he talked about something interesting.’
She shrugged as she re-hung the hanger on the rail. ‘I have absolutely no idea.’ Though she certainly had a few worrying suspicions.
‘You must do,’ Marco insisted. ‘You know the man. You lived with him for over five years.’
Ten, she wanted to correct, but held back the information. ‘And I’ve lived with you for all of one,’ she pointed out as she closed the wardrobe door. ‘But knowing what makes you tick is beyond me.’
‘Oh, very trite,’ he mocked. ‘Now, answer my first question and tell me if you’ve been secretly working with him again.’
‘For a man famed for the sharpness of his intelligence, you can be really dense sometimes,’ she derided. ‘Ask yourself—when?’ she suggested. ‘Have I had the opportunity to work or do anything else with Stefan?’
He didn’t like the derision, his eyes darkened. ‘For all I know the man might have a secret studio set up right here in Milan where the two of you meet on a regular basis.’
‘So, I’m keeping the two of you happy?’ Her laugh was scornful. But even Antonia was aware that her expression was suddenly guarded, because Marco had unwittingly drifted too close to a carefully kept secret of her own.
He saw the change. Of course he did. Reaching out with a hand, he drew her across the few feet separating them. His eyes were hard, his features grim and his grip on her wrist was firm. ‘You’re hiding something,’ he gritted.
She refused to answer, her mouth set in a defiant pout. Marco formed his own conclusions, his expression darkening some more. ‘If the two of you are plotting my embarrassment on Friday, then I’m warning you, you will regret ever knowing me!’
‘Why won’t you listen?’ she snapped. ‘I don’t know what Stefan is planning for Friday!’
‘Then why the shifty look?’
‘You don’t own the right to know my every secret!’ she hit back bitterly. ‘I’m your mistress, not your wife!’
This came hard on the fact that he had just reminded himself of the same thing, and his expression hardened into steel. ‘The way the two of you were lost in deep conversation while you clung to him like a vine says to me that you were discussing something important while you made love to each other in front of everyone. And I want to know what that something is!’
‘We were discussing you!’ she flashed. ‘And whether it was time for me to leave you or not!’
The claim had hit a nerve. Antonia actually saw it flick like the tip of a whip across his taut cheekbones. ‘Are you saying he wants you back?’ he demanded thinly.
‘He will always have me back!’ she flung at him recklessly. ‘And when I’m ready to leave you, then I probably will go back to him!’
With that, she gave a tug at her wrist to free herself and walked proudly away, trying not to show how badly shaken she was feeling at this, the worst row they’d had to date.
Needing something to do in the drumming silence that followed her, she sat down on the stool in front of the dressing table and began to let down her hair.
‘If there was the remotest possibility of you actually walking out on me, you would have done so without the warning,’ Marco drawled in a voice loaded with derision.
‘You think I’m a real push-over, don’t you?’ she muttered, tossing hairpins in an angry scatter across the dressing table top. ‘You think that because you’re as sexy as hell and so darn wealthy you can afford to buy anything, that I should be grateful that you decided to buy me!’
‘I did not buy you,’ he denied. ‘I chose you. There is a definite difference between the two.’ His arrogance, she noted, really showed no bounds. ‘Whether or not you sold yourself to me, though, is a question I have no wish to hear the answer to.’
‘Why not?’ she challenged, via his reflection in the mirror. ‘Are you afraid to discover that maybe your
