it. But now he was here he had ways and means to bring her to heel, and bring her to heel he would. ‘We have things to discuss, Claire,’ he said. ‘We have been apart a long time, and some decisions have to be made about where we go from here.’
‘I can tell you where we go from here,’ she said. ‘We go straight to court and formally end our marriage.’
He paused for a moment, taking in her flashing blue-green gaze and the way her soft-as-a-feather-pillow mouth was pulled into a tight line. The skin of her face was a pale shade of cream, with a tiny dusting of freckles over the bridge of her retroussé nose, giving her a girl-next-door look that was captivating. He had already noted how every male head had turned when she had come into the bar. She was either totally unaware of the effect she had on the male gaze, or she very cleverly ignored it to enhance her feminine power.
‘What if I told you I do not want a divorce?’ he said after a measured pause.
She put her mineral water down with a sharp little thwack on the nearest coffee table, her eyes going wide as she stared at him. ‘What did you say?’
He gave her an indolent half-smile. ‘You heard me.’
She sucked in a breath and threw him a flint-like glare. ‘That’s too bad, Antonio, because I do want one.’
Antonio kept on pinning her with his gaze. ‘Then why have you not done anything about it before now?’
She shifted her eyes from his. ‘I…I couldn’t be bothered,’ she muttered in a petulant tone. ‘You were out of sight and out of my mind, as far as I was concerned.’
‘But now I am back you suddenly want to put an end to our marriage?’ he snapped his fingers. ‘Just like that.’
She looked at him with icy disdain. ‘Our marriage ended five years ago, Antonio, and you damn well know it.’
‘And why was that?’ Antonio asked, not bothering to disguise his simmering anger this time. ‘Because you wanted to blame someone for anything and everything and I was the nearest scapegoat?’
She glared at him heatedly. He could see a pulse leaping in her neck, and how her fingers were so tight around her purse. Each and every one of her knuckles looked as if the tiny bones were going to break through the fine layer of her skin.
‘You betrayed me,’ she said in a low hard tone. ‘You betrayed me when I was at my lowest point. I will never forgive you for that.’
Antonio clenched his jaw, the pressure making his teeth ache. ‘So you are still running with that fairy story about me being unfaithful to you in the last few months of our relationship, are you?’
Her eyes flashed with pure venom. ‘I know what I saw,’ she hissed at him in an undertone, so the other drinkers in the bar wouldn’t hear. ‘You were holding her in your arms, so don’t bother denying it.’
‘I would not dream of denying it,’ he said. ‘Daniela was and still is a close family friend. You know that. That is something else I told you when we first met.’
‘Yes, but you neglected to tell me you were her lover for the eighteen months prior,’ she tossed back. ‘A minor detail but a rather important one, I would have thought.’
Antonio put his drink down. ‘I did not want to upset you with talk of my ex-lovers,’ he said. ‘It did not seem appropriate since you were without similar experience.’
‘Yes, well, I certainly got all the experience I needed living with you for almost a year,’ Claire said, with an embittered set to her mouth.
His eyes warred with hers for a tense moment. ‘Why don’t you say it, Claire?’ he said. ‘Why don’t you tell everyone in this bar what it is you really blame me for?’
Now she had made him so blisteringly angry Claire wasn’t sure she knew how to handle it. She was used to him being cold and distant, clinically detached, with no hint of emotion ever showing through his mask-like expression.
She became aware of the interested glances of the other guests in the bar and felt her face begin to crawl with colour. ‘Would you mind keeping your voice down?’ she asked in a terse whisper. ‘People are staring at us.’
‘Let them bloody well stare.’
Claire cringed as she heard someone snicker close by. ‘Could we at least go somewhere a little more private?’ she said in desperation.
Antonio got to his feet. ‘Come with me,’ he said, and set a brisk pace towards the lifts situated on the other side of the marbled foyer.
Claire followed at a slower pace, on account of her heels, stepping into the lift he was holding for her, moving to the back of it, as far away from him as the space allowed.
She watched as he swiped his security pass for the penthouse floor, her nerves jumping and leaping beneath her skin as the doors whooshed closed and the lift began to climb each floor.
The silence apart from the mechanical whirr of the lift was palpable; it seemed to grow teeth, snapping at her where she stood in her corner.
Claire could feel her heart thumping irregularly, the blood racing through her veins at breakneck speed. She felt the faint knocking of her knees, and the on-off clench of her insides as the lift finally came to a smooth halt.
Antonio held the doors open for her and she slipped past him, her breath locking in her throat as she caught a faint trace of his lemon-based aftershave, an evocative fragrance that brought a host of memories to the fore-front of her brain. Memories of her body pinned beneath his, her skin smelling of him, the taste of him salty and sexy in her mouth, all her muscles relaxed in the afterglow of their shared passion. Each vision made her body glow with heat; she could feel the creep of colour in her cheeks and wondered if he knew what had put it there.
He unlocked the door of his suite with the security card and silently gestured for her to enter, his dark eyes unreadable as they followed her every movement. Claire lowered her gaze and moved past, the gentle swish of her skirt brushing against his trouser legs, making her even more acutely aware of him.
The sound of the door closing behind her made her skin pepper all over with goosebumps, and to disguise her reaction she took a leisurely wander over to the bank of windows, looking down at the view as if that alone was what she was there for.
She sensed him come up behind her, the hairs on the nape of her neck rising to attention one by one. She suppressed a tiny shiver, and concentrated on watching a brightly lit ferry go under the Harbour Bridge.
‘So you want a divorce?’ he said, as if she was an employee who had just asked for a raise that was not going to be forthcoming.
Claire turned and faced him combatively. ‘You can’t deny me one, Antonio. We’ve been separated for too long for you to contest it.’
‘I realise that,’ he said, holding her gaze with the dark intensity of his. ‘And if that is what you want then I will grant you one. But only after the three months of my stay.’
‘I’m not sure I’m following you,’ she said, frowning at him guardedly. ‘Are you suggesting some sort of temporary reconciliation?’
His eyes continued to watch
