the rings covered by an insurance policy?’
‘No…I couldn’t afford it, and—’
‘That is not true, though—is it, Claire?’ he said, with that same glitter of simmering anger in his diamond-hard gaze. ‘You could well afford it, but you chose to spend the money my mother gave you on other things.’
Pride made Claire’s back stiffen. ‘So what if I did?’ she said. ‘What are you going to do about it?’
His hand dropped from her face as if he didn’t trust himself to touch her. ‘We will be late if we do not leave now,’ he said tersely.
Claire followed him out to the lifts. The smooth ride down was conducted in a crackling silence. As soon as the doors swished open he put a hand at her elbow and escorted her to a waiting limousine. She pasted a stiff smile on her face for the benefit of the hotel staff and their driver, but inside she was seething. Acting the role of his reconciled wife was going to be much more difficult than she had first imagined. There was so much bitterness between them, so much ingrained distrust and resentment.
Antonio leaned forward to close the panel separating them from the driver. As he sat back one of his thighs brushed Claire’s, and she automatically shifted along the seat.
He gave her a smouldering look that sent a shiver down her spine. ‘You did not find my touch so repulsive an hour or so ago, Claire.’
She sent him a haughty glare in the vain hope of disguising her reaction to him. ‘I must have been out of my mind. I can think of nothing I want less than to sleep with you again.’
He smiled a lazy smile as he moved closer, until he was touching her thigh to thigh, his hand capturing one of hers. Claire flinched at his touch, and he frowned and looked down at the faint bracelet of fingertip bruises he had unknowingly branded her with earlier.
His smile disappeared and a heavy frown furrowed his brow. He picked up her other hand and turned it over, ever so gently. ‘I did this?’ he asked in a husky tone as he met her eyes.
Claire swallowed tightly. His touch was achingly gentle now, his fingers like feathers brushing over the barely-there bruises. His eyes were so dark, intensely so, as if the pupils had completely taken over his irises. Her heart began to thud, in an irregular rhythm that made her chest feel constrained.
‘It’s n-nothing…’ she said with a slight wobble in her voice. ‘I probably knocked myself against something…’
He was still frowning as he looked back at her wrists. ‘Forgive me,’ he said, low and deep. ‘I had forgotten how delicately you are made.’
Claire held her breath as he lifted each of her wrists in turn to his mouth, the soft salve of his kisses stirring her far more deeply than the words of his apology could ever do. His lips were a butterfly movement against her sensitive skin, a teasing of the senses that made her realise how terribly unguarded she was around him. Her heart shifted inside her chest like a tiny insect’s wings, beating inside the narrow neck of a bottle.
His eyes came back to hers, his fingers loose as they held her hands within his. ‘Do they hurt?’ he asked in a gravel-like tone.
She shook her head, still not trusting herself to speak. She felt choked-up, emotion piling right to the back of her throat in a great thick wad of feeling she couldn’t swallow down, no matter how hard she tried. Her eyes began to burn with the effort of keeping back tears, and she had to blink rapidly a couple of times to stave them off. This was the Antonio she had fallen so deeply in love with all those years ago. How was she supposed to resist him when he sabotaged her resolve not with force but with tenderness?
Antonio released her hands with a sigh. ‘We have to sort this out, Claire. I know you think I have engineered this to my advantage, but we both have to be absolutely sure about where this ends up.’
Claire could already guess where it was going to end up. She was halfway there already: back in love with him, back in his arms, dreaming of a happy ever after when there were no guarantees she would ever have a nibble at the happiness cherry again. She could almost taste the hard pip of reality in her mouth. He didn’t love her. He had never loved her the way she longed to be loved—the way her mother had never been loved, even after three desperate tries to get it right. Was Claire facing the same agonising destiny? A life of frustrated hopes? Girlhood dreams turned to dust as thick as that lining the roads of the Outback where she had grown up?
The limousine purred to a halt outside a convention center, and within moments the press were there to capture the moment when Antonio Marcolini and his wife, newly reconciled, were to exit the vehicle.
Claire thought she had hidden her discomfiture well as she got out of the car with Antonio by her side, but somehow, in the blur of activity and the surging press of the crowd, she met his gaze for the briefest of moments and realised she had not fooled him—not even for a second.
He offered her his arm and she looped hers through it with a smile that tugged painfully at her face. ‘Do we have to do this?’ she whispered with a rueful grimace. ‘Everyone is looking at us.’
He picked up a tendril of her curly hair and secured it behind her ear. ‘We have to, cara,’ he said, meshing his gaze with hers. ‘We need to show ourselves in public as much as possible.’
Claire drew in a scratchy breath and, straightening her shoulders, walked stride by stride with him into the convention center. But for some reason she felt sure he hadn’t been referring to the glamorous evening ahead, but more about the night that was to follow…
The table they were led to was at the front of the ballroom, where the other guests were already seated. Each person stood and greeted Antonio formally, before turning to greet her with smiles of speculative interest.
Drinks were served as soon as they sat down, and Claire sipped unenthusiastically at a glass of white wine as convivial conversation was bandied back and forth around her. She smiled in all the right places, even said one or two things that contributed to the general atmosphere of friendliness, but still she felt out on a ledge. She didn’t belong here—not amongst his colleagues, not amongst his friends. She had never belonged, and somehow sitting here, with the lively chatter going on around her, it brought it home to her with brutal force. Even listening with one ear to one of the women at the table describing the latest antics of her toddler son felt like a knife going through Claire’s chest. Her mind filled with those awful moments after her baby had been delivered, the terrible silence, the hushed whispers, the agonised looks, the shocking realisation that all was not as it was supposed to be.
‘Claire?’
Claire suddenly realised Antonio was addressing her, his eyes dark as the suit he was wearing as they meshed with hers. ‘Would you like to dance?’
She sent the tip of her tongue out to sweep away yet another layer of lipgloss. ‘Dance?’
He smiled—Claire supposed for the benefit of those around them, watching on indulgently. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘You were very good at it, I seem to remember.’
Claire lowered her gaze to stare at the contents of her glass. ‘I haven’t danced for ages…’
‘It does not matter,’ he said, taking her by the hand and gently pulling her to her feet. ‘This number is a slow waltz. All you have to do is shuffle your feet in time with mine.’
She
