her gaze respectfully. ‘I am so sorry. Your mother must miss him greatly. You must all miss him…’
‘My mother is doing the best she can under the circumstances,’ he said after another slight pause. ‘My brother Mario has taken over my father’s business.’
Claire brought her gaze back to his in surprise. ‘What? You mean your father didn’t leave you anything in his will?’
An indefinable look came into his eyes. ‘Mario and I are both partners in the business, of course, but due to my career commitments I have by necessity left most of the corporate side of things to him.’
‘I am sure your brother was shocked to hear of your intention to look me up while you are here,’ Claire commented with a wry look.
Antonio continued to hold her look with an inscrutable one of his own. ‘I have spoken to my brother, who told me rather bluntly he thinks I am a fool for even considering a rematch with you. But then he has always been of the philosophy of one strike and you are out. I am a little more…how shall I say…accommodating?’
Claire could just imagine his playboy younger brother bad-mouthing her to Antonio. His parents had been the same—not that Antonio would ever believe it. That last degrading scene with his mother had been filed away in Claire’s do-not-go-there-again-file in her head. She had kept the cheque in her purse for weeks, folded into a tiny square, frayed at the edges, just as her temper was every time she thought of how she had been dismissed, like a servant who hadn’t fulfilled the impossible expectations of her employer. But then she had finally cashed it, without a twinge of conscience. As far as she was concerned it had been money well spent.
‘How do you know it was my brother who took your car?’ Claire asked, looking at Antonio warily. ‘You’ve never met any of my family.’ Thank God, she thought. What he would make of her loving but totally unsophisticated mother was anyone’s guess, but her brothers—as much as she loved them—were way beyond the highbrow circles Antonio moved in.
‘When the police caught him he identified himself,’ Antonio said. ‘He made no effort at all to cover up the fact he was my young brother-in-law.’
Claire felt her stomach drop.
‘Wh-where is he?’ she asked. ‘Where is my brother now?’
‘I have arranged for him to spend a few days with a friend of mine,’ he said. ‘He runs a centre for troubled youths on the South Coast.’
She clenched her fists by her sides. ‘I want to see him. I want to see my brother to make sure he’s all right.’
‘I will organise for you to speak to him via the telephone,’ he said, and reached for his mobile.
Claire sank her teeth into her bottom lip as she listened to him speak to his friend before he handed her the phone. She took it with a shaking hand and held it up to her ear, turning away so he wouldn’t see the anguish on her face, nor hear what her brother had to say.
‘Isaac? It’s me, Claire.’
‘Yo, sis. What’s up?’
Claire mentally pinched the bridge of her nose. ‘I think you know what’s up,’ she said, stepping further out of Antonio’s hearing and keeping her voice low. ‘Why did you do it, Isaac? Why on earth did you take Antonio Marcolini’s car?’
Her brother muttered a filthy swear word. ‘I hate the way he treated you. I thought it would help. Why should he drive around in such a cool-dude car when yours is a heap of rust?’ he asked. ‘Rich bastard. Anyway, I thought you were going to divorce him?’
Claire cringed as the sound of her brother’s voice carried across the room. Turning away from Antonio’s livid dark brown gaze, she said, ‘I’m actually considering…um…getting back with him.’
Her brother let out another swear word. ‘Get out. Jeez, why didn’t you tell me that the other day?’
‘Would it have made a difference?’ she asked.
There was a small silence.
‘Yeah…maybe…I dunno. You seemed pretty cut up about that article and the photo in the paper.’
Claire squeezed her eyes shut. Why hadn’t she thrown it in the rubbish, where it belonged? ‘Look, I just want you to promise me you’ll behave yourself now you’ve been given this chance.’
‘Don’t’ ave much choice, locked up here,’ he grumbled.
Claire frowned. ‘You’re locked up?’
‘Well…sort of,’ Isaac said. ‘It’s some sort of youth reform centre. It’s kind of all right, though. The food’s OK, and they’ve given me a room to myself and a TV. The head honcho wants me to think about teaching some of the kids to surf. I might take it on; I’ve got nothing better to do.’
‘Just stay there and do as you’re told, Isaac,’ she pleaded with him.
‘So you’re dead serious about getting back with the Marcolini bloke, huh?’ Isaac asked.
She lowered her voice even further, but even so it seemed to echo ominously off the walls of the plush suite—just as her brother’s damning words had. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I am as of this moment going to return to Antonio and live with him as his wife.’
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