LITMIR.BIZ

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that was why she’d used the smallest suitcase she could find. Maybe she never intended leaving Marco! Maybe she’d needed to get this far before she could finally accept that the man was her other half! You couldn’t go anywhere with only half of you! It just wouldn’t let you.

      Dropping the tickets and the boarding pass on the attendant’s desk, she turned and started running. She needed to get back to him—fast! ‘Don’t worry me,’ he’d said. ‘Be here when I return!’

      He wanted her. What more could she ask of him, for goodness’ sake? He cared that his mother had upset her! He had even asked her to marry him so that she wouldn’t leave!

      Oh God, why did clarity have to come this late? Why couldn’t she have just waited until he got home and then faced him with Anton Gabrielli, instead of running away without giving him a chance to respond? And he wasn’t like Gabrielli! How dared she compare the two of them?

      The taxi queue was huge. Strange therefore, after a half-hour wait, she should get the same driver that had brought her to the airport. She gave the address for the apartment. He raised his eyebrows at her via the mirror as he drove off. ‘It is a popular address today, signorina. I collected you from there this morning,’ he remembered. ‘Then I took another person there this afternoon. Now I take you back. Do you think the gentleman will be waiting to catch my taxi for the return journey here?’

      He thought it was funny. Antonia didn’t. ‘Do you know the man’s name?’ she questioned huskily.

      ‘Sure,’ he shrugged. ‘Everyone knows Signor Bellini. He tips well too…’

      Marco paid off the driver and got out of the taxi to wait for Stefan to join him. The Ferrari wasn’t back from its service and he was damned if he was going to drive Antonia’s Lotus. That was staying exactly where it was until she came back to claim it.

      ‘What the hell has she been doing in a place like this?’ he demanded.

      Stefan didn’t answer. Going to the door, he used the key, then stepped inside. With Marco crowding behind him he took the stairs floor by floor, passing by the doors bearing nameplates of a suspect nature.

      ‘You do know that this is part of the red-light district?’ Marco growled into Stefan’s back.

      ‘I do now,’ the other man answered and, though he had a fair idea what it was that Antonia did here, he was beginning to feel a trifle edgy—just in case he was wrong.

      They arrived on the top landing. Neither spoke as they stepped up to the only door. Stefan turned the key, the tension riding high as he walked inside first.

      Therefore he had those few split seconds to just stand looking around him before murmuring, ‘Well, that’s a relief.’ Then he added a rueful grin.

      Not for Marco it wasn’t. How long had he known this woman? he asked himself as he stood there beside Stefan Kranst and stared at what might euphemistically be called an artist’s studio. Light streamed in through a wall of windows, setting dust motes dancing in the air. The room smelled of old wood and oil and turpentine thinner, and everywhere you looked stood the paintings. Some drying, some framed, some waiting to be framed. Piazza del Duomo. La Scala. Pusteria di Sant’ Ambrogio. The bustling Brera, with its trendy little shops and people, and the gardens at Villa Reale.

      Over by the window stood a huge trestle bench stacked with pencil sketches. On the easel waited a half-finished view from his own terrace, looking out over the top of Milan.

      Marco hadn’t known Antonia had ever picked up a paintbrush, never mind possessed the capacity to produce work like this.

      ‘Look at these,’ Stefan murmured. He had moved towards the window and was now sifting through the sketches.

      Sketches of life drawn with a quick sure hand. Sketches of people going about their business. Something caught in Marco’s chest as he had a sudden vision of her sitting on a bench or a low stone wall just sketching—sketching while he had been safely out of the way in his office playing in the big league, believing her to be doing what the women of wealthy men did, which was basically nothing.

      Then—no. He amended that notion, and didn’t like himself for admitting that he hadn’t really given much thought to what Antonia did when he wasn’t there.

      Stefan lifted a sheet of paper to one side, then went still enough to catch Marco’s attention. Marco’s own face looked back at him. It almost took his breath away, at the accuracy with which she had caught his mood of the moment.

      The shark on his way to hunt prey, he named it with a wryness that didn’t hold any humour. Picking it up, he found another—and another. All revealing his different moods in accurate detail.

      Then something else caught his eye to divert his attention. It was a half-finished painting of Franco and Nicola about to leave on their honeymoon. Antonia clearly had not been pleased with the result because she had tossed it onto the bench and left it there. But that wasn’t why the painting held him. It was the realisation that, in size, it would have fitted exactly the painting she had wrapped for the anniversary gift.

      Yet she hadn’t thought to show him, ask his approval. In fact she hadn’t sought his approval on anything she had been doing in here.

      And it hurt. ‘Why not tell me?’ he murmured out loud.

      Turning from where he had wandered off to, Stefan Kranst looked at him—just looked—and he knew the answer. She would have had to feel safe from his mockery to tell him about all of this, and she hadn’t.

      ‘I am no ogre,’ he growled out angrily—angrily because this was just another area she hadn’t trusted him with.

      Antonia had changed her mind at the very last minute. She didn’t know why she had done it, but some instinct had suddenly spoken to her and said, Better stop Stefan from emptying your studio if you’re intending to stay here. So she’d redirected the driver and realised only after she had let him go that she no longer had any keys to get into the building.

      Fortunately another tenant was just coming out. He recognised her and, with a smile, stood back to allow her inside. ‘You have visitors,’ he told her.

      Stefan. She smiled. ‘Grazie,’ she said, and let him close the door behind her.

      Her case wasn’t heavy, but she was puffing a bit by the time she reached the top landing. The door was open a little. Pushing it wider, she paused to put down her suitcase just as Marco growled out harshly, ‘What did she think I was going to do—laugh in her face?’

      Her breathing changed from an out-of-breath pant to a trembling stammer, her mouth ran dry, her eyes glazed. Marco was here, with Stefan, of all people. It felt as if fate was still controlling her actions like a puppet on a string.

      ‘Well,’ she managed to whisper, ‘are you?’

      He spun round to face the doorway. Silence roared, tension sung, the sunlight shone on his black silk hair. He was wearing slate-grey. Slate-grey suit, slate-grey shirt, darker slate-grey tie. His skin had a polished gold cast to it, and his eyes were the same colour as his tie—dark with anger and passion and hurt pride.

      She wanted to break down and weep at the sheer beautiful sight of him. She wanted to go to him, wrap her arms around his neck and cling so tightly that he would never ever be able to shake her free.

      But instead her chin went up, it simply had to. No matter how desperate she was to feel his touch, or how shaky she was feeling inside, or even how afraid she was of hearing his answer to the question—she had to challenge him with it. It was a matter of her own pride.

      ‘You’re on a plane,’ he said. It was really stupid. It was the very last thing she’d expected him to say.

      ‘I couldn’t go.’ ‘I’m not laughing.’ He answered her question. ‘What I do here is important to me,’ she told him. ‘I can see that,’ he answered. ‘Why couldn’t you go?’

      Her

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