LITMIR.BIZ

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unsteadily. ‘Y-you trusted me to stay but I didn’t trust you to…’ The words trailed away on a wash of distraction. ‘Ththat s-sketch you’re holding isn’t a good likeness.’ Her fingers unpleated so she could point to what he was holding in his hand.

      He looked down at it like someone who had no idea that he was holding anything. ‘You think I’m a shark,’ he murmured as he looked back at her.

      ‘Sometimes.’ She nodded.

      ‘Are you coming in, or are you thinking of running again?’

      ‘Oh.’ It was her turn to glance down as if she didn’t know where she was or what she was doing. She was still standing on the threshold, with her case sitting beside her and her bag swinging from one of her shoulders.

      She went to pick up the case. The moment she moved, so did Marco. He came across the bare-board floor at the speed of lightning. The case was lifted out of her reach. Her arm was imprisoned in long fingers. Before she knew what he was about she was fully inside the room and the door was being firmly closed behind her.

      That was when she saw Stefan, leaning against a wall with his arms casually folded and his expression—interested. ‘Hi,’ she murmured self-consciously.

      ‘Hi, yourself,’ Stefan softly replied. ‘I don’t suppose you would like to explain what’s been going on here?’ he drily requested.

      ‘She doesn’t need to explain anything,’ Marco put in tensely, and his hand tightened on her arm as if he expected her to break free and run, when in actual fact she was already hanging on to his shirt at his waistband and had no intention of letting go of it.

      Stefan sent the dry look Marco’s way. ‘She does if you want me to get out of here,’ he replied, without bothering to hide his meaning.

      Marco grimaced and remained silent, conceding Stefan’s right to demand an explanation.

      Still shaking too much, and not thinking straight, it needed a few attempts at breathing properly before Antonia could find some semblance of intelligence.

      ‘Y-you know I paint. You taught me to do it,’ she reminded Stefan.

      ‘You taught yourself,’ he drily corrected. ‘By being a pain in the neck and insisting on placing your easel next to mine every time I worked so you could copy my every damn brushstroke.’

      ‘I learned from you then.’ She sighed at the play with semantics.

      ‘Not this kind of stuff,’ he said with derision. ‘This is chocolate-box art they sell on street corners.’

      ‘It’s art,’ Marco sliced back at him in her defence.

      It was sweet of him, but Stefan was right. ‘Shops,’ she corrected. ‘I sell them to the shops on the Brera. They sell them to the tourists. It—it makes me a nice little living…’

      ‘So that’s why you hardly ever touched the money I gave you,’ Marco said bleakly.

      ‘And your serious work?’ Stefan asked, refusing to be sidetracked.

      She tensed up; so did Marco. ‘What serious work?’ he demanded.

      ‘You saw an example of it last night,’ Stefan informed him, without taking his eyes off Antonia’s suddenly angry face.

      ‘Dio mio,’ Marco breathed, his eyes wide with surprise as he stared at her. ‘You mean you painted your own nude study?’

      ‘Sometimes I hate you,’ she hissed at Stefan.

      Stefan just shrugged, moved out of his lazy stance against the wall and began walking towards them. ‘Ask her about the one she has stashed against the wall over there,’ he suggested to Marco as he passed by them. Then he paused, leaned over to kiss Antonia’s angry cheek. ‘Pack the chocolate-box stuff in before you ruin yourself with it,’ he warned seriously, then pulled open the door and left them to it.

      Or left Antonia to stand there on her own while she watched Marco stride across the room to the large canvas Stefan had so kindly pointed out to him.

      Her cheeks began to heat, her body to stiffen in readiness for what was to come. She tried to divert him. ‘Marco, we need to talk…’

      But it was already too late. ‘Now, just look at what we have here,’ he drawled lazily. And with a deft flick of his hands he scooped the painting up and took it over to her easel.

      She struggled not to gasp. Her cheeks were on fire. Standing back, he proceeded to study the nude painting of himself with the all-seeing eye of the complete connoisseur.

      When he started to grin, she felt like following Stefan. But the way he reached out and touched the lean shape of a sleek male thigh was pure infuriating conceit.

      ‘It’s all wrong,’ she snapped. ‘The proportions are out. Your nose looks like Caesar’s and your torso is too long!’

      ‘I think it’s perfect.’

      He would, she thought with an angry frown. ‘I hate people looking at my work until it’s finished!’

      ‘You mean you hate me looking at it!’ His mood changed so swiftly she wasn’t prepared for it. From lazy conceit he was suddenly pulsing with fury. ‘Why?’ he demanded, walking back to her. ‘Why couldn’t you tell me that you can paint like this? I thought I knew you! But I’ve been living with a stranger! Your mother sits on my wall but you don’t bother to tell me that! Your ex-lover has never been your ex-lover! In fact, I bet you never even had a lover before me—did you?’ She blushed and shook her head, which only infuriated him more. He continued heatedly, ‘You have a rat for a father. And you have a gift at your fingertips that I would have thought you would have been proud to let me see!’

      ‘You own a Rembrandt!’ she fired at him defensively.

      ‘I own a Kranst!’ he threw right back. ‘Many works by totally unknown artists. And the Rembrandt! Are you saying I am an art snob on top of all my other failings?’

      ‘Your opinion meant too much to me!’ she cried. ‘So it was safer not to seek it!’

      He grabbed her and kissed her. And about time too, she thought as she fell into the kiss like a woman starved.

      ‘Dio mio,’ he rasped against her clinging lips. ‘Do you have any idea what it did to me to come back and find you gone today?’

      ‘I cried all the way to the airport,’ she confessed, as if that should make it easier for him.

      It didn’t. ‘Don’t ever leave me like that again!’ ‘I won’t,’ she promised.

      He sunk them into another hot deep hungry kiss that didn’t last long enough before he was pulling right back. ‘No, you won’t,’ he agreed. ‘Because I am going to make sure that you don’t!’

      His hand went into his pocket and came out again, holding a small black leather box.

      The moment Antonia saw it she knew what it was. And on a choke of dismay, she said, ‘No,’ and snapped her hands behind her back. ‘You don’t have to do that.’

      She even started backing away. He followed. ‘Of course I do.’ He reached for her.

      ‘No!’ she cried, and almost bounced as her shoulders hit the wall behind her.

      Marco started frowning. ‘Amore, this is what I want. It is what we both want!’

      But she kept on shaking her head. ‘I came back,’ she repeated. ‘I don’t need this to keep me here! A ring will just make everything more complicated! I would rather—’

      ‘It’s okay,’ he said soothingly. ‘I squared it with my father. He—’

      Her eyes shot to his. Her mouth trembled. ‘You told your father about me?’ She looked so horrified it hurt. ‘But

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