LITMIR.BIZ

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the door, turning the key in the lock and even went so far as to remove the key and pocket it.

      Try running off with only what you came here with, now, the action yelled at her.

      Unsure how to respond, Antonia was still considering her options when he came back towards her, shut the bedroom door with one hand and removed her bag from her shoulder with the other then simply let it drop. And every action was so deliberate that he set her nerve-ends tingling. Her hand was caught next. He used it to trail her behind him over to the window where he touched the switch that sent the vertical blinds sliding across the glass.

      The room became shrouded in a soft half-light. Seduction suddenly eddied in the air. Turning her towards to him, he looked down at her, searched her whole face as if he had forgotten what it looked like, then sighed a small sigh.

      ‘Why the closed blinds?’ she asked him. He had never bothered to do that before.

      ‘Ambience,’ he replied. ‘A desire for your full attention,’ he added. ‘And the need to shut the rest of the world out while we remind each other what it was we almost lost.’

      ‘I’m sorry,’ Antonia said. ‘I—’

      ‘Don’t ever use those words to me again,’ he cut in harshly. ‘Especially not in English.’ He even shuddered. ‘They will always represent to me the coldest little goodbye a man could experience.’

      He was talking about her text message. Her heart found her throat and blocked it as she gazed into his pain darkened blue-grey eyes. I’m sorry hovered on her lips again. She converted the words into a tender-sweet kiss meant to convey the meaning for her.

      Pain-dark changed to passion-dark. ‘Si,’ he whispered in approval. The kiss was most definitely preferable to words for him.

      So one tender kiss led to another, until tender became hungry and hunger converted itself into desire. Desire stripped clothes away in a slow precious reacquainting with what she had put at risk today.

      This was it. All she needed, she told herself. This man looking at her like this, touching her like this—needing her like this. Anything else he cared to bestow was merely a bonus. Because she could feel the love emanating from him even though he had never said the words to her.

      But, as she had just demonstrated, words weren’t necessary when there were other ways to relay your feelings. It was special. What they had was special. So they made love as if this was their first time. And as one day slipped harmoniously into another, Antonia began likening it to a honeymoon, where neither was seemingly prepared to allow anything to spoil what they had together.

      Who wanted a betrothal ring? Who wanted a marriage proposal? This was so much more comfortable. So much more her perception of what real love was about.

      On Monday, Marco slipped back into his work routine without so much as hinting that he couldn’t trust her to be there when he came home again. And Antonia began converting one of the guest bedrooms into her studio. Tuesday was the day she remembered the two paintings that had disappeared from the hallway and made a note to ask Marco where they had gone, only to forget completely when he arrived home that evening with a letter from Anton Gabrielli. It was an acknowledgement that she was indeed his daughter, apologising for his behaviour, and offering to announce her as such if she wished him to do so.

      ‘Did you bully him into this?’ she asked Marco.

      ‘I merely made him see the error in his judgement of you,’ he replied. ‘I thought you deserved that. What you do about him now is, of course, your own decision.’

      ‘So you aren’t going to persuade me into making his relationship to me public?’

      It was a challenge, and Marco recognised it as such. ‘I don’t need him, cara,’ he stated it quietly. ‘But I wondered if you might feel the need to know him better one day.’

      ‘I won’t,’ she said adamantly. ‘It turns me cold just to look at his name.’

      ‘Then put the letter away,’ Marco advised, ‘and forget about him. He won’t trouble you again, I promise you.’

      Which made her wonder what influence he had brought to bear on a man like Anton Gabrielli that he could sound so sure about that. But she didn’t ask, didn’t want to spoil her new grasp on happiness by contaminating it with questions she really didn’t want the answers to.

      Wednesday, they went out to dinner with Franco and Nicola, who were just back from their visit to Lake Como. Nicola looked radiant. Her eyes shone with pleasure because it was so very obvious that Antonia and Marco had sorted out their differences. Everyone enjoyed themselves. It was just as it used to be.

      Thursday and Friday she devoted to overseeing the transfer of her artist’s studio to its new location, and not once…Well, maybe once or twice she found herself thinking wistfully back to a certain ring box she had last seen disappearing into Marco’s pocket never to see again. But then she would pull herself together and get on with whatever it was she was doing. She was content. She was happy. Marco was making her a permanent part of his life and he loved her; she was sure of it. Or becoming more sure of it as the days went by.

      Then he ruined it.

      It came so unexpectedly that it just hadn’t occurred to her how she had been living the last week, cocooned in her own sweet dream-world constructed around a comfortable self-denial, until, over breakfast on Saturday, he murmured casually, ‘We are going out tonight. A party. I think we will go shopping for something really special for you to wear…’

      A party, she repeated. A party meant people. People meant facing her public humiliation from the week before. She couldn’t do it. ‘No,’ she breathed.

      Lifting his eyes from his ever-present morning newspaper, he narrowed them on her paling face. ‘Red,’ he murmured softly. ‘I think we will go for something truly outrageous in red. Long. Slinky. Strapless and backless to show off your wonderful skin.’

      ‘I’m not going, Marco,’ she announced more firmly.

      ‘Wear your hair up,’ he continued as if she hadn’t spoken. ‘Let everyone see your beautiful neck and know that the only man allowed to put his lips to it is me…’

      ‘I said, I’m not going!’ She jerked to her feet.

      ‘And I will drip you in diamonds.’ He refused to take any notice of her. ‘Ears, throat, wrists—even a sexy anklet sounds really irresistible.’

      ‘Why don’t you just hang a sign round my neck saying Scarlet Woman?’ she flashed at him angrily.

      Sitting back in his chair, he grinned at the image. ‘Red-painted mouth. Lots of black mascara. And I think a red carnation in your hair might just make the whole ensemble perfect.’

      He even kissed the tips of his fingers. Antonia had never felt so hurt in all her life. ‘I can’t believe you’re talking like this to me, when you know what happened the last time you took me into company!’

      She was pulsing with hurt, with fright, with indignation, Marco observed ruefully. But he didn’t question any of those emotions. In fact he absolutely understood her right to feel them.

      But as for the rest? ‘Are you ashamed of who you are, cara?’ he queried curiously.

      Her chin went up. ‘No,’ she denied. ‘Ashamed of being my woman, then?’ ‘I won’t be pilloried a second time.’

      Which was a neat way of getting out of giving him the answer to his question. He stood up. She made to spin away. He held her in place with the firm grip of his hands on her waist. Trapped by the table, their chairs, and his hands, she had no choice but to remain exactly where she was. But the tension in her body was enormous, the need to run again so palpable he could actually feel it dancing along every muscle she possessed.

      ‘We made a deal a week ago,’ he reminded her.

      ‘Deal?’

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