LITMIR.BIZ

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just wanted to be sure you knew that before we went inside,’ he added very huskily—so huskily, in fact, that he didn’t know his own voice.

      She didn’t say anything. He didn’t think she could. So he took her hand and walked her towards his parents’ house and in through the huge French windows left open to the evening air. Her fingers clung so tightly to his he knew—knew this woman, this beautiful woman was his for ever now.

      The first people they saw as they entered were his mother and father, waiting to greet them on the huge expanse of brown and white chequered floor that gave their home such a grand entrance that led right from the front to the back of the house.

      This was it, he thought. Show time…

      Dressed in statutory black, but breathtakingly elegant in it, Signora Isabella Bellini walked forwards. She was smiling at her, Antonia noticed. It was an uncertain, slightly wary smile, but at least it was a smile. She tried a smile in return.

      ‘Welcome,’ Marco’s mother greeted, and leaned forward to place a kiss on each of her cheeks.

      Her fingers tightened their grip on Marco.

      ‘Th-thank you.’ Antonia wasn’t sure why she offered those words in English. It simply seemed appropriate. ‘It was good of you to invite me here.’

      ‘No.’ Signora Bellini did not accept that. ‘It should have happened a long time ago. I apologise for my rudeness and hope you can learn to forgive me for it. We Bellinis can be too arrogant for our own comfort sometimes.’

      It was so gracious, so kind, Antonia felt the tears threaten again. ‘I understood, really I did,’ she assured the older woman. Well—maybe it was a lie, but it was a kind lie.

      It was a good point for Federico Bellini to step smoothly into the breach. ‘Now I see why my son lays threats at a sick man’s door,’ he remarked, softening the censure with a lazy grin which hit Antonia right in her solar plexus because it was so like Marco’s smile.

      He was tall like his son, dark-haired like his son—if a little peppered with silver. But it was also clear that, beneath the sophistication of formal black and white clothing, the rest of Signor Bellini had seen better times.

      Opening her mouth to voice her concern for his illness, the man himself pre-empted her by bending towards her. ‘Don’t say it,’ he confided. ‘It is not necessary.’ Then he kissed both her cheeks, raised his head and smiled his son’s smile again. ‘It’s an honour to meet you at last, Miss Carson.’

      Then he turned his attention to Marco. ‘This is your night, Marco. Your guests await. Therefore I suggest you get this started.’

      With that hand still firmly clasped in his, Marco felt Antonia’s instant tension, the shock in realising that this was more than just a formal introduction to his parents.

      His father’s eyes were glinting with sardonic knowledge. His mother was displaying no expression at all. She had not been against what he had set up here, but she had not been sure it was the right way to go about settling the issue of Antonia.

      ‘Hurt her with this and she will never forgive you,’ she’d warned him only yesterday.

      ‘You don’t know her as I do,’ he’d replied. ‘I have confidence in her. I trust her to understand.’

      Trust. Dio, but that word was playing a major role in his life right now, he acknowledged as he started walking towards the doors which led into the family’s formal reception room.

      Antonia clung to his side. His parents fell into step behind them. As they reached the doors a waiting servant smoothly pushed them open to reveal a vast room lit by huge mountains of crystal. Marco paused on the threshold, so he could give Antonia a moment to absorb the sheer grandeur of the room and the people who were already present and waiting for their entrance.

      The hum of conversation dropped into silence. Faces turned, people stared. Beside him, Antonia’s pulse began to quicken as she took in the full impact of the whole assembly. And Marco did nothing, just waited for her restless eyes to finish making a full inventory of what he had set up for them here tonight.

      Then at last she saw them, standing out like a pair of statements. Bold, brash, utterly scorning any hint of discomfort. Her warm soft red-painted mouth slackened, her ensuing gasp audible only to him. Surprise tingled from her fingers into his, then she simply stood there so breathless and still that he actually began to wonder if he had made a big mistake.

      This just wasn’t happening, Antonia tried to tell herself. She was having a dream. A very weird dream. She had to be. In a minute all of these people were going to start laughing in gruesome mockery, telling her to get out and never come near them again, which was how dreams like these usually finished. It was the only answer she could form to what it was she was looking at.

      But it wasn’t a dream. She knew it because she could feel Marco literally vibrating with waiting tension beside her. She tried swallowing and found she couldn’t. She tried turning to look at him, but she couldn’t do that either because her eyes were refusing to move from what they had frozen on.

      For right there, hanging on his parents’ wall for everyone to see, were two nudes painted in oils and mounted in matching frames. One was herself, looking slender and sleek and coyly seductive. The other was Marco, looking as bold and arrogant in his nakedness as she’d always perceived him to be.

      Heat roared into her cheeks, then faded away again. Her heart began to thunder on the total shock of seeing the two of them so brazenly presented like this. And suddenly the dress began to make sense, the desire to drip her in diamonds. Marco was taking them all on—his parents, his friends, all those mocking doubters who didn’t believe he could love this woman who could expose her body like this.

      If you can’t beat them, join them, he was saying. If I can’t make them believe, then—what the heck? Throw these two paintings in their faces and let them think what they like!

      ‘If you can hack it then I can too,’ Marco murmured beside her, and his voice was soft, layered with warmth and humour and a lazy challenge.

      She found the strength to look at him, saw the humour reflecting in his eyes, plus something else—a plea, maybe, for her to understand what it was he had been trying to achieve when he’d decided to do this.

      A short laugh rippled from her. It spilled into her eyes and turned his smile into a grin. She looked frontward again—and continued to smile, because she understood. She knew! This was his way of levelling the differences in them. It was him coming down his lofty ladder. It was her climbing up to meet him.

      The hand he placed on her lower spine threaded electric sensation across her naked skin as it began drifting up her spine to her slender nape in an act of sensual possession.

      ‘More to come,’ he warned softly, and urged her into movement again.

      Her legs felt like rubber. Her pulse was racing, and her mind was lost in a haze of shock and some dismay and a whole lot of sinfully delicious elation. He took them past smiling faces, past rueful faces, past familiar faces like Franco and Nicola. She saw, through what felt like a misted glaze, Stefan grinning knowingly at her, while the woman at his side looked on curiously. She was tall and dark and so beautiful it made Antonia halt for a second to offer her a warm smile.

      ‘Tanya.’ She whispered the woman’s name.

      ‘Later,’ Marco advised, and pressed her into movement again.

      At the other end of the room, he finally paused. It was a staged arrival, which placed them exactly in between their naked images. Lights sparkled, diamonds flashed, faces observed curiously as he turned her towards him.

      Holding the whole room captive, he looked deep into her eyes, then dropped his gaze to her mouth and allowed it to linger there until the pulse of anticipation became an energy charge all of its own.

      ‘Right,’ he said huskily, ‘now, this is the deal…’

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