between priceless works of art that adorned the walls.
Like his famous art-collecting ancestors, Marco had inherited an eye for what was just that bit special. Both he and his mother were generous patrons of the arts. What either of them bought, others took particular notice of. And, as with his taste in décor, he thought nothing of mixing the totally unknown with old respected masters—and of course it had worked beautifully.
But she didn’t have time to stand here considering all of this right now, Antonia told herself wryly. She was late and she knew it. Somehow, time seemed to have got away from her today, and she was aware that she’d only just made it back before Marco usually arrived home.
Live dangerously, why don’t you? she scolded herself as she headed directly for the bedroom, meaning to make it look as if she had been in there for ages getting ready for the evening when he did eventually get in.
It turned out to be a wasted effort for, as fate would have it, Marco didn’t appear until she was already dressed for the evening and beginning to wonder what had happened to him.
Then the bedroom door suddenly swung open and he came striding in.
‘You’re late,’ she immediately chided.
‘I have a watch,’ he clipped back, and walked right past her without even sparing her a glance.
Frowning slightly, Antonia watched him begin pulling off his jacket in a way that spoke volumes about his mood.
‘Bad day?’ she quizzed.
‘Bad everything,’ he said grimly.
‘Hence no welcoming smile for me, no kiss hello?’ Teasing though her voice sounded, she was serious. After the efforts he’d put in, sweet-talking himself back into her favour, this new attitude was threatening to send him right back to square one if he wasn’t careful.
Maybe he realised it because, after tossing the jacket onto the bed, he then stood for a moment flexing his wide shoulders as if he was trying to dislodge whatever it was that was bugging him. As she watched solid muscle move beneath pale blue shirting, Antonia felt the usual sprinkling of pleasure warm her insides, and would have gone to him and helped ease those tense muscles—if he hadn’t released a sigh and turned to look at her.
The expression on his face held her stationary. His eyes were glinting with barely suppressed anger, his features hard and grim and unusually pale. In a single brief sweep he gave her appearance the once-over, then his mouth tightened and he turned away again.
Warning bells began to ring in her head. ‘What’s wrong?’ she asked sharply.
‘Nothing,’ he clipped out. Then on another short sigh added, ‘Give me ten minutes to make myself human and we will begin this conversation again, I think.’
‘Fair enough,’ she agreed. It wasn’t often she’d witnessed the darker side of Marco, but on those few occasions she had done so, she’d learned very quickly to tread warily around him until he had calmed down. But she was still frowning as she let herself out of the bedroom, wondering what could have happened this afternoon to put him in that kind of mood.
Bad meeting? A fortune lost on the Stock Exchange? she mused as she walked into the small sitting room and straight over to the drinks bar to mix him his favourite whisky sour while she waited for him to join her.
The ten minutes he’d allocated himself had obviously not been long enough, was her first observation when he joined her. He came into the room with his hair still slightly damp from his quick shower and his fingers impatiently tugging the white cuffs to his shirt into line with the black silk edges of his dinner jacket—and it was clear, by the look on his face, that he was feeling no better.
‘Here, try this. It might help,’ she drily suggested, offering him the prepared drink.
But, ‘No time,’ he refused. ‘And anyway, I’m driving.’ With that, he diverted over to the mirror and began messing with his bow-tie.
And the hand holding out the whisky sour sank slowly back to the drinks bar as it began to dawn on Antonia that his mood had nothing to do with a bad day at the office, but had something to do with her.
‘All right,’ she said, deciding to take him on so they could get whatever it was that was annoying him out of the way before the evening began. ‘Tell me what it is I’m supposed to have done to make you so angry.’
‘Who said you’d done anything?’ Bow-tie perfect, shirt-cuffs straight, he turned his attention to checking his watch. ‘If you’re ready, we should get going…’
If she was ready…Dipping her eyes to look down at the slender red silk dress she was wearing—newly bought this afternoon with Marco in mind because he loved to see her in red—Antonia felt her own happy mood shatter. The dress, the way she’d done up her hair so only the odd fine silk tendril caressed her nape, and even the blush-red lipstick she was wearing, had all been chosen with his pleasure in mind.
And it hurt that he was deliberately ignoring that. That his voice might sound mellow but the message was cold. Cold like the silence he was now allowing to develop, even when he must know what she was thinking because he deciphered atmospheres in a room as easily as he deciphered a page full of figures.
The man was an accounting genius, it therefore went without saying that he wanted her to feel this hurt. But more painful was the knowledge that he had done this to her twice in one day.
What was the matter with him? What was he trying to tell her with these violent swings in his mood?
That he’d had enough? That she’d begun to irritate him so much that he couldn’t seem to look at her without taking a verbal swipe at her?
The idea wasn’t a new one. She had been suspecting it on and off for a while, though until this morning they had just enjoyed a whole week of near perfect harmony and she had begun to believe that she’d been imagining his growing irritation with her.
But now, as she stood here in this carefully orchestrated silence, the suspicion returned with a vengeance. Was she growing stale? Did he want out? Had the week away been arranged in an effort to recapture what he was no longer feeling for her?
Twice in one day, she repeated to herself. Twice he’d been deliberately hurtful.
‘Cara?’ he prompted her to answer.
The endearment made her insides wince. ‘Yes,’ she said quietly. ‘I’m ready.’
But, as she turned away to retrieve her little red purse from where she had left it, she found herself wondering exactly what it was she was ready for. Losing him?
A sharp pain caught her breath for a moment, holding her still while she waited for it to ease in much the same way she had done this morning. By that example the sensation should have dispersed quickly. But it didn’t. In fact, the more sure she became that he was tiring of her, the more it was beginning to hurt. Yet she had always known that this could only ever be a temporary affair, she tried to reason. And, as some people were always eager to tell her, she had lasted longer than most.
Those were usually the same people who were also quick to explain that when Marco Bellini married it would be to a woman of his own social standing. Someone with money, someone with class, someone with a lineage to match the superior weight of his. And, most importantly, someone his parents would welcome with open arms.
Certainly not a little English nobody who had never known her father. A woman who wasn’t deemed fit to even be in the same room as any of his relatives. And, worse, a woman who didn’t mind exposing her body to the world.
‘What’s this?’ The questioning sound of Marco’s voice impinged on her bleak summing up of herself. Having to blink a couple of times before she could face him, she found him standing there with a gold-wrapped flat package in his hands.
‘Oh, it’s a gift for Franco and Nicola.’ Eyes still slightly glazed, she turned away again. ‘I realised we hadn’t got them anything,