‘Ciao, mi amore.’ The deep dark tones of his voice filled the car-space, soft, warm and aimed to seduce, she felt tingles of excitement run down her spine. ‘You were, of course, too busy concentrating on your driving to answer the phone straight away.’
Not a question exactly, but more a remark loaded with satire. He knew she had hesitated over whether to speak to him.
‘What do you want?’ she demanded curtly.
‘That depends,’ he murmured suggestively, ‘on where you are right now…’
‘Walking naked down Monte Napoleon, living up to expectations,’ she promptly tossed back at him, naming a particularly classy area within Milan’s famous Quadrilatero.
As a direct hit back at what he had said to her this morning, it should have caught him on the raw. Instead, it was the turn of his appreciative laughter to coil itself all around her. Antonia wriggled in her seat and wished she could hate him. But what she was experiencing was far from hate, and it took a couple of risky manoeuvres through the heavy traffic to help dispel the sensation.
‘And to think,’ he said eventually, ‘I refused lunch at Dino’s just to talk to you.’
‘Bad move, caro,’ Antonia responded. ‘Dino’s was by far your better option.’
‘And you sulk like a prima donna,’ he smoothly threw back.
He was right and she did. But then she felt justified. Still, the remark held a warning she would be a fool not to heed. ‘You told me you had back-to-back meetings all day,’ she murmured with less sarcasm. ‘Lunch at Dino’s is usually an all-afternoon thing.’
‘I surprise myself sometimes with my own efficiency,’ was his light reply.
‘And your conceit,’ she added.
‘Si, that too,’ he had the arrogance to agree.
Despite not wanting it to, Antonia felt her mouth twitch into a grin. In truth, his arrogance and conceit were major parts of what made Marco the charismatic person he was. Plus his sensational dark good looks, she then wryly added as she sped off the autostrada and headed for the city centre. Then there was his great body, and his prowess as lover, and the way he…
‘In truth, lunch at Dino’s was never an option.’ The sound of his voice grabbed her attention back again. ‘The morning meetings ran overtime. The first one of the afternoon begins in half an hour. So here I am, sitting at my desk, with a take-away sandwich to ease my hunger, a newspaper to feed my mind—and a desperate desire to hear you say something nice to me.’
‘Huh,’ was all she offered.
‘You really want me to grovel, don’t you?’ his rueful voice drawled.
‘Preferably on your knees,’ Antonia confirmed.
‘Mmm,’ Marco murmured. ‘Now this sounds interesting. There are so many—many ways I can beg your forgiveness from that position.’
Her impulsive burst of laughter refused to be held in check. Across the city haze, in his plush office, Marco leant back in his chair and smiled a satisfied smile. Then, with the charm of a master, he turned the conversation to more ordinary things, like the performance of the Lotus, what she intended to do with her afternoon, and what time they needed to leave the apartment this evening to attend the first wedding anniversary party being thrown by his best friend Franco and his lovely wife Nicola.
By the time he replaced the receiver, Marco was satisfyingly sure that this morning’s stupidity on his part had been carefully soothed away and he could begin to relax again.
Reaching out, he picked up his sandwich and removed it from its wrapping, then collected up his newspaper, he lifted his feet onto the corner of the desk, and settled back to enjoy a half-hour of leisure before his next meeting began with a pair of young hopefuls who wanted his financial backing for their very good idea but fell short of his investment criteria by possessing the business skills of a pair of gnats!
Until five minutes ago he had been intending to send them away with the curt advice to learn how to run a business before attempting to start one. But now he felt much more amenable. Maybe he would even offer to oversee the project himself!
Then he opened the newspaper and any hint of amenability died a death in that moment. For there staring out at him was none other than—Stefan Kranst. He was standing inside one of Milan’s most respected private art galleries. And the full-page article was really a plug for the Romano Gallery, where the artist was planning to exhibit next week.
But that wasn’t the thing that was knotting up Marco. It was the unsavoury suspicion that if Kranst was in town then Antonia must know about it, but she hadn’t mentioned a word to him!
Did she know?