Was she planning to meet up with him secretly? She had done it before at least once, to his knowledge.
Antonia might have left Kranst to come to live in Milan with him, but the ex-lovers had not parted enemies. During a trip to London earlier this year, he had discovered by pure accident that she had spent a whole day with Kranst.
‘Don’t tell me who I can and who I can’t see!’ she’d declared when he’d objected. ‘Stefan will always be very special to me, and if you can’t cope with that, then that’s your problem, not mine, Marco.’
It had been one of a very few times when she’d actually looked ready to walk away from him if he tried to push the issue. He hadn’t pushed it. But, for the first time in his life, he’d experienced the ugly burn of jealousy, when he’d realised that Kranst held a power over Antonia that was a challenge to his own.
He didn’t like it. He didn’t like the knowledge that he’d backed down from taking up that challenge. And he didn’t like Kranst turning up in Milan just when Marco was having to do some serious thinking about his relationship with Antonia.
It was either immaculate timing on Kranst’s part or yet another bad omen. Either way, the sandwich never got eaten and the two young hopefuls lost all chance of meeting an amiable Marco Bellini that day. If it hadn’t been for the fact that Marco was still functioning clearly enough to recognise an unmissable opportunity in what they were proposing, he would have taken great delight in kicking them out!
Irritation alternated with disturbing bouts of skin-prickling restlessness throughout the rest of the afternoon. Sudden flashes of Antonia and Kranst holed-up somewhere secret played games with his head.
In the end he could stand it no longer and went back to the privacy of his office to pick up the phone. Her mobile was switched off. Irritation ripped through him, then he remembered her telling him she was going straight back to the apartment, so he rang there instead.
All he got was his own pre-recorded message telling him that no one was available to take his call.
Antonia was standing in a tiny backstreet in another, less fashionable part of the city, fitting a key into a door. Once inside, she walked the narrow hallway and began climbing bare-boarded flights of stairs, passing by small dingy offices belonging to the kinds of businesses Marco looked down upon from his lofty position at the top of the corporate tree. Some of the tenants knew her, some didn’t, most looked curiously at her, smiled politely and left her alone. She liked it that way. For this place was her secret. A part of her life Marco didn’t control.
On the very top landing, she went to the only door there and fitted another key into its lock. Stepping inside, she carefully closed the door again and then, turning round, she looked about her and quite simply smiled…
CHAPTER TWO
WALKING through the front door to the Milan apartment was always a pleasure. And the first thing Antonia did as she stepped into it some hours later was pause for a moment to reacquaint herself with surroundings that were a thousand times different from those she had just come from.
Occupying the entire top floor of a modern city block, Marco’s home was an interior designer’s idea of heaven. No detail had been skimped in an effort to achieve its harmonious ambience.
The hall was large and light and airy, the rooms leading off from it furnished with a clever mix of classical, old and new. Nothing offended the eye. There were formal rooms used only for entertaining, less grand rooms for when they did not. The kitchen was a cook’s paradise, all four en-suite bedrooms designed to co-ordinate with the pastel colours applied to the walls. And everywhere you went you walked on the very best in Italian ceramic, passing 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.