Exotic Affairs(138)

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, so I went shopping before coming on here…’

Shopping.

For several moments Marco couldn’t move a single muscle. Remorse was cutting into him for the second time that day. While he’d been suspecting her of meeting secretly with Stefan Kranst she’d been trawling the shops, looking for an anniversary gift for his own two closest friends.

He didn’t know what to do. He didn’t know what to say to put right the wrong he’d done her—yet again. ‘I’m sorry, cara,’ seemed the only thing to offer. ‘I should have thought about this myself.’

There was a double meaning to the last part, though he was relieved Antonia couldn’t know it. She winced at the cara, though, he noticed. Shrugged at the rest. ‘It doesn’t matter. Your money paid for it.’

With that she walked stiffly away, leaving her very derisive offering hanging in the air behind her. With a silent curse aimed at his own nasty suspicions, Marco followed, grimly deciding to keep his mouth shut since he was well aware that he had successfully managed to wipe her clean of all hint of good humour by now.

And she looked gorgeous, delectable, good enough to eat—though he knew he had left it too late to tell her that. The dress was short, red and very sexy the way it clung to every slender curve she possessed. It made him want to run his hands all over her, but that was just another pleasure he had denied himself with his lousy mood.

Antonia lifted the latch on the front door and stepped through, leaving Marco to set the alarm and lock up, while she called the lift. It arrived as he did. They stepped inside it. The lift took them down towards the basement with Antonia occupying one corner, he another, and the atmosphere was so thick he could have cut it with a knife.

If the English were brilliant at only one thing, then it would have to be their ability to freeze people out, he mused as he viewed her glacial expression.

‘Do you want me to apologise for taking my bad temper out on you?’ he sighed eventually.

‘What—again?’ she drawled. Then, ‘No, don’t bother,’ she advised, before he could answer. ‘No doubt you’ll be doing it again before too long, which renders your apologies pretty meaningless gestures.’

Perhaps he deserved that, Marco conceded. But irritation began to bite into him again. He didn’t like being treated like a leper just because he’d made a natural mistake.

Natural? He quizzed himself.

Yes, damn natural, he insisted arrogantly. He might no longer suspect her of spending the afternoon with Kranst, but that didn’t mean she didn’t know the man was here in Milan!

Well, he was damned if he was going to bring the subject up first, he decided, grimly aware that he didn’t really want to know the answer. For to know the answer meant dealing with it. And he didn’t want to deal with anything that could risk his relationship with Antonia. Not until he had made up his own mind where it was going to go, anyway.