‘Then we will make it a priority tomorrow to correct the mistake.’
It was just so typically arrogant of him. ‘Are you planning to put an ad in the newspaper, Marco, announcing to the world that your mistress is not the Mirror Woman? And do you honestly think anyone will believe you if you do?’
‘We can at least try to set the record straight.’
‘For what purpose?’ she asked. ‘To make you feel better? Your mother? Me? Don’t you see? It doesn’t matter who the model is; people will always look at me and see the same woman! I can’t change that. I look like her! In every way but name I could be her! Either you have to learn to accept it or we have nothing left here to—’
Firm hands toppled her back down to him. ‘Shut up,’ he gritted. ‘I know what you were going to say, so just shut up!’
‘You started it,’ she sighed.
‘And I am finishing it!’ And he did, by launching into a second seduction.
It was all very fierce, intense and possessive, but sex didn’t solve everything. Okay, so in bed they were as compatible as any two human beings could be. But out of it?
Nothing could change. He wanted to fix what couldn’t be fixed. Which was why she hadn’t told him the full truth about Anton Gabrielli. She might love Marco, but some secrets you could only trust to someone who would love you enough not to care what you had to tell them.
And Marco didn’t love her that way.
This time her drift from satiation to sleep was allowed to happen uninterrupted. But Marco lay awake, frowning into the darkness until dawn eventually began to filter into the room, when, carefully untangling himself from Antonia, he slid out of the bed.
Two hours later he was in a helicopter heading for his parents’ Tuscany home, intent on an interview with his father. And Antonia was just awakening to find the place beside her empty—if you didn’t count the written note waiting on the pillow.
‘Don’t worry me, cara,’ it said. ‘Be here when I return.’
Don’t worry me, she read again. Be here…
Such emotive words, she thought sadly. But what did they tell her, except that he didn’t want her to go? They didn’t solve anything. They didn’t put right what his mother had done to her self-esteem. She would have to be really brazen to go amongst his friends after last night’s public humiliation and boldly outface their new perception of her.
And she wasn’t that brazen. Though she didn’t think Marco would understand if she tried to explain it to him. He would probably think she was angling after another marriage proposal. When in actual fact the one he’d given her had been more than enough for her.
So was she going to ‘be here’ when he got back?
Her indecisive sigh told its own story. She just couldn’t make up her mind. To go was going to hurt. To stay was going to hurt. Her problem was deciding which one was going to hurt more.
Getting out of bed, she showered and dressed in a simple dusky-mauve skirt and a cerise top, then went to search out Carlotta to see if she knew where Marco had gone.
It was Saturday, after all, and she had rarely known him to work on Saturdays. He preferred to laze around and do as little as possible.
Carlotta was just placing a pot of coffee, a bowl of freshly sliced fruit and some toast down on the table for her when she arrived in the sunny breakfast room.
No, she didn’t know where Marco had gone.
The smell of the toast made Antonia realise that with last night’s drama she hadn’t eaten a scrap since late afternoon yesterday and she was hungry, which was a much simpler problem to solve.
Or was it that she didn’t really want to look for the answer to where Marco had gone? she wondered as she sat down. He’d threatened to go and see Anton Gabrielli. He also had to smooth things out with his mother. Who else? she asked herself. Confront Stefan with what she had told him? Demand his money back for the Mirror Woman? The list could go on and on.
Any interview between Marco and Anton Gabrielli did not sit comfortably with her, although the man could only tell Marco more or less what she had already said, she attempted to reassure herself.
As for an interview with his mother—the outcome of that depended entirely on which one of them was the more committed to his or her offended senses. Either way, it did not promise to be a pleasant conversation. Nor did it sit comfortably with her that she was the cause of dissension between mother and son.
Then there was Stefan. Annoyingly unpredictable Stefan, who was likely to say anything if Marco pushed hard enough. And, since he knew just about everything about her, it was yet another confrontation she would prefer didn’t take place.