Exotic Affairs(181)

The shark on his way to hunt prey, he named it with a wryness that didn’t hold any humour. Picking it up, he found another—and another. All revealing his different moods in accurate detail.

Then something else caught his eye to divert his attention.

It was a half-finished painting of Franco and Nicola about to leave on their honeymoon. Antonia clearly had not been pleased with the result because she had tossed it onto the bench and left it there. But that wasn’t why the painting held him. It was the realisation that, in size, it would have fitted exactly the painting she had wrapped for the anniversary gift.

Yet she hadn’t thought to show him, ask his approval. In fact she hadn’t sought his approval on anything she had been doing in here.

And it hurt. ‘Why not tell me?’ he murmured out loud.

Turning from where he had wandered off to, Stefan Kranst looked at him—just looked—and he knew the answer. She would have had to feel safe from his mockery to tell him about all of this, and she hadn’t.

‘I am no ogre,’ he growled out angrily—angrily because this was just another area she hadn’t trusted him with.

Antonia had changed her mind at the very last minute. She didn’t know why she had done it, but some instinct had suddenly spoken to her and said, Better stop Stefan from emptying your studio if you’re intending to stay here. So she’d redirected the driver and realised only after she had let him go that she no longer had any keys to get into the building.

Fortunately another tenant was just coming out. He recognised her and, with a smile, stood back to allow her inside. ‘You have visitors,’ he told her.

Stefan. She smiled. ‘Grazie,’ she said, and let him close the door behind her.

Her case wasn’t heavy, but she was puffing a bit by the time she reached the top landing. The door was open a little. Pushing it wider, she paused to put down her suitcase just as Marco growled out harshly, ‘What did she think I was going to do—laugh in her face?’

Her breathing changed from an out-of-breath pant to a trembling stammer, her mouth ran dry, her eyes glazed. Marco was here, with Stefan, of all people. It felt as if fate was still controlling her actions like a puppet on a string.

‘Well,’ she managed to whisper, ‘are you?’

He spun round to face the doorway. Silence roared, tension sung, the sunlight shone on his black silk hair. He was wearing slate-grey. Slate-grey suit, slate-grey shirt, darker slate-grey tie. His skin had a polished gold cast to it, and his eyes were the same colour as his tie—dark with anger and passion and hurt pride.

She wanted to break down and weep at the sheer beautiful sight of him. She wanted to go to him, wrap her arms around his neck and cling so tightly that he would never ever be able to shake her free.

But instead her chin went up, it simply had to. No matter how desperate she was to feel his touch, or how shaky she was feeling inside, or even how afraid she was of hearing his answer to the question—she had to challenge him with it. It was a matter of her own pride.

‘You’re on a plane,’ he said. It was really stupid. It was the very last thing she’d expected him to say.

‘I couldn’t go.’

‘I’m not laughing.’ He answered her question.

‘What I do here is important to me,’ she told him.

‘I can see that,’ he answered. ‘Why couldn’t you go?’

Her eyelashes flickered. Everything felt as if it was coming to her through a confused mist. She wet her lips with her tongue, linked her fingers together in a trembling pleat across her trembling stomach.

‘Y-you didn’t want me to,’ she murmured unsteadily. ‘Y-you trusted me to stay but I didn’t trust you to…’ The words trailed away on a wash of distraction. ‘Th-that s-sketch you’re holding isn’t a good likeness.’ Her fingers unpleated so she could point to what he was holding in his hand.

He looked down at it like someone who had no idea that he was holding anything. ‘You think I’m a shark,’ he murmured as he looked back at her.

‘Sometimes.’ She nodded.

‘Are you coming in, or are you thinking of running again?’

‘Oh.’ It was her turn to glance down as if she didn’t know where she was or what she was doing. She was still standing on the threshold, with her case sitting beside her and her bag swinging from one of her shoulders.

She went to pick up the case. The moment she moved, so did Marco. He came across the bare-board floor at the speed of lightning. The case was lifted out of her reach. Her arm was imprisoned in long fingers. Before she knew what he was about she was fully inside the room and the door was being firmly closed behind her.