Page 115 of Exotic Affairs: The Mistress Bride\The Spanish Husband\The Bellini Bride

‘But you’ll have me anyway,’ Caroline added smilingly. ‘There really isn’t much to pick between you, my father and poor Felipe,’ she said. ‘You’re all too self-motivated to be true.’

‘Felipe was right when he compared my father’s life with the life of the ancestor who built this castle,’ Luiz remarked gruffly. ‘It was history repeating itself.’

Twisting in the water until she was facing him, Caroline murmured softly, ‘Not this time, though. This time the Conde got his woman. That makes for a happy ending.’

Eyes like dark chasms filled with satisfaction. ‘A very happy ending,’ Luiz agreed hus

kily, and began to kiss her…

The Bellini Bride

Michelle Reid

CHAPTER ONE

THE BED was a sea of rumpled white linen. Tangled amongst it Marco Bellini could see a long golden leg bent at the knee and the smooth silken-curve of a hip and thigh. The rest was covered by fine white sheeting but for a slender arm and the rippling swathe of strawberry-blonde hair flowing away from the kind of profile that would have launched ships in times gone by.

Only her name was not Helen, it was Antonia, and, although her beauty might have launched many metaphorical ships in her time, there was no disputing to whom she now belonged.

Leaning back against the balcony rail, Marco allowed himself a smile as he brought his coffee cup to his lips. It was still very early, but the sun was already hot against his naked back. He had come out onto the terrace directly from his shower, and the white towel draped low around his narrow hips was his only concession to modesty, here, in his summer villa perched high on the hill above Portofino, where the only eyes to see him belonged to the seagulls soaring on the early morning currents of air.

And Antonia, of course, if she bothered to wake up. But, unlike him, she didn’t have to be back in Milan by nine o’clock, so she had no reason to rise this early. Although… he then added ruefully to that, if she did happen to awaken now, it would be the simplest thing in the world for him to linger long enough to drop the towel and join her back in the bed.

But not yet, Marco told himself as he took another sip from his cup. The coffee was hot, black and strong and was just another pleasure he enjoyed lingering over while he leant here watching his woman sleep.

In the year they had been together he had never seen Antonia look anything but beautiful. Dressed to slay or stripped bare to the exquisite skin nature had given her, she exuded a beauty that by far outclassed any other woman he had known. He was proud to be her lover, proud that only he held the right to place a possessive hand upon any part of her anatomy. Proud that she only had eyes for him.

But did he love her? he asked himself.

No, he admitted heavily. He didn’t love her. He loved how she looked, and how she always made him feel. And he would willingly have laid down his own life if it meant him saving hers. But true love had to go deeper than that. He had to love what she was, and he didn’t.

A sigh caught in the depth of his chest. A cloud blotted out the sun. A seagull shrieked in protest. The coffee suddenly tasted bitter. Putting the cup aside he turned to stare at the misted-blue waters of the Mediterranean shimmering in the distance—and wished to hell he knew what he was going to do about her.

Letting her go was out of the question. Letting her stay meant trouble in more ways than one. Out there, across hills and lush valleys that made up his beautiful Italy, trouble was brewing. It came in the form of an autocratic mother and an ailing father with an urgent desire to see his son safely married and settled before he died.

Marrying Antonia, even without the true-love bit, would be the easiest thing in the world for him to do. She was young, she was beautiful and she loved him totally. But what parent would condone their only son, and the heir to the great Bellini fortune, marrying himself to a woman like Antonia?

A woman with the kind of past that was destined to dog her for ever. A woman with the kind of past that would reflect poorly on him and his family name.

A woman who made the perfect mistress—but could never be the perfect wife for him.

Another sigh whispered from him. Maybe Antonia heard it, because she began to stir. Recovering his coffee-cup, Marco turned to watch her slide lazily onto her back then, even before she bothered to open her eyes, send an arm out to search the empty space beside her in the bed. It was a gesture so familiar to him that he actually felt the hairs on his chest prickle as if she had reached out and touched him. The sensation placed the smile back on his lips, because it pleased him to know that the first thing she always thought about on waking was him.

When she found no warm male body lying beside her, her next move was to open her lovely eyes, pause for a moment to allow the remnants of sleep to disperse, then, in a single smooth graceful movement, she sat up and began to search for him.

She found him almost instantly. A warm lover’s smile touched her lovely mouth. ‘Ciao,’ she greeted him softly.

His response was a lazy masculine gleam over the rim of his cup, while inside he became aware of the chemical responses already beginning to stir his blood. She moved him in so many ways he didn’t dare count them.

Sliding out of the bed, she lifted her arms above her head and indulged in a long lazy stretch that highlighted every perfect contour of her very naked frame from slender toes to delicate fingertips. Her light golden skin shone like the finest silk ever created. Her wonderful hair tumbled in loosely spiralling threads down her arching spine. In all his life Marco had never known any woman quite so perfect as Antonia. Her face, her hair, her sensational body—the way she moved as she began to walk towards him.

Like the world’s most dangerous siren, she roused the male senses without even having to try. Even the sun worshipped her by coming out from behind its cloud at the same moment she stepped onto the terrace, pooling her in soft golden light as she continued her slow graceful journey towards him.

It was no wonder Stefan Kranst had been so obsessed with her, Marco thought with a sudden grimness. No wonder he’d painted her every single way an artist could paint an obsession. Seeing her like this, he could easily understand why the man had felt so compelled to preserve her naked image. For years Antonia had appeared in all of his paintings, not always the main focal point but always the slender naked figure you looked for whenever you found yourself viewing a Kranst.

But in his desire to make Antonia immortal he had turned her into every man’s titillating fantasy. Her naked form now adorned the walls of the rich and famous. When she walked into a room those in the know stopped and stared in intimate recognition.

Did she care? No. Did she blush with embarrassment or hide her eyes in shame? Not this woman, who was as comfortable with her body as she was comfortable with those wretched paintings.

---