Page 124 of Exotic Affairs: The Mistress Bride\The Spanish Husband\The Bellini Bride

‘He still wants her.’ Louisa’s remark hit him dead centre, as if she could tap into his thoughts.

‘His desires don’t interest me,’ he answered dismissively. The real point was—did Antonia still want Kranst?

Then another thought slid silk-like into his head, filling him with something disturbingly like dismay. Could it be that Antonia was becoming tired of him?

The very suggestion was so alien to him that he couldn’t quite work out how to handle it. No woman in his memory had even considered walking away from him until he was ready to let them go!

Then—no. Marco dismissed that idea with a contempt even he recognised as arrogance. She adored him. She always had done. If he walked over there right now and took her in his arms she would become his loving siren again within seconds, and Kranst would be the one left forgotten on the sidelines.

‘He has the looks, caro.’ Once again Louisa tapped into his thinking. ‘He has the body and the reputation of a great lover. And although he may not have the social standing you possess, he can claim star quality, which cancels out the proud Bellini name. In fact,’ she concluded tauntingly ‘the only thing you seem to have that he doesn’t are the financial resources you claim she doesn’t abuse. But it is interesting how it always comes back to the money, hmm?’

Even to his own surprise, Marco released a burst of laughter. Because he was seeing the new red Lotus Antonia had walked past tonight as if it wasn’t there. He was seeing a safe full of jewels she hardly ever asked to wear because she preferred to wear paste, like the clasp dressing her hair. And he was seeing an account in his own bank into which he paid a regular amount of money that she rarely spent.

So, no, avarice was not Antonia’s besetting sin. But at least Louisa’s peevish barb had put the humour back into his mood, so he repaid her by bending down to kiss her pouting mouth. She clung to him. He wasn’t surprised—only indifferent—which was a shame, really, because Louisa would be his mother’s idea of the perfect Bellini bride.

Shame—big shame—she wasn’t his own.

‘There,’ Antonia declared. ‘Didn’t I tell you?’

Antonia was seeing that kiss Marco had just bestowed on Louisa Florenza as the final proof she needed to confirm that he was tiring of her.

‘Men like Bellini do not replace old with older,’ Stefan drawled sardonically. ‘And you’ve just been kissing me,’ he further pointed out. ‘I would be flattered to think it was because you wanted me as your replacement lover, but we both know it wouldn’t be true.’

‘I love you more than anyone else on this earth, and I wish I’d never met him,’ Antonia told him so tragically that Stefan had to sigh.

‘My darling, the man is besotted with you. One only has to look at the too-cool way he is handling this little scene you’re so carefully laying on for his benefit to know he’s paying you back by doing the same to you.’

‘If he loved me, he would be over here punching your lights out instead of laughing with her.’

‘Well, thanks a lot,’ Stefan drawled.

‘It’s all your fault, anyway,’ she informed him churlishly. ‘If you hadn’t put my likeness into your stupid paintings, he wouldn’t have bothered coming looking for me in the first place!’

‘I didn’t encourage you to fall for the rake.’ It was Stefan’s turn to laugh, and Marco’s turn to listen to him doing it. ‘You did that all on your own, Antonia. And I distinctly remember warning you off.’

It was such a painful little truth that she felt the tears suddenly flood into her eyes. Seeing them, Stefan released another sigh and pulled her just that little bit closer.

‘You’ve been with him for over a year,’ he gently reminded her. ‘That’s a whole lot longer than any other woman in his harem.’

‘And the next person to tell me that will probably receive a slap,’ she responded bitterly.

‘But it still has to count for something, my darling,’ he persisted. ‘Can you honestly swear that he’s actually said he no longer wants you?’

All Antonia did was smile cynically. For how many hints did she need tossed at her to know what was going on inside Marco’s head? Even the week in Portofino was beginning to look like their swan-song to her. They’d had a row a few days before, over his intention to spend several days with his parents on their Tuscany estate. And she’d taken offence that even after a year together he was still refusing to let her meet them. ‘Anyone would think you were ashamed of me,’ she’d said.

‘My father is ill,’ he’d replied. ‘Show a little consideration for the plight of others.’

But he hadn’t denied the accusation that he was ashamed. And his face had closed up, just as it always did when they touched on the subject of his exalted family. So he’d gone alone to Tuscany. She hadn’t heard from him once in the three days he’d been there. And when he’d come back he’d been so moody and irritable that the sudden decision to spend a week together in Portofino had come as a complete surprise.

‘That depends on your definition of want,’ she said to Stefan with a bleak little smile. ‘He still wants me in his bed, but out of it I just irritate the hell out of him.’

‘Hence the hungry vamp act here with me, designed to irritate him even more so,’ Stefan heavily concluded. ‘Do you have a death wish or something, Antonia? Because, love you or hate you, Marco Bellini is not the kind of man you embarrass in front of his friends,’ he warned very seriously. ‘He’ll strike back so hard you won’t know what’s hit you.’

From the corner of her vision she saw Marco join them on the dance floor with Louisa clasped in his arms. As Stefan swung her around she caught sight of Nicola standing watching them with anxious eyes while, beside her, Franco simply looked angry. And as it suddenly occurred to her that there was a lot of watchful tension eddying around in the atmosphere, she finally realised what had made Stefan issue the warning.

A calamity was brewing in Nicola’s drawing room and, in her eagerness to score points off Marco’s arrogant pride, she was unwittingly the cause of it.

‘How did you manage to get an invite to this party?’ she asked Stefan, suddenly realising that neither Franco or Nicola would be so insensitive as to invite him here, knowing his past relationship with their best friend’s current mistress.

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