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‘Isaac,’ Antonio answered.

Claire swallowed, and hoped the despair wasn’t showing on her face. ‘What has he…um…allegedly done?’ she asked with a lift of her chin.

He slanted one brow in a wry manner. ‘I see you are no stranger to the legal vernacular when it comes to the behaviour of your sibling.’

She drew in a breath and forced herself to hold his gaze. ‘I am the first to admit Isaac has some behavioural issues,’ she said. ‘But I fail to see what they have to do with you.’

‘Actually, his behaviour on this occasion has everything to do with me,’ he said, with a purposeful glint in his dark eyes. ‘And you too, when it comes to it.’

Don’t ask, Claire tried to warn herself, but even so the words left her lips in a stumbling stream. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Your brother took it upon himself to steal my hire car from the hospital car park earlier this afternoon and take it for a joy-ride,’ he said.

Oh, dear God, Claire thought in rising despair. Of all the cars in Sydney, why pick Antonio Marcolini’s? She knew Isaac was still in the city; he had come down from the country to go surfing with some friends. He had come to see her only a couple of days ago. He had stayed overnight, and she had given him some money to put towards a new wetsuit.

‘Um…was there any damage?’ she asked, with a thread of hope holding her voice almost but not quite steady.

‘None that three months living with me as my wife will not rectify,’ he said, his eyes boring into hers with steely intent.

Claire stared at him, her heart doing a pretty fair imitation of her car’s recalcitrant engine on a cold morning. ‘You’re blackmailing me to come back to you?’ she choked out.

‘The word blackmail implies a lack of choice,’ he said, with an enigmatic tilt of his lips that was close to a smile. ‘In this instance I am giving you a choice, Claire. You either return to our marriage for the duration of my stay in Sydney or I will press charges against your brother. What is it to be?’

CHAPTER THREE

CLAIRE felt the arctic-cold water of shock trickle drop by chilling drop down her spine as she stood gaping speechlessly at the man she had once loved more than life itself. What he was suggesting was unthinkable. But the alternative was even more horrifying. If Isaac went to prison, or even a detention centre, how could she ever forgive herself, knowing she’d had the means to prevent it? Callum had once described some of the things that went on in remand centres, and none of them had anything to do with justice.

But returning to the marriage that had brought her such heartache and unmitigated despair was surely going to test her limits. How on earth would she do it? What strength of character would she need to draw on to see it through?

Hatred clogged her veins as she sent Antonio a castigating glare. ‘You’ve really surpassed yourself this time, Antonio,’ she said. ‘I thought your callous, unfeeling treatment of me in the past set the benchmark, but this is way above that. You couldn’t have thought of a better revenge than this.’

He responded coolly. ‘I am merely offering you an escape route which will be of benefit to all parties concerned.’

Claire rolled her eyes again, only because she knew it would annoy him. ‘Pardon me,’ she said, ‘but I fail to see how I could possibly benefit from this outrageous plan of yours.’

Anger flickered in his gaze as it pinned hers. ‘Have you ever thought of the sort of damage your brother could have done this afternoon?’ he asked.

Claire lifted her chin. ‘So your precious prestige hire car got a scratch or two? So what?’

His mouth stretched into a thin, flat line of fury. ‘Do you have any idea of how many faces I have had to reconstruct over the years?’ he ground out. ‘Beautiful, perfect faces, permanently damaged by fools like your brother, whose idea of fun is to do burnouts and wheelies in city streets with no thought or regard to whoever else might be on them. That is what my life’s work is all about, Claire. Not that you have ever shown a moment’s interest, of course.’

‘That is just so typical of you,’ she threw back. ‘I gave up my whole life for you and your career—not that you ever noticed. I was stuck at home day after miserable day, with only your mother and very occasionally your father dropping in just often enough to remind me none too subtly how I wasn’t good enough to be their precious firstborn brilliant surgeon son’s wife.’

His jaw tightened like a clamp. ‘That is not how my mother tells it,’ he bit out. ‘She tried her utmost to help you settle in, but you refused to give an inch.’

‘Here we go again,’ Claire said with a curl of her lip. ‘Her version and mine—and you still can’t make up your mind which one to believe.’

Antonio thrust his hands into his trouser pockets in case he was tempted to pull her into his arms and kiss her into submission. She was so damned infuriating. No one could make him angrier than she did. He was master of his emotions, he always had been—and needed to be during the long hours of complicated surgical procedures where a cool, calm head was essential. But five minutes with Claire in this mood was enough to set his blood on the boil.

The very fact she had demanded a divorce the moment he stepped foot in the country showed how much of a gold-digger she had become. He could not stomach her getting half of his inheritance. He would do anything to prevent it. She had already taken enough. It still infuriated him to think of her demanding money from his mother the day she had left him.

Their blazingly hot affair had suddenly changed gear when she had informed him she was carrying his child. He had stood by her, marrying her promptly even though he had always had some misgivings over the true state of her feelings. She had claimed to love him, but he had always suspected it was the lifestyle she had fallen in love with, not him at all. From the little she had told him, he knew she came from a relatively poor background. Money had been scarce and luxuries almost unheard of. She had certainly acted a little starstruck on more than one occasion. Her wide-eyed wonder at the way he and his family lived had amused him at first, but after a while he’d realised he had become a passage for her to a new life, a life where each day wasn’t a struggle for survival. That was until fate had stepped in with its most devastating of blows.

Thinking of that time always twisted his insides. He had been so busy, so very distracted. The surgical career pathway was strenuously demanding at the best of times, but juggling the needs of a young wife during an unplanned pregnancy and long hours of study and operating had been crippling, to say the least. His mother had told him many times how she had found Claire still in her dressing gown, moping about the villa, unwilling to make the slightest effort to adjust to being a surgeon’s wife. Claire had obviously expected him to be at her beck and call, a nine-to-five sort of husband, when he had been anything but.

His own feelings he hated examining too closely, although he had to admit if he had loved her half as much as he had lusted after her maybe things would have been different. Love was a word he had never been quite comfortable using when it came to Claire, or indeed any other woman he had been involved with. He had decided long ago he was not the falling in love type.

The trouble was he still wanted her. He had never stopped wanting her. It was like a thrumming pulse in his body every time he was near her. His blood pounded in his veins as he thought of the ways she had pleasured him in the past. What she had lacked in experience she had made up for in enthusiasm. He had never had a more satisfying lover. Something about Claire and her responses to him, and his to her, made him feel as if he would never be content until he got her out of his system once and for all. And this was the perfect opportunity to do it.

‘Claire,’ he said locking his gaze with hers, ‘is it possible for us to put aside the past for a moment and discuss this like mature adults?’

The look she sent him was contemptuous. ‘I fail to see what is mature about forcing me back into your life when you didn’t want me in it in the first place,’ she said. ‘All you really wanted was an heir, and I once I failed to provide one you moved on to the next person who could.’

Antonio silently counted to ten to control his temper. ‘So I take it your decision is to send your brother to prison? Is that correct?’

She turned away from him, folding her arms across her chest like a shield. ‘You know I would do anything to stop that happening,’ she said. ‘No doubt that’s why you’re playing that particular card from the deck.’

‘This is not a game, Claire.’

She turned to look at him again, her expression cynical. ‘Isn’t it?’

He blew out a gust of breath. ‘I am thirty-six years old,’ he said. ‘I want to settle down at some point, but I cannot do that until things are finalised between us one way or the other.’

Claire felt a sensation akin to a sharp pain beneath her ribcage. ‘So…’ She ran her tongue over the sudden dryness of her lips. ‘So you’re thinking of getting married to someone else…once we get a divorce?’

His eyes gave little away, his expression even less. ‘That is not an unlikely scenario,’ he answered. ‘I have been thinking about it a lot lately.’

‘Are you…’ Claire swallowed against the aching restriction in her throat. ‘Are you planning on having children?’

Again his expression was shuttered, totally and frustratingly unreadable. ‘It is a goal of mine, indeed of most people my age, to have a child or two if it is at all possible.’

‘Then I’m not sure why you are wasting your time on our relationship, given it has already failed once,’ she said, holding his gaze with an effort. ‘Wouldn’t you be better placed looking for a replacement wife, instead of trying to refashion the one you’ve got and don’t really want?’

‘I do not recall saying I did not want you,’ he said, with a look that would have ignited tinder. ‘On the contrary, you would not be here right now if that was not my primary focus.’

Claire’s eyes widened, her heart skipping a beat. ‘So…so what you’re saying is…you still want me…as in…sex?’

A corner of his mouth lifted in a smile that set her pulse racing out of control. ‘You find that surprising, cara?’ he asked.

‘Actually, I find it totally insulting,’ she tossed back, desperate to disguise her reaction to him. ‘You haven’t spoken to me in five years, other than via an occasional terse e-mail in the first few months of our separation, and now you’re expecting me to dive headfirst into your bed. What sort of woman do you think I am to agree to something as deplorable as that?’

‘You do not have a current lover, so I do not see why this will not work between us—for the time being at least.’

Claire narrowed her eyes in outrage. ‘How do you know I don’t have a lover? Have you done some sort of background search on me?’

‘You are still legally married to me, Claire,’ he said. ‘I believe it is very much my business to know if you are involved with anyone at present. Particularly if we are to resume a physical relationship.’

‘That is a very big if,’ she said, folding her arms. ‘Anyway, what about you? How many women have you had during our separation?’

‘I have had the occasional date, but nothing serious.’

Claire wanted to believe him, but knowing him as she did, or at least had, she couldn’t imagine him remaining celibate for five years. He was a full-blooded male, healthy and virile, with a sex drive that had left her shuddering in his arms each and every time. She could feel that virility and potency now. The sensual spell he cast was woven around her like an invisible mist. She couldn’t see it but she could feel it dampening her skin, making her aware of his maleness as no one else could. She could feel her breasts stirring against the lace of her bra, the tightness of her nipples reminding her of how his hot, moist mouth had suckled on her, his teeth tugging at her in playful little bites that had made her toes curl. Her belly quivered, the hollow ache of her womanhood pulsing with longing to be filled with his length and thickness again and again, driving her to the cataclysmic release she had silently craved for every one of the days, months and years they had spent apart.

It shamed her to be confronted by her own weakness where he was concerned. What sort of gullible fool would she be to go back for a second helping of betrayal and heartbreak?

He had never wanted their relationship to be anything other than a short-term affair, but her accidental pregnancy had changed everything. It had taken her almost a month to summon up the courage to tell him. Claire still remembered the total look of shock on his face when she had. But then to her surprise he had insisted they get married. It was only later she’d realised it had not been because he loved her, but because he had wanted an heir.

Claire had always known Antonio wasn’t anywhere near as serious about her as she was about him. She had heard the adage far too many times to ignore it: Italian men slept with foreigners, but when it came to settling down they married their own countrywomen. But even so she had been caught up in the fairytale of it all: having a handsome man who lavished her with gifts and took her on exciting dates, not to mention one who initiated her into the heady pleasures of the flesh. It was all like a dream come true to a shy country girl from the Outback of Australia.

Claire had always been so careful with men in the past. She hadn’t wanted to repeat the mistakes of her mother, pregnant and abandoned at a young age, spending most of her life looking for love in all the wrong places, and going on to have two other children, none of whose fathers had stayed around long enough to have their names registered on the birth certificates.

Claire hadn’t slept around like most of her peers. Instead she had saved up the money from the three part-time jobs she’d juggled in order to put herself through hairdressing college. She had graduated as student of the year, and spent the next year or so saving for a holiday abroad, wanting to see the world before she settled into an upmarket salon.

But then she had met Antonio.

He had come in for a haircut, and as Riccardo, her flamboyant boss, had been double-booked due to a mistake one of the apprentices had made, he had asked her to wash and cut Antonio’s hair for him.

Claire had smiled up at the tall, gorgeous-looking man, introducing herself shyly. ‘I am so sorry about the mistake in the appointment book,’ she said. ‘Riccardo has spoken to you about me filling in for him?’

Antonio smiled. ‘It is not a problem,’ he said. ‘You are from England, si?’

‘No.’ She felt herself blushing and gushing. ‘I’m actually Australian, from Sydney…well, really the country, not the city…a rural district…you know…cows and sheep…that sort of thing.’

‘Ah, Australia,’ he said, taking the chair she held out for him. ‘I have distant relatives there. In fact my younger brother has been there several times. I have been promising myself a trip out there some time. It is the land of opportunities, si?’

Claire draped the cape around his impossibly broad shoulders, her nerves fizzing as her fingers accidentally came into contact with the raspy skin along his jaw. ‘Um…yes…I guess so. If you’re prepared to work hard,’ she said, trying to avoid meeting his coal-black eyes in the mirror.

‘Do you speak Italian?’

‘Non parlo Italiano,’ she said with an apologetic grimace. ‘But I would like to learn. I’ve been thinking about taking some classes.’

He met her eyes in the mirror and held them. ‘I will give you a lesson for free if you agree to have dinner with me tonight.’

Claire’s fingers stilled amongst the silky strands of his sooty black hair. ‘Um…I’m not sure if Riccardo agrees with his staff fraternising with clients,’ she faltered.

‘He will agree when it comes to me,’ Antonio said, with the sort of easy confidence that would have presented itself as arrogance in anyone else.

‘Would you like to come over to the basin?’ she asked, trying for cool and calm but not quite pulling it off.

Antonio rose from the chair, his height yet again dwarfing her. ‘Riccardo must think a lot of your skill if he has shunted one of his best clients into your hands,’ he said. ‘Will I be safe?’

Claire responded to his flirting as any other young woman would have done. ‘Only if you behave yourself, Signor Marcolini,’ she said with a smile. ‘I make a habit of keeping all of my customers satisfied—even the most demanding ones.’

‘I am sure you do,’ he said, and put back his head so she could wash his hair.

Claire had to drag herself out of the past to concentrate on the here and now. She didn’t want to remember how it had felt to run her fingers through his hair, to massage his scalp for far longer than any other client before or since. She didn’t want to remember how she had agreed to have dinner with him—not just that night but the following night as well. And she certainly didn’t want to remember the way he had kissed her on their third date, his mouth sending her into a frenzy of want that had led to her lying naked in his arms only moments later, his body plunging into hers, her muffled cry of discomfort bringing him up short, shocked, horrified that he had inadvertently hurt her…

No. Claire shoved the memories back even further. It had been the first time he had hurt her, but not the last. And there was no way she was going to think about the last.

‘I find it hard to believe you have been without a regular bedmate for the last five years,’ she said, voicing her doubts out loud.

‘Believe what you like,’ he said. ‘As in the past, I have no control over the unfathomable workings of your mind.’

Claire ground her teeth. ‘You know, you are really going to have to dig a little deeper on the charm front to get me back into your bed, Antonio.’

He gave her an imperious smile. ‘You think?’

She took a step backwards, her hands clenched into fists by her sides. ‘What do your parents and brother think of your dastardly little scheme to lure me back into the fold of the Marcolini family?’

A shadow passed through his dark eyes. It was just a momentary, almost fleeting thing, and Claire thought how she could so easily have missed it. ‘My father unfortunately passed away a couple of months ago,’ he said, with little trace of emotion in his voice. ‘He had a massive heart attack. Too many cigarettes, too much stress, and not enough advice taken from his doctors or his family to slow down, I am afraid.’ He paused for a moment, his dark eyes pinning hers in a disquieting manner. ‘I thought you would have read about it in the press?’

‘I…I must have missed it,’ she said, lowering her voice and her gaze respectfully. ‘I am so sorry. Your mother must miss him greatly. You must all miss him…’

‘My mother is doing the best she can under the circumstances,’ he said after another slight pause. ‘My brother Mario has taken over my father’s business.’

Claire brought her gaze back to his in surprise. ‘What? You mean your father didn’t leave you anything in his will?’

An indefinable look came into his eyes. ‘Mario and I are both partners in the business, of course, but due to my career commitments I have by necessity left most of the corporate side of things to him.’

‘I am sure your brother was shocked to hear of your intention to look me up while you are here,’ Claire commented with a wry look.

Antonio continued to hold her look with an inscrutable one of his own. ‘I have spoken to my brother, who told me rather bluntly he thinks I am a fool for even considering a rematch with you. But then he has always been of the philosophy of one strike and you are out. I am a little more…how shall I say…accommodating?’

Claire could just imagine his playboy younger brother bad-mouthing her to Antonio. His parents had been the same—not that Antonio would ever believe it. That last degrading scene with his mother had been filed away in Claire’s do-not-go-there-again-file in her head. She had kept the cheque in her purse for weeks, folded into a tiny square, frayed at the edges, just as her temper was every time she thought of how she had been dismissed, like a servant who hadn’t fulfilled the impossible expectations of her employer. But then she had finally cashed it, without a twinge of conscience. As far as she was concerned it had been money well spent.

‘How do you know it was my brother who took your car?’ Claire asked, looking at Antonio warily. ‘You’ve never met any of my family.’ Thank God. she thought. What he would make of her loving but totally unsophisticated mother was anyone’s guess, but her brothers—as much as she loved them—were way beyond the highbrow circles Antonio moved in.

‘When the police caught him he identified himself,’ Antonio said. ‘He made no effort at all to cover up the fact he was my young brother-in-law.’

Claire felt her stomach drop.

‘Wh-where is he?’ she asked. ‘Where is my brother now?’

‘I have arranged for him to spend a few days with a friend of mine,’ he said. ‘He runs a centre for troubled youths on the South Coast.’

She clenched her fists by her sides. ‘I want to see him. I want to see my brother to make sure he’s all right.’

‘I will organise for you to speak to him via the telephone,’ he said, and reached for his mobile.

Claire sank her teeth into her bottom lip as she listened to him speak to his friend before he handed her the phone. She took it with a shaking hand and held it up to her ear, turning away so he wouldn’t see the anguish on her face, nor hear what her brother had to say.

‘Isaac? It’s me, Claire.’

‘Yo, sis. What’s up?’

Claire mentally pinched the bridge of her nose. ‘I think you know what’s up,’ she said, stepping further out of Antonio’s hearing and keeping her voice low. ‘Why did you do it, Isaac? Why on earth did you take Antonio Marcolini’s car?’

Her brother muttered a filthy swear word. ‘I hate the way he treated you. I thought it would help. Why should he drive around in such a cool-dude car when yours is a heap of rust?’ he asked. ‘Rich bastard. Anyway, I thought you were going to divorce him?’

Claire cringed as the sound of her brother’s voice carried across the room. Turning away from Antonio’s livid dark brown gaze, she said, ‘I’m actually considering…um…getting back with him.’

Her brother let out another swear word. ‘Get out. Jeez, why didn’t you tell me that the other day?’

‘Would it have made a difference?’ she asked.

There was a small silence.

‘Yeah…maybe…I dunno. You seemed pretty cut up about that article and the photo in the paper.’

Claire squeezed her eyes shut. Why hadn’t she thrown it in the rubbish, where it belonged? ‘Look, I just want you to promise me you’ll behave yourself now you’ve been given this chance.’

‘Don’t ‘ave much choice, locked up here,’ he grumbled.

Claire frowned. ‘You’re locked up?’

‘Well…sort of,’ Isaac said. ‘It’s some sort of youth reform centre. It’s kind of all right, though. The food’s OK, and they’ve given me a room to myself and a TV. The head honcho wants me to think about teaching some of the kids to surf. I might take it on; I’ve got nothing better to do.’

‘Just stay there and do as you’re told, Isaac,’ she pleaded with him.

‘So you’re dead serious about getting back with the Marcolini bloke, huh?’ Isaac asked.

She lowered her voice even further, but even so it seemed to echo ominously off the walls of the plush suite—just as her brother’s damning words had. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I am as of this moment going to return to Antonio and live with him as his wife.’