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CHAPTER FOUR

CLAIRE handed back Antonio’s phone with a look of grim resignation on her face. ‘Would you like me to lie down on the bed now, so you can get straight down to business?’ she asked. ‘Or would you like me to perform a strip show and really get your money’s worth?’

Anger flared like a struck match in his dark eyes. ‘There is no need to prostitute yourself, Claire,’ he said. ‘We will resume a physical relationship only when I am convinced it is what we both want. Right at this moment I can see you would much rather rake your nails down my face than anything else.’

Claire felt relief tussling with her disappointment, making her feel disconcerted over what it was she actually felt for Antonio. She had told herself so many times how much she hated him, and yet standing before him now she found that hatred proving frustratingly elusive. Other feelings had crept up on her—dangerous feelings of want and need. She could feel the traitorous beat of her pulse, the hit and miss of her heartbeats reminding her of the sensual power he still had over her.

‘So…’ She tried to keep her voice steady and her expression coolly detached. ‘This three-month reconciliation…Am I supposed to move in here with you, or do I get to keep my own place?’

‘You are renting at present? Is that correct?’ he asked.

Claire wondered again how he knew so much about her current circumstances when their contact had been so limited. In the first weeks after she had left he had called and left message after message on her mobile, but she had deleted them without listening. He had e-mailed her several times, but she had not responded, and in the end had changed her e-mail address and her mobile number. She had assured herself if he really wanted to contact her he would find some way of doing so. But after some months had gone by, and then a couple of years, and then another couple, she’d resigned herself to the fact he had well and truly moved on.

‘Claire?’

‘Um…yes,’ she said. ‘I’m renting a place in Glebe, not far from the salon.’

‘Do you own the salon outright?’

She frowned at him. ‘What, do you think I am made of money or something?’ she asked. ‘Of course I don’t own it outright. I work for a friend, Rebecca Collins.’

Antonio searched her features for a moment. ‘So if you do not own a share in the salon, and you rent where you live, what exactly did you do with the money my mother gave you?’ he asked.

Her shoulders went back and her blue-green eyes flashed flick knives of resentment at him. ‘So she told you about that, did she?’ she asked.

‘She reluctantly informed me of it a couple of weeks after you left,’ he said, keeping his expression deliberately shuttered.

‘I looked upon it as a severance payout,’ she said. ‘After all, you no longer required my services once you’d hooked back up with Daniela Garza.’

Antonio ignored that little jibe to ask, ‘Is that why you refused to accept money from me, even though I offered it repeatedly in my e-mails and phone calls?’

She gave him another castigating glare. ‘Do you really think I would have accepted money from you after what you did?’ she asked.

His lip curled in disdain. ‘And yet you demanded it from my mother.’

Shocked, she stared at him with wide eyes. ‘What did you say?’

He let a three beats of silence pass.

‘I think you heard what I said, Claire,’ he said. ‘You blackmailed my mother, forcing her to pay you a large sum of money to stop you going to the press about your marriage to me.’

She was looking at him as if he was speaking another language. But Antonio was well aware of how manipulative she could be, and still had his suspicions about her plans to take him for what she could get. Yet no one looking at her now would think her guilty of such a scheme. Her eyes were wide, feigning shocked innocence, her mouth trembling and her face pale.

‘You have not answered my question,’ he said.

Her back visibly stiffened, although her tone sounded calm and even. ‘What question is that?’

‘What did you do with the money?’

She let out her breath in a long hissing stream. ‘What do you think I did with it?’

He frowned at her darkly. ‘I would have given you money, damn it, Claire. But you always refused it.’

She turned her back on him. ‘It was less personal taking it from her,’ she said. ‘I didn’t want anything to do with you.’

‘So what did you do with it?’

She turned after a moment, her expression as cold as the night air outside. ‘I spent it on myself,’ she said, with that same razor-sharp glint in her eyes. ‘That’s what gold-diggers do, isn’t it, Antonio?’

He drew in a breath as he reined back his temper. She was deliberately goading him, as she had done so many times before. Yes, he had proof she had blackmailed his mother, even though she now staunchly denied it, but he understood how she would have seen it as some sort of payback for him not being there for her in the way she had wanted him to be.

He had come to a time in his life now where he wanted to put down roots. His father’s sudden death had no doubt got a lot to do with it—not to mention his mother’s deterioration since. And, since his brother Mario had no intention of settling down and producing a Marcolini heir, it was up to Antonio to make some important decisions about his own future. He could not move on until he had tied up the loose and frayed ends of the past. God knew he owed it to his beautiful little daughter, who hadn’t even had the chance to take her first breath.

Antonio swallowed against the avalanche of emotion he felt whenever he pictured that tiny, perfect, lifeless face. He had helped so many people during the long, arduous course of his surgical career. He had saved lives, he had changed lives, he had restored health and vitality to people who had stared death or disfigurement in the face—and yet he had not been there when his daughter and Claire had needed him most.

It tortured him to think he might have been able to do something. Claire had gone into labour far too early. He had ignored the signs when she had mentioned her concerns that morning. He had no excuse, not really. The truth was he had been distracted with the case scheduled first on his list that day. A young girl of only seventeen, who had just landed herself a lucrative modelling contract, had been involved in a horrific traffic accident some weeks earlier. Antonio hadn’t seen anyone quite so damaged before. He’d had to concentrate on preserving crucial facial nerves during surgery that would decide whether she would ever smile her beautiful smile at the camera again. He had perspired beneath his surgical scrubs; it had run like a river down his back as he’d worked with his dedicated team for twelve, nearly thirteen hours, to put her face back together the best they could—hoping, praying she would still be able to live the life she had mapped out for herself.

And he had done it. Bianca Abraggio was still modelling today—her face her fortune, her gorgeous smile intact, her life on track, while Antonio’s was still in limbo.

‘I do not recall referring to you at any time as a gold-digger,’ he said.

She lifted her chin, her eyes flashing at him like shards of blue-green glass. ‘You didn’t need to. Your family made it more than clear that’s what they thought I was.’

‘Look,’ he said, dragging a hand through his hair, ‘I admit they were not expecting me to produce a daughter-in-law for them quite so soon. I was in the middle of my final fellowship training and—’

She cut him off. ‘They never accepted me. They thought I wasn’t good enough for you. I was a foreigner. I couldn’t even speak their language. Not to mention I spoke with a broad Australian accent.’

‘That is not true,’ Antonio said. He had seen time and time again how both of his parents had tried their level best to get on with Claire, but she had been so fiercely independent they had eventually given up trying to include her. ‘Anyway, it was not up to them, it was up to me who I spent my time with. It is still up to me.’

‘What would you know of how it was for me?’ she asked. ‘I couldn’t bear going through it all again. It has taken me this long to move on.’

Antonio could feel his frustration building, and couldn’t quite disguise it in his tone. ‘Get used to it, Claire, because you and I are going to spend the next three months together—otherwise you will be personally responsible for sending your brother to jail where he belongs.’

She glared at him furiously. ‘I thought you had devoted your life to saving the lives of others?’ she said. ‘If you send my brother to prison you might as well be signing your name on his death certificate. He won’t last a day inside. He’ll get bullied or beaten up or something. I know he will.’

The look he gave her was merciless. ‘Then do not make me do it, Claire, for I will if I have to. It is in your hands. Do not forget that.’

She threw him a hateful glare as she snatched up her purse from where she had flung it earlier. Fighting to control her anger was like trying to rein in a bolting horse with nothing but piece of string. She had never thought it was possible to hate someone so intensely—especially someone she had loved so much before. Antonio was a ruthless stranger now, a man without mercy, a man who was prepared to go to unbelievable lengths to have her bend to his will.

‘When do you wish to start this ridiculous charade?’ she asked.

‘Have you had dinner?’ he asked.

‘Um…no, but I’m not hungry.’

‘There is a very fine restaurant within a block of here,’ he said. ‘I suggest we have dinner together, so as to ease back into our relationship.’

‘I don’t think I could eat a thing.’

‘It looks like you have not eaten a thing in days.’

She gave him a cutting look. ‘Is there anything else you would like to criticise me about while you’re at it?’ she asked.

Antonio’s eyes glittered determinedly as they held hers. ‘One thing I would like to make very clear from the outset,’ he said. ‘You can say what you like to me when we are alone, but while we are in the presence of other people I expect you to act with the dignity and decorum befitting your role as my wife.’

‘Yes, well, that’s all it’s going to be,’ she snipped back. ‘An act—and not a particularly attractive one.’

‘I will make sure there are certain compensations,’ he said. ‘A generous allowance, for one thing, which will mean you can cut back your hours at work—or quit altogether while I am here.’

She stood as stiff as a broom handle. ‘You can keep your stupid allowance, and I am not giving up my job for you,’ she said. ‘I want to maintain some element of independence.’

‘If that is what you want then I have no issue with it,’ he said. ‘I just thought you might be glad of a break from the long hours you work. You certainly look like you could do with one.’

Claire knew she had dark shadows under her eyes, and she was at least a couple of kilos lighter than she should be, but did he have to make her feel as if she had just crawled out from beneath a rock?

‘Would you like me to get a paper bag to place over my head before we are seen in public together?’ she asked. ‘No doubt I fall rather short of the glamorous standard of the legions of other women you have enjoyed over the last five years.’

He held her challenging look for a tense moment. ‘I was merely commenting on how stressed and tired you look, il mio amato,’ he said. ‘There is no need to feel as if everything I say to you is a veiled insult.’

Claire had to hastily swallow to keep her emotions in check. Her heart recognised the term of endearment and swelled in response. My beloved one. Of course he didn’t mean it. How could he? He had never said he loved her. He had not once revealed anything of how he felt about her apart from at the start of their affair, when his desire for her had been so hot and strong it had left her spinning in its wake.

But then he had left her grieving the loss of their baby to find solace in his previous lover’s arms. He had always denied it strenuously, and she might have believed his version of events if it hadn’t been for Antonio’s mother Rosina confirming her son’s clandestine relationship.

‘Do we have to do this tonight?’ she asked now, with a hint of petulance. ‘Why can’t we meet for dinner tomorrow, or even the day after?’

‘Because I have limited time available,’ he said. ‘I have a large operating list tomorrow, which could well go over time. And besides, I know what you will do if I give you a reprieve. You will more than likely disappear for the next three months so as to avoid further contact with me.’

Claire shifted her gaze so he wouldn’t see how close his assessment of her had been. She had been madly thinking of various escape routes, mentally tallying the meagre contents of her bank account to figure a way of covering her tracks until he left the country. But she could hardly leave Rebecca in the lurch—not after she had always been so supportive of her over the years.

‘I know how your mind works, Claire,’ he said into the silence. ‘You would rather walk over hot coals than spend an evening with me, would you not?’

Claire returned her gaze to his, surprised at the bitterness in his tone. What did he have to be bitter about? She hadn’t destroyed their marriage, he had—and irreparably. ‘You surely don’t expect me to be doing cartwheels of joy about you forcing your way back into my life, do you?’ she asked.

The line of his mouth tightened. ‘I can see why you have lost so much weight,’ he said. ‘It is no doubt due to that chip on your shoulder you are carrying around.’

Claire gripped her purse so tightly her fingers began to ache. ‘You don’t think I have a right to be upset?’ she asked. ‘I’m not an emotional cardboard cut-out like you, Antonio. I feel, and I feel deeply. Not a day goes past when I don’t think about her—about how old she would be now, what she would look like, the things she would be saying and doing. Do you even spare her a single thought?’

His eyes darkened, and the tension around his mouth increased, making a tiny nerve flicker beneath the skin of his rigid jaw. ‘I think of her,’ he said, his voice sounding as if it had been scraped across a serrated surface. ‘Of course I think about her.’

Claire bit the inside of her mouth until she tasted the metallic sourness of blood. She didn’t want to break down in front of him. She didn’t want him to see how truly vulnerable she still was around him. If he reached out to comfort her she would betray herself; she was sure of it. Her arms would snake around his neck; her body would press up against his in search of the warmth and strength only he could give. Her flesh would spring to life, every cell in her body recognising the magnetism of his, drawing her into his sensual orbit, luring her into lowering her guard until she had no defences left. The sooner she was out of this suite and in a public place the better, she decided firmly.

She drew in a scratchy breath and forced herself to meet his gaze. ‘I guess dinner would be OK,’ she said. ‘I missed lunch, and breakfast seems like a long time ago.’

He picked up the security card and slid it into his wallet. ‘I will not keep you up too late, Claire. I am still getting over my jet lag.’

Claire noticed then how tired he looked. His dark eyes were underscored with bruise-like shadows, and the grooves either side of his mouth looked deeper than usual. He still looked as heart-stoppingly gorgeous as ever—perhaps even more so. Maybe it was because she hadn’t seen him for so long. She had forgotten how compelling his chocolate-brown eyes were, how thick and sooty his long lashes, and how his beautifully sculpted mouth with its fuller bottom lip hinted at the passion and potency she had tasted there time and time again.

She had to wrench her gaze away from his mouth, where it had drifted of its own volition.

‘So…what’s this restaurant like?’ she asked as they made their way out of his penthouse. ‘What sort of cuisine do they offer?’

He reached past her to press the call button for the lift, and Claire felt her breath come to a stumbling halt in her chest. The near brush of his arm had triggered every nerve in her body, until she could almost sense how it would feel to have him touch her again. Her breasts ached for the press of his hands, the brush of his lips, the sweet hot suck of his mouth and the roll and glide and tortuous tease of his tongue. Was she so pleasure-starved as to be suddenly craving the touch of a man she hated? Her mind was playing tricks on her, surely? He had accused her of blackmail, and yet she couldn’t quite stop her heart from skipping a beat every time his gaze meshed with hers.

The lift arrived with an almost soundless swish of doors opening, and Claire stepped in, moving to the back, out of temptation’s way.

‘Come here, Claire,’ Antonio commanded.

Claire held her purse like a shield against her traitorous pelvis, where a pulse had begun beating. ‘Why?’ she asked. ‘There’s no one else in the lift.’

‘No, but as soon as we hit the ground floor there will be. So it is better to start as we mean to go on,’ he said.

She frowned at him as suspicion began to crawl beneath her skin. ‘How do you know there will be someone there?’ she asked.

He held her narrowed gaze with equanimity. ‘I took the liberty of releasing a press statement earlier today.’

Claire felt anger rise up within her like a cold, hard substance, stiffening every vertebra of her spine. ‘You were that sure I would agree to this farce?’ she asked.

His eyes glinted as they held hers. ‘I was sure you would not like to see your brother face the authorities. I was also sure you would do it for the money.’

The despair she felt at that moment almost consumed her. It was so hurtful to realise how badly he thought of her, how for all this time he’d believed her to be an avaricious opportunist, when all she had ever wanted from him was his love. How could he have got it so wrong about her? Hadn’t he seen how much she had adored him? Claire knew she had been a little goggle-eyed at his lifestyle to begin with, but as their relationship had progressed she’d thought she had demonstrated how little his fame and fortune meant to her. Was his heart so hard and impenetrable he was unable to recognise genuine love when he saw it?

‘Come here, Claire,’ he commanded again, holding out his hand for her.

Claire released her tightly held breath and pressed herself away from the back of the lift, where she had flattened her spine. She took his hand, struggling to hide the way his fingers curling around hers affected her. His hands—his so very clever, life-saving hands—felt strong and warm against hers. They had been one of the first things she had noticed about him all those years ago in Riccardo’s salon. Antonio had strong, capable hands—tanned, lightly sprinkled with hair, broad and yet long-fingered, his nails cut short and scrupulously clean from the hundreds of washes he subjected them to in order to operate.

She looked down at their entwined fingers and suppressed a tiny shiver. Those hands had explored every inch of her body. They had known her intimately; they had taught her everything she knew about sexual response. She could feel the warmth of him seeping through her skin, layer by layer, melting the ice of her resolve to keep herself distanced and unaffected by him.

The lift doors opened and a camera flashed in Claire’s face as she stepped out hand in hand with Antonio. She cringed, and shielded her eyes from the over-bright glare, but within seconds another journalist had rushed up and thrust a microphone towards her.

‘Mrs Marcolini,’ the young woman said, struggling to keep up with Antonio’s determined stride as he pulled Claire towards the front of the hotel. ‘Is it true you are returning to your husband after a five-year estrangement?’

Antonio gently but firmly moved the microphone away from Claire’s face. ‘Do you mind giving my wife some space?’ he asked.

The journalist took this as encouragement, and directed her line of questioning at him instead. ‘Mr Marcolini, you are reputed to be here in Sydney for a limited time. Does that mean your new relationship with your wife will be on a set time-frame as well? Or do you intend to take her back to Italy with you once your lecture and surgical tour here in Sydney is completed?’

Claire looked up at Antonio, her breath catching in her throat, but he was as cool and collected as usual, the urbane smile in place, his inscrutable gaze giving no clue to what was ticking over in his mind.

‘That is between my wife and I,’ he answered. ‘We have only just sorted out our differences. Please give us some space and privacy in which to work on our reconciliation.’

‘Mr Marcolini.’ The young female journalist was clearly undaunted by his somewhat terse response. ‘You and your wife suffered the tragedy of a stillbirth five years ago. Do you have any advice to parents who have suffered the same?’

Claire felt the sudden tension in Antonio’s fingers where they were wrapped around hers. She looked up at him again, her heart in her throat and the pain in the middle of her chest so severe she could scarcely draw in a much needed breath.

‘The loss of a child at any age is a travesty of nature,’ he answered. ‘Each person must deal with it in their own way and in their own time. There is no blueprint for grief.’

‘And you, Mrs Marcolini?’ The journalist aimed her microphone back at Claire. ‘What advice would you give to grieving parents, having been through it personally?’

Claire stammered her response, conscious there were women out there just like her, who had been torn apart by the loss of a baby and would no doubt be hanging on every word she said. ‘Um…just to keep hoping that one day enough research will be done to make sure stillbirths are a thing of the past. And to remember it’s not the mother’s fault. Things go wrong, even at the last minute. You mustn’t blame yourself…that is the important thing. You mustn’t blame yourself…’

Antonio, keeping Claire close, elbowed his way through the knot of people and cameras. ‘Just keep walking, cara,’ he said. ‘This will die down in a day or two.’

‘I can’t see why our situation warrants the attention it’s just received. Who gives a toss whether we resume our marriage or not? It’s hardly headline material.’

Antonio kept her hand tucked in close to his side as he led the way down the sidewalk to the restaurant he had booked earlier. ‘Maybe not here in Australia,’ he said. ‘However, there are newshounds who relay gossip back to Italy from all over the world. They like to document whatever Mario and I do—especially now we are at the helm of the Marcolini empire.’

‘So what is Mario up to these days?’ Claire asked, not really out of interest but more out of a desire to steer the conversation away from their unusual situation. ‘Still flirting with any woman with a pulse?’

Antonio’s smile this time was crooked with affection for his sibling. ‘You know my brother Mario. He likes to work hard and to play even harder. I believe there is lately someone he is interested in—an Australian girl, apparently, someone he met last time he was here—but so far she has resisted his charm.’

‘Yes, well, maybe he could try a little ruthlessness or blackmail,’ she said. ‘Both seem to run rather freely in the Marcolini family veins.’

He turned to face her, holding her by the upper arms so she couldn’t move away. ‘I gave you a choice, Claire,’ he said, pinning her gaze with his. ‘Your freedom or your brother’s. You see it as blackmail, I see it as a chance to sort out what went wrong between us.’

She wrenched herself out of his hold, dusting off her arms as if he had tainted her with his touch. ‘I can tell you what went wrong with us, Antonio,’ she said. ‘All I ever was to you was a temporary diversion—someone to warm your bed occasionally. You had no emotional investment in our relationship until there was the prospect of an heir. The baby was a bonus, and once she was out of the equation, so was I.’

Antonio clenched and unclenched his fingers where hers had so recently been. He could still feel the tingling sensation running up under his skin. ‘I fulfilled my responsibilities towards you as best I could, but it was never enough for you. So many men in my place would not have done so. Have you ever thought of that? I stood by you and supported you, but you wanted me to be something I am not nor ever could be.’

She sank her teeth into her lip when it began to tremble. Moisture was starting to shine in the blue-green pools of her eyes, making him feel like an unfeeling brute for raising his voice at her. How on earth did she do it to him? One wounded look from her, just one slight wobble of her chin, and he felt the gut-wrenching blows of guilt assail him all over again.

He let out a weighty sigh and captured her hand again, bringing it up to his mouth, pressing his lips warmly against her cold, thin fingers. ‘I am sorry, cara,’ he said gently. ‘I do not want to fight with you. We are supposed to be mending bridges, si?’

She looked at him for a stretching moment, her eyes still glistening with unshed tears. ‘Some bridges can never be mended, Antonio,’ she said, pulling her hand out of his.

Antonio held the restaurant door open for her. Let’s just see about that. he thought with grim determination, and followed her inside.