Caroline Anderson - Marrying the Italian - The Marcolini Blackmail Marriage / The Valtieri Marriage Deal / The Italian Doctor's Bride

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.’