The Marcolini Blackmail Marriage. Melanie Milburne

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