The Royals Collection. Rebecca Winters

She liked the fact that Marco was consulting her rather than telling her what he thought they should drink, and she knew perfectly well why he had suggested the Valtellina.

       ‘Leonardo drank Valtellina. If it was good enough for him then it’s good enough for me,’ she told him.

       Marco had suspected that would be her response, which was in part why he had suggested the Valtellina in the first place.

       Was that actually a small smile she could see on Marco’s face, as though he was enjoying a private joke? Lily wondered. He had a good smile, warm and masculine, revealing a tantalising hint of a manly cleft in his jaw and strong white teeth. Her heart missed a beat of female appreciation of his maleness, followed by a dull, hollow feeling inside her chest. Because his smile was not for her?

       She was glad of the arrival of their wine to distract her from the possible meaning behind her emotional reaction to him.

      ‘So that’s the itinerary. We’ll start off tomorrow morning with a visit to Villa Balbiannello. I’ve arranged a private tour for you. Most of the villas we’ll be visiting are not fully open to the public, as you know.’

       Lily nodded her head. Marco was discussing the arrangements for the morning with her over coffee after their meal, and now he added, ‘Since we’ve got an early start in the morning, and I’ve got some work to do, I’d like to call it a night—unless you want more coffee.’

       Was that a stab of disappointment she felt? Of course not. Lily forced herself to shake her head and tell him firmly, ‘I won’t sleep if I have any more coffee.’

       She ought to be tired, not strung so tightly with nervous energy. It had been a long and far from easy day, to put it mildly. The truth was that she felt as though she’d been travelling on an alien emotional rollercoaster from the first moment she had set eyes on Marco.

       They had dined relatively early, the restaurant was still full and busy as they left. As they drew level with one table the stunning-looking brunette seated there with several other people, called out to Marco in a very pleased voice. ‘Marco, ciao.’

       Lily wasn’t surprised to see him stop as the woman stood up to reveal a perfect hourglass figure in a cream designer dress that showed off her figure to perfection. Politely she left them to it after murmuring a brief ‘goodnight’, sensing that the other woman’s delight at seeing Marco did not extend to her. She removed from her evening bag the plastic keycard to her suite, ready to make her way there.

       In the ante-room to the restaurant a large group of people were heading towards the restaurant—fashion people from Milan’s fashion week, Lily guessed expertly, easily recognising the mix of expensively suited older men, bone-thin young models, and a handful of very smart women who looked like magazine editors. She had never been comfortable around such people, reminding her as they did of her past. Her stomach was churning anxiously already, her face starting to heat up with nervous dread.

       Desperate to get past them as quickly as she could, she started to skirt the group—only to be brought to shocked halt when one of the men stepped out in front of her, blocking her way. Anger, disgust and most shamingly of all stomach-gripping fear washed over her in a nauseating spine-chilling surge. He put his hand on her arm as he smiled his cruel crocodile smile at her, the familiar sour smell of his breath closing her throat against the retching movement of loathing tightening it. Anton Gillman. A man she had every reason to loathe and fear. She wanted to turn and run but she couldn’t.

       ‘Lily, what a delicious surprise—and looking so grown up as well. It’s been so long. It must be—what? —twelve years?’

       It was surely deliberate that he was talking to her in that adult-to-child manner she remembered so well. Because he knew what hearing it would do to her.

       The temptation to correct him and tell him that it was thirteen years was dangerously strong. She must not let him know that she even remembered, never mind knew to the exact year how long it had been.

       Someone bumped into her, jolting her uncomfortably. Her keycard slipped from her hand. Immediately, before she could bend down to retrieve it, Anton released her and did so for her, carefully studying the number of the suite printed on the card before taunting her softly as he held it out to her. ‘If that’s an invitation…’

       Horror crawled along her veins.

       Almost snatching the keycard from him, she said, half choking on her loathing, ‘No, it isn’t. You know I would never…’ She stopped speaking, not trusting herself to say any more.

       The people he was with had moved on into the restaurant. She felt hot and cold, as though she was in the grip of a fever.

       But instead of annoying him her rejection seemed only to amuse him, because he laughed and shook his head, shook that mane of dark coiffured hair that curled down his neck just as she remembered it

       ‘Ah, you should never say never, my dear Lily. After all, there is a great deal of unfinished business between you and I, and it would give me a great deal of satisfaction to bring it to its proper end—especially in such an undeniably sensual setting.’

       Even though she knew he would be able to see and feel the shudder that ripped through her, she couldn’t control it. She was fourteen again, and he a grown man, stalking her with one thing on his mind.

       ‘I’m twenty-seven now,’ she forced herself to point out to him. The past fought inside her with the present, the child she had been with the woman she now was. ‘Far too old to appeal to a man of your tastes.’

       He was watching her with amusement, and an open sexual greed that had her only increased her panic. ‘Ah, but you do appeal to me, Lily. You always have. They say there is an extra allure to a lost opportunity. Are you here alone?’

       Lily hesitated before saying quickly, ‘No.’

       She had waited too long before answering him, Lily knew, and his laughter chilled her with horror. It told her that he knew how she felt.

       ‘You’re lying to me,’ he told her mock disappointedly, confirming her fear. ‘How delightfully erotic that you still fear me. That will add a divine extra pleasure to my possession of you. And I shall possess you, Lily, because it is what you owe me. How pleasing that you should come back into my life so fortuitously. You are staying in suite number sixteen, I see.’

      From the restaurant Marco watched Lily with increasing contempt. It was plain to him that she and the man knew one another very well indeed, from the way in which they were standing so intimately close to one another. The man was mature, at least twenty years older than Lily, and well dressed in a flashy kind of way.

       ‘Marco,’ Izzie Febretti complained at his elbow, ‘you are not listening to me.’

       ‘You have a husband who I am sure will be delighted to listen to you, Izzie,’ Marco pointed out, adding, ‘Please excuse me,’ and then walking away from the table. A long time ago he and Izzie had been lovers. Just like Lily and the man with her? Why did that thought stab at him with such vicious fury?

      ‘Anton,’ called one of the other men from the restaurant, leaving Lily free to make her escape on trembling legs. But there could be no real relief for her now that she knew not only that he was here in the same hotel but also, thanks to her own folly, he knew the number of her suite. He had enjoyed threatening and frightening her tonight, she recognised, just as she remembered him enjoying threatening and frightening the young girls he had pursued and destroyed.

       ‘An old friend?’

       The sound of Marco’s curt voice broke the dark spell of fear at seeing Anton Gillman and she spun her round to look at him.

       Unable to reply, she swallowed hard and then told him unsteadily, ‘If you’ll excuse me, I’m…I’m rather tired…so I’ll say goodnight.’

       Without waiting for Marco to respond Lily hurried towards the lift. She was desperate to escape from the surroundings that Anton Gillman had contaminated with his presence.