International bestseller

Sandra

MARTON

presents

The ORSINI BRIDES

Two Sicilian sisters, two powerful princes—two passionate, tempestuous marriages!

THE ICE PRINCE

THE REAL RIO D'AQUILA

SANDRA MARTON wrote her first novel while she was still in primary school. Her doting parents told her she'd be a writer some day and Sandra believed them. In secondary school and college she wrote dark poetry nobody but her boyfriend understood—though, looking back, she suspects he was just being kind. As a wife and mother she wrote murky short stories in what little spare time she could manage, but not even her boyfriend-turned-husband could pretend to understand those. Sandra tried her hand at other things, among them teaching and serving on the Board of Education in her home town, but the dream of becoming a writer was always in her heart.

At last Sandra realised she wanted to write books about what all women hope to find: love with that one special man, love that's rich with fire and passion, love that lasts forever. She wrote a novel, her very first, and sold it to Mills & Boon. Since then, she's written more than seventy books, all of them featuring sexy, gorgeous, larger-than-life heroes. A four-time RITA® Award finalist, she has also received eight RT Book Reviews awards and has been honoured with an RT Book Reviews Career Achievement Award for Series Romance.

Sandra lives with her very own sexy, gorgeous, larger-than-life hero in a sun-filled house on a quiet country lane in the northeastern United States.

Sandra loves to hear from her readers. You can contact her through her website, www.sandramarton.com, or at PO Box 295, Storrs, CT 06268, USA.

The Orsini Brides

The Ice Prince

The Real Rio D’Aquila

Sandra Marton

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Table of Contents

Cover

About the Author

Title Page

The Ice Prince

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

The Real Rio D’Aquila

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

EPILOGUE

Copyright

The Ice Prince

Sandra Marton

CHAPTER ONE

THE first time he noticed her was in the Air Italy VIP lounge.

Noticed? Later, that would strike him as a bad joke. How could he not have noticed her?

The fact was, she burst into his life with all the subtlety of a lit string of firecrackers. The only difference? Firecrackers would have been less dangerous.

Draco was sitting in a leather chair near the windows, doing his best imitation of a man reading through a file on his laptop when the truth was he was too sleep-deprived, too jet-lagged, too wound up to do more than try to focus his eyes on the screen.

As if all that weren’t enough, he had one hell of a headache.

Six hours from Maui to Los Angeles. A two-hour layover there, followed by six hours more to New York and now another two-hour layover that was stretching toward three.

He couldn’t imagine anyone who would be happy at such an endless trip, but for a man accustomed to flying in his own luxurious 737, the journey was rapidly becoming intolerable.

Circumstances had given him no choice.

His plane was down for scheduled maintenance, and with the short notice he’d had of the urgent need to return to Rome, there’d been no time to make other arrangements.

Not even Draco Valenti—Prince Draco Marcellus Valenti, because he was certain his ever-efficient PA had resorted to the use of his full, if foolish, title in her attempts to make more suitable arrangements—could come up with a rented aircraft fit for intercontinental flight at the last minute.

He had flown coach from Maui to L.A., packed in a center seat between a man who oozed over the armrest that barely separated them and an obscenely cheerful middle-aged woman who had talked nonstop as they flew over the Pacific. Draco had gone from polite mmms and uh-huhs to silence, but that had not stopped her from telling him her life story.

He had done better on the cross-country flight to Kennedy Airport, managing to snag a suddenly available first-class seat, but again the person next to him had wanted to talk, and not even Draco’s stony silence had shut him up.

For this last leg of his journey, the almost four thousand miles that would finally take him home, he had at the last minute gone to the gate and, miracle of miracles, snagged two first-class seats—one for himself, the other to ensure he would make the trip alone.

Then he’d headed here, to the lounge, comforted by the hope that he might be able to nap, to calm down, if nothing else, before the confrontation that lay ahead.

It would not be easy, but nothing would be gained by losing control. If life had taught him one great lesson, that was it. And just as he was silently repeating that mantra, trying to focus on ways to contain the anger inside him, the door to the all but empty first-class lounge swung open so hard it banged against the wall.

Cristo!

Just what he needed, he thought grimly as the pain in his temple jumped a notch.

Glowering, he looked up.

And saw the woman.

He disliked her on sight.

At first glance, she was attractive. Tall. Slender. Blond hair. But there was more to see and judge than that.

She wore a dark gray suit, Armani or some similar label. Her hair was pulled back in a low, no-nonsense ponytail. A carry-on the size of a small trunk dangled from one shoulder, a bulging briefcase from the other.

And then there were the shoes.

Black pumps. Practical enough—except for the spiked, sky-high heels.

Draco’s eyes narrowed.

He’d seen the combination endless times before. The severe hairstyle. The businesslike suit. And then the stilettos. It was a look favored by women who wanted all the benefits of being female while demanding they be treated like men.

Typical. And if that was a sexist opinion, so be it.

He watched as her gaze swept across the lounge. There were only three people in it at this late hour. An elderly couple, seated on a small sofa, their heads drooping, and him. Her eyes moved over the sleeping couple. Found him.

And held.

An unreadable expression crossed her face. It was, he had to admit, a good face. Wide set eyes. High cheekbones. A full mouth and a determined chin. He waited; he had the feeling she was about to say something … and then she looked away and he thought, Bene.

He was not in the mood for making small talk; he was not in the mood for being hit on by a woman. He was not in the mood for any damned thing except being left alone, returning to Rome and dealing with the potential mess that threatened him there, and he turned his attention back to his computer as her heels tap-tapped across the marble floor to the momentarily deserted reception desk.

“Hello?” Impatience colored her voice. “Hello?” she said again. “Is anyone here?”

Draco lifted his head. Wonderful. She was not just impatient but irritable, and she was peering over the desk as if she hoped to find someone crouched behind it.

“Damn,” she said, and Draco’s lips thinned with distaste.

Impatient. Irritable. And American. The bearing, the voice, the me-über-alles attitude—she might as well have had her passport plastered to her forehead. He dealt with Americans all the time—his main offices were in San Francisco—and while he admired the forthrightness of the men, he disliked the lack of femininity in some of the women.

They tended to be good-looking, all right, but he liked his women warm. Soft. Completely female. Like his current mistress.

“Draco,” she’d breathed last night after he’d joined her in the shower of the beachfront mansion he’d rented on Maui, lifted her into his arms and taken her while the water beat down on them both. “Oh, Draco, I just adore a man who takes charge.”

No one would ever take charge of the woman at the reception desk, now tapping one stiletto-clad foot with annoyance, but then, what man would be fool enough to want to try?

As if she’d read his thoughts, she swung around and stared around the room again.

Stared at him.

It lasted only a couple of seconds, not as long as when they’d made eye contact before, but the look she gave him was intense.

So intense that, despite himself, he felt a stir of interest.

“So sorry to have kept you waiting,” a breathless voice said. It was the lounge hostess, hurrying toward the reception desk. “How may I help you, miss?”

The American turned toward the clerk. “I have a serious problem,” Draco heard her say, and then she lowered her voice, leaned toward the other woman and began what was clearly a rushed speech.

Draco let out a breath and dropped his eyes to his computer screen. That he should, even for a heartbeat, have responded to the woman only proved how jet-lagged he was.

And he had to be in full gear by the time he reached Rome and the situation that awaited him.

He was accustomed to dealing with difficult situations. In fact, he enjoyed resolving them.

But this one threatened to turn into a public mess, and he did not countenance public anythings, much to the media’s chagrin. He did not like publicity and never sought it.

He had built a financial empire from the ruins of the one his father and grandfather and countless great-great-grandfathers had systematically plundered and ultimately almost destroyed over the course of five centuries.

And he had done it alone.

No stockholders. No outsiders. Not just in his financial existence. In his world. His very private world.

Life’s great lesson numero due.

Trusting others was for fools.

That was why he’d left Maui after a middle-of-the-night call from his PA had dragged him out of a warm bed made even warmer by the lush, naked body of his mistress.

Draco had listened. And listened. Then he’d cursed, risen from the bed and paced out the bedroom door, onto the moon-kissed sand.

“Fax me the letter,” he’d snapped. “And everything we have in that damned file.”

His PA had obliged. Dressed in shorts and a T-shirt, Draco had read through it all until the pink light of dawn glittered on the sea.

By then he’d known what he had to do. Give up the cooling trade winds of Hawaii for the oppressive summer heat of Rome, and a confrontation with the representative of a man and a way of life he despised.

The worst of it was that he’d thought he’d finished with this weeks ago. That initial ridiculous letter from someone named Cesare Orsini. Another letter, when he ignored the first, followed by a third, at which point he’d marched into the office of one of his assistants.

“I want everything you can find on an American named Cesare Orsini,” he’d ordered.

The information had come quickly.

Cesare Orsini had been born in Sicily. He had immigrated to America more than half a century ago with his wife; he had become an American citizen.

And he had repaid the generosity of his adopted homeland by becoming a hoodlum, a mobster, a gangster with nothing to recommend him except money, muscle and now a determination to acquire something that had, for centuries, belonged to the House of Valenti and now to him, Prince Draco Marcellus Valenti, of Sicily and Rome.

That ridiculous title.

Draco didn’t often use it or even think it. He found it officious, even foolish in today’s world. But, just as his PA would have resorted to using it in her search for a way to get him from Hawaii to Italy, he had deliberately used it in his reply to the American don, couching his letter in cool, formal tones but absolutely permitting the truth—Do you know who you’re dealing with? Get the hell off my back, old man—to shine through.

So much for that, Draco had thought.

Wrong.

The don had just countered with a threat.

Not a physical one. Too bad. Draco, whose early years had not been spent in royal privilege, would have welcomed dealing with that.

Orsini’s threat had been more cunning.

I am sending my representative to meet with you, Your Highness, he had written. Should you and my lawyer fail to reach a compromise, I see no recourse other than to have our dispute adjudicated in a court of law.

A lawsuit? A public airing of a nonsensical claim?

In theory, it could not even happen. Orsini had no true claims to make. But in the ancient land that was la Sicilia, old grudges never ended.

And the media would turn it into an international circus—

“Excuse me.”

Draco blinked. Looked up. The American and the lounge hostess were standing next to his chair. The American had a determined glint in her eyes. The hostess had a look in hers that could only be described as desperate.

“Sir,” she said, “sir, I’m really sorry but the lady—”

“You have something I need,” the American said.

Her voice was rushed. Husky. Draco raised one dark eyebrow.

“Do I, indeed?”

A wave of pink swept into her face. And well it might. The intonation in his words had been deliberate. He wasn’t sure why he’d put that little twist on them, perhaps because he was tired and bored and the blonde with the in-your-face attitude was, to use a perfectly definitive American phrase, clearly being a total pain in the ass.

“Yes. You have two seats on flight 630 to Rome. Two first-class seats.”

Draco’s eyes narrowed. He closed his computer and rose slowly to his feet. The woman was tall, especially in those ridiculous heels, but at six foot three, he was taller still. It pleased him that she had to tilt her head to look at him.

“And?”

“And,” she said, “I absolutely must have one of them!”

Draco let the seconds tick by. Then he looked at the hostess.

“Is it the airline’s habit,” he said coldly, “to discuss its passengers’ flying arrangements with anyone who inquires?”

The girl flushed.

“No, sir. Certainly not. I don’t—I don’t even know how the lady found out that you—”

“I was checking in,” the woman said. “I asked for an upgrade. The clerk said there were none, and one word led to another and then she pointed to you—you were walking away by then—and she said, ‘That gentlemen just got the last two first-class seats.’ I couldn’t see anybody with you and the clerk said no, you were flying alone, so I followed you here but I figured I should confirm that you were the man she’d meant before I—”

Draco raised his hand and stopped the hurried words.

“Let me be sure I understand this,” he said evenly. “You badgered the ticket agent.”

“I did not badger her. I merely asked—”

“You badgered the hostess here, in the lounge.”

The woman’s eyes snapped with irritation.

“I did not badger anyone! I just made it clear that I need one of those seats.”

“You mean you made it clear that you want one.”

“Want, need, what does it matter? You have two seats. You can’t sit in both.”

She was so sure of herself, felt so entitled to whatever she wanted. Had she never learned that in this life no one was entitled to anything?

“And you need the seat because …?” he said, almost pleasantly.

“Only first class seats have computer access.”

“Ah.” Another little smile. “And you have a computer with you.”

Her eyes flashed. He could almost see her lip curl.

“Obviously.”

He nodded. “And, what? You are addicted to Solitaire?”

“Addicted to …?”

“Solitaire,” he said calmly. “You know. The card game.”

She looked at him as if he were stupid or worse; it made him want to laugh. A good thing, considering that he had not felt like laughing since that damned middle-of-the-night phone call.

“No,” she said coldly. “I am not addicted to Solitaire.”

“To Hearts, then?”

The hostess, wise soul, took a step back. The woman took a step forward. She was only inches away from him now, close enough that he could see that her eyes were a deep shade of blue.

“I am,” she said haughtily, “on a business trip. A last-minute business trip. First class was sold out. And I have an important meeting to attend.”

This time it was her intonation that was interesting.

He had not bothered shaving; he had taken time only to shower and dress in faded jeans and a pale blue shirt with the sleeves rolled to his elbows, the top button undone. He wore an old, eminently comfortable pair of mocs and, on his wrist, the first thing he’d bought himself after he’d made his first million euros—a Patek Phillipe watch for no better reason than the first own he’d owned he had stolen and, in a fit of teenage guilt, had a day later tossed into the Tiber.

In other words he was casually but expensively dressed. A woman wearing an Armani suit would know that. He’d reserved two costly seats, not one. Add everything together and she would peg him as a man with lots of money, lots of time on his hands and no real purpose in life, while she was a captain of industry, or whatever was the female equivalent.

“Do you see why the seat is so important to me?”

Draco nodded. “Fully,” he said with a tight smile. “It’s important to you because you want it.”

The woman rolled her eyes. “My God, what’s the difference? The seat is empty.”

“It isn’t empty.”

“Damnit, will someone be sitting in it or not?”

“Or not,” he said, and waited.

She hesitated. It was the first time she had done so since she’d approached him. It made her seem suddenly vulnerable, more like a woman than an automaton.

Draco felt himself hesitate, too.

He had booked two seats for privacy. No one to disturb his thoughts as he worked through how to handle what lay ahead. No one with whom he’d have to go through the usual Hello, how are you, don’t you hate night flights like this one?

He was not in the mood for any of it; if truth be told, he was rarely in the mood for sharing his space with others.

Still, he could manage.

He didn’t like the woman, but so what? She had a problem. He had the solution. He could say, Va bene, signorina. You may have the seat beside mine.

“You know,” she said, her voice low and filled with rage, “there’s something really disgusting about a man who thinks he’s better than everyone else.”

The hostess, by now standing almost a foot away, made a sound that was close to a moan.

Draco felt every muscle in his body tighten. If only you were a man, he thought, and for one quick moment imagined the pleasure of a punch straight to that uptilted chin ….

But she wasn’t a man, and so he did the only thing he could, which was to get the hell out of there before he did something he would regret.

Carefully he bent to the table where his laptop lay, turned it off, put it in its case, zipped the case closed, slung the strap over his shoulder. Then he took a step forward; the woman took a step back. Her face had gone pale.

She was afraid of him now. She’d realized she had gone too far.

Good, he thought grimly, even though part of him knew this was overkill.

“You could have approached me quietly,” he said in a tone of voice that had brought business opponents to their knees. “You could have said, ‘I have a problem and I would be grateful for your help.’”

The color in her face came back, sweeping over her high cheekbones like crimson flags.

“That’s exactly what I did.”

“No. You did not. You told me what you wanted. Then you told me what I was going to do about it.” His mouth thinned. “Unfortunately for you, signorina, that was the wrong approach. I don’t give a damn what you want, and you will not sit in that seat.”

Her mouth dropped open.

Hell. Why wouldn’t it? Had he really just said something so foolish and petty? Had she reduced him to that?

Get moving, Valenti, he told himself, and he would have …

But she laughed. Laughed! Her fear had given way to laughter.

His face burned with humiliation.

There was only one way to retaliate and he took it.

He closed the last inch of space between them. She must have seen something bright and icy-hot glowing in his eyes, because she stopped laughing and took another quick step back.

Too late.

Draco reached out. Ran the tip of one finger over her lips.

“Perhaps,” he said softly, “perhaps if you had offered me something interesting in trade …”

He put his arms around her, lifted her into the leanly muscled length of his body and took her mouth as if it were his to take, as if he were a Roman prince in a century when Rome ruled the world.

He heard the woman’s muffled cry. Heard the hostess gasp.

Then he heard nothing but the thunder of his blood as it coursed through his veins, tasted nothing but her mouth, her mouth, her sweet, hot mouth …

She hit him. Hard. A surprisingly solid blow to the ribs. The sting of her small fist was worth the rage he saw in her eyes when he lifted his head.

“Have a pleasant flight, signorina,” he said, and he brushed past her, leaving Anna Orsini standing right where he’d left her, staring at the lounge door as it swung shut behind him while she wished to hell she’d had the brains to slug the sexist bastard not in the side but right where he lived.

Where all men lived, she thought grimly as she snatched up her carry-on and briefcase that had somehow ended up on the floor.

In the balls.

CHAPTER TWO

ANNA stalked through the crowded terminal, so furious she could hardly see straight.

That insufferable pig! That supermacho idiot!

Punching him hadn’t been enough.

She should have called the cops. Had him arrested. Charged him with—with sexual assault ….

Okay.

A kiss was not sexual assault. It was a kiss. Unwanted, which could maybe make it a misdemeanor …

Not that anyone would call what had landed on her lips just a kiss.

That firm, warm mouth. That hard, long body. That arm, taut with muscle, wrapped around her as if she were something to be claimed …

Or branded.

A little shudder of rage went through her. It was rage, wasn’t it?

Damned right it was.

Absolutely, she should have done something more than slug him.

Where was the gate? Her shoulders ached from the weight of her carry-on and briefcase. Her feet hurt from the stilettos. Why in hell hadn’t she had the sense to change to flats? She’d worn the stilettos to court. Deliberately. It had become her uniform. The tailored suit coupled with the spike heels. It was a look she’d learned worked against some of the high and mighty prosecutors who obviously thought a female defense counsel, especially one named Orsini, would be easy to read.

Nothing about her was easy to read, thank you very much, and Anna wanted to keep it that way.

But the shoes were wrong for hurrying through an airport. Where on earth was that gate?

Back in the other direction, was where.

Anna groaned, turned and ran.

By the time she reached the right gate, the plane was already boarding. She fell in at the end of the line of passengers shuffling slowly forward. Her hair had come mostly out of the tortoiseshell clip that held it; wild strands hung in her face and clung to her sweat-dampened skin.

Anna shifted her carry-on, dug into its front pocket, took out her boarding pass. Her seat was far back in the plane and, according to the annoyingly perky voice coming over the loudspeaker, that section had already boarded.

Perfect.

She was late enough so that the most convenient overhead bins would surely be full by the time she reached them.

Thank you, Mr. Macho.

The line, and Anna, moved forward at the speed of cold molasses dripping from a spoon.

He, of course, would have no such problem. First-class passengers had lots of overhead storage room. By now he probably had a glass of wine in his hand, brought by an attentive flight attendant who’d do everything but drool over her good-looking passenger, because there were lots of women who’d drool over a man who looked like that.

Tall. Dark. Thickly lashed dark eyes. A strong jaw. A face, a body that might have belonged to a Roman emperor.

And the attitude to go with it.

That was why he would have access to a computer outlet, and she would not ….

Anna took a breath. No. Absolutely not. She was not going there!

Concentrate, she told herself. Try to remember what it said on those yellowed, zillion-year-old documents her father had given her.

Hey, it wasn’t as if she hadn’t read them ….

Okay. She hadn’t read them. Not exactly. She’d looked through them prior to scanning them into her computer, but the oldest ones were mostly handwritten. In Italian. And her Italian was pretty much confined to ciao, va bene and a handful of words she’d learned as a kid that wouldn’t get you very far in polite company.

The endless queue drew nearer to the gate.

If only she’d had more time, not just to read those notes but to arrange for this flight. She’d have flown first class instead of coach, let her father pay for her ticket because Cesare was the only reason she was on this fool’s errand.

Cesare could afford whatever ridiculous amount of money first class cost.

She certainly couldn’t. You didn’t fly in comfort on what you earned representing mostly indigent clients.

And comfort was what first class was all about. She’d flown that way once, after she’d passed her bar exams and her brothers had given her a two-week trip to Paris as a gift.

“You’re all crazy,” she’d said, blubbering happily as she bestowed tears and kisses on Rafe and Dante, Falco and Nicolo.

Plus, she’d flown on the private jet her brothers owned. Man, talk about flying in comfort …

“Boarding pass, please.”

Anna handed hers over.

“Thank you,” the gate attendant said. In, naturally, a perky voice.

Anna glowered.

Seven hours jammed into an aluminum can like an anchovy was not something to be perky about.

Not that she disliked flying coach. It was what real people did, and she had spent her life, all twenty-six years of it, being as real as possible.

Which wasn’t easy, when your old man was a la famiglia don.

It was just that coach had its drawbacks, she thought as she trudged down the ramp toward the plane. No computer outlets, sure, but other things, too.

Like that flight to D.C. when the guy next to her must have bathed in garlic. Or the one to Chicago, when she’d been sandwiched between a mom with a screaming infant on one side and a dad with a screaming two-year-old on the other.

“You guys want to sit next to each other?” Anna had chirruped helpfully.

No. They didn’t. They weren’t together, it turned out, and why would any sane human being want to double the pleasure of screaming kids trying their best to drive everyone within earshot to infanticide?

One of the flight attendants had taken pity on her and switched her to a vacant seat. To the only vacant seat.

Unfortunately, it was right near the lavatories.

By the time the plane touched down, Anna had smelled like whatever it was they piped into those coffin-sized closets.

Or maybe worse.

In essence, flying coach was like life. It wasn’t always pretty, but you did what you had to do.

And what she had to do right now, Anna told herself briskly, was find a way to review her notes in whatever time her cranky old laptop would give her.

At last. The door to the plane was just ahead. She stepped through and somehow managed not to snarl when a flight attendant greeted her with a smiling “Buona notte.”

It wasn’t the girl’s fault she looked as if she’d just stepped out of a magazine ad. Anna, on the other hand, knew she looked as if she had not slept or fixed her hair or her makeup in days.

Come to think of it, she hadn’t.

Her father had dumped his problem on her twenty-four hours ago and she had not slowed her pace since then. A long-scheduled speech to a class of would-be lawyers at Columbia University, her alma mater. Two endless meetings. A court appearance, a desperate juggling of her schedule followed by a taxi ride to the airport through rush-hour Manhattan traffic, only to learn that her flight was delayed and that no, she could not upgrade her seat even though she’d realized during the taxi ride that she had to do so if she wasn’t going to walk into the meeting in Rome without a useful idea in her head.

And on top of everything, that—that inane confrontation with that man …

There he was.

The plane was an older one, which meant the peasants had to shuffle through first and business class to get to coach. It gave her the wonderful opportunity to see him in seat 5A—all, what, six foot two, six foot three of him sitting in 5A, arms folded, long legs outstretched, with 5B conspicuously, infuriatingly empty.

Her jaw knotted.

She wanted to say something to him. Something that would show him what she thought of him, of men like him who thought they owned the world, thought women were meant to fall at their feet along with everybody else, but she’d already tried that and look where it had gotten her.

And, almost as if he’d heard her thoughts, he turned his head and looked right at her.

His eyes darkened. The thick lashes fell. Rose. His eyes got even darker. Darker, and focused on her face.

On her mouth.

His lips curved in a slow, knowing smile. Remember me? that smile said. Remember that kiss?

Anna felt her cheeks turn hot.

His smile tilted, became an arrogant, blatantly male grin.

She wanted to wipe it from his face.

But she wouldn’t.

She wouldn’t.

She wouldn’t, she told herself, and she tore her gaze from his and marched past him, through first class, through business class, into the confines of coach where the queue ground to a halt as people ahead searched for space in the crowded overhead bins and stepped on toes as they shoehorned themselves into their designated seats.

“Excuse me,” Anna said, “sorry, coming through, if I could just get past you, sir …”

At last she found her row and found, too, with no great surprise, that there was no room in the overhead bin for her carry-on. Which was worse? That she had to go four more seats to the rear before she found a place where she could jam it into a bin, or that she had to fight her way back like a salmon swimming upstream?

Or that the guy in the window seat bore a scary resemblance to Hannibal the cannibal, and the woman on the aisle was humming. No discernible melody. Just a steady, low humming. Like a bee.

Anna took a deep breath.

“Excuse me,” she said brightly, and she squeezed past the hummer’s knees, tried not to notice that part of Hannibal’s thigh was going to be sharing her space, shoved her bulging briefcase under the seat in front of her and folded her hands in her lap.

It was going to be a very long night.

At 30,000 feet, after the usual announcement that it was okay to use electronic devices, she hoisted the briefcase into her lap, opened it, took out her laptop, put down the foldout tray, plunked the machine on it and tapped the power button.

The computer hummed.

Or maybe it was the woman on the aisle. It was hard to tell.

The computer booted. The screen came alive. Wasting no time, Anna searched for and found the file she needed. Clicked on it and, hallelujah, there it was, the most recent document, a letter from Prince Draco Marcellus Valenti to her father.

The name made her snort.

So did the letter.

It was as stiffly formal as that ridiculous name and title, wreathed in the kind of hyperbole that would have made a seventeenth-century scribe proud.

One reading, and she knew what the prince would be like.

Old. Not just old. Ancient. White hair growing from a pink scalp. Probably growing out of his ears, too. She could almost envision his liver-spotted hands clutching an elaborate cane. No, not a cane. He’d never call it that. A walking stick.

In other words, a man out of touch with life, with reality, with the modern world.

Anna smiled. This might turn out to be interesting. Anna Versus the Aristocrat. Heck, it sounded like a movie—

Blip.

Her computer screen went dark.

“No,” she whispered, “no …”

“Yup,” Hannibal said cheerfully. “You’re outta juice, little lady.”

Hell. Little lady? Anna glared at him. What she was, was out of patience with the male of the species … but Hannibal was only stating the obvious.

Why dump her anger on him?

Sure, she was ticked off by what had happened in the lounge, but her mood had been sour even before that.

It had all started on Sunday, after dinner at the Orsini mansion in Little Italy. Anna’s mother had phoned the previous week to invite her.

“I can’t come, Mom,” Anna had said. “I have an appointment.”

“You have not been here in weeks.” Sofia’s tone of reprimand had taken Anna straight back to childhood. “Always, you have an excuse.”

It was true. So Anna had sighed and agreed to show up. After the meal her father had insisted on walking her to the front door, but when they were about to pass his study, he’d stopped, jerked his head to indicate that Freddo, his capo and ever-present shadow, should step aside.

“A word with you alone, mia figlia,” he’d said to Anna.

Reluctantly she’d let Cesare lead her into the study. He’d sat down behind his massive oak desk, motioned her to take a seat, looked at her for a long moment and then cleared his throat.

“I need a favor of you, Anna.”

“What kind of favor?” she’d said warily.

“A very important one.”

Anna had stared at him. A favor? For the father she pretended to respect for the sake of her mother but, in reality, despised? He was a crime boss. Don of the feared East Coast famiglia.

Cesare had no idea she knew that about him, that she and her sister, Isabella, had figured it out when Izzy was thirteen and Anna was a year older.

Neither could remember exactly how it had happened. Maybe they’d read a newspaper article. Maybe the whispers of the girls at school had suddenly started to make sense.

Or maybe it was their realization that their big brothers, Rafe, Dante, Falco and Nick, had struck out on their own as soon as they could and treated Cesare with cold disdain whenever they visited the mansion and thought the girls and their mother were out of earshot.

Anna and Izzy only knew that one day they’d suddenly realized their father was not the head of a waste management company.

He was a crook.

Because of their mother, they hadn’t let on that they knew the truth. Lately, though, that was becoming more and more difficult. Anna, especially, was finding it hard to pretend her father’s hands were not dirty, even bloody.

Do a favor, for a man like him?

No, she’d thought. No, she wouldn’t do it.

“I’m afraid I’m incredibly busy, Father. I have a lot on my plate just now, and—”

He’d cut her off with an imperious wave of his hand.

“Let us be honest for once, Anna. I know what you think of me. I have known it for a very long time. You can fool your mama and your brothers, but not me.”

Anna had risen to her feet.

“Then you also know,” she’d said coolly, “that you’re asking the wrong person for a favor.”

Her father had shaken his head.

“I am asking the right person. The only person. You are my daughter. You are more like me than you would care to admit.”

“I am nothing like you! I believe in the law. In justice. In doing what is right, no matter what it takes!”

“As do I,” Cesare had said. “It is only that we approach such things differently.”

Anna had laughed.

“Goodbye, Father. Don’t think this hasn’t been interesting.”

“Anna. Listen to me, per favore.”

The per favore did it. Anna sat back and folded her arms.

“I need to see justice done, mia figlia. Done your way. The law’s way. Not mine. And you are a lawyer, mia figlia, are you not? A lawyer, one who carries my blood in her veins.”

“I can’t do anything about being your daughter,” Anna said coldly. “And if you need an attorney, you probably have half a dozen on your payroll.”

“This is a personal matter. It is about family. Our family,” her father said. “Your mother, your brothers, your sister and you.”

Not interested, Anna wanted to say, but the truth was Cesare had piqued her curiosity.

What her father was now calling “our family” had never seemed as important to him as his crime family. How could that have changed?

“You have five minutes,” she said after a glance at her watch. “Then I’m out of here.”

Cesare pulled a folder of documents from a drawer and dumped them on the shiny surface of his desk. Most were yellowed with age.

Anna’s curiosity rose another notch.

“Letters, writs, deeds,” he said. “They go back years. Centuries. They belong to your mother. To her family.”

“Wait a minute. My mother? This is about her?”

“Sì. It is about her, and what by right belongs to her.”

“I’m listening,” Anna said, folding her arms.

Her father told her a story of kings and cowards, invaders and peasants. He spoke of centuries-old intrigue, of lies on top of lies, of land that had belonged to her mother’s people until a prince of the House of Valenti stole it from them.

“When?”

Cesare shrugged. “Who knows? I told you, these things go back centuries.”

“When did you get involved?”

“As soon as I learned what had happened.”

“Which was what, exactly?

“The current prince intends to build on your mother’s land.”

“And you learned this how?”

Cesare shrugged again. “I have many contacts in Sicily, Anna.”

Yes. Anna was quite sure he did.

“So what did you do?”

“I contacted him. I told him he has no legal right to do such a thing. He claims that he does.”

“It’s difficult to prove something that happened so long ago.”

“It is difficult to prove something when a prince refuses to admit to it.”

Anna nodded.

“I’m sure you’re right. And it’s an interesting story, Father, but I don’t see how it involves me. You need to contact an Italian law firm. A Sicilian firm. And—”

Her father smiled grimly.

“They are all afraid of the prince. Draco Valenti has enormous wealth and power.”

“And you’re just a poor peasant,” Anna said with a cool smile.

Her father’s gaze was unflinching.

“You joke, Anna, but it is the truth. No matter what worldly goods I have accumulated, no matter my power, that is exactly what I am, what I shall always be, when measured against a man like the prince.”

Anna shrugged. “Then that’s that. Game, set, match.”

“No. Not yet. You see, I have one thing the prince does not have.”

“Blood on your hands?” Anna said with an even cooler smile than before.

“No more than on his, I promise you that.” Cesare leaned forward. “What I have is you.”

Anna laughed. Her father raised his eyebrows.

“You think I am joking? I am not. His attorneys are shrewd, clever men. They are paid well. But you, mia figlia … You are a believer.”

She blinked. “Excuse me?”

“You graduated first in your class. You edited the Law Review. You turned down offers from the best legal firms in Manhattan to join one that takes on cases others turn away. Why? Because you believe,” Cesare said, answering his own question. “You believe in justice. In the rights of all men, not only those born as kings and princes.”

His words moved her. He was right—she did believe in those things.

And though it shamed her to admit it, even to herself, it warmed her heart to hear of his paternal pride in her.

Maybe that was why she brought her hands together in slow, insulting applause.

“Quite a performance, Father,” she said as she rose and started for the door. “You want to give up crime, you might consider a career on—”

“Anna.”

“Dear Lord,” she said wearily, “what is it now?”

“I have not been the father you wanted or the one you deserved, but I have always loved you. Is there not some part of you that still loves me?”

Such simple words, but they had changed everything. The shameful truth was that he was right. Somewhere deep in her heart she was still a sweet, innocent fourteen-year-old who loved the father she had once believed him to be.

So she’d gone back to his desk. Sat across from him. Listened while he told her that he had been fighting to claim the land. He had sent Prince Valenti letters that the prince had ignored. He had contacted lawyers, in Sicily where the disputed land lay and in Rome, where the prince lived. None would touch the problem.

“We cannot permit a man like Valenti to ride roughshod over us simply because he believes our blood is not the equal of his,” Cesare said. “Surely you must see that, Anna.”

She did. Absolutely, she did. The haves and the have-nots had always been at war, and there was always fierce joy in showing the haves that they could not always win.

“Do not do this for me,” Cesare had said. “Do it because it is right. And for your mother.”

Now, hurtling through the skies at 600 miles an hour, Anna asked herself for what was surely the tenth time if she’d been had.

She sighed.

The thing was, she knew the answer.

Her father was right about her. She hated to see the rich and powerful walk over the poor and powerless. Okay, her father was hardly poor or powerless, but her mother’s family had surely been both when the House of Valenti stole the land.

Besides, she’d given her word that she’d meet with this Italian prince, and she would.

Too bad she wasn’t the slightest bit prepared for the meeting, but her father was right—she was a good lawyer, an excellent negotiator. She could handle this even if she didn’t know all the details and facts.

What did any of that matter? This was the privileged prince against the poor peasant and, okay, her father wasn’t poor or a peasant, but the principle was the same.

This prince, this Draco Marcellus Valenti, was an anachronism. He lived in an elegant past with no idea the rest of the world was living in the twenty-first century.

Like that guy in the VIP lounge who thought he owned the world, owned people …

And any woman he wanted.

He probably could.

Women, idiots that they were for good looks, undoubtedly fawned all over him.

But not her.

Not her, no matter how his mouth felt on hers, how his arms felt around her, how alive that one kiss had made her feel …

Ridiculous.

He’d kissed her for a purpose. To show her that he was male, and powerful, and sexy.

But did that impress her? Ha, Anna thought, and she put her head back and closed her eyes.

What was sexy about a man with a low, deep voice? With darkly lashed eyes that were neither brown nor gold, and a face that might have been carved by an ancient Roman sculptor? With a body so leanly muscular she’d felt fragile in his arms, and that was saying a lot for a woman who stood five foot eight in her bare feet.

What could possibly be sexy about being kissed like that, as if an absolute stranger had the power to possess her? To put his mark on her, as if she were his woman?

Anna shifted in her seat.

What if instead of slugging him, she’d wound her arms around his neck? Opened her mouth to his? What would he have done?

Would he have said to her, Forget that plane. That flight. Come with me. We’ll go somewhere dark and private, somewhere where I can undress you, whisper things to you. Do things to you …

A tiny sound vibrated in her throat.

She could almost feel it happening. The kisses. The caresses. And then, finally, he’d take her. She’d been with men. Sex was as much a woman’s pleasure as a man’s, but this would be—it would be different.

He would make her moan, make her writhe, make her cry out …

“Signorina?”

Make her cry out …

“Signorina. Forgive me for disturbing your sleep.”

Anna’s eyes flew open.

It was him. The man from the lounge. The man who had kissed her.

The man whose kiss she could still feel on her lips.

He was standing in the aisle, looking down at her. And the little smile on his beautiful mouth stole her breath away.

CHAPTER THREE

DRACO watched as the woman’s eyes flew open.

Blue, just as he recalled, but to say only that was like saying that the seas that surrounded Sicily were blue.

Not so.

The colors of the Ionian Sea, the Tyrrhenian Sea, the Mediterranean were more than blue. And so were her eyes.

Not pale. Not dark. The shade reminded him of forget-me-nots blooming under the kiss of the noon sun along the Sicilian cliffs where he was reconstructing a place that he was sure had once been as magnificent as the view those cliffs commanded.

His gaze fell to her mouth. Her lips were parted in surprise. It was a very nice mouth. Pink. Soft. Enticing.

Draco frowned.

So what? The color of her mouth, of her eyes, was unimportant. She could look like the witch in Hansel and Gretel, for all it mattered to him.

He’d made his decision based on what was right and what was wrong, not on anything else.

A man who could not see past his own ego was not a man deserving of life’s riches. That had been another lesson of his childhood, learned by watching how men with power, with wealth, with overinflated ideas of their own importance thought nothing of trampling on others.

At the announcement that it was now permissible to use electronic devices, he’d put aside his glass of more-than-acceptable burgundy, thanked the flight attendant for handing him the dinner menu, plugged in his computer …

And thought, suddenly and unexpectedly, of the woman.

Yes, she had infuriated him, that arrogant, the-world-is-mine-if-only-you’d-get-out-of-my-way attitude …

But was his any better?

Half an hour or so of soul-searching—remarkable, really, when you considered that many of those who knew him would have insisted Draco Valenti had no soul to search—and he’d decided he might have overreacted.

After all, first-class flying was comfortable. Not as comfortable as his own jet would have been but still, it was acceptable. Yes, his legs were long, his shoulders broad but still, the seat accommodated him.

You could have made do with the one seat, he’d found himself thinking.

As for not wanting someone next to him who would jabber away the entire time … That wouldn’t be a problem. The reason the blonde wanted that vacant seat was that she had work to do.

In other words, she would keep to herself.

He would keep to himself.

No problem in that at all.

The bottom line? He’d been tired, grumpy and bad tempered. She’d been desperate, overeager and short-fused. Not a good combination under any circumstances, and in these particular circumstances, it had led to her being insulting and him being no better.

It was, he’d decided, an honest assessment and once he’d made it, he’d risen to his feet and headed toward the rear of the plane.

“Something I can do for you, Your Highness?” the eager flight attendant had said as soon as she saw the direction he was taking.

“Yes,” Draco had said crisply. “You can stop calling me ‘Your Highness.’”

He’d softened the words with a quick smile as he moved past her. Then he’d walked and walked and walked, going from first-class luxury to business-class efficiency and, finally, through what he’d tried not to think of as a sardine tin until he’d figured he might just end up in Oz.

And then, at last, he’d spotted her. Her sun-kissed hair was like a beacon. And when her eyes opened, her lips parted, he almost smiled, imagining how delighted she would be at the sight of him ….

Maybe not.

She was staring at him as if he were an apparition. If he’d given it any thought, and he hadn’t, he’d have known his sudden appearance would take her by surprise.

Well, it had.

But the look on her face, the shock and amazement, told him that she was a woman people rarely took by surprise.

That he’d done so was a bonus.

He could see her struggling for words. That was nice to see, too. She certainly hadn’t been at a loss for words earlier … except when he’d kissed her ….

And that kiss had as little to do with this as the color of her eyes. This was a matter of human decency. Nothing more and nothing less.

“Sorry to have awakened you,” he said politely.

She sat up straight and tugged down her skirt, which had ridden halfway up her thighs.

They were good thighs.

Actually, they were great.

Firm. Smooth. Lightly tanned to a sort of gilded bronze. Was she that color all over? Her hips. Her belly. Her breasts …

Damnit, he thought, and when he spoke again his tone had gone from polite to brusque.

“I said I’m sorry to have—”

“I wasn’t asleep.”

Probably not. Who could sleep, jammed between a woman who looked like a ticking time bomb’s worth of neuroses and a guy with a look about him that reminded Draco of some movie character he couldn’t place.

“And what are you doing here?”

Draco cleared his throat. This wasn’t going quite the way he’d anticipated.

“I, ah, I’ve changed my mind.”

“About what?”

Dio, was she going to make this difficult?

“About the seat. If you want it, it’s yours.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Why?”

Her tone was flat. Sarcastic. Was she playing to their audience? The guy to her right and the woman to her left were both watching him with the intensity of people viewing an accident on a highway.

So much for doing the right thing, Draco thought grimly, and met her slitted stare with one of his own.

“Why?” he snapped. “Because, fool that I am, I thought you might still prefer a first-class seat to—to this!”

“What’s wrong with this?” the woman next to her demanded, and Draco threw up his hands and started back up the aisle.

“Wait!”

The cry carried after him. It was her, the blonde with more attitude than any one person, male or female, could possibly need.

A smart man would have kept walking, but Draco had already proved to himself that he wasn’t being terribly smart tonight, so he stopped, folded his arms, turned …

And saw her hurrying toward him, that ridiculously lumpy briefcase swinging from one shoulder.

Despite himself, his mouth twitched.

What had become of all her crisp American efficiency?

The heavy case had tugged her suit jacket askew in a way he suspected Giorgio Armani would never approve; her golden hair had slipped free of its clasp. A shoe dangled from her fingers. In her rush to go after him, she’d apparently lost one of those high heels, which she’d managed to retrieve.

Those incredibly sexy high heels.

The thought marked the end of any desire to laugh. Instead, his eyes grew even more narrow. It was an indicator of his mood, and would have made any of his business opponents shudder.

“Well? What is it?”

“I—I—”

His gaze, as cold as frost on a January morning, raked over her.

“You what?”

It was, Anna thought, an excellent question. How did you admit you’d made a mistake? Not in judging this man. He was as cold, as self-centered, as insolent as ever—but that wasn’t any reason to have rejected his offer.

Never mind that she couldn’t think of a reason he’d made it, or that sitting next to him all the way to Rome would be the equivalent of choking down more humble pie than any one human being should have to consume.

Only an idiot would refuse gaining access to a spot where she could plug in her computer … and, okay, incidentally combine that with a seat that lacked the psycho bookends.

“I am waiting,” he growled, that accent of his growing more pronounced by the minute.

Anna swallowed. Hard. The first bite of crow did not go down easily.

“I—I accept your apology.”

He laughed. Laughed, damn him! So did someone else. Anna looked around, felt her face blaze when she realized their little drama was proving more interesting than books or magazines to what looked like this entire section of the plane.

“I did not apologize. I will not apologize.”

She drew closer. He was inches away. Once again she had to tilt her head to look up at him, the same as she’d had to in the lounge an eternity ago. It was just as disconcerting now as it had been then, and suddenly she thought, He’s going to kiss me again, and if he does—if he does …

“What I did was offer you the empty seat beside mine.” His mouth twisted. “The one you groveled for a little while ago.”

“I did not grovel. I would never grovel. I—I—”

Anna fell silent. She didn’t know where to look. There was nowhere that was safe, given the choice between his dark, hard eyes and the attentive faces of their audience.

“Jeez, lady, are you nuts? You tell him you’ll take the seat or I will,” a male voice said, and somebody snickered. “Yes or no, lady? Last chance.”

Anna glared. It was a toss-up who she despised more—her father for putting her in this untenable position or this … this arrogant idiot for putting her in this situation.

“You are,” she said, her voice shaking, “a horrible, hideous man.”

His eyelids flickered. “I take it that’s a yes,” he said, and he swung away from her and headed briskly up the aisle.

Anna did the only thing that made sense.

She fell in behind him and followed him to the front of the plane.

An hour later Anna turned off her computer, closed it and put it away.

So much for going through the document file.

She’d read and read, switched screens and made notes, and she still didn’t have a true grasp of what was happening.

No.

She had a grasp, all right.

She was about to step into a pile of doggy-doo, two centuries old and a mile high.

There was a piece of land somewhere in Sicily that either belonged to her mother or belonged to a prince. None of the papers Anna had seen proved ownership; none even hinted at it.

Unless the papers written in Italian said something different, the documents Cesare had given her proved nothing beside the fact that her father had sent several letters to the prince.

The prince had sent only one that really mattered.

It was a note written by one of his lackeys on a sheet of vellum that weighed almost much as her computer, and it took half a dozen paragraphs to say, basically, “Go away.”

The one certainty was her father’s insistence that the royal House of Valenti had stolen the land in question. And how could that be possible? Anna asked herself tiredly. She didn’t know much about what her father called the old country, but she knew enough to be certain that peasants didn’t argue with princes.

For all she’d learned, she might as well still be back in coach, without access to her computer.

And without access to the man seated on the aisle seat beside her.

Anna gave him a covert glance.

Access was the wrong word to use. He had not looked at her or spoken to her since they’d sat down. He had a computer on his lap, too, and it was the only thing that claimed his attention.

That was fine.

The hell it was.

Calmer now, she could look at him and admit that he was a beautiful sight. That chiseled, masculine face. That hard body. Those strong-looking hands, one lightly wrapped around his computer, the other working its touch pad …

She knew what his hands felt like.

Back in the lounge, he’d grasped her shoulder. Here, he’d put his palm lightly on the small of her back, guiding her into the window seat. His touch had been impersonal then.

What if he touched her differently?

Not that automatic, you-first thing men did, but a stroke of those long, tanned fingers. A caress of that powerful hand.

Anna frowned, shifted in her seat.

Such nonsense!

He wasn’t her type and she wasn’t his. He’d like girlie women. Pliable in nature, eager to please, the kind who’d do whatever it took to make a man happy.

She was none of that.

“Prickly,” a guy she’d dated a couple of times had called her.

“Difficult,” another had claimed.

“Tough as nails,” her brothers said, with pride.

Yes, she was.

How else did a woman get to make it in a world dominated by men, or endure growing up in a household where your mother walked two paces behind your father? Metaphorically, of course, but still …

Back to peasants and princes. And the man next to her. And the simple fact that in this situation he was the prince. Not because of their different seating arrangements but because he’d done something gracious and she …

She had not.

Would a simple thank you have killed her?

No. It would not have.

Was it too late to say the words now? It’s never too late to say something nice, she could almost hear her sister, Izzy, saying. Okay. She wasn’t sweet like Iz—she never would be—but she could try.

“Finished already?”

She blinked. He was looking at her, a hint of a smile on his lips.

Anna cleared her throat. “Yes.”

“Didn’t find what you wanted on your computer?”

She shook her head. “I only wish.”

“Same here.” He closed the cover of his and put it away. “I’m going to a meeting that will almost surely be a complete waste of time.”

“Sounds like my story.” She gave a little laugh. “Don’t you just hate that kind of thing?”

“I despise it,” he said, nodding in agreement. “There’s nothing worse than having to sit across the table from a guy who can’t figure out he’s absolutely not going to accomplish anything.”

“Exactly. It’s so useless.” Anna sighed. “Actually, what I’d like to do is walk into my meeting and say, ‘Okay, this is pointless. I’m going to turn around and go home and if you have half a brain, so will you.’”

He chuckled. “Yes, but if the idiot really had half a brain, he wouldn’t be there, eating up your time in the first place.”

Anna grinned. “Exactly.”

“That’s life, isn’t it? Things don’t always work out as one expects.”

“No, they don’t.” She hesitated. It was the perfect segue, and she took it. “Which brings me to offering my thanks for this seat. I should have said it sooner, but—”

“Yes,” he said, “you should have.”

“Now, wait a minute …”

He laughed. “Just teasing. This was my fault, too. I overreacted when you first asked for the seat. How about we call it even? I’ll apologize if you will.”

Anna laughed, too. “You’re not a lawyer, are you?”

He gave a mock shudder. “Dio, no. Why do you ask?”

“Because you have a way with words.”

“It’s what I do,” he said, smiling. “I’m a negotiator.” What better way to describe fashioning deals that made him millions and millions of dollars and euros? “So, do we have a truce?”

He held out his hand. Anna took it—and jerked back. An electric current seemed to flow from his fingers to hers.

“Static electricity,” she said quickly. “Or something.”

“Or something,” he said, and all at once his voice was low and husky.

Their eyes met. His were dark, deep, fathomless. Anna felt her heartbeat stutter. I’m tired, she thought quickly. I must be terribly tired or everything wouldn’t seem so—so—

“Would you like to see the wine list?”

It was the flight attendant, her smile perfect, her voice bright and bubbly, though Anna had to give her credit for not having reacted to the sight of a refugee from coach slipping into the cabin an hour or so before.

“Champagne,” said the man still holding her hand, his gaze never leaving hers. “Unless you’d rather have something else?”

“No,” Anna said quickly. “No, champagne would be lovely.”

“Lovely,” he said, and Anna wondered why she’d ever thought him cold or arrogant.

They drank champagne. In flutes. Glass flutes, not plastic. Switched to red wine, also in glasses, when dinner was served—served on china, with real flatware and real linen napkins.

Being in first class wasn’t bad.

Neither was being with such a gorgeous stranger.

He ordered for them both. Normally Anna would have bristled at a man assuming he could order for her, but tonight it seemed right.

Everything seemed right, she thought as they ate and talked. Conversation flowed easily, not about anything important, just about the weather they’d left behind in New York, how it would compare to the weather they’d find in Rome, about where he lived—in San Francisco, overlooking the bay, he said. And where she lived—in Manhattan, on the lower east side.

For all of that, they didn’t exchange names.

That seemed right, too.

There was something exciting about hurtling through the night at six hundred plus miles an hour, laughing and talking and having dinner with a man she didn’t know and would never see again.

Anything was possible, Anna thought after their dishes had been whisked away and the cabin lights were dimmed. Absolutely anything, she thought, looking at him, and a faint tremor went through her.

“Are you cold?”

“No,” she said quickly. “I’m fine.”

“Tired, then.”

“No. Really …”

“Of course you’re tired. I’m sure your day has been as long as mine. In fact, I’m going to put my seat back. You’ll do the same.”

That tone of easy command made Anna laugh. “Do you ever ask a woman what she wants, or do you simply tell her?”

Their eyes met. Her heart did a little stutter step.

“There are times when there is no need to ask,” he said softly.

Heat swept through her. Get up, she thought. Get up and go back to your own seat in the rear of the plane.

But she didn’t.

He reached out. Leaned across her. She caught her breath as he pressed the button that eased her seat all the way back.

“Close your eyes, bellissima,” he whispered. “Get some sleep.”

She nodded. Closing her eyes, pretending to sleep was probably a good plan. No reason to tell him that she never, ever was able to sleep on a plane ….

When she woke, the cabin was almost completely dark.

And she was cocooned in warmth.

Male warmth.

Somehow she was lying in the stranger’s arms, both of them covered by a soft blanket. Her head was on his shoulder, her face buried in the curve where his neck met his shoulder.

He was asleep. She could tell by the deep, slow exhalations of his breath.

Move, she told herself. Anna, for heaven’s sake, shift away from him.

Instead, she shifted closer. Closer. Drew his scent—masculine, musky, clean—deep into her lungs.

Her hand rose. By itself, surely. No way would she have deliberately lifted it, placed it against his jaw, rubbed her fingers lightly over the sexy stubble.

The sound of his breathing changed. Quickened. Her heartbeat quickened, too.

“Hello,” he whispered.

Anna touched the tip of her tongue to her lips. “Hello,” she whispered back.

His arms tightened around her. He turned his face, brought his lips against her palm in a soft kiss.

She heard a sound. Low, urgent …

The sound had come from her.

“I dreamed I was holding you,” he said. His teeth fastened lightly in the tender flesh at the base of her thumb. “And then I awoke, and you were in my arms.”

A tremor went through her. Or perhaps through him. She couldn’t tell. And it didn’t matter. The excitement growing within her was growing within him, too. His heartbeat had quickened. And when she shifted her weight, when she shifted her weight …

Yes. Oh, yes.

He was hard. Fully aroused. And she—dear God, she was, too. She could feel her breasts lift, her nipples bud. And she was wet. So wet …

He kissed her mouth. Her lips parted against his. He groaned; his teeth fastened lightly in the tender flesh of her bottom lip, his tongue stroked across the tiny, exquisite wound and Anna gave a soft, pleading cry.

He murmured something in Italian. She didn’t understand the words but she’d have had to be a fool not to understand their meaning.

His fingers tangled in her hair. Drew her head back. She could barely see his face in the dim light, but what she could see thrilled her—those dark eyes, the bones etched hard and harsh beneath his skin.

“You are playing with fire, cara,” he said thickly.

Anna cupped her hand around the back of his head. “I like fire,” she whispered.

“So do I.” His voice was low, rough, as hot as his skin.

She brought his head down to hers, brushed her lips over his.

“I wanted you long before this,” he said. “I wanted you hours ago, back in that lounge.”

Anna trembled. Ran her fingers into his hair. It had been the same for her. That was why she’d argued with him. Fought with him. Because she had wanted him. Wanted this. His heat. His embrace. His strength …

She cried out as his hand slipped under her suit jacket. Under her blouse. Found her breast, cupped it over her silky bra, and she would have cried out again but he captured her lips with his, shaped her lips with his, slipped his tongue inside her mouth and claimed her with a slow, deep, kiss.

His thumb swept over her nipple.

She gasped, arched against him, felt her nipple bead and press blindly against his hand.

Please, Anna thought, please …

Draco gave a low growl.

He shifted the woman against him, raised her leg, brought it over his hip and pressed his aroused flesh against her.

Now, he thought, now …

The cabin lights winked on.

“Ladies and gentlemen, we’ll be serving breakfast in just a few minutes ….”

The woman in his arms froze. Her eyes flew open, blurred with passion and then with shock.

Cristo, he was having difficulty grasping the facts himself. What had happened—what had almost happened …

Impossible.

He’d had sex on planes before. That was one of the perks of owning a private jet, but sex, or the closest thing to it, in a plane filled with people?

It was crazy.

How could he have done such a thing? It was an unacceptable, inexplicable loss of control, and he was not a man given to losses of control or, for that matter, to doing things that were either inexplicable or unacceptable.

“Let go of me,” the woman snapped.

Draco looked at her. She was as white as paper, and trembling.

“Easy,” he started to say, but she cut him short.

“Are you deaf? Let go!”

“Look, bella, I know you’re upset—”

“Damnit, let go!”

His mouth thinned. Was she going to try to label him the villain in this little drama?

“With pleasure, once I’m convinced you’re in control of your senses.” He waited, watched her face. “Are you?”

“You’d better believe I am.”

There was no panic in her voice now, only razor-sharp warning. A muscle knotted in Draco’s jaw. Then, with elaborate care, he took his hands from her.

In a flash she tossed off the blanket, pushed the button that brought her seat upright, shot to her feet. He did the same, if a split second later.

“Listen to me,” he said …

Too late.

She had already turned and fled.

CHAPTER FOUR

DRACO exited Fiumicino Airport, his cell phone at his ear.

“Just tell your boss that I am not, repeat, not going to meet his representative an hour from now. Two hours from now. That’s the best I’ll do. You don’t know if you can get in touch with his rep?” Draco took the phone from his ear and glared at it. “That is not my problem—it is yours.”

One good thing about old-fashioned desk phones, he thought grimly as he ended the call. In moments like this, you could slam the thing down and get some satisfaction out of it.

“Il mio principe!”

Heads swiveled. Glowering, Draco eyeballed his Maserati and his driver and strode toward them.

The man beamed. “Buon giorno, il mio principe. Come è stato il vostro volo?”

“My flight was a nightmare,” Draco snarled, “and must you announce my title to the world?”

Merda. The driver’s face fell. The man had been with him only a couple of weeks; he was just trying to be pleasant.

Draco took a deep breath, forced a smile he hoped was not a grimace to his lips.

“Mi dispiace. I’m sorry. I’m just jet-lagged.”

“You must not apologize to me, sir! It is my fault, surely.”

The driver clapped his heels together, lifted Draco’s carry-on, and reached for the handle of the rear door just as Draco did the same. Their hands and arms collided.

Cristo! Could the man’s face get any longer?

“Scusi,” the driver said in tones of hushed horror, “Dio, signore, scusi …”

“Benno. That is your name, is it not?”

“Sì. It is, sir, and I offer my deepest—”

“No. No apologies.” Draco smiled again. At least, he pulled his lips back from his teeth. “Suppose we start over. You say ‘Hello, how was your flight?’ And I’ll say—”

“Scusi?”

“I’ll say,” Draco said quickly, “it was fine. How’s that?”

His driver looked bewildered. “As you wish, sir.”

“Excellent,” Draco replied, and he got into the backseat of the Maserati and sank into its leather embrace.

He was going to have to be careful.

He had put off the impending meeting with the Sicilian’s man. That would, at least, give him time to shower, change his clothes, make some small attempt at getting his head on straight, but he was tired, not just jet-lagged but jet-fatigued.

Only that could explain what had happened on the plane.

“Il mio principe? Do you wish to go to your office or to your home?”

“Home, per favore, as quickly as possible, sì?”

“Sì, il mio principe.”

Draco sat back as the Maserati eased from the curb.

How could jet fatigue possibly be the reason for the incident on the plane? And what a hell of a way to describe that thing with the woman. What was that all about?

Draco frowned.

Well, he knew what it was all about.

He’d made love to her. And she’d made love to him, until those cursed lights went on, though he couldn’t call what they’d been doing “making love.”

It had been sex.

Mind-blowing, incredible sex.

Those few moments had been as exciting as any he’d ever spent with a woman.

He’d forgotten everything. Their surroundings, the fact that there were other people only a few feet away. All he’d known was her. Her taste. Her scent. Her heat.

There was a logical explanation, of course. There always was. For everything. In this case, the rush had come from having sex with a beautiful stranger in a place where anyone might have stumbled across them.

She’d been as out of control as he.

And then the lights had come on and she’d tried to lay it all on him.

No way, Draco thought, folding his arms over his chest.

All he’d done was watch her fall asleep, then drawn the blanket over her. All right. It had been his blanket, not hers, but her blanket had been half-tucked under her.

It had been logical to use his.

How was he to know she would sigh and fling her arm across his chest? That she’d lay her head on his shoulder? He was a man, not a machine; she’d all but moved into his embrace. Was he supposed to push her away? And when she’d lifted her dark lashes and looked up at him, her eyes as blue as the sea, when she’d caressed his cheek …

Everything after that had been unplanned. Unstoppable. The kiss. The way she’d opened her mouth to his. The way she’d moaned when he cupped her breast, the way her heart had raced when he put his hand under her blouse …

Damnit, he was hard, just remembering.

Enough.

He’d made a mistake, and the sole value of a mistake was learning not to make it again.

No danger of that, he thought grimly. He would never see the woman again.

Besides, it was time to turn his mind elsewhere, to the meeting that would take place in just a couple of hours with the sleazy representative of a sleazy hoodlum. An hour wasted was what it would be, but at least he’d have the satisfaction of knowing he’d sent the Orsini stooge home to the States with his tail between his legs.

His phone rang.

Draco took it from his pocket. “Pronto,” he said brusquely. He listened, listened some more and then he snarled a word princes surely did not use and jammed the phone back into his pocket.

His attorney couldn’t make the meeting. “Forgive me, sir,” the man had said. “Reschedule it for whenever you like …”

Draco scowled.

The hell he would.

He had not flown all this distance to reschedule a meeting. It would go on as planned.

The day he couldn’t handle a Sicilian’s errand boy had not yet dawned.

His home was a villa in the parkland that surrounded the Via Appia Antica, ocher in color in keeping with its ancient Roman roots, set far back from the road and protected by massive iron gates.

He’d been drawn to the place the first time he saw it, though what the draw had been was anybody’s guess. The villa had been a disaster, part of it in total disrepair, the rest of it in desperate need of work.

Still, something about it had appealed to him. The history, he’d thought, the realization of what the house must have seen over the centuries.

Foolish, of course; a man with demanding responsibilities did not give in to sentimental drivel. He’d taken an acquaintance to see it. An architect. His report was not encouraging.

Draco, he’d said, you want to do this, we’ll do it. But the place is an ugly pile of rubble. Why spend millions on it when you already own a magnificent palazzo on the Tiber?

It was an amazingly honest assessment. Draco told himself the man was right. Why not rebuild the Valenti palace? Once, a long time ago, he had promised himself that he would. His ancestors, his father, even his mother had stripped it of almost everything that could bring in cash and then neglected it to a state of near collapse, but he had the money to change all that.

So he had done it. Restored the palazzo to medieval grandeur. Everyone had pronounced it exquisite. Draco’s choice of adjectives was far less flattering, though he kept his thoughts to himself.

You could breathe new life into a building, but you could not rewrite the memories it held.

He had gone back to the realtor who’d shown him the villa. He bought it that same day, restored it and moved in. There was an honesty to its rooms and gardens. Best of all, its ghosts wore togas.

The memories the villa held had nothing to do with him.

The Maserati came to a purring stop at the top of the driveway. The driver sprang from behind the wheel, but Draco was already out of the car and striding up the curved marble steps that led to the villa’s massive wooden doors, which opened before he could touch them.

“Buon giorno, signore,” his smiling housekeeper said, welcoming him home. Did he want something to eat? Breakfast? Some fruit and cheese, perhaps?

Coffee, Draco said. Not morning coffee. Espresso. A large pot, per favore, and he would have it in the sitting room in the master suite.

His rooms were warm; he suspected the windows had not been opened since he’d left for his San Francisco office three weeks ago. Now he flung them open, toed off his mocs, stripped off shirt, jeans, all his clothes, left them as part of a long trail that led to his bathroom.

He could hardly wait to shower away the endless hours of travel.

One of the first things he’d seen to when he’d arranged for the restoration of the villa was the master bath. He wanted a deep marble Jacuzzi, marble vanities and the room’s centerpiece: a huge, glass-enclosed steam shower with multiple sprays.

His architect had raised an eyebrow. Draco had grinned. Life in America, he’d said, with all those oversize bathrooms, had spoiled him.

Perhaps it had.

His California duplex had a huge bathroom with a shower stall the size of a small bedroom. There were times, at the end of a long day, that he stood inside that stall and could almost feel the downpouring water easing the tension from him.

Now, standing in the shower at Villa Appia, Draco waited for that to happen.

Instead, an image suddenly filled his mind.

The blonde, here with him. Her hair undone, streaming like sunlight over her creamy shoulders, over her breasts, the pale apricot nipples uptilted, awaiting him.

He imagined his lips closed on those silken pearls, drawing them deep into his mouth.

His hand between her thighs.

Her hand on his erection.

Draco groaned.

He would back her against the glass, lift her in his arms, take her mouth as he brought her down, down, down on his hard, eager length ….

Another groan, more guttural than the first, burst from his throat. His body shuddered, did what it had not done since he’d had his first woman at the age of seventeen.

Her fault, he thought in sudden fury. The blonde. She had made a fool of him yet another time.

He wished he could see her again, and make her pay.

Draco shut his eyes. Raised his face to the spray. Let the water wash everything from his body and his mind. He had to be alert for the meeting that loomed ahead.

The land in Sicily was his. He’d been in Palermo on business, gone for a drive to relax and passed through the town of Taormina, where something had drawn him to a narrow road, a hairpin curve, a heart-quickening view of the sea …

And a stretch of land that seemed unaccountably familiar.

He had taken the necessary steps to ensure his possession of it, brought in an architect … And suddenly received a letter from a man he’d never heard of, Cesare Orsini, who had made claims that were not only nonsense, they were lies.

The land was his. And it would remain his, despite the best efforts of a thug to claim it.

Draco had learned a very long time ago never to give in to bullies.

It was a lesson that had changed his life, one he would never, ever forget.

Anna’s hotel was old.

Under some circumstances, that would have been fine. After all, Rome was old. And magnificent.

The same could not be said about her hotel.

She’d made the reservation herself, online at something called BidCheap.com. Bidding cheap was where it was at; if only she’d had the common sense to demand her father hand over a credit card …

Never mind.

She’d traveled on the cheap before, after university and during spring breaks in law school. How bad could a place be?

Bad, she thought as she followed a shriveled bellman into a room the size of a postage stamp.

Water stains on the ceiling, heaven only knew what kinds of stains on the carpet, a sagging club chair in front of a window with a rousing view of …

An airshaft.

All the way to Rome so she could overlook an airshaft.

Well, so what?

She wouldn’t be here long enough for it to matter. Besides, right now she felt as if she were walking in her sleep. She’d done that a couple of times, when she was little. Once she’d awakened in the kitchen, standing in front of the open fridge.

The next time, she’d been halfway out the conservatory door into the garden when she’d walked into one of her brothers. Falco, or maybe Rafe. Whichever, he’d startled her into wakefulness; she’d shocked him into a muffled oath.

“What are you—” they’d both said, and then they’d shushed each other and laughed, and agreed to keep quiet about the whole thing, because he’d obviously been sneaking back into the sleeping house and she’d just as obviously been sneaking out of it.

Anyway, she still remembered the feeling when her eyes had blinked open. She’d been awake, but not really. Her feet had seemed to be inches off the floor, her eyes had felt gritty, her body had felt … the only word that described it was floaty.

That was exactly how she felt now as she waited patiently for the bellman to finish showing her how to adjust the thermostat, how to open and close the drapes, how to use the minibar.

She yawned. Maybe he’d take the hint.

No way.

Now he was at the desk, opening drawers, snapping them shut, moving to the TV, turning it on and off, and, oh my God, now he was showing her how to set the clock radio …

Anna gave herself a mental slap on the forehead. Duh. He was waiting for a tip.

She opened her purse, dug inside, took out a couple of euros and, less than graciously, shoved them at him.

“Thank you,” she said. “Grazie. You’ve been very helpful.”

Her form would probably have earned demerits from Sister Margaret, who’d taught tenth grade deportment, but it satisfied the bellman, who smiled broadly, wished her a good day and exited, stage left.

“Thank God,” Anna said, and fell facedown on the bed.

Everything ached.

Her arms from keeping her elbows tucked to her sides the last couple of hours of the flight. Her shoulders from hunching them. Her butt from pretty much doing the same kind of thing to keep her thighs and hips from coming into contact with Hannibal and the Hummer.

Her head hurt, too. A baby a couple of rows back had decided to scream in protest at the unfairness of life. Anna couldn’t blame the kid; she’d have screamed, too, if it would have done any good.

But it wouldn’t.

She had done something awful, and being packed into the middle seat would never be sufficient to expiate her total, complete, hideous feelings of embarrassment.

Anna groaned.

Embarrassment didn’t even come close. Humiliation was an improvement, but horror was better. Much better. She was totally, completely, mind-numbingly horrified at what she’d done. What she’d almost done.

Okay, what she had done and what she had been on the way to doing …

His fault. The stranger’s. All of it, his fault.

First, driving her temper into the stratosphere, then confusing her, then charming her.

An overstatement.

He had not charmed her. He could never be the charming type. He’d simply lulled her into thinking he was human. And maybe just a little bit interesting.

Pleasant conversation. A couple of smiles. His looks had been part of it, too. She had to admit, he was nice-looking.

A hunk, was more like it.

And then to wake up and find him all over her …

Anna sprang to her feet. Unzipped her carry-on.

“The bastard,” she hissed as she tore through the contents in search of toothpaste, toothbrush, cosmetics.

Who gave a damn about his looks? He’d pawed her. Attacked her.

She groaned again and sank onto the edge of the bed.

“Liar,” she whispered.

She was blaming everything on him when the truth was, whatever he had done, she had encouraged.

“How could you?” she whispered. “My God, Anna, how could you?”

The question was pointless. She didn’t have an answer. And she was not a child.

You opened your mouth to a man’s kisses, you moaned under his touch, you draped your leg over him … What could you call all that, if not encouragement?

The stranger hadn’t done anything she hadn’t wanted him to do.

Anna closed her eyes.

And, oh my, he had done it magnificently.

That wonderful, knowing mouth. That hard, long body. Those big hands on her breasts …

“Enough,” she said briskly, and got to her feet.

She had things to do before the meeting. And, thankfully, miraculously, an hour in which to do them. Her father’s capo had called on her cell. The prince had delayed the meeting by an hour.

Excellent news.

Not that she’d let the prince know it, Anna thought as she dumped the contents of her carry-on on the bed. On the contrary. She’d tell him that his change of plans—his unilaterally made change of plans—was an inconvenience. She would tell him of her flight, of how she had spent the entire time in the air diligently bent over her computer, studying the documents that proved, irrefutably, her mother’s ownership of the land in—in whatever the name of that town in Sicily was. Torminia. Tarminia. Taormina, and she had less than an hour to at least get that much into her weary brain.

A shower. A change of clothes. A quick look at the file that had, thus far, proven useless.

Yes, but she’d gone into court with less information before and come out the winner.

She was one hell of a fine attorney.

The prince’s attorney would probably be top grade, but so what? She could handle that. And she could definitely handle a fawned-upon, effeminate blue blood of a prince.

She was an American, after all.

Quickly she laid out fresh clothes. Another suit. Charcoal- gray, this time. Another blouse. Ivory silk, of course. A change of shoes. Stilettos. Black and glossy, with—for kicks—peep toes. Underwear. Silk. Sexy.

People could see the stilettos. The undies were just for her. She liked knowing that under the uniform she was all female.

The stranger would probably have liked it, too.

He was the kind of man who’d know how to strip a woman of a sexy half bra, a sexy thong. There were times she’d thought, fleetingly, that what she’d worn under her clothes had been wasted on a lover.

It would not be wasted on him.

His hands would be sure and exciting as he took off her bra, his fingers just brushing across her nipples. They’d be steady as he hooked his thumbs into the edges of her thong and slid it down her hips, his eyes never leaving hers even as her breathing quickened, as she felt herself getting wet and hot and … and …

“Damnit!” she said. What was with her today?

She liked men. Liked sex. But this, wanting a man whose name she didn’t even know, a man she’d never see again, not only wanting him but going into his arms in a place where anyone could have seen them …

Anna yanked her cell phone from her purse, hit a speed-dial digit. Her sister answered on the first ring.

“Anna?”

Oh, the wonders of caller ID.

“Izzy. I have something to ask you.”

“Anna, where are you? I called your office and your secretary said—”

“Isabella,” Anna said briskly, “how many times must I remind you? There are no more secretaries. She’s a PA. A personal assistant. Got it?”

“Got it—but where are you? Your sec—your PA said you were in Italy, and I said that wasn’t possible because you never told me that—”

“I’m in Italy, Iz. I never told you because I never had the chance. The old man cornered me Sunday—which, by the way, he could not have done if you’d shown up for dinner the way you were supposed to.”

“I wasn’t. I mean, nobody asked me to show up. And what’s that got to do with you being in—”

“Later,” Anna said impatiently. “Right now, just answer a question, okay?”

“What’s the question?”

“It’s … it’s …” Anna cleared her throat. “You took psych, right?”

“Huh?”

“Izzy, I said—”

“I heard you. Sure. I took psych 101. So did you.”

“Yeah. Well, remember that section on, ah, on sexual fantasies?”

“Anna,” Isabella said carefully, “what’s going on?”

“Wasn’t there something about, ah, about fantasizing sex with a stranger?”

“A dark, dangerous stranger.”

Anna put her fingers to her forehead, gave her temple a little rub.

“Right. And—and wasn’t there something else about sex in public places? Where there was a risk of being caught?”

“Anna,” Izzy said firmly, “what’s going on?”

“Nothing. Nothing, I swear. I just—I just wanted to clarify something, is all.”

“About risk? About sex with dangerous strangers? In public places? Hey, big sister, this is me, remember? What have you done?”

“I told you, nothing. I, ah, I read a magazine article on the plane. It was about sex. Risky sex. Hey, it’s jet lag, you know? Makes you think strange things.”

“Think them,” Izzy said firmly. “Don’t do them. I mean, you’re not contemplating sex in a public place with a dangerous stranger, are you?”

Isabella lightened her question with a laugh. After a second, Anna laughed, too.

“Not even I would do something so crazy,” she said, and then she said she had to run, that she’d phone when she had more time, kiss-kiss, talk to you soon …

And ended the call.

Silly to have called Isabella. The truth was, she’d intended to ask her if she’d ever wanted hot, fast sex with a stranger, and what would sweet Izzy know about sex, hot or otherwise?

Anna sighed. Undressed. Headed into the ancient bathroom, stepped into a rust-stained tub, tried not to bang her skull on the showerhead and turned a squeaking handle that wheezed out a thin stream of lukewarm water.

Forget the plane. The unintelligible files. Most of all, forget the man and what had happened. Correction. What had almost happened, because, thank goodness, she’d come to her senses in time.

What she had to concentrate on was the forthcoming meeting. The farcical concept of a prince in this, the twenty-first century. On making it crystal clear that no one, not even a doddering old stooge with a pretend crown on his balding pate and, for all she knew, a roomful of lawyers, could steal her mother’s land and get away with it.

It was a good plan.

An excellent one.

It might have taken Anna far had she not, seventy-five minutes later, rushed through the doors of an elegant building just off the Via Condotti and paused at a reception desk only long enough to tell a receptionist elegant enough to grace the elegant building that she had an appointment with Prince Draco Valenti.

“And you are …?” the receptionist said, peering at Anna down her—what else could it have been?—Roman nose.

“I,” Anna said, knowing it was time to marshal her resources, “I am counsel for Signore Cesare Orsini.”

The receptionist nodded and reached for a telephone.

“Fourth floor, take a right, end of the corridor.”

The elevator was elegant, too.

So was the man waiting for her. One man, not the legal team she’d anticipated. One man, standing at a window overlooking the street, his back to her.

Even so, he gave an immediate impression of … what?

Power, she thought. Power and strength, masculinity and youth. The tall, leanly muscled body evident within the stylish gray Armani suit; the broad shoulders; the long legs. He stood with those legs slightly apart; she could tell his arms were folded. His posture signaled irritation and arrogance.

Strange. There was something familiar about him …

Anna’s heart leaped into her throat. No, she thought, no!

She made a sound, something between a choked gasp and a low moan. The man heard it.

“I do not appreciate being kept waiting,” he said coldly as he swung toward her …

“You,” Draco Valenti, il Principe Draco Marcellus Valenti of Rome and Sicily said, and the only good thing about this awful, terrible moment was that Anna knew the surprise and shock on his cold, classically beautiful face had to mirror hers.

CHAPTER FIVE

DRACO stared at the figure in the doorway.

No. No! It was not possible!

Lots of women had golden hair. Eyes the color of the Tyrrhenian Sea. A soft-looking, tender-pink mouth …

Dio, who was he trying to fool?

It was she. It was her. And what the hell did the intricacies of English grammar matter right now? He hadn’t worried about his command of English in years, not since he’d taken the small financial company he’d started on equal parts bluff, brains and balls and turned it into an empire.

That a woman—that this woman—should turn his life so upside down proved that his brain was scrambled …

And, yes, impossible or not, it was the same woman. No question, no doubt. The unforgettable face, the curvaceous body demurely hidden within a dressed-for-success suit, the long legs set off by nothing-demure-about-them stiletto heels …

This was the woman he’d almost initiated into the Mile High club. Although initiated might be the wrong word. The way she’d come awake in his arms, the way she’d responded to his kisses …

For all he knew, she was a charter member.

Or wasn’t.

She’d gone from hot to cold in the blink of an eye, and—

And who cared about that?

What was she doing here? She could be in Rome, yes. But she most assuredly could not be Cesare Orsini’s rep resentative.

Had she come looking for him? Maybe she hadn’t been able to forget what had happened and now she wanted to finish that long, exciting slide into sexual oblivion …

Forget that.

His receptionist had buzzed him. Cesare Orsini’s representative is here, sir, she’d said. And his receptionist had been with him a long time. No one could get past her without proper ID. So this had to be—it had to be—

The woman stopped in the doorway, face white.

“Ohmygod,” she said. “Ohmygod!”

Draco’s last, faint hope that this was a mistake vanished.

“You?” The woman reached for the doorjamb, curved her hand around it as if that might keep her from fainting. Her voice rose an octave. “You’re Draco Valenti?”

Draco took a deep breath. “And you are …?”

She laughed, but it was not a real laugh. It was the kind of sound someone might make when what was really called for was an anguished wail of despair.

“The Orsini attorney.”

Draco had always heard that hope died hard. Now he discovered that it didn’t simply die—it crashed to earth in flames.

“Small world,” he said drily.

She nodded. “Small, indeed.” All at once the look of shock vanished. “Wait a minute,” she said slowly, letting go of the jamb, straightening to her full height. Her eyes narrowed. “It was all deliberate!”

“I beg your pardon?”

Color suffused her face. “I cannot believe anyone would resort to such a thing.”

“Perhaps you’d like to enlighten me, Miss—Miss—”

She stalked toward him menacingly, a cat approaching its prey.

“You set me up!”

“What?”

“You—you sneaky, slimy—”

“Watch what you say to me,” Draco said sharply.

“You played me for a patsy!”

What did that mean? This woman was playing havoc in his head.

“You tried to take advantage of me!”

Draco gave a mirthless laugh.

“Are we back to that?” Slowly he let his gaze travel over her, from head to toe and back again. “Believe me, if I could erase that momentary behavioral aberration, I would.”

A momentary behavioral aberration? Was that what he called what had happened—what had almost happened? And that chill in his eyes. In his voice. How could he speak so—so clinically of what had taken place on the plane?

Anna narrowed her eyes until they were slits.

“That behavioral aberration,” she said, somehow making the words sound as if they consisted of four letters each, “was a clever ploy. At least, that’s what you intended it to be. But it didn’t work, did it? It didn’t work because I’m not one of your—your women.”

Draco raised an eyebrow. Looked over his shoulder. Stared into the corners of the elegant room.

“My women?” he purred.

She tossed her head.

“You know damned well what I mean. A man like you thinks he can snap his fingers and the entire female population of the planet will fall at his feet!”

“An interesting abuse of the laws of physics,” he said coldly. “And what has it to do with you and me and that airplane?”

“You thought you could compromise my position.”

“Was that the position you took when your leg was draped over mine?” Draco said with chilling politeness.

Her face turned an angry shade of crimson.

“You’re despicable!”

“And you are wasting my time.”

“You knew who I was all the time, Valenti!”

“You will address me as ‘prince’ or ‘sir,’” Draco heard himself say, and tried not to wince at the idiocy of it, but what better way to deal with the representative of a smarmy Sicilian gangster than to play on the ancient, if ridiculous, elements of class distinction?

“That’s why you invited me to sit with you.”

“I hope you know what you’re talking about, madam, because I most assuredly do not!”

She strode forward, came to a stop inches from him. The scent of her rose to him, something as feminine, delicate and sexy as her stiletto heels.

He recalled the scent from those moments she’d lain in his arms on the plane.

He recalled more than that.

The feel of her, pressed against him. The softness of her breasts against his chest. The heat of her body. The swift race of her heart against his, the sigh of her breath …

Draco frowned.

His body was remembering, too. Damnit, that was the wrong thing to have happen right now.

“You offered me that seat for a reason!”

“I offered it out of the goodness of my heart and the graciousness of my soul.”

“Ha!”

She tossed her head again. A couple of golden curls slipped free of whatever it was women called those silly things they used to catch their hair and keep it from falling free, as nature had intended.

“How pathetic! That you’d stoop to such measures.”

Her mouth was curled with contempt. Yes, he thought, but he could uncurl it in a heartbeat, kiss that mouth until it softened and sweetened under his.

“You—knew—who—I—was,” she said hotly, punctuating the words by jabbing her index finger into the center of his chest. “And don’t bother trying to deny it!”

Had he missed something? Had he been so busy remembering the taste of her, the feel of her, that he’d lost track of the conversation?

The realization made him even angrier.

“Deny what?” he demanded. “And stop doing that,” he growled, clasping her hand and folding his fingers around hers.

“What happened on the plane. What you did.”

“Excuse me?”

“Kissing me. It was all for a purpose.”

He laughed. He couldn’t help it. What man wouldn’t laugh at such an accusation?

Her eyes flashed with anger. “You think this is amusing?”

“Let me be sure I understand this. You’re accusing me of kissing you on purpose?”

“Absolutely.”

“Well, that’s a relief. I mean, I’d hate to have you accuse me of kissing you without any purpose.”

Anna blinked. How could he do this? Twist her words so they came out wrong. Take her accusations and turn them into jokes.

Most of all, how could he be so damnably arrogant and officious and clever and still be so incredibly easy on the eyes? How could the feel of his fingers wrapped around her wrist make her remember the feel of his body against hers? The feel of his mouth? The taste of his kisses?

“Don’t play dumb,” she said. “You thought if you seduced me it would be impossible for me to represent Cesare Orsini’s interests.”

He gave her a long, steady look. Then, curse the man, he laughed. Again.

“Dio, am I clever!”

“What you are is a bast—”

“I hate to rewrite your script, madam, but you’ve got it all wrong. I had no idea who you were. The only thing I knew about you was that you had one hell of a quick temper.”

“What I have, oh your worshipful highness, is no tolerance for bull.”

“A quick temper. A sharp tongue.” Suddenly his voice turned low and rough. “And you fell asleep in my arms and came awake wanting me as much as I wanted you.”

Anna’s heart banged against her ribs.

“I was half-asleep. You took advantage. You wanted to compromise me.”

He gave a soft, sexy laugh.

“Compromise is not the word to describe what I wanted of you.” His arms went around her. “What we wanted of each other.”

“Let go,” Anna said.

“That’s what you said on the plane.”

“Exactly. And I’m saying it again. Let—”

“You said it only after the lights came on.” His arms tightened around her; she could feel every inch of him against her. “Until then, you were as turned on as I was.”

“That isn’t true! I wasn’t—”

His gaze dropped to her lips. She could almost feel the warmth of his mouth on hers, taste those remembered kisses.

“The hell you weren’t.”

His voice was husky. Hot with masculine warning. He was aroused. The hard ridge of his erection was against her belly.

Desire, urgent and primitive, shot through her blood. He was the enemy. He was everything she despised, a damnable aristocrat, a man who obviously thought he could treat a woman as if he owned her. He was her father’s and her mother’s enemy, for heaven’s sake …

But what did that matter when her body throbbed with need?

They could finish what had started hours ago.

Alone. Here, with no prying eyes to see them, no one to interrupt a joining of eager bodies.

Anna shuddered. A whisper of sound sighed from her mouth. Her lashes fell, veiled her eyes as she rose toward him …

His arms opened, dropped to his sides.

She blinked. Looked up. Saw that his face was stony, his mouth cruel.

“Now,” he said calmly as he took a step back, “now, signorina, you have been compromised.”

Her hand balled into a fist at her side. She wanted to hit him. Hard. Leave an imprint on that smug, cold, handsome face.

“You did that once,” he said coldly. “I would advise you not to do it again.”

Anna took a steadying breath. And laughed, though it took everything she possessed to choke out the sound.

“You’re so easy, Your Highness. Oh, sorry. Does the news come as a shock? Do you honestly believe one look from you turns my knees to water?”

Draco narrowed his gaze.

What he believed was that she was lying. To him. To herself. If he wanted her, he could have her. Now. Here. But he didn’t. Damnit, he didn’t. What he wanted was to get everything to do with Cesare Orsini out of his life.

“Enough of these games,” he growled. “What is your name? And what do you want?”

“I want you to face facts.” Anna’s voice was steady. Amazing, because her pulse was ragged. “No matter what you claim, I can make an excellent case for you knowing my identity all along.” She smiled brightly. “So if you want to talk about compromising one’s legal position …”

“An excellent speech. Unfortunately, it’s also meaningless. I didn’t know your name on that plane. I still don’t.”

Anna gave a negligent shrug. “He said, she said. Stuff like that is bread and butter in courts of law.”

“Which brings me to the second reason your little speech is meaningless.” He smiled. “This would never get adjudicated in a court of law.”

“I’m an attorney.”

Another quick smile, this one pure venom. “Not in Italy.”

Damnit, he was quick, and he was right. She had no legal standing here. She’d tried telling that to her father. You want a lawyer, find one who’s Italian, she’d said, but Cesare had been adamant. This was a family matter. A personal matter. He didn’t need a stranger to speak for him, for Sofia. He needed her.

“So,” the Prince of All He Surveyed said, “we have a—what would you call it? A situation. I am the rightful owner of land your client would like to claim is his.”

“The land in question belongs to my client’s wife. She is the rightful owner.”

Draco shrugged, walked to his impressive desk, hitched a hip onto its edge.

“I agreed to meet with Cesare Orsini’s representative as a courtesy.”

“You agreed,” Anna said coolly, “because you know you have a problem on your hands.”

She wasn’t wrong. There were those in the judiciary who would be more than happy to see a Valenti prince trapped in endless legal wrangling over a mess like this. The land was indisputably his, but thanks to the way things worked in Sicily, it could take years to put the case to rest.

Assuming there was a case, and there wouldn’t be.

He knew enough about Cesare Orsini and men like him to understand they had only two methods of settling debts.

One involved blood.

The other …

Draco sighed. His plane was back in service; his pilot was already en route to Rome so he could fly him back to Hawaii, the sea, the sun and the warm bed of his mistress—a woman who would not play hot then cold, as this one did.

“Very well.” He went behind the desk, sat down in a chair, pulled open a drawer, took out a gold pen and a leather checkbook. “How much?”

“I beg your pardon? How much what?”

“Didn’t you hear what I said? I’m tired of playing games. How much does Orsini want?”

“To buy his land?”

A muscle knotted in Draco’s jaw. “The land is not his to sell.”

The woman gave him a smile that would have sent a diabetic to the hospital. She was going to drive him crazy!

“I am not offering to buy it, I am offering—”

“A payoff?”

“Compensation. What does your client want to end this insane charade?”

Anna tossed her briefcase on a chair and strolled to the enormous desk. It was probably very old, and obviously hand carved. Mythological griffins dove on falcons, falcons dove on rabbits, wolves sank their fangs into the hindquarters of stags and brought them to their knees.

The history of the landed gentry, she thought coldly. She knew a lot about that history. She’d made a point of studying it when she’d first realized her father’s true profession, hoping against hope that understanding the old Sicilian antagonisms would help her understand him.

What she’d ended up understanding was that the world could be a brutally unfair place, but the world of her father was more than brutal.

Right now, though, what she was seeing firsthand went a long way toward validating her opinion of princes who thought they could take whatever they wanted from mere mortals, and get away with it.

“Well?”

She looked up. The prince, gold pen poised, was watching her much as the wolves carved into his desk had surely watched the creatures they hunted. He looked intent. Determined. Coldly analytical, and certain of how the chase would end.

Not so fast, big boy, she thought, and she took a long breath.

“Well, what?”

“You’re pushing your luck,” Draco said softly.

“And you’re making foolish assumptions if you think you can buy your way out of this.” Anna jerked her chin toward the checkbook. “You can put that thing away.”

Draco said nothing for a long minute. A muscle knotted and unknotted in his jaw. Then he dropped the pen and checkbook back into the drawer and slammed it shut with enough force to send the sound bouncing around the room.

“Let’s get down to basics,” he snapped. “If you don’t want money, what do you want?”

“You know what I want. The land, of course.”

“That’s impossible. The land is mine. I have the deed to it. No court in Sicily will—”

“Perhaps not.”

“Then, how—”

Anna gave him her best look of wide-eyed innocence.

“Roman Aristocrat Steals Land from Helpless Grandmother,” she said sweetly, and batted her lashes. “Maybe they can work the words puppies and kittens into that headline, too.”

“You left something out. Sicilian Citizen Protects Land from Theft by American Hoodlum.” Draco flashed a smug smile. “Or don’t you like that wording?”

“You’re no more Sicilian than I am!”

“My ancestors settled in Sicily five hundred years ago.”

“You mean they invaded it five hundred years ago. The Orsinis were already there.”

“I asked you a question. What do you want?”

“And I answered it. I want the land. If you think my client will run from a newspaper calling him a gangster …” Anna showed her teeth in a brilliant smile. “Trust me, Valenti. It won’t be the first time.”

“Do not address me that way,” Draco said, hating himself for sounding ridiculous, hating the woman for pushing him to it. “As for headlines …” He shrugged. “They come and go.”

She smiled. It was the kind of smile that made him want to shoot to his feet and toss her out of his office …

Or take her in his arms and remind her of just how easily he could change her cold contempt to hot desire.

“The thing is, oh powerful prince, we love that kind of stuff in the States. We give it all our attention. Page Six of the Post. People. US. The Star. All those juicy tabloids, the even juicier internet blogs. The cable news channels.”

“You’re pushing your luck again,” he said in a soft voice.

She knew she was, but it was too late to back down now.

“Even the real newspapers—the New York Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Washington Post—will love this.” Anna leaned closer. “See, one of the few things I had time to do was look you up on Google. I know you’re not just a prince, stealing money from the peasants—”

“A gangster’s legal mouthpiece calling me a thief?” Draco leaned back in his chair, folded his arms over his chest and laughed.

“You also control a huge financial empire.”

His laughter ended. A look of cold determination took its place as he rose to his feet

“If you have a point, get to it.”

“Oh, I do,” Anna said. She paused for effect, as if this were a grungy New York City courtroom instead of an elegant office. “How do you think a company like yours would stand up to such a scandal in today’s financial climate?”

His face darkened.

“How dare you threaten me? Who the hell are you?”

Anna dug into her pocket, took out a small leather case and extracted a business card. Nonchalantly she plucked a pen from his desk, scribbled the name of her hotel on the back, then flipped the card at him. He caught it, read the black engraving and looked at her through narrowed eyes.

“Anna Orsini,” he said softly. “Well, well, well.”

“That’s me,” Anna said cheerfully. “Anna Orsini. Cesare’s daughter.” Her voice became cold and flat. “In other words, a full-blooded member of the Orsini famiglia. I urge you to keep that in mind.”

It seemed the right line, the closing line, especially when your enemy looked as if he might spring across the desk and throttle you …

Especially when your own heart was banging so hard you were afraid it might leap from your chest.

Anna pivoted on her heel, picked up her briefcase and walked out.

CHAPTER SIX

DRACO watched Anna Orsini march to the door.

Head up, shoulders back, spine straight, her long-legged stride on those amazing stilettos clearly sending a to-hell-with-you message.

Almost.

The shoes changed her walk, ever so slightly. Balancing on them made her hips sway, changing what she surely meant to be a brisk march into something feminine and damned near feline.

Golden-haired seductress. Cold-blooded consigliere. Which was the real Anna Orsini?

For a dangerous couple of seconds Draco came close to demanding the answer.

He would go after her, swing her toward him, look down into those blue eyes and say, Hell, woman, how dare you threaten me! Are you fool enough to think I can be brought to heel by you and your hoodlum father?

Or he’d say nothing at all.

He’d pull her into his arms, lower his head to hers and kiss her hard and deep until she forgot about being her father’s mouthpiece and became the woman he’d known on the plane, the one who’d come within a heartbeat of giving herself up to him.

Instead, he stood his ground. He didn’t even breathe until she slammed the door hard enough to make it rattle.

He had to move carefully. No rash decisions. No letting the emotions within him overtake logic.

Draco went to his desk and sat in the massive chair behind it.

No question, he had a problem. Anna’s threat had teeth.

Teeth?

Hell, it had fangs, fangs that could sink into his throat and destroy him. There were some businesses that sought publicity, that thrived on it.

Not Valenti Investments.

Even being mentioned in the same breath as a crook like Cesare Orsini could mean the end of everything he had worked for. Not just money, although the amount he might lose, for himself and for his clients, was staggering.

But there was more at stake than money. If Anna forced a public confrontation, Draco would lose that which mattered most to him.

The honor of his name. The respect it once again carried.

A muscle jumped in his cheek.

To think he’d almost had sex with her. With Cesare Orsini’s consigliere.

Cristo, he wanted to laugh!

Not that this was a laughing matter, Draco thought grimly as he took the gangster’s letters from his briefcase and stacked them on the desk in front of him. Nothing about the situation was even remotely amusing.

If only he’d known who she was last night, he’d never have let things go so far.

Actually, the more he thought about it, the less he understood why he had become involved with her at all.

Her name could be Jane Doe, and he wouldn’t want her.

She wasn’t his type. She was too tall, too blonde, too slender. His tastes ran to petite women. Brunettes, with voluptuous bodies.

And that attitude of hers, that feminist chip she carried on her shoulder …

What man in his right mind would be attracted to a woman who argued over everything?

Calmer now, he could see that it had been the situation, not the woman, that had turned him on. The hushed darkness. The isolation that came of being five miles above the earth. The added rush of knowing you were in a public setting.

Draco sat back in his chair.

Given all that, what man would not want to take things to their natural conclusion when he awoke with a woman draped over him like a blanket?

In a way, he owed Anna Orsini his thanks. Men thought with parts of their anatomy that had nothing to do with their brains. She had saved them both from making an embarrassing mistake.

Imagine if he’d actually had sex with the Orsini consigliere …

Draco did laugh this time.

There was a solution to the problem. There always was. And he would find it—something he could do to get the Orsinis, father and daughter, out of his life.

He was, above all else, a logical man. A pragmatist. And pragmatism, not emotion, would save the day. Control over your emotions was everything.

His father and those before him had never understood that.

They drank to excess. Gambled with money they didn’t have. They went from woman to woman, losing themselves in the kind of passion and intensity that could only lead to trouble.

The Valenti family history was a minefield of greed, infidelity, abandonment and divorce.

Absolutely, a man had to learn to curb his emotions. And Draco had learned early how to curb his.

His boyhood had been filled with scenes that still made him grimace. His mother had taken a string of lovers who helped themselves to what little remained of the family’s money. Still, she’d apparently found her life boring and abandoned her husband and Draco when he was a toddler.

His father might as well have done the same. He was too busy whoring and gambling to pay attention to his son. Draco’s early memories were of big, silent rooms, most of them stripped of what had once been elegant furnishings. The few servants who remained, overworked and underpaid, ignored him.

He had been a solitary and lonely child; it had never occurred to him other children might have had different existences from his.

One winter, his father stayed sober long enough to figure out that the last of what he’d still referred to as his staff had abandoned ship, leaving nine-year-old Draco to fend for himself.

The prince had given his young son orders to bathe and dress in his best clothes. Then he’d taken him to a school run by nuns.

The Mother Superior, who was also the principal, had eyed Draco and wrinkled her nose, as if he gave off a bad smell. She’d tested him in math. In science. In French and English.

Draco had known the answers to all her questions. He was a bright boy. An omnivorous reader. From age five he’d sought solace by immersing himself in the few remaining volumes in the once-proud Valenti library.

But he’d been struck speechless.

The nun’s voice had been sharp; he’d been able to see his own reflection in her eyeglasses, and that was somehow disorienting. Her coif had made her round face with its pointed nose look like an owl’s.

She had been, in his eyes, an alien creature, and he’d been terrified.

“Answer the Mother Superior,” his father had hissed.

Draco had opened his mouth, then shut it. The nun glared at his father, then at him.

“The boy is retarded,” she’d said. Her fingers had clamped hard on Draco’s shoulder. “Leave him with us, Prince Valenti. We will, if nothing else, teach him to fear his God.”

That was the theology he’d received at the hands of the sisters.

The other boys had taught him more earthly things to fear.

Beatings, on what was supposed to be the playground. Beatings at night, in the sour-smelling dormitory rooms. Humiliation after humiliation.

It had been the equivalent of tossing a puppy into a cage of hungry wolves.

Draco had been skinny and pale. His clothes were threadbare, but their style had marked him as a member of a despised upper class, as had the way in which he spoke. He was quiet, shy and bookish, with the formal manners of a boy who had never before dealt with other children.

It had been a recipe for disaster, either unnoticed or ignored by the sisters until one day, almost a year later, when Draco had decided he could not take any more.

It was lunchtime, and everyone had been on the playground. Draco saw one of his tormenters closing in.

All the hurt, the fear, the emotions he’d kept bottled inside him burst free.

He’d sprung at the other boy. The fight had turned ugly, but when it was over, the other kid was on the ground, sobbing. Draco, bloodied and bruised but victorious, had stood over him.

His reputation was made. And if keeping it meant stepping up to the challenge of other boys from time to time, beating them and, occasionally, being beaten in return, so be it.

The Mother Superior had said she’d always known he would come to no good.

The day he turned seventeen, one of the senior boys decided to give him a very special gift. He’d come to Draco during the night while he slept, slapped a hand over his mouth and yanked down his pajama bottoms.

Draco was no longer small or skinny. He had grown into manhood; he was six foot three inches of fight-hardened muscle.

With a roar, he’d shot up in bed, grabbed his attacker by the throat and if the other boys hadn’t pulled him off, he might have killed him.

The Mother Superior asked no questions.

“You are,” she told Draco, “a monster. You will never amount to anything. And you are unwanted here.”

He hadn’t argued. As far as he knew, she was right on all counts.

She’d expelled him, told him to be gone the next morning, and he’d thought, So be it.

That night he’d jimmied the lock on the door to her office and taken four hundred euros from her desk. Going home was not an option. He had no home, not really. The castle was in a state of near disaster and his father, who had visited him once the first year and then never again, meant nothing to him.

The next day he’d flown to New York with the clothes on his back, a determination to make something of himself, and a philosophy by which to live.

Never show weakness.

Never show emotion.

Trust no one but yourself.

New York was big, brash and unforgiving. It was also a place where anything was possible. For Draco, that “anything” meant finding a way to make sure he’d seen the last of hunger, poverty and humiliation.

He’d found jobs. In construction. As a waiter. A cab driver. He’d worked his royal ass off—not that anybody knew he was a royal. And in the dark of night, in a roach-infested room in a part of Brooklyn that was beyond any hope of gentrification, he’d lie awake and admit to himself that he was going nowhere.

A man needed a goal. A purpose. He’d had neither.

Until, purely by accident, he’d learned that his father had died.

Prince Mario Valenti, a one-inch item buried in the New York Post said, died yesterday in a shooting accident involving former movie star …

The details didn’t matter. His father had died a shameful death, broke and in debt. And in that moment Draco had known what he would do with his life.

He would redeem the Valenti name.

That meant paying off his father’s debts. Restoring the castle. Making the family name, even the accursedly ridiculous title, stand for something again.

He’d wanted a new start. To get it, he’d worked his way across the vast expanse of the United States. He liked Los Angeles, but San Francisco struck him as not just beautiful but the kind of place that rewarded individuality. He’d talked himself into San Francisco State University, chosen classes in mathematics and finance because he found them interesting. Writing a term paper, he’d stumbled upon an idea. An investment plan. It worked in theory but would it in real life?

Only one way to find out.

Draco took everything he’d set aside for the next year’s tuition and sank it in the stock market.

His money doubled. Tripled. Quadrupled. He quit school, devoted himself to investing.

And parlayed what he had into a not-so-small fortune.

“Draco Valenti,” the Wall Street Journal said the first time it mentioned him, “a new investor on the scene, who plays the market with icy skill.”

Was there any other way to play the market or, in fact, to play the game of life?

Eventually he founded his own company. Valenti Investments. He made mistakes, but mostly he made choices that led to dazzling successes.

He knew the dot com ride would not last forever, and acted accordingly. He thought packaged mortgages sold by banks made no sense and he bet his money, instead, on their eventual failure. He found small tech firms with big ideas and invested in them.

He made more money than seemed humanly possible, enough to buy the San Francisco condo, the Roman villa. Enough to restore the Valenti castle.

And enough to fund a school for poor kids in Rome and others in Sicily, New York and San Francisco, though he kept those endeavors strictly private.

He was tough, he was hard, he was not sentimental. The schools were simply a practical way of using up some of his money, and he’d be damned if he’d let anybody try to put a different spin on it.

Draco shoved aside the Orsini documents and swung his chair toward the window behind him.

There had to be a way around the Orsini problem.

Valenti Investments could not, must not, go under. He could live through the financial loss—hell, life was, at best, an uphill battle—but to tarnish the Valenti name …

He could not bear the thought of that happening again.

He turned from the window.

There was a solution, and he would find it, but not by concentrating on it. He would, instead, do what he always did at moments of stress. He would think about anything but the problem at hand. He would think logically. Rid his thoughts of emotion.

Draco rang the intercom. His PA answered.

“I have some letters to dictate,” he said.

But, damnit, Anna Orsini would not stay in the mental file drawer in which he’d placed her. She kept appearing in his mind, front and center.

Ridiculous, because she was not really the problem. Her father was.

Then why did he keep seeing her face, that sleepy, sexy look in her eyes when she’d lain in his arms last night?

Why did he keep remembering the way she dressed, the conservative suit, the do-me stilettos?

What did she have on under that suit? Was it the equivalent of banker’s gray? Or was it silk and lace, as sexy as the shoes?

“Sir?” his PA said.

Draco blinked.

“Sorry,” he said briskly. “Uh, where was I?”

“The Tolland merger,” his PA said, and Draco nodded and picked up where he’d left off in his dictation.

Five minutes later, he gave up.

“That’s all for now, Sylvana,” he said.

His PA left the room. Draco rose to his feet, grabbed his suit coat and went to lunch. He followed that with a long, hard workout at his gym.

He still had not come up with a way to handle the Orsini situation.

Worse, Anna Orsini was still in his head.

At five, he called for his car.

“Where to, sir?” his driver said.

Draco thought of the various answers he could give.

He could go out to dinner. He had no reservations anywhere, but that would not matter. There was not a ristorante in Rome that would not give him its best table if he showed up at the door.

He could take out his BlackBerry, phone one of a dozen beautiful women. There wasn’t one in Rome who would deny him anything he might ask of her, even at the last minute.

That made him think of his mistress, waiting for him in Hawaii.

Cristo, he had not thought of her once the entire day.

“Take me home,” he told his driver, and while the big car made its way through the crushing end-of-day traffic, Draco put through a call to her.

“Hello?” she said in a sleepy voice.

What time was it in Hawaii, anyway? No way was he going to ask.

“It’s me,” he said. “How are you?”

“Draco,” she said. He could picture the look on her face. Sultry, sexy, pouty. “I thought you’d forgotten me.”

Draco rubbed his temple with his free hand.

“How did you spend your day?” he said, because he knew he had to say something.

She laughed.

“I spent it shopping, darling. Well, window-shopping. I have a whole bunch of gorgeous things picked out for you to buy me when you get back.”

Draco closed his eyes and imagined the hours she’d expect him to spend in a dozen different boutiques.

“When will you be back, Draco?” Her voice turned husky. “I miss you.”

The truth was she missed the status that came of being seen with him. The knowledge that he would buy her whatever she’d shopped for today. She missed his title, his status, his money.

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