The Ice Prince (10 page)

The jeans rode low on her hips; the shirt was a little short.

She looked in the mirror. Her belly button showed. Maybe she’d get it pierced when she got home.

Too bad she hadn’t done it sooner. Then she’d be wearing the perfect outfit for Draco’s stuffy office because, of course, that was where he was taking her.

Did he think the formal setting would intimidate her?

The hell it would.

Neither would whatever he intended to say.

She wasn’t finished with this fight. There were courts here, just as there were back home, and Cesare had all the money she’d need for translators, lawyers, the works.

Plus, just as she’d warned Draco, there was the ever-voracious press. He was right—her father would not want the publicity. But who cared what Cesare wanted? He’d sent her here. How she handled things was her business.

Anna grabbed her purse.

Forget going home tomorrow. She would stay in Rome as long as it took to recoup her mother’s land.

She didn’t know how she’d pull it off, not yet, but she would.

After that, Prince Draco Marcellus Valenti could go straight to hell.

D
RACO
saw Anna the minute he pulled his car to the curb outside the hotel.

She was standing a few feet away, highlighted by the watery sun that had appeared after the rain, and he could see that she’d taken his advice.

No lady lawyer suit. No killer heels. She wore jeans, sneakers, a T-shirt. What did the shirt say? He squinted, read it … and knew he was in for a long day.

At least she looked like an average woman.

The hell she did.

There was nothing average about her. It was all pure Anna, from the straight-as-an-arrow posture to the defiant set of her chin, from the tips of those well-worn and, he was sure, definitely unfashionable sneakers to the gold curls that were already trying to spring free of whatever it was she’d used to tie them back.

What was it he’d thought before? Delicate but strong—and so what?

He wanted her gone, and by tomorrow she would be.

The guy in the Gilbert and Sullivan get-up spotted him, saw Anna begin marching toward him and rushed past her, his obvious goal to score points by reaching the car before she did.

Anna offered a stony glare and a dismissive wave of her hand.

All she had to add was a thumbs-down gesture and a lion would surely have appeared to sink its fangs into the poor guy and drag him away.

And then there was that T-shirt. Never mind the way her breasts thrust against the thin cotton, or the way it clung to her skin. It was the message written across it that got him, that woman-bicycle-fish thing.

For some crazy reason it made him want to drag her into the car and kiss her until she wound her arms around his neck and begged him to make love to her—except it wasn’t love, it was, just as she’d pointed out, sex.

“You find this amusing?” she demanded.

Draco turned what threatened to be a grin into a scowl.

“Nothing about you is amusing, Orsini.” He leaned across the front seat and pushed the door open. “Get in.”

“Perhaps you didn’t get my message. I don’t need you to open doors. I am perfectly capable of doing things for myself.”

Her voice rang with icy scorn. Draco narrowed his eyes. The lady needed some lessons in manners, and for the few hours she’d still be annoyingly at his side he was damned well going to be the one teaching them to her.

“Forgive me,” he said, his voice as chilly as hers. “For a moment I forgot how you feel about good manners.”

Her face went pink. Good, he thought grimly. In fact, excellent.

“As for your treatment of the doorman, he was simply trying to do his job.”

“A useless job.”

“A job,” Draco said. “Something that puts food on the table, though I doubt if someone in your situation would ever have to worry about that.”

Anna felt her color deepen.

He was right, of course, though what a prince would know about putting food on the table was beyond her.

She certainly knew what it was like. How it felt to worry about money. When you refused financial support from your father to get you through university, when you lied to your brothers and said thanks but you didn’t need any help paying your tuition, your room, your board …

“You going to get in the car or not? Make up your mind,
consigliere.
I’m not in the mood for games.”

What she wanted to do was slam the door in his handsome, arrogant face, but, speaking of jobs, she had one to do and she was going to do it.

Anna tossed her head, slid into the passenger seat and flashed a sickly-sweet smile at the doorman when he reached, warily, for the door.

“Grazie,”
she said, but when she looked at Draco, the saccharine smile faded. “You,” she said, each letter a virtual pellet of ice, “would, of course, be fully cognizant of what it’s like to worry about putting food on the table.”

Draco thought back to the years he’d spent eating one meal a day so he could put most of what he earned into paying for the exorbitant costs of getting his degree—well, of almost getting that degree—but he’d never told anyone about those years and no way was he ever going to talk about it with someone like Anna Orsini.

Instead, he handed the doorman a tip and then stepped hard on the gas.

“Oh, I don’t know,” he said as the car shot away from the curb. “Truffles and caviar aren’t always easy to find.”

Anna glared at him. A joke? For all she knew, a statement of fact.

Not that she cared.

Her temper was at boiling point again, and there was nobody to blame but herself.

She despised Draco Valenti, yet she’d gone to bed with him. She was a modern woman, yes. But she was a discriminating woman. She did not go to bed with men she despised.

Now she was compounding that error by, heaven help her, obeying his regal commands.

What was she doing, sitting in his car like an obedient slave? Why was she letting him take her somewhere without knowing where that somewhere was? Why had she not worn what he’d scoffingly referred to as her lady lawyer outfit? That’s what she was. A lawyer, never mind the sexist and demeaning “lady” sobriquet.

And not to dwell on it or anything …

Why had she ever gone to bed with him?

Because you wanted to,
a scathing voice inside her purred.
Because he’s gorgeous and sexy, funny and smart. He’s arrogant, too, and you love his unmitigated arrogance. You love it when he has the balls to stand up to you, love it even more when he takes you in his arms and changes everything you thought you knew about being with a man ….

“… change everything you thought you knew about it,” Draco said.

Anna swung toward him, horrified. “I didn’t mean to say …”

His eyebrows rose. Okay! She hadn’t said anything. She was not so far out of touch with reality that she was speaking her thoughts out loud.

“Never mind,” she said quickly. “I, uh, I was just—just thinking about something ….”

Draco narrowed his eyes.

Thinking about what?
he wondered.

Her eyes had gone blurry; her cheeks had taken on a rosy glow. It reminded him of how she looked in the heat of passion,
when he’d held her in his arms, her body warm and yielding as he moved inside her, her moans of ecstasy his, all his …

Damnit, he thought in righteous indignation, what was wrong with him?

“Forget thinking,” he snapped, “and try paying attention. And I know it’s difficult, but try having an open mind, okay?”

“About what?”

“About my land in Sicily.”

“It’s Orsini land.”

Draco snorted. How had he forgotten, even for a second, that this was Anna Orsini, her father’s
consigliere?
Anything else was just an illusion.

They rode in silence for a few minutes. Then Anna turned toward him, frowning.

“This isn’t the way to your office.”

“No,” he said calmly. “It isn’t.”

“Then where are we going?”

“To a place where we can settle this idiocy.”

“If you think I’m going to let you take me somewhere to try and seduce me—”

“Did anyone ever tell you that you have an overblown opinion of yourself as a sexual trophy?”

“You,” Anna said through her teeth, “are a horrible human being!”

Draco laughed. That only made her angrier. She was glaring at him, her lips set in a thin, angry line. What would she do if he pulled to the shoulder of the road, pulled her into his arms and kissed her until her lips softened, parted, clung to his?

He would not do it, of course; he was done with kissing her or even touching her. He wasn’t interested in her anymore; it was just idle thought …

“And,” she said, “I am not letting you drive one more mile until you tell me where—”

“Sicily.”

Just as he’d figured, shock replaced the look of fury on her face.

“Sicily? You and I are going to—”

“Right. You and I, and a pilot.”

That was when Anna saw the sign. Aeroporto Ciampino. She didn’t hesitate, didn’t stop to weigh her words. She simply swung toward him and said, “No!”

“In fact …” Draco checked his mirror, accelerated, swung around a black van in the lane ahead. “We’re running late. I want to be off the ground before—”

“Listen to me, Draco. I am not flying anywhere with you.”

“We aren’t flying ‘anywhere,’
consigliere,
we’re flying to Sicily.”

“Forget the word games! And stop calling me
consigliere.
”

“It’s what you are, aren’t you?”

“I am not my father’s counselor. I am not even his lawyer. I’m his daughter, and I am not letting you take me to Sicily.”

“Wow,” Draco said, his voice thick with sarcasm, “so much information in one breath! I’m impressed.”

“Damn you, Valenti—”

Anna gave a little cry as he swung the wheel hard to the right, pulled onto the shoulder of the road and put the car in neutral.

“Frankly,” he said, turning toward her, his eyes, his words, cold, “I don’t care what you call yourself, lady. You came to Italy to do a job for your old man. You made threats. You—”

“Threats?” Anna laughed. “What, do you think I’m
carrying a pistol? That I’m going to put a gun to your head and—”

Draco moved fast. Too fast for her to protest. One heartbeat, he was sitting next to her; the next, he’d pulled her half over the gear shift and into his arms.

“I know every inch of you,” he said in a low voice. His hand swept up her side, cupped her breast; Anna gasped and tried to slap his hand away, but he wouldn’t let her. “So, no, I don’t think you’re going to threaten me physically.” His eyes grew dark and hot. “Hell,” he growled, “you’re already a physical threat, Anna. When you’re in my arms, when you’re looking at me the way you are now,
Dio,
I can’t think straight.”

“I don’t know what you mean. And you’d better let go of me, Valenti. Let go, or—”

Draco cupped the back of her head and brought her mouth to his. Anna stiffened, tried to twist away … and then she moaned, wound her arms around his neck and sucked his tongue into her mouth.

The kiss was long and deep; it left her shaken. When Draco finally drew back, she was trembling.

“This is crazy,” she whispered. “Just plain crazy! We cannot—”

“Yes,” Draco said roughly, “we can.”

“One minute we’re enemies. The next … the next—”

He kissed her again, his lips gentle on hers, so gentle that she wanted to sigh, to melt, to stay in his arms not so much for the sexual pleasure she knew he could bring her but for the simple joy of feeling his arms around her.

The thought was unsettling, and she tore her lips from his. He let her do it, let her turn her head and lay it against his chest.

“Please.” Her voice was low, almost breathless. “Please, Draco. Don’t.”

Draco held Anna close, one hand stroking her hair, the other on the small of her back.

He was a man who’d had considerable experience with women. Perhaps that was putting it modestly. He’d been with a lot of women, all of them willing and eager. Sometimes, despite all the talk of women meaning what they said, women who said “don’t” meant just the opposite.

“Don’t,” a woman might say, even as she put her hand over your fly. “Don’t,” she’d say, even as she moaned into your mouth and rubbed against you. “Don’t,” she’d whisper, when she wanted you to tell her why she should be saying “Do.”

That was how he knew, with all the instincts of a man holding an aroused woman in his arms, that “don’t” was not what Anna really meant.

She wanted him.

He could hear it in her voice, feel it in the way she trembled in his arms, in the way she remained curled tightly against him. One more drugging kiss. One more caress and she would whisper his name, lift her mouth to his, kiss him with all the passion he knew was in her.

But he didn’t kiss her, or touch her. Instead, he went on holding her, his eyes closed, his face buried in her hair. Long moments went by before he raised his head.

“Anna.”

She sighed. Then she sat up and her eyes met his.

His heart turned over.

Delicate and strong, his Anna. His beautiful, beautiful Anna.

“Anna.” Draco stroked back the riot of curls that had come loose from her ponytail. “Something is happening with us,
bellissima.
”

Anna shook her head.

“We’re attracted to each other,” she said quickly. “Why make it sound so unusual?”

She was right. There was nothing unusual in a man and a woman desiring each other. So why did her swift denial anger him?

Draco sat up straight. Checked for traffic, then pulled onto the road.

“We both want more of what happened last night,” he said brusquely. “Don’t waste time denying it, Anna. You know I’m speaking the truth.”

Anna smoothed back her hair, redid the ponytail, folded her hands in her lap.

Damnit, why were they shaking?

“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “There’s still the land.”

“Exactly. That’s why we’re going to Sicily. We’ll settle this thing once and for all. And then—”

“And then,” Anna said firmly, “I’ll go home.”

The plane was a small private jet, all leather and luxury inside. The pilot and Draco shook hands, Draco introduced Anna, all of it done with the politeness of people doing business for the first time.

Not Draco’s plane, then,
Anna thought as she settled into her seat.

“It’s a rental,” Draco said as if she’d spoken the thought aloud. “Mine is en route to Rome, from Hawaii.”

Rome. Hawaii. Sicily, and hadn’t some of the documents in her father’s file carried a San Francisco address?

The prince knew his way around the world.

Around women, too. That was why she felt so confused. It wasn’t him. Or rather it was, but not because of anything special he made her feel. She was confused because he was so suave, so sophisticated, so damned smooth. She knew men who thought they were all those things, but she’d never known one like Draco.

And that was over.

She’d come to Italy on business, and this trip to Sicily wasn’t going to change that.

A couple of hours from now she’d have seen whatever earthshaking thing he wanted her to see, and then Rome and Sicily and Prince Draco Valenti would be history.