The Ice Prince (3 page)

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.

D
RACO
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—”