Making love was a woman’s phrase, a female way of twisting words to turn something basic and honest into something they could do without having to admit they had the same appetites as men.
Men spoke of making love, but the truth was that as far as they were concerned, “making love” was a euphemism for a four-letter word or, in polite company, a three-letter one.
S-e-x.
It was what men and women did in bed. It was what he and Anna had done. In bed, and out of it. Against the wall, with her legs wrapped around him. Against the vanity, with his hands on her hips. In the shower, with the soap turning their skin slick …
Was he insane? He had to be, or why would he be driving along at a zillion miles an hour and turning himself on with hot images of a woman he was sorry he’d ever met?
The gates to his villa loomed ahead. Draco slowed the Ferrari, depressed a button and the gates swung slowly open.
The point was they’d had sex. And then she’d brought them both down to earth by accusing him of figuring the night they’d spent together might have been a quid pro quo.
What it had been, he thought grimly as he pulled up before the villa and killed the engine, what it had been was pure, raw hunger.
It had filled him, nearly consumed him, though he’d refused to admit it, even to himself, until Anna had opened the hotel door, looking beautiful without makeup, with her hair a sexy tumble of untamed curls; looking delicate and strong—and no way was he going to try to figure out how a woman could seem strong and fragile at the same time.
Anna did, that was all.
She was too complex for her own good and certainly for his, and knowing that, he’d still wanted her.
And she had wanted him just as intensely, just as passionately, even though he was supposed to be her enemy.
She had an honest, open attitude toward sex. He liked that about her, too. And damnit, it was ridiculous to fault her for putting into words what a man might well have thought—that maybe being intimate had put an end to their legal dispute.
Only a man would think that way. Or, at least, speak so bluntly.
Was that what this was all about?
Was he angry because Anna Orsini was a gorgeous, desirable woman, never mind all that nonsense about her simply being attractive, who spoke a man’s thoughts and expressed a man’s hunger? He’d never dealt with a woman like her before.
Did it make him uncomfortable?
Or did it go beyond that?
Was it because in some deep, dark foolish part of him, he wanted to know if she was like this with other men? Was she as ready, as hot, as wet for them as she had been for him?
Not that he gave a damn …
Draco slapped his hands against the steering wheel.
There was no logic to it. There could not be any logic to it. He’d made a mistake, and that was that.
He should never have permitted the controversy with Cesare Orsini to go this far. He should have ignored that last letter. Failing that, he should not have gone ahead and met with Orsini’s representative without his own lawyer present.
But he had, and now he’d compounded the mess by sleeping with Anna.
He was tired of the nonsense. Of all of it. A thug who had spent his life stealing from others and thought he could go on doing it. A woman who thought he might see sex as a bargaining tool …
Draco narrowed his eyes.
Was that the real purpose of that little speech? Had she hoped that he truly had seen the night as a kind of trade? She’d given him a night to remember; he would give her the land?
Hold on, a voice inside him said, she never even suggested that. It was you, dummy. You haven’t just leaped to a conclusion, you arrived in that fantasyland all by yourself. And you didn’t just arrive there, you landed with both feet. Remember what you said about her doing her father’s dirty work in her bed?
A mess. At total, stinking mess.
Draco got out of the car and slammed the door behind him.
Who cared who had done what? He’d had enough of the Orsinis, father and daughter.
By nightfall he’d be rid of them both.
Anna had packed lightly for her trip to Rome.
Two suits. Four white silk blouses. Three pairs of heels, and what had that full-of-himself fool meant by calling her stilettos ‘ridiculous’?
“You try going without lunch for four months to buy a pair,” she muttered as she pawed through the clothes she’d brought with her.
Better still, let him try wearing them.
The picture that leaped into her head, Draco attempting to stuff his big feet into her size sevens, might have made her laugh if she’d been in a laughing mood. But she wasn’t, not even over the Cinderella story told in reverse.
Besides, no matter how you turned things around, Prince Valenti was no Prince Charming.
He was an aristocratic, autocratic idiot, she thought grimly. And if she owed him for anything, it was that he’d gone out of his way to remind her of it.
Such an overreaction to her simple statement about them still being adversaries. How could you insult a man by telling him the truth?
Or maybe that was the problem. Maybe the truth was that he’d figured he was so good in bed that he’d dazzled her into giving up what had brought her to Rome in the first place.
Anna rolled her eyes as she searched through her clothes.
That would never work with her. She wasn’t a girlish fool who’d lose her girlish heart over him just because she’d slept with him, and what was with the silly euphemism?
They hadn’t slept together—they’d had sex. That’s what it always was to a man, and to any woman with a functional brain.
One of the things Anna loved about the law was that it had the right words to describe whatever needed describing.
Sex was like that.
Why pretend? Why give the act fanciful names that had to do with sleeping or, even worse, with romance? Why make it sound as if the heart was involved in a strictly biological act?
As for her pointing out that a night of sex had not changed the bottom line … The almighty prince might not like hearing the truth, but people traded sex for what they really wanted all the time. Her professional life was full of examples. Sad-eyed women staying with men who beat them, just so they could have roofs over their heads. Gorgeous models married grotesque old men so they could wallow in money and jewels.
Anna’s mouth thinned.
There were other kinds of trades, too. Look at the one her own mother had made.
Sofia Orsini stayed with her gangster husband so that she wouldn’t have to face the disgrace that went with an old-fashioned Sicilian woman asking for a divorce. What other explanation could there possibly be?
Anna slapped her hands on her hips and blew a curl off her forehead.
Well, she wasn’t like that.
She didn’t need a man to keep her housed, clothed and fed. She didn’t want jewels or anything she couldn’t afford to buy for herself. And she sure as hell would divorce a bastard who deserved divorce, except she’d never have to.
Marriage, a lifetime commitment, was absolutely not on her agenda.
She liked men, liked spending time with them, liked having sex on occasion, but all on her own straightforward terms. No trading. No promises. No lies.
Love was an illusion. Sex was sex, and what did any of that have to do with the ugly little scene here a few minutes ago?
She’d made a candid statement. How had Draco managed to make it sound, well, cheap? It wasn’t. It had been honest, that was all.
The prince didn’t like honesty? Too bad.
And she wasn’t going to forget that accusation he’d hurled at her. Suggesting she’d gone to bed with him to change his mind about the land …
That had hurt. Because making love with him … No. Having sex with him had been, it had been …
“Damnit,” Anna said, her voice shaking.
Never mind thinking about what had happ
ened.
It was time to look forward.
And where were the jeans, the T, the sneakers she knew she’d packed? She always brought along stuff like that. Getting snowed in at an airport in upstate New York on a ski trip her senior year in law school had taught her two things.
One, she hated skiing.
Two, when you flew anywhere, you always had to pack something comfortable to wear.
And there were the things she’d been looking for, tucked on a shelf in the tiny hotel-room closet. Old jeans. Older sneakers. An ancient T-shirt that she positively adored.
Who wouldn’t?
This was not any T, it was the one Isabella had given her on her last birthday. It was vintage, from the 1970s. Isabella said she’d found it in a little shop in Soho. The shirt was gray and slightly faded, but the words that marched across the front of it read loud and clear.
A Woman Needs a Man Like a Fish Needs a Bicycle.
Truer words had never graced a T-shirt.
Anna took off the robe, pulled on a bra and panties, stepped into the jeans, zipped them up and tugged the shirt over her head.
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.
CHAPTER TEN
DRACO 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.
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