The Orsini Brides: The Ice Prince / The Real Rio D'Aquila

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.