Sandra Marton - The Princes' Brides

Of all the women he’d known, Aimee Black was the last woman in the world he would ever consider marrying. Her morals were lacking and it wasn’t because she’d slept with him that night.

It was because she’d done it as part of an act.

Nicolo took another mouthful of coffee.

Maybe his ego demanded it. Maybe his male pride required it. Whatever the reason, he’d wanted to believe that the woman with the violet eyes had felt the same uncontrollable hunger he had felt. That she could no more have kept from making love with him than she could have stopped breathing.

That what had happened that night was the most exciting memory of her life, and that they had created that memory with equal passion and desire.

He could see her now, that night in his bed. Eyes dark with pleasure. Skin fragrant with her need…

“Your sandwich, sir.”

Nicolo blinked. Had he ordered a sandwich?

“Would you like anything else? More coffee?”

Nicolo pushed the plate aside, rose to his feet and dropped a hundred-dollar bill on the table.

“No,” he said brusquely, and added what he hoped was a polite smile and a hurried, “Grazie.”

It wasn’t the bartender’s fault that what he wanted, what he damned well would not be denied, could not be found in this bar.

Aimee sat slumped on the sofa in her apartment, face buried in her hands.

Her anger was gone, replaced by a terrible emptiness in her heart.

“Let me explain,” Grandfather had said.

Explain what? That he’d been willing to sell her to a foreigner to get what he wanted for his precious bank?

She’d fled his office, ignored his voice calling after her, stumbled into a taxi and gone home.

She’d never harbored any illusions about her grandfather’s feelings for her. His lack of feelings, she amended, with a bitter smile. She’d accepted it.

What other choice did she have?

He’d taken her in after she’d lost her parents. He’d raised her, or maybe it was more accurate to say he’d paid a series of nannies and housekeepers to raise her. He’d sent her to the best schools; he’d seen to it she had tennis and skiing and riding lessons, all the things his fortune could buy.

But he’d never really loved her.

What he loved was his bank and the dead Staffords, Coleridges and Blacks who’d founded it. Everything else, including her, was secondary.

Even so, she’d never dreamed him capable of such a cold-blooded scheme. That he’d want to marry her off to a stranger…

Except, Nicolo Barbieri—Prince Barbieri—was not a stranger. He was the man she’d made love with endless times in a few short hours.

How could she have done that? Climaxed in his arms when she hadn’t even known his name?

Nausea roiled in her belly. Aimee clamped her hand to her mouth, raced to the bathroom and reached it just in time. A couple of moments later, pale and shaken, she flushed the commode and sank down on the closed seat.

God, she felt awful. She was tired of throwing up, tired of just plain feeling tired.

This time, at least she had a reason for feeling so rotten. Who wouldn’t, after today?

That son of a bitch. Prince Barbieri. Prince of Darkness, was more like it. To call her a—a—

She couldn’t even think the word.

How could he believe she’d deliberately seduced him? Offered herself as bait for her grandfather’s vile proposition?

She’d slept with Nicolo Barbieri because—because she’d been upset. Anxious. Stressed.

Aimee groaned and put her face in her hands again.

She’d slept with him because she’d wanted to. Because he was the most exciting man she’d ever seen and because she’d fantasized about him all that afternoon.

That was why she’d refused to exchange names.

To make what had happened real would have meant despising herself for what she’d let him do…

And ever since that night, she’d wanted him to do it all again.

No wonder he’d looked at her with such loathing today. She loathed herself. But to believe she’d deliberately—

The ringing of the phone made her jump.

She didn’t want to talk to anybody. Especially her grandfather and that was probably him calling. He was furious at her. She’d walked out of his office without a word, ignored his demand that she come back.

Let the answering machine deal with him. She wasn’t going to.

Another ring. Then the machine picked up.

Hi. You’ve reached 555-6145. Please leave a message after the tone.

“Ms. Black, this is Dr. Glassman’s office. Your test results are in. Please call our office between the hours of eight and—”

She ran for the phone, snatched it up. “I’m here! I mean, this is Ms. Black.”

“Ms. Black? Please hold for the doctor.”

Aimee held, imagining the worst. Why not, on a day like this? A brain tumor. A rare blood malady. Or—her breath caught at how stupid she was not to have thought of it sooner.

Or an illness of the kind people got these days, from having unprotected sex.

No. Not that.

Whatever else he was, she could not imagine the Prince of Darkness having that kind of disease.

“Ms. Black? Dr. Glassman here…”

Aimee listened. And listened. Then she put down the phone and stared blankly at the wall.

She’d thought right.

Nicolo Barbieri hadn’t give her a disease.

He’d given her a baby.

She sat motionless for hours, wrapped in her robe, oblivious to the passage of time.

What to do? What to do?

She was single. Unemployed. Living on temporary jobs because she refused to let her grandfather support her.

No money, no prospects, this small apartment in a not-very-good neighborhood…

This time, it wasn’t the phone that beat shrilly against the silence, it was the doorbell.

Aimee ignored it. Whoever it was would go away. The UPS man with a package, the super to drill a peephole in the door, something she’d been requesting for months.

The bell rang again. And again. Whoever was out there was persistent.

Aimee sighed, rose to her feet and went to the door. She undid the locks. The chain. Cracked the door an inch…

And felt the blood drain from her head.

“No,” she said. “No—”

“Yes,” Nicolo growled, and just as he had that fateful night, he put his shoulder to the door and forced it open.

THEY SAID TIME defused anger.

The hell it did.

In the thirty or forty minutes Nicolo had spent looking up Aimee Black in the telephone directory, then taking a taxi all the way downtown, through the tangled snarl of midmorning traffic, his anger didn’t cool one bit.

If anything, it changed to something so hot and fierce he could damned near feel it inside him.

It was bad enough she’d been part of the ugly scam her grandfather had designed. If the actual seduction wasn’t part of it, at least the come-on was.

What was worse was that she’d kept lying to him, not only that night but again this morning.

She had intended to entice him. He was certain of that. Now, she’d lied about what she’d felt in his arms. She hadn’t intended to get caught up in her own game, but she had.

He was certain of it.

He knew women. The little things they did when they wanted to boost a man’s ego. The things they did when their passion was real.

What Aimee felt had been real.

The throaty little moans. The soft cries. The lift of her hips to his. Real. All of it. So real, he knew he’d never forget anything they had done together.

And he was damned well going to force her to admit it. She might have come on to him deliberately but after the first few minutes in his arms, everything had changed.