Sandra Marton - The Orsini Brides

Strange. There was something familiar about him …

Anna’s heart leaped into her throat. No, she thought, no!

She made a sound, something between a choked gasp and a low moan. The man heard it.

“I do not appreciate being kept waiting,” he said coldly as he swung toward her …

“You,” Draco Valenti, il Principe Draco Marcellus Valenti of Rome and Sicily said, and the only good thing about this awful, terrible moment was that Anna knew the surprise and shock on his cold, classically beautiful face had to mirror hers.

DRACO stared at the figure in the doorway.

No. No! It was not possible!

Lots of women had golden hair. Eyes the color of the Tyrrhenian Sea. A soft-looking, tender-pink mouth …

Dio, who was he trying to fool?

It was she. It was her. And what the hell did the intricacies of English grammar matter right now? He hadn’t worried about his command of English in years, not since he’d taken the small financial company he’d started on equal parts bluff, brains and balls and turned it into an empire.

That a woman—that this woman—should turn his life so upside down proved that his brain was scrambled …

And, yes, impossible or not, it was the same woman. No question, no doubt. The unforgettable face, the curvaceous body demurely hidden within a dressed-for-success suit, the long legs set off by nothing-demure-about-them stiletto heels …

This was the woman he’d almost initiated into the Mile High club. Although initiated might be the wrong word. The way she’d come awake in his arms, the way she’d responded to his kisses …

For all he knew, she was a charter member.

Or wasn’t.

She’d gone from hot to cold in the blink of an eye, and—

And who cared about that?

What was she doing here? She could be in Rome, yes. But she most assuredly could not be Cesare Orsini’s rep resentative.

Had she come looking for him? Maybe she hadn’t been able to forget what had happened and now she wanted to finish that long, exciting slide into sexual oblivion …

Forget that.

His receptionist had buzzed him. Cesare Orsini’s representative is here, sir, she’d said. And his receptionist had been with him a long time. No one could get past her without proper ID. So this had to be—it had to be—

The woman stopped in the doorway, face white.

“Ohmygod,” she said. “Ohmygod!”

Draco’s last, faint hope that this was a mistake vanished.

“You?” The woman reached for the doorjamb, curved her hand around it as if that might keep her from fainting. Her voice rose an octave. “You’re Draco Valenti?”

Draco took a deep breath. “And you are …?”

She laughed, but it was not a real laugh. It was the kind of sound someone might make when what was really called for was an anguished wail of despair.

“The Orsini attorney.”

Draco had always heard that hope died hard. Now he discovered that it didn’t simply die—it crashed to earth in flames.

“Small world,” he said drily.

She nodded. “Small, indeed.” All at once the look of shock vanished. “Wait a minute,” she said slowly, letting go of the jamb, straightening to her full height. Her eyes narrowed. “It was all deliberate!”

“I beg your pardon?”

Color suffused her face. “I cannot believe anyone would resort to such a thing.”

“Perhaps you’d like to enlighten me, Miss—Miss—”

She stalked toward him menacingly, a cat approaching its prey.

“You set me up!”

“What?”

“You—you sneaky, slimy—”

“Watch what you say to me,” Draco said sharply.

“You played me for a patsy!”

What did that mean? This woman was playing havoc in his head.

“You tried to take advantage of me!”

Draco gave a mirthless laugh.

“Are we back to that?” Slowly he let his gaze travel over her, from head to toe and back again. “Believe me, if I could erase that momentary behavioral aberration, I would.”

A momentary behavioral aberration? Was that what he called what had happened—what had almost happened? And that chill in his eyes. In his voice. How could he speak so—so clinically of what had taken place on the plane?

Anna narrowed her eyes until they were slits.

“That behavioral aberration,” she said, somehow making the words sound as if they consisted of four letters each, “was a clever ploy. At least, that’s what you intended it to be. But it didn’t work, did it? It didn’t work because I’m not one of your—your women.”

Draco raised an eyebrow. Looked over his shoulder. Stared into the corners of the elegant room.

“My women?” he purred.

She tossed her head.

“You know damned well what I mean. A man like you thinks he can snap his fingers and the entire female population of the planet will fall at his feet!”

“An interesting abuse of the laws of physics,” he said coldly. “And what has it to do with you and me and that airplane?”

“You thought you could compromise my position.”

“Was that the position you took when your leg was draped over mine?” Draco said with chilling politeness.

Her face turned an angry shade of crimson.

“You’re despicable!”

“And you are wasting my time.”

“You knew who I was all the time, Valenti!”

“You will address me as ‘prince’ or ‘sir,’” Draco heard himself say, and tried not to wince at the idiocy of it, but what better way to deal with the representative of a smarmy Sicilian gangster than to play on the ancient, if ridiculous, elements of class distinction?

“That’s why you invited me to sit with you.”

“I hope you know what you’re talking about, madam, because I most assuredly do not!”

She strode forward, came to a stop inches from him. The scent of her rose to him, something as feminine, delicate and sexy as her stiletto heels.

He recalled the scent from those moments she’d lain in his arms on the plane.

He recalled more than that.

The feel of her, pressed against him. The softness of her breasts against his chest. The heat of her body. The swift race of her heart against his, the sigh of her breath …

Draco frowned.

His body was remembering, too. Damnit, that was the wrong thing to have happen right now.

“You offered me that seat for a reason!”

“I offered it out of the goodness of my heart and the graciousness of my soul.”

“Ha!”

She tossed her head again. A couple of golden curls slipped free of whatever it was women called those silly things they used to catch their hair and keep it from falling free, as nature had intended.

“How pathetic! That you’d stoop to such measures.”

Her mouth was curled with contempt. Yes, he thought, but he could uncurl it in a heartbeat, kiss that mouth until it softened and sweetened under his.

“You—knew—who—I—was,” she said hotly, punctuating the words by jabbing her index finger into the center of his chest. “And don’t bother trying to deny it!”

Had he missed something? Had he been so busy remembering the taste of her, the feel of her, that he’d lost track of the conversation?

The realization made him even angrier.

“Deny what?” he demanded. “And stop doing that,” he growled, clasping her hand and folding his fingers around hers.