“I was just thinking that this is the first time, the very first time in my life, I’m going to have pasta for breakfast.”
Draco watched as she busied herself with the ragù. He took the pot he assumed his housekeeper used for pasta from a cupboard, brought it to the sink and filled it with water.
Was that really what she’d been thinking? Pasta for breakfast? A first for him, too …
There were more firsts for him this morning than pasta.
Early-morning conversation with a woman. Breakfast with her. No thought at all of business. That alone was inconceivable, that he should have awakened as he had, his thoughts not on the day’s business agenda or how the New York market would open but on, of all things, a woman.
And what, exactly, did that mean?
The water began to boil.
Draco lowered the flame and wished he could lower the boiling point of whatever it was that was happening inside him.
A muscle knotted in his jaw.
Anna was still at the stove, concentrating on stirring the sauce as if her life depended on it.
Was she as confused as he was?
Yesterday he’d told her that something was happening. The question was, what? He needed time and space to clear his head.
“Draco.”
He looked at Anna. Her face was pale.
“I have to leave.”
He didn’t answer.
“Go back to New York, I mean.”
Still he didn’t respond. Anna expelled a breath.
“I came to do a job and I’ve done it.” She gave a little laugh. “I mean, I came to do a job and now I know there’s no job to do. The land is absolutely yours. I don’t even know how my father came up with that story, but—”
“I understand,” he said politely … and then he looked at her, really looked at her, and felt himself growing angry. At her. At him. At them both. He moved toward her, clasped her shoulders, pulled her to her toes and glowered. “Goddamnit, Anna, you’re not going anywhere!”
“Don’t be ridiculous. I have to.”
“What you have to do is stay here. With me.”
“No.” Her voice took on a panicked edge. “I can’t. My work—”
“I have work, too. Call your office, as I will call mine. Tell them you won’t be in for a week.”
“Draco. I can’t simp—”
He kissed her. Again and again, his arms hard around her, until she was hanging on to him to keep her knees from buckling.
“Stop,” she whispered. “I can’t think when you—”
“I am not asking you to think. I am asking you to do.”
Oh, he was so sure of himself! So arrogant. So demanding. So certain that because he was a man, he could bend her to his will.
“I have a job,” she said. “A life. I have commitments …”
Dark fire flashed in his eyes. “To a man?”
“No! Never. See? You don’t know anything about me or you’d never have asked me a thing like—”
“What I know,” he said, “is that we aren’t done with this.”
“Done with what?” Anna gathered herself together. “Look. It’s been—it’s been—”
“Sì,” he said in a low voice, “it has. But it isn’t over.” He let go of her, reached for the phone, held it out. “Call your office. Call whoever needs to be called. Tell them you’ll be gone a week.”
Anna looked at her lover. At the phone in his outstretched hand. Arrogant wasn’t the word to describe him. It didn’t even come close. No one had told her what to do since she’d turned eighteen. Hell, she’d stopped listening to those who’d tried long before that.
And now this man, this impossible, tough-and-tender man thought he could step into her life with orders and demands?
“Anna.” Draco kissed her. Gently. Tenderly. “Per favore, mio amore,” he said softly. “I beg you. Stay with me this week.”
Anna stared into his eyes. Took a deep breath. Took the telephone from him.
And made the call.
They ate bowls of delicious pasta. Showered. Then Draco said he wanted to show her his Rome.
“I hate to say it,” he told her, “but it’s time to get dressed.”
Dressed in what?
Anna groaned as she looked at the clothes she’d left on a chair in his bedroom. “Oh no,” she whispered.
Draco, who was zipping up a pair of chino trousers, looked at her.
“What’s wrong, cara?”
“If there’s anything worse than wearing the same stuff two days in a row—”
“Ah,” he said. “That.”
“Yes. That. I don’t even have a change of underwear.”
“But you do.”
“I do?”
His smile was as smug as any she’d ever seen.
“Sì. Your clothes, your makeup—although why you’d put gunk on such a beautiful face is beyond me—all of that is here.”
Anna stared at him. “Here?”
“Of course. I took care of it.”
“You took—”
“Anna,” Draco said gently, “stop repeating what I say. Yes, I took care of it. I arranged for the hotel to pack for you and my driver to bring your luggage here. My housekeeper put everything in the dressing room. Didn’t you notice?”
“Well, no. But then, I didn’t expect …” She paused. “Let me get this straight. You made all these arrangements without asking me?”
Draco slipped on a white cotton shirt, did up most of the buttons, then folded back the sleeves.
“What was there to ask? I knew you would want your belongings.”
“Did you also know I’d be amenable to staying here instead of at my hotel?”
“Amenable. Lady lawyer talk,” he said, smiling as he reached for her.
Anna stepped back. “Don’t do that.”
“Don’t do what?”
“Don’t try and—and make fun of what I say.”
“Whoa.” Draco held up his hands. “All I did was—”
“This may surprise you, but I can think for myself.”
His smile fled. “Such a mistake,” he said stiffly. “A man tries to do a good thing for his woman—”
“I am not your woman. I am not anyone’s woman. I am my own …” Anna caught her lip between her teeth. His woman. She had to admit there was something special in the words. “Hell,” she said softly. “I’m behaving like a fool.”
Draco hesitated. Then he sighed and reached for her.
“Yes,” he said, “you are.”
She gave a little laugh. “Thanks for agreeing with me. I think.”
Smiling, he put a finger under her chin and tilted her face to his.
“Let me spoil you a little, bellissima, okay?”
“I’m just not used to …” She sighed. “It was very sweet of you to do what you did.”
His answering grin was all sexy male arrogance.
“Yes,” he said, and brushed his lips over hers. “It was.”
Anna laughed as he drew her close. Learning to let a man spoil you, especially a man like Draco Valenti, was going to be a challenge.
He said there were five places you had to visit if you wanted to say you had seen Rome.
The Coliseum. The Forum. The Piazza Navona. The Trevi Fountain. And the Spanish Steps.
Today, he said, they would see the Spanish Steps.
Another of his self-assured pronouncements. This time Anna fought her instinctive—and foolish—reaction. Why should he consult her on something so simple? This was Rome, he was Roman, she wasn’t. End of argument.
Besides, the Spanish Steps sounded perfect, and they were.
The stone steps, worn smooth in places by the tread of feet over hundreds of years, climbed from the beautiful Piazza di Spagna to the Piazza Trinità dei Monti. Tourists as well as Romans climbed the steps, stood on them and sat on them, enjoying the sights, the sounds, the balmy weather ….
And cups and cones of cold, creamy gelato.
Draco took Anna to his favorite gelateria.
“So many flavors,” she said, looking at the endless list, but it turned out she didn’t have to make a choice. He ordered for them both, no questions asked. One chocolate, one marrone. The two best flavors, he said with his arm around her, keeping her close to his side.
What about lemon? she almost said, but didn’t. The day was perfect. So was the man. The truth was, there was something sexy to this me-Tarzan, you-Jane approach that she had so recently laughed at.
As long as it didn’t go too far.
They found places to sit on the steps, one right above the other. Draco took the upper step; Anna took the one beneath it and leaned back against his legs.
She took a long lick of chocolate gelato. Draco’s eyes followed the motion of her tongue.
“Now try the marrone,” he said softly.
She licked at the chestnut ice cream, caught an almost-spilled drop at the corner of her mouth with the tip of her tongue.
“You,” Draco said in a low voice, “are asking for trouble.”
She looked up at him. “What kind of trouble?” she said with a teasing smile, and he laughed and deposited a quick, ice-cream-sweet kiss on her lips.
Anna sat back again, Draco at her back, the Roman sun on her face, the gelato cool in her mouth. Wonderful, she thought. All of it. The city. The piazza. The gelato.
The man.
Most especially the man.
He was so different from what she’d expected, so different from the men she usually dated. He was beautiful to look at, yes, but what made him unique was harder to pin down, that tantalizing combination of strength and tenderness, that old-fashioned belief in honor …
That male arrogance.
Back to that again.
She’d always hated it.
Well, no.
She hated it in her father, where arrogance equated with dominance. In the men who surrounded him. She hated it in a handful of her colleagues, who sometimes spoke to her as if she were a girl and not a woman.
But her brothers were male to the core; they were incredibly arrogant and yet she loved that in them—their assertiveness, their protectiveness …
Her sisters-in-law, independent females every one, clearly loved those same qualities. Maybe whether you thought a man’s attitude was caring or dominating depended on what you felt for the man. On whether you respected him and admired him.
On whether you loved him—whatever that meant, because she didn’t believe in love. In the very concept of it. In being with one man forever, waking up in his arms, falling asleep with your hand on his heart, feeling peace inside you just because you did something simple like—like sitting in the sun, eating ice cream while you leaned against him …
The cup of gelato slipped from her hand.
“Such a waste,” Draco teased as he scooped it up. Then he saw her face. “Anna? What is it?”
What, indeed? It wasn’t possible. It absolutely wasn’t. She was—she was a victim of her own imagination. The beautiful city. The beautiful man. A hundred movies and magazine articles with Rome as the setting, and that was all it was, this—this sudden gallop of her heart.
“Anna. Answer me. Are you ill?”
“No. No! I’m fine.”
Draco rose and drew her to her feet. “Are you sure?” His eyes were dark with worry.
“I’m positive. Too much sun maybe.” She managed a smile. “Or maybe too much ice cream after too much pasta. I mean, when your usual breakfast is whole wheat toast …”
He was supposed to laugh. Instead, he drew her into his arms.
“I know exactly what you need.”
There it was again. That damnable male attitude. No. She could never—
“In fact,” he said, his voice a rough caress meant for her ears alone, “I know precisely what you need. A cool drink. A cool bed. And my arms, warm around you.”
He was right.
He was right, and whatever that meant was …
It was terrifying.
Over the next few days Draco showed Anna more of his Rome.
The ancient, narrow streets. The magnificent fountains. The green parks. The centuries worth of paintings and frescoes and sculptures. The passageways beneath the Coliseum, where she could almost hear the cries, smell the fear of the men and the animals about to die in the arena.
And he wanted to buy her things. A carnival mask from Venice. A tiny bejeweled heart from Bulgari. Each time, she offered a polite “Thank you, but no.”
He tried to overrule that no in a tiny, elegant shop on the Via Condotti, where he’d taken her after she said she really, really needed to buy some clothes, emphasis on the really, really in a way that told him what he already suspected—that his Anna wasn’t accustomed to spending much on herself.
Except for shoes. “My weakness,” she’d admitted one night, and he told her he was glad that it was, because the sight of her long, lovely legs in those killer heels, the rest of her clad only in a thong and matching bra, was fast becoming his.
But when she said she needed to get something to wear, that she couldn’t live in her lady lawyer suits, one pair of jeans and that T-shirt that made him laugh each time he saw it, Draco took her to the only place he could think of. The Via Condotti, its endless designer shops …
A mistake.
Any of the women who’d passed through his life would have been thrilled.
Anna was horrified.
“Ohmygod, look at the prices!” she’d hissed—at least she’d hissed it when there were prices to see. There were no tags on the things in some shops; when Anna asked, the clerk would ignore her and give the answer to him.
That they would assume he’d pay for her purchases made Anna even more indignant.
“Anna,” he’d said softly, “bellissima, be reasonable. This is how things are done.”
“Not by me.”
“But I want to buy these things for you. That dress. This skirt.” He picked up a tiny gold-and-Murano-glass replica of the Trevi Fountain. “And this. Imagine how it would look on your fireplace mantel. Or the desk in your office.”
Imagine how it would remind you of this week we spent together, he’d meant, but it was pointless.
“That little figure,” she’d said, “costs a king’s ransom. Besides, I don’t have a fireplace or a mantel in my walk-up, and if I put it anywhere in the hole-in-the-wall I call an office, one of my scruffy clients would try and steal it.”
A walk-up flat. A miserable office. Clients who probably spent more time making excuses for their failures than doing something about them. She deserved better than that, but he’d known that telling her so was pointless.
Almost as pointless as their shopping expedition until a clerk had taken pity on her, or maybe on him, and whispered the name of a place blocks away that dealt, she said, in things far less expensive. Anna had dragged him there and left him outside to cool his heels.
When she’d emerged a quarter of an hour later, carrying a huge, plain shopping bag, he’d been surprised.
“So fast?” he’d said.
“I don’t need to waste time. I know what I want when I see it.”
Yes. So did he. And what he wanted was Anna.
He wanted her all the time, and she wanted him with the same hot desire. And yet the more they made love, the more he felt that heat changing to something else. Something deeper and stronger, something powerful …
And frightening.
It was on his mind all the time.
That he felt something he couldn’t comprehend, and that their time together was coming to a close. Only another two days, he found himself thinking one night as they were finishing dinner on the terrace of a small, very quiet, well—off-the-tourist-route restaurant in Trastevere.
Anna was talking. Animatedly.
Draco was listening. More or less. Mostly he was filling his eyes with her.
“… haven’t listened to a word,” she said sud
denly, and he blinked and said, “What?”
She made a face. “See? And here I was telling you all my secrets.”
He reached for her hand. “I know all your secrets,” he said softly. “That place on your neck that drives you crazy when I kiss it. The taste of your nipples on my tongue …”
“Stop that,” she said, but her eyes glittered and her lips curved in a smile. “I’m talking about a different kind of secret. About my hair.”
He looked at her hair, hanging down her back like curls of spun gold.
“I love your hair,” he said.
“Yeah?” She flashed a smile so smug it made him raise his eyebrows. “I bet you wouldn’t have loved it when I dyed it black.”
He blinked. “You what?”
“I dyed it. Not just black. Jet-black. So then, of course, I went the whole route. Black nail polish, black lipstick, black T-shirts, black jeans …”
He tried to imagine it. And shuddered. “Why?”
“Teenage rebellion, maybe. I was, I don’t know, sixteen, seventeen. Or maybe it was a way to tell my father what he could do with his version of ‘young ladies are expected to be quiet, demure and obedient’ nonsense.”
“Was that what he expected of you?”
“Of course.” Anna eyed the tray of tiny pastries that the waiter had brought with their coffee, reached for one, pulled her hand back, reached for another, did the same thing, finally sighed and gave the tray a delicate push away from her. “He had as much chance of me falling into line as a snowball has of making it through hell.”
Draco smiled. Dio, his Anna was tough!
“And your father said …?”
“He said if this were the fifteenth century instead of the twenty-first, he’d have locked me away in a nunnery.”
“I’m starting to understand that T-shirt of yours,” Draco said, and grinned. “The fish and the bicycle thing. I’m just trying not to take it personally.” Anna smiled. He reached for her hand and enfolded it in his. “So what did he do?”
“Well, what could he do?”
“Ah. No nunneries. I forgot.”
“He cut off my allowance. Big deal. My brothers made up for it.”
“Your brothers liked your black hair?”
“They liked that I’d stood up to our father, the way they had. Plus, I’m pretty sure they thought my Goth phase was cool. See, they’re pretty cool themselves.” She reached for the tray again. This time she grabbed a pastry and ate it in two quick bites. “They never took a penny from our father,” she said after she’d swallowed. “And now they run this humongous investment firm in Manhattan.”
The Ice Prince Page 14
