Besides, he had hurt his Anna. Their sister.
All things considered, if they wanted to beat the crap out of him, he wouldn’t try to stop them.
A hand shoved him, none too gently, into a small, inexpensively furnished room. Desk. Phone. Chairs. And framed photos on the walls. Photos of these four. And of four smiling women. Babies. A toddler. A woman who had to be the mother of the clan. A slim, beautiful young woman with dark hair.
And Anna. His Anna, smiling and happy and lovely and—and God, how he missed her, yearned for her, needed her—
“So?”
Draco turned around. The Orsinis stood lined up, shoulder to shoulder, arms folded, jaws set. He was a fan of American football and he had a totally irrelevant thought.
He’d seen offensive linemen who looked less threatening than these guys.
“What do you mean, she’s your Anna?”
He had no idea which of them had spoken the first time, which had spoken now. The only thing he did know was that now was not the time for introductions.
“You want it straight?” he said. “No bull?”
“Straight,” one of them growled. “From the beginning.”
So Draco told them.
Everything. Okay. Not everything. Not about what had happened on the flight to Rome, or what had happened in her hotel, or, Cristo, not what had happened in his bed.
But all the rest … He told them.
How he’d thought this was just going to be a weekend fling. One of them started forward when he said that, but the guy beside him muttered, “Cool it,” and the other guy stood still the way a tiger might stand still before it made a kill.
Draco told them more.
He said that weekend fling hadn’t been enough, how he’d convinced Anna to stay another week. How incredible the week had been, and how he’d suddenly realized he didn’t want her to leave him when it ended.
Now came the hardest part.
He told them of the scheme he’d hatched. All of it. The job offer. The apartment. That what he wanted was to make Anna his mistress.
One of the Orsinis swung at him. He stood there and took the blow, straight to his jaw.
“Damnit, chill,” one of Anna’s brothers snarled, and glared first at Draco and then at the other three. “Been there, done that,” the guy growled, and damned if the rest of them didn’t sort of hang their heads.
“And now you’re here,” said the one who’d slugged him. “What took you so long?”
Draco had expected the question. His answer was blunt and honest.
“She said something that hurt me. About—about having been with other men.”
“Let me get this straight,” one Orsini said. “You’re into a double standard?”
“No. I am not. It was only that—that by then Anna had made me forget every woman I’d ever known. To think that I had not done the same for her …”
“Yeah, okay. No need for specifics.”
“I still don’t get it. You think we’re going to tell you that you can make our sister your mistress?”
Draco narrowed his eyes. It was one thing to be deferential, but quite another to be taken for a fool.
“If I wanted her to be my mistress,” he said quietly, “I’d go to her, not you.”
“Then what do you want?”
Draco took a breath. “Anna loves the four of you.”
“Damned right. And we love her.”
“I am Italian.”
“If you think that makes this better—”
“I am also a prince.”
“Whoopee,” one of the brothers said, his tone flat and insulting.
“What I mean is that I carry a name that had once been respected.” Hell. This wasn’t going well. “But my father sullied that name, and I have spent my life trying to restore honor to it.”
The atmosphere in the room eased, if only a little.
“Go on.”
“You don’t know the half,” one of the brothers muttered.
“In Italy, honor demanded asking permission of a woman’s family before asking for her hand in marriage.”
A muscle twitched in one of those grim jaws.
“Is that why you’re here? You want Anna to marry you, and us to tell her that she should?” Four deep, unpleasant barks of laughter. “If you knew anything about our sister, you’d know that nobody can tell her what to do.”
“No,” Draco said softly. “It’s one of the things I love about her. I will do the asking, not any of you.”
“And why should she say yes?”
“Because I adore her,” Draco said gruffly. “And she loves me.” Nothing. Not even a twitch. Draco narrowed his eyes. Eating crow was one thing; eating an entire rookery’s worth was another. “I know that she loves me. It is the reason she acted as she did when she found out what I’d done.”
“The bastard stood there,” one of the brothers said grimly, “and watched her cry.”
“She didn’t cry. Another woman would have.” Draco paused. “Anna hit me.”
Silence. And then the Orsinis began to laugh. But as quickly as the laughter started, it stopped.
“Suppose we say no? Suppose we refuse you permission to marry her? Or even to ask her? Suppose we tell you to get the hell out of here and never look back? Then what?”
Enough, Draco thought, and he stood straighter, his dark eyes level with theirs.
“Then,” he said quietly, “I am afraid I will have to take you on, one by one, and when I am the only one of us left standing—and I will be, in an honest fight—I will go to my Anna and put my life and my heart in her hands.”
The silence that followed was surely the longest of Draco’s life. Then Anna’s brothers smiled. Grinned. Shook his hand and introduced themselves, and when the introductions were over, they wished him good luck and sent him on his way.
Autumn Peach was too dark, Russet Red was too deep and Pumpkin Patch was just plain insipid.
That was all Anna would talk about when she stopped crying, never mind Izzy’s persistent questioning, and finally Izzy threw up her hands and said okay, fine, enough was enough. She’d go to the hardware store and get some more color samples.
“You’re a pigheaded mule,” she told Anna, and Anna tried to laugh at the impossible image, but she couldn’t.
Laughing seemed out of the question.
At least she’d gotten rid of Izzy for a while. A half hour would give her time to regroup.
Unfortunately, Izzy had obviously decided leaving was a mistake, because the doorbell rang not five minutes later. Anna rubbed her eyes with her fists, pasted a smile on her face and went to the door.
“No,” she said as she flung it open, “I will not compromise on Tangerine Twist ….” The words died on her tongue. “Draco?” she said, and two things happened at once. Her hand balled into a fist so she could hit him, and Draco said her name and reached for her, and after a hesitation that surely lasted no more than a heartbeat, Anna sobbed her lover’s name and went into his arms.
He kissed her, over and over. Her forehead. Her eyes. The tip of her nose. Her mouth. Oh, her mouth, even sweeter than he remembered.
“Anna,” he said brokenly, “Anna, bellissima, mio amante Anna, ti amo, ti adoro!”
Anna didn’t speak much Italian, but a woman didn’t have to speak the language to understand any of those words.
“I love you, too,” she whispered. “I adore you. I’ve missed you so terribly!”
“Sì. I have missed you, too. My heart, my life have been so empty …”
“That night,” Anna said, “that awful night …”
“I was afraid to lose you. And afraid to try and keep you.” Draco laughed as he framed her face in his hands. “I always thought love was a foolish fairy tale.”
Anna smiled, even as tears rolled down her cheeks.
“I thought it was just a way of keeping a woman under a man’s thumb.”
Draco kissed her again.
�
��We were both wrong, bellissima.”
“Yes. Oh yes, we were.”
Draco took a deep breath. And dropped to one knee.
“Anna. Beloved,” he said, “will you do me the honor of becoming my wife?”
The smile that curved Anna’s lips was, Draco knew, the most beautiful sight a man would ever see.
“Yes,” she said, “oh, yes. I will.”
He reached in his pocket, took out a ring and slipped it on her finger. It was a perfect copy of the Valenti crest, done in sapphires and diamonds.
Anna looked from her hand to her lover. Her eyes filled again.
“It’s beautiful,” she said softly. “And I am honored to wear it.”
Draco rose to his feet. “Anna,” he murmured, “bella Anna.”
She went into his arms and he kissed her, kissed her until the world floated away. They never heard Isabella come in, never heard her hurried departure.
But when Izzy quietly shut the apartment door, she was smiling.
They were married two weeks later in the little church Anna’s mother had always loved, on a street that was either part of Little Italy or Greenwich Village, depending on who you asked.
Sofia Orsini was thrilled with her new son-in-law, but she raised her eyebrows when he came to her at the party that followed in the observatory at the Orsini mansion and said he had a wedding gift for her.
It was the deed to the Sicilian land that sheltered the ruins of the castle that had belonged to his ancestors.
“Now it will belong to two families,” he said.
Sofia shook her head and gently gave the document back to him. She said she had no idea what he was talking about, but that it was good to know her Anna had married a man who loved Sicily.
He shook hands with each of Anna’s brothers, all of whom had been his best men—“Just try and talk me out of it,” he’d told the wedding planner, who had not been foolish enough to try—and laughed with them in a way that told Anna they shared something, but none of them would tell her what it was.
He kissed his sisters-in-law, who had been Anna’s bridesmaids, kissed the nephews and nieces he’d so suddenly acquired, and reserved a special hug for Anna’s maid of honor.
“Isabella,” he said, “Anna says you are the dearest sister a woman could possibly have.”
“You next, kid,” Rafe said to Izzy as he swept her away and danced her around the room.
“Right,” Izzy said brightly, and thought, Not me, not now, not ever in a million billion years.
And, finally, he walked up to Cesare.
“Anna thinks she despises you,” he said softly, “but the truth, signore, is that she loves you because you are her father.” He looked the don straight in the eye. “And you made up all that nonsense about your wife’s family and my land.”
The don permitted himself a small smile.
“I may have had my facts confused. Anything is possible.” He paused. “By the way,” he continued, as if what he were about to say was unimportant, “I knew your father. He was not the best of men but then, neither am I.”
Draco waited. Then he said, “And?”
The don smiled. “And, I suspect your father would be proud of the man you have become.”
At last it was time for Anna and Draco to say goodbye and leave on their honeymoon.
They were flying to Venice, on his private plane. It was big and luxurious; the center aisle had been garlanded with white roses.
Draco carried his bride down that aisle to the private bedroom in the rear of the plane and kicked the door shut after him.
“This is how it all began, cara,” he said softly. “A plane. And you. And me.”
Anna smiled as he set her slowly on her feet. She was wearing stilettos, of course. Still, she had to rise on tiptoe to kiss him, and then to put her lips to his ear and whisper something hot and wicked.
His eyes grew very, very dark. Slowly he shrugged off his jacket. Undid his tie. Unbuttoned his shirt.
“Anna,” he said in a voice that was pure sex.
Anna laughed and wound her arms around his neck.
“Draco,” she whispered. “What took you so long?”
All the characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author, and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all the incidents are pure invention.
All Rights Reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Enterprises II BV/S.à.r.l. The text of this publication or any part thereof may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, storage in an information retrieval system, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher.
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the prior consent of the publisher in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
® and TM are trademarks owned and used by the trademark owner and/or its licensee. Trademarks marked with ® are registered with the United Kingdom Patent Office and/or the Office for Harmonisation in the Internal Market and in other countries.
First published in Great Britain 2011
by Mills & Boon, an imprint of Harlequin (UK) Limited,
Eton House, 18-24 Paradise Road, Richmond, Surrey TW9 1SR
© Sandra Marton 2011
ISBN: 978-1-408-92582-9
Table of Contents
Cover
Preview
About the Author
Title Page
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Copyright
The Ice Prince Page 16
