The Ice Prince (14 page)

Even with her new income, she’d never be able to afford
the flat otherwise, and no way was he going to give her any excuse not to be with him.

A tiny kernel of doubt crept in.

What if it turned out she hated California? What if she didn’t want to leave her family?

What if she didn’t want to spend her life with him?

Well, not forever, of course. Nothing lasted forever. Still …

Still, maybe some things did. Maybe what he really wanted of her was more than a move to the West Coast. Maybe this wasn’t simply about wanting her, but was about needing her. About—about—

Dio,
his head was spinning.

Draco ran his hands through his hair until it stood up in unruly little peaks.

Had he acted too impulsively? He couldn’t think.

He needed coffee. Or brandy. Grappa. Yes. Excellent. Some good, strong grappa so he could think through this whole thing again.

He walked quickly through the silent house, grabbed the bottle of grappa from the bar in the living room. The phone rang as he was pouring the fiery liquid, but he didn’t bother answering it. What for? He knew what it was. A fax from his lawyer, confirming everything they’d arranged: Anna’s new job, her new flat, the reduced monthly costs she’d never know about.

He drank off half the grappa.

He’d done the right thing. Surely he had …

Hell.

He had done a stupid thing!

How could he have woven such a lie? You didn’t lie to the woman you loved, and he loved Anna. He didn’t want her to be his mistress, to be at his beck and call. He wanted to be with her always, for the rest of his life. He wanted—

Something hit him, hard, in the center of his back.

Draco swung around, the grappa flying from his hand … and saw the beautiful, furious face of the woman he loved. She’d slugged him with her fist. A fist that held what were, quite obviously, the pages of a fax.

“Anna. Anna, I know what you must be thinking—”

“You—you son of a bitch!”

“Per favore, bellissima …”

“Do not,” she snarled, “do not
bellissima
me, you bastard!”

“Anna. Listen to me.”

“Was this the plan all along? To tell me lies and lure me to California after I passed the—the tryout for the part of your new mistress?”

“Look, I know how this must seem. But—”

“Did you or did you not arrange for me to get a new job and a new apartment?”

How had it all come apart this quickly?

“Answer me, damn you!”

“Yes,” Draco said, “but—”

“How could you be so stupid? How could you even dream I would ever be any man’s mistress? Especially yours!”

“I made a mistake. I know that. I didn’t think. I was so—so intent on not losing you—”

“On owning me, you mean.” Her voice broke. “What an idiot I was! How I could have let myself think that you—that I …”

She spun away and ran from the room, Draco on her heels, but she reached the bedroom first, slammed and locked the door.

“Anna!”

Draco pounded on the door, but it remained closed until she flung it open. She was fully dressed: sneakers, jeans, the
to-hell-with-men T-shirt, the carry-on over her shoulder, the bulging briefcase under her arm.

“I phoned for a taxi. Make sure the gate opens for it.”

“Anna—”

“Damnit, Draco, did you hear what I said?”

“Anna. I beg you—”

“It was a great week,” she said, her eyes, her voice, everything about her as icy and unyielding as when they’d first met. “I’ve never had an Italian lover before. Thanks for giving me the chance to add you to my list.”

It was a solid metaphorical blow, delivered by a tough street fighter.

He had to admire her for it, even though she had just broken his heart.

“S
O,
what do you think, Iz? Too much color? Not enough? What?”

Isabella Orsini stood in the center of her sister’s minuscule living room, arms folded, brow furrowed, watching as Anna held paint samples against the wall.

“What I think is, it’s Friday night. You want to go to a movie?”

“Answer the question. Too bright? Too dull? Which?”

Isabella sighed. “Try that orange one again.”

“Which orange one? Pumpkin Patch? Russet Red? Autumn Peach?”

“That’s ridiculous. Peaches are a summer fruit. There are no peaches in autumn.”

“Go over to the Whole Foods on Union Square. I’ll bet they have peaches.”

“For goodness sake, Anna, you know what I mean.”

“Just answer the question, okay? Pumpkin? Russet? Autumn?”

Isabella sighed. “You want the truth, I don’t like any of them. Tell me again why we’re going to paint this room?”

“So it looks different, that’s why. To shake things up, that’s why. Must there be a logical reason for everything?”

“Just listen to you, lady lawyer. Since when aren’t you a stickler for logic?”

“Change is logical. And what’s with calling me lady lawyer?”

“I don’t know. I just did, that’s all.”

“Well, don’t do it again.” Anna edged out from behind the sagging sofa she’d picked up at a Bowery consignment shop the prior weekend. “Ugh! Why did I buy this gross-looking thing?”

“I have no idea. I mean, it sags. It tilts. And baby-poo brown isn’t one of my favorite colors.”

“Thank you. That really makes me feel better.”

“Hey, you asked. Here’s an idea. You take one end, I’ll take the other, we’ll drag it downstairs, put it at the curb—”

“We’d never move it. It weighs a ton. I had to pay the super fifty bucks to get it up here.”

“And it cost you how much?”

Anna sighed. “Fifty bucks.”

“So a hundred dollars for a pile of sagging baby poo when you already had a perfectly acceptable sofa?”

“It was ugly.”

“Not like this.” The sisters sank down on opposite ends of the offending piece of furniture and looked at each other. Isabella cleared her throat. “So, you gonna tell me what’s happening?”

“You know what’s happening. I have an interesting new client.”

“Excellent way to describe a nut who shot out all the windows in his ex’s apartment so he wouldn’t have to see her and her new boyfriend through them.” Izzy snorted. “Anybody break the news to him yet? That, hello, you can see through windows even better when the glass is gone?”

“And,” Anna said, choosing to ignore the remark, “in addition to an interesting new client, I have a new sofa. New for me, okay? This time tomorrow I’ll also have new paint on the walls. And let’s not forget the boots I bought last week.”

“Right. Not boots. Snow boots. And it’s still summer.”

“It’s the end of summer. That’s why they were on sale.”

“Uh-huh. Maybe they were on sale ’cause only my sister would be crazy enough to buy snow boots with five-inch heels.”

“Four-inch, and what’s so bad with me trying to make some changes in my life?”

“Nothing,” Isabelle said, “if you weren’t doing it to try and bury something you don’t want to think about.”

Anna snorted. “That’s crazy.”

“That’s accurate. Remember you asked me about psych 101? About sexual fantasies?”

“Isabella. I have no intention of—”

“There was more to psych 101 than that. For instance, chapter twelve of that oversize textbook, remember? Ahem. ‘A sudden flurry of change-centered activity is often symptomatic of a desire to obliterate memory of a distressing situation.’”

Anna stared at her sister. “You can remember reading that?”

Iz shrugged. “Heck, no. I just made it up. But see, I’m right. I can tell. Just look at your face.”

“Coffee,” Anna said briskly. She sprang to her feet and walked the six feet it took to reach the kitchen. “Get out the cream, would you? And the pink stuff.”

“Anna. You went to Italy. ‘I’ll be gone a couple of days,’ you said. Instead, you were gone a week. And when you got back, you looked like crap.”

“Baby poo. Now crap. What a fine sense for similes my sister has.” Anna’s words were brisk, but her hands trembled as she filled the coffeepot with water. “Want some cookies?”

“I want some answers. What happened in Rome?”

“Nothing,” Anna said. “Nothing at all. I saw the Trevi Fountain, the Coliseum, I did a little shopping and—”

“And?” Isabella said, narrowing her hazel eyes.

“And,” Anna said, turning her back to her sister, “and …”

“Anna. Honey, you can tell me anything. You know that.”

Anna nodded. She could. And, really, she had to. She couldn’t carry this around inside her anymore.

“And,” she said in a low voice, “I fell in love.”

Isabella all but collapsed onto a wooden kitchen chair.

“Not you. Not you, Anna!”

“I fell in love.” A sob broke from Anna’s throat. “With the coldest, cruelest, most hard-hearted bastard in the world.”

“What’s his name?”

“Draco. Draco Valenti.” Anna sank into a chair across from Isabella. “Prince Draco Valenti, no less.”

“A handsome prince?”

“An ice prince. All sex, no heart.”

“Wow. That’s quite a description.”

“It’s accurate. But don’t worry. I fell out of love fast enough. I mean, I realized how I really felt two minutes after I walked out on him. I’m just upset, is all. With myself, for having been such a jerk.”

“Oh, honey …”

“Really. It’s okay.” Tears ran down her face as she looked at her sister. “I never actually loved him, Iz. I never would have. Never, not me, not in a billion years …”

Anna folded her arms on the scarred wooden table, laid down her head and sobbed.

Not too far away, in a much trendier part of Manhattan, in a bar that was still a bar and not a cocktail lounge or a club, Raffaele, Dante, Falco and Nicolo Orsini were having their usual Friday-night get-together.

The bar—actually, The Bar—was theirs, which was why it was still a bar despite the fact that the neighborhood, to their enormous distaste, had gone upscale.

Once, this had been the place where they shared talk of dangerous dilemmas and beautiful women.

Now they were all married. Very happily married, but they met anyway and talked sports and business, kids and family, and, yes, once in a while they even talked dangerous dilemmas.

Tonight they were talking about one of their sisters.

“Izzy agrees,” Rafe said. “Something’s up with Anna.”

Nick bit into his burger, chewed, swallowed and nodded. “Yeah. But what?”

Falco lifted his beer to his mouth. “Isabella’s going to try and find out.”

“Could it be a man?” Dante said. His brothers looked at him, and he sighed. “Right. Not our Anna. There’s not a guy alive could bring our Anna down.”

There was a sound from nearby. Somebody clearing his throat, maybe.

“Agreed,” Rafe said. “A guy tried to upset our Anna, she’d take him out.”

There it was. That same sound again. The four Orsinis looked up. A guy was standing next to their booth. He was big, like them. Dark haired, like them. Dressed in an expensive suit and handmade shoes, also like them, but his tie was crooked, his hair looked as if he’d combed it with his fingers and there was a glitter in his eyes that they all recognized as Trouble, definitely Trouble, and with a capital
T.

The brothers looked at each other.
What the hell is this?
those looks said and, as one, they rose to their feet.

“Service is at the bar, pal,” Falco said.

The guy nodded. Did that throat-clearing thing again.

“Listen,” Rafe said, “you got a problem with the place or the food—”

“I am Draco Valenti,” Draco blurted. “And she’s not your Anna, she is mine.”

Silence. A heavy, awful silence. Then Nick jerked his chin toward the door that led to The Bar’s private office, and the five men marched to it, Draco surrounded by men he figured could grind him into dust if they decided that he was the problem, not the solution.

He could fight back. He was pretty sure he was as tough as they were, but there were four of them, one of him, and besides …

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.