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He was not a good man, he thought then, biting back a laugh. It was just as well he’d never had any illusions on that score. He was enjoying her bad-tempered, ill-fitting cloak of feigned submission far too much.
He led her over to the sexy little convertible sports car that waited for them, and handed her into it before climbing into the driver’s seat. He signaled to Nikolai and the rest of his security detail, and then he put the car into gear and drove.
“We have to talk about what happened in Paris,” she said the moment they started to move. “There can be no shifting, or whatever game you were playing. We already discussed this. You signed the same document—”
“We are in the open air,” he interrupted her as if she was a fractious child. “Try to contain your need to lecture me until there are thick walls around us.”
She looked at him as if she’d like to club him over the head but lacked only the appropriate instrument, and it nearly made him laugh again.
“You don’t have to talk to me like I’m one of your employees,” she snapped when they slowed at an intersection.
“This is not how I talk to my employees,” he assured her, amused. “They know better than to talk back.”
When she opened her mouth to snap something else at him, he simply reached over and shut it with two fingers over her soft lips, testing himself. Torturing himself. Shifting, perhaps, whether she liked it or not. Whether he did.
“I can’t wait to hear your litany of complaints,” he said, his voice something too close to a growl. She jerked her head back, but he could still feel the press of her mouth against his flesh. The fire of it. The way his whole body hardened, ready for her, dooming them both. “But not right now. Perhaps you can sit back and take in the world-famous view. This is the Côte d’Azur and I am Ivan Korovin. Some people would sell their souls to be sitting where you are right now, and I wouldn’t have to ask them to be still and enjoy it.”
There was a searing sort of pause, and then she pulled a silk scarf from her bag. She tied it around her hair with quick, furious jerks of her delicate hands. She didn’t say another word, and she didn’t even have to look at him, this time, to convey her feelings. He had to bite back his smile. He should not find her very prickliness so delightful. It could only spell disaster for them both.
He guided the powerful little convertible along the Promenade des Anglais, the gorgeous stretch of road that separated the city of Nice from the Baie des Anges and the Mediterranean Sea beyond. He soaked in the views of the French hills in the soft light that made Provence so justly beloved the world over, the sparkling sea, and the intriguing woman beside him whose current deafening silence was only a reprieve—having more to do with the noise of the open air around them as he drove, he imagined, than any particular attempt to do as he’d asked.
It was just as well he was about to give her something to really be angry about, he thought with a certain fatalism as he guided them through the charming seaside village of Villefranche-sur-Mer and then swung out onto the small, decadently exclusive Cap Ferrat peninsula. The narrow lanes were deliberately overgrown, richly forested in lush green vines, sweeping gardens and a canopy of ancient trees. Red-roofed villas peeked out from behind private walls while the stunning views stretched in all directions—the craggy French coastline and the endless cobalt waters of the Mediterranean always just around this curve, through those trees.
Down at the tip of the peninsula, Ivan pulled into the graceful drive that led to the impressive and world-renowned Grand Hôtel du Cap Ferrat. The hotel, now deemed a palace and more than worthy of the term, was an elegant, all-white affair, trumpeting its eminence by commanding one of the finest seaside spots in the south of France.
His professor was so busy gazing up at the soaring, whitewashed beauty of the magnificent hotel before them that she failed to notice the small pack of reporters who waited near the entrance until it was too late. He knew the moment she did as she stiffened in the seat beside him.
“What are they doing here?” she asked as she pulled the scarf from her head and let that exquisite hair of hers fall free.
