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It was because she’d done it as part of an act.
Nicolo took another mouthful of coffee.
Maybe his ego demanded it. Maybe his male pride required it. Whatever the reason, he’d wanted to believe that the woman with the violet eyes had felt the same uncontrollable hunger he had felt. That she could no more have kept from making love with him than she could have stopped breathing.
That what had happened that night was the most exciting memory of her life, and that they had created that memory with equal passion and desire.
He could see her now, that night in his bed. Eyes dark with pleasure. Skin fragrant with her need…
“Your sandwich, sir.”
Nicolo blinked. Had he ordered a sandwich?
“Would you like anything else? More coffee?”
Nicolo pushed the plate aside, rose to his feet and dropped a hundred-dollar bill on the table.
“No,” he said brusquely, and added what he hoped was a polite smile and a hurried, “Grazie.”
It wasn’t the bartender’s fault that what he wanted, what he damned well would not be denied, could not be found in this bar.
Aimee sat slumped on the sofa in her apartment, face buried in her hands.
Her anger was gone, replaced by a terrible emptiness in her heart.
“Let me explain,” Grandfather had said.
Explain what? That he’d been willing to sell her to a foreigner to get what he wanted for his precious bank?
She’d fled his office, ignored his voice calling after her, stumbled into a taxi and gone home.
She’d never harbored any illusions about her grandfather’s feelings for her. His lack of feelings, she amended, with a bitter smile. She’d accepted it.
What other choice did she have?
He’d taken her in after she’d lost her parents. He’d raised her, or maybe it was more accurate to say he’d paid a series of nannies and housekeepers to raise her. He’d sent her to the best schools; he’d seen to it she had tennis and skiing and riding lessons, all the things his fortune could buy.
But he’d never really loved her.
What he loved was his bank and the dead Staffords, Coleridges and Blacks who’d founded it. Everything else, including her, was secondary.
Even so, she’d never dreamed him capable of such a cold-blooded scheme. That he’d want to marry her off to a stranger….
Except, Nicolo Barbieri—Prince Barbieri—was not a stranger. He was the man she’d made love with endless times in a few short hours.
How could she have done that? Climaxed in his arms when she hadn’t even known his name?
Nausea roiled in her belly. Aimee clamped her hand to her mouth, raced to the bathroom and reached it just in time. A couple of moments later, pale and shaken, she flushed the commode and sank down on the closed seat.
God, she felt awful. She was tired of throwing up, tired of just plain feeling tired.
This time, at least she had a reason for feeling so rotten. Who wouldn’t, after today?
That son of a bitch. Prince Barbieri. Prince of Darkness, was more like it. To call her a—a—
She couldn’t even think the word.
How could he believe she’d deliberately seduced him? Offered herself as bait for her grandfather’s vile proposition?
