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“Alessia.”
His voice was rough as sandpaper. He took her hands in his, sought desperately for something clever to say, but nothing came. Her eyes were blurred, her breathing uneven, and he knew his wasn’t any too steady.
“Nicolo,” she said in shaky whisper.
It was the second time she’d said his name. How come he was so aware of that, and aware, too, that it sounded different, in her mouth? What she said was “Neekello,” and how could a simple word sound like pure sex?
Nick let go of her while he still could and put a few inches of space between them. She swayed; he reached out, steadied her with a hand on her elbow. She drew a deep breath, sank her very white teeth into the rich curve of her bottom lip.
The simple action damned near undid him.
“This—this must stop,” she whispered. “This—this thing between us…”
Her words drifted to silence. A muscle jumped in his jaw.
He knew that any other woman in this kind of situation would have laid the blame strictly on the guy. It made him want to kiss her again but he wouldn’t. Dammit, he wouldn’t. He wouldn’t so much as touch her again, and absolutely, positively he was saying, arrivederci, ASAP tomorrow.
“You’re right,” he said briskly. “It has to stop. In fact, it just did. Let’s go to that meeting you’ve set up, come back here and check out the vineyards, the winery, all of it, so I can be out of here tomorrow.”
“But you said—”
“I know what I s
aid.” God, he wanted to touch her. Just one quick brush of his hands over her body… “I’ve changed my mind. In fact, I’ll put a call in, arrange for the Orsini plane to fly over and get me. It’ll be quicker that way.”
“The Orsini plane.”
“Yes. We have our own—”
“Of course you do,” Alessia said, and all at once, her eyes were clear and cool. “For a moment, I almost forgot who you were, signore. Molte grazie for reminding me.”
The temperature dropped ten degrees. If she’d slapped him across the face, she couldn’t have made things any clearer.
The time was right to tell her who he was. What he was. That he and his old man had nothing but blood in common…And then he thought, to hell with that. To hell with explaining himself to Alessia Antoninni or anyone else. “I understand, principessa.” His tone was as frigid as hers. “Lust can get in the way of sanity.”
Her cheeks flamed. She called him something he couldn’t quite understand and he thought of returning the compliment but, dammit, no way was he going to let her turn him into the kind of man she believed him to be.
“Undoubtedly,” he said, his smile feral. Then he gestured toward the front door. “After you, baby.”
Back straight as an arrow, she spun on her heel and marched to the door. She didn’t wait for him to play the gentleman; she flung it open herself and marched down the marble steps, straight toward a black Bentley the size of a not-so-small boat. A liveried chauffeur shot from the driver’s seat, opened the rear door and bowed as she stepped past him into the car.
Nick followed after her. “Do not,” he growled to the chauffeur, “do not even think of bowing to me!”
Aside from that, he was more than willing to let somebody else do the driving.
Somebody whose head was on straight, he thought grimly, as the car started majestically down the long driveway.
CHAPTER SIX
ALESSIA had arranged for the meeting to be held in the offices her father kept in Florence.
The building itself had once been a palace and was very old, dating back to the 1400s and the Renaissance, when the Medici family ruled the city.
The Antoninnis could trace their lineage to Cosimo de’ Medici or, rather, to a supposedly illegitimate son of Cosimo’s. Faced with his mistress’s threats to make their affair a public scandal, Cosimo was said to have given her the vast, fertile rolling acres that even then were producing excellent wine. When the illegitimate son died, as so many Medicis, legitimate or not, were wont to do at that time, the mistress passed the estate on to her daughter, who married a prince of the house of Antoninni, which was when the vineyards became known by that name.
The Antoninni part of the tale was true; there was some doubt about the Medici connection but no Antoninni had ever tried to verify it. Someone in each generation always realized that tracing something that might turn out to be a centuries-old falsehood—or, worse still, a tale of murder—would serve no purpose except to disgrace the Antoninni–Medici connection.
Alessia thought the whole thing was foolish. Who had the time for titles and lineage and fifteenth-century intrigue? Besides, the Antoninni problem right now was not one of DNA but of dollars. Orsini dollars, ones that would become Antoninni euros. That was the reason she had arranged to hold the meeting here, in these magnificent surroundings.
