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“Filthy, anyway.”
Gina had laughed, hurried to a rack filled with clothes and yanked a gown from it.
“Ta-da,” she’d said dramatically. “I have the perfect creation for you to wear. Take a look at this.”
“This” was a stunning column of gold, embellished with tiny crystal paillettes.
“This man doesn’t deserve anything so elegant,” Alessia had said, but Gina had insisted she try it on.
“I told you,” she’d said triumphantly, once Alessia had it on. “It is absolutely perfect.”
Perfectly spectacular, Alessia had thought, looking at herself in the mirror. The cut of the halter-necked gown was deceptively simple—but the back of it dipped to the base of her spine and when she took a step, a slit in the skirt revealed a glimpse of leg from ankle to thigh.
Alessia had laughed.
“My job is to convince this man to give my father a lot of money, not seduce him.”
“You’ll dazzle him! He’ll agree to anything. Between your title, that villa and this gown, you’ll have him at your feet.” Gina had wrinkled her nose. “Look, you don’t like this guy and you haven’t even met him. Think of what it’ll be like to have him groveling.”
It would be wonderful, Alessia had thought with sudden clarity.
She had taken the gown. And the stiletto-heeled gold sandals that went with it.
“The only thing you’ll have to add is attitude,” Gina had said with a wink, “but, hey, if you think like a princess, you won’t have any trouble.”
They’d both laughed, though Alessia could not imagine laughing now.
She picked up the glass again.
Very well.
She could, indeed, conjure up that regal attitude Gina had joked about. She would be polite but distant, pleasant but cool. And when the evening ended, she would tell this arrogant man that she had made a mistake on that hillside….
“Good evening, princess.”
Alessia spun toward that slightly rough voice and her heart leaped into her throat.
“Nicolo,” she said…and knew instantly that everything she’d just told herself was a lie.
She had not made a mistake this afternoon.
She wanted Nicolo Orsini to make love to her, and to hell with right and wrong.
She’d wanted him since he’d taken her in his arms as she wept so foolishly by the side of the road, she wanted him now, and nothing else mattered. He was everything she had ever let herself dream of in the darkest recesses of the night, and she was not going to walk away from what would surely never come into her life again.
“You are,” he said softly, “incredibly beautiful.”
She smiled. So was he. The leanly muscled body. The wide shoulders and long legs. The hard, angel-of-darkness face. The way he was looking at her.
“Thank you.” She touched the tip of her tongue to her suddenly dry lips. “You look—you look very elegant in that tux.”
It was an understatement of amazing proportions. He looked as if he’d just stepped out of a Ralph Lauren advertisement.
He smiled back at her. “I’m glad I packed it. A man could wear nothing else for an evening with a woman who looks the way you do tonight.”
“It’s the gown.” Deliberately, as aware of him as if he were a lion and she were the female he was stalking, she turned in a little circle, just slowly enough to be sure he saw the low dip of the gown at her spine and the long, exposed length of her leg. “Do you like it?”
She watched his eyes narrow under his dark lashes, saw the tic of muscle in his jaw. Her entire body responded, pulse rocketing, skin flushing, bones threatening to turn to water. And when he started toward her, it was all she could do not to fly into his arms.
