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By nightfall he’d be rid of them both.
Anna had packed lightly for her trip to Rome.
Two suits. Four white silk blouses. Three pairs of heels, and what had that full-of-himself fool meant by calling her stilettos ‘ridiculous’?
“You try going without lunch for four months to buy a pair,” she muttered as she pawed through the clothes she’d brought with her.
Better still, let him try wearing them.
The picture that leaped into her head, Draco attempting to stuff his big feet into her size sevens, might have made her laugh if she’d been in a laughing mood. But she wasn’t, not even over the Cinderella story told in reverse.
Besides, no matter how you turned things around, Prince Valenti was no Prince Charming.
He was an aristocratic, autocratic idiot, she thought grimly. And if she owed him for anything, it was that he’d gone out of his way to remind her of it.
Such an overreaction to her simple statement about them still being adversaries. How could you insult a man by telling him the truth?
Or maybe that was the problem. Maybe the truth was that he’d figured he was so good in bed that he’d dazzled her into giving up what had brought her to Rome in the first place.
Anna rolled her eyes as she searched through her clothes.
That would never work with her. She wasn’t a girlish fool who’d lose her girlish heart over him just because she’d slept with him, and what was with the silly euphemism?
They hadn’t slept together—they’d had sex. That’s what it always was to a man, and to any woman with a functional brain.
One of the things Anna loved about the law was that it had the right words to describe whatever needed describing.
Sex was like that.
Why pretend? Why give the act fanciful names that had to do with sleeping or, even worse, with romance? Why make it sound as if the heart was involved in a strictly biological act?
As for her pointing out that a night of sex had not changed the bottom line … The almighty prince might not like hearing the truth, but people traded sex for what they really wanted all the time. Her professional life was full of examples. Sad-eyed women staying with men who beat them, just so they could have roofs over their heads. Gorgeous models married grotesque old men so they could wallow in money and jewels.
Anna’s mouth thinned.
There were other kinds of trades, too. Look at the one her own mother had made.
Sofia Orsini stayed with her gangster husband so that she wouldn’t have to face the disgrace that went with an old-fashioned Sicilian woman asking for a divorce. What other explanation could there possibly be?
Anna slapped her hands on her hips and blew a curl off her forehead.
Well, she wasn’t like that.
She didn’t need a man to keep her housed, clothed and fed. She didn’t want jewels or anything she couldn’t afford to buy for herself. And she sure as hell would divorce a bastard who deserved divorce, except she’d never have to.
Marriage, a lifetime commitment, was absolutely not on her agenda.
She liked men, liked spending time with them, liked having sex on occasion, but all on her own straightforward terms. No trading. No promises. No lies.
Love was an illusion. Sex was sex, and what did any of that have to do with the ugly little scene here a few minutes ago?
She’d made a candid statement. How had Draco managed to make it sound, well, cheap? It wasn’t. It had been honest, that was all.
The prince didn’t like honesty? Too bad.
And she wasn’t going to forget that accusation he’d hurled at her. Suggesting she’d gone to bed with him to change his mind about the land …
That had hurt. Because making love with him … No. Having sex with him had been, it had been …
