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The hell she did.
There was nothing average about her. It was all pure Anna, from the straight-as-an-arrow posture to the defiant set of her chin, from the tips of those well-worn and, he was sure, definitely unfashionable sneakers to the gold curls that were already trying to spring free of whatever it was she’d used to tie them back.
What was it he’d thought before? Delicate but strong—and so what?
He wanted her gone, and by tomorrow she would be.
The guy in the Gilbert and Sullivan get-up spotted him, saw Anna begin marching toward him and rushed past her, his obvious goal to score points by reaching the car before she did.
Anna offered a stony glare and a dismissive wave of her hand.
All she had to add was a thumbs-down gesture and a lion would surely have appeared to sink its fangs into the poor guy and drag him away.
And then there was that T-shirt. Never mind the way her breasts thrust against the thin cotton, or the way it clung to her skin. It was the message written across it that got him, that woman-bicycle-fish thing.
For some crazy reason it made him want to drag her into the car and kiss her until she wound her arms around his neck and begged him to make love to her—except it wasn’t love, it was, just as she’d pointed out, sex.
“You find this amusing?” she demanded.
Draco turned what threatened to be a grin into a scowl.
“Nothing about you is amusing, Orsini.” He leaned across the front seat and pushed the door open. “Get in.”
“Perhaps you didn’t get my message. I don’t need you to open doors. I am perfectly capable of doing things for myself.”
Her voice rang with icy scorn. Draco narrowed his eyes. The lady needed some lessons in manners, and for the few hours she’d still be annoyingly at his side he was damned well going to be the one teaching them to her.
“Forgive me,” he said, his voice as chilly as hers. “For a moment I forgot how you feel about good manners.”
Her face went pink. Good, he thought grimly. In fact, excellent.
“As for your treatment of the doorman, he was simply trying to do his job.”
“A useless job.”
“A job,” Draco said. “Something that puts food on the table, though I doubt if someone in your situation would ever have to worry about that.”
Anna felt her color deepen.
He was right, of course, though what a prince would know about putting food on the table was beyond her.
She certainly knew what it was like. How it felt to worry about money. When you refused financial support from your father to get you through university, when you lied to your brothers and said thanks but you didn’t need any help paying your tuition, your room, your board …
“You going to get in the car or not? Make up your mind, consigliere. I’m not in the mood for games.”
What she wanted to do was slam the door in his handsome, arrogant face, but, speaking of jobs, she had one to do and she was going to do it.
Anna tossed her head, slid into the passenger seat and flashed a sickly-sweet smile at the doorman when he reached, warily, for the door.
“Grazie,” she said, but when she looked at Draco, the saccharine smile faded. “You,” she said, each letter a virtual pellet of ice, “would, of course, be fully cognizant of what it’s like to worry about putting food on the table.”
Draco thought back to the years he’d spent eating one meal a day so he could put most of what he earned into paying for the exorbitant costs of getting his degree—well, of almost getting that degree—but he’d never told anyone about those years and no way was he ever going to talk about it with someone like Anna Orsini.
Instead, he handed the doorman a tip and then stepped hard on the gas.
“Oh, I don’t know,” he said as the car shot away from the curb. “Truffles and caviar aren’t always easy to find.”
Anna glared at him. A joke? For all she knew, a statement of fact.
