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She licked at the chestnut ice cream, caught an almost-spilled drop at the corner of her mouth with the tip of her tongue.
“You,” Draco said in a low voice, “are asking for trouble.”
She looked up at him. “What kind of trouble?” she said with a teasing smile, and he laughed and deposited a quick, ice-cream-sweet kiss on her lips.
Anna sat back again, Draco at her back, the Roman sun on her face, the gelato cool in her mouth. Wonderful, she thought. All of it. The city. The piazza. The gelato.
The man.
Most especially the man.
He was so different from what she’d expected, so different from the men she usually dated. He was beautiful to look at, yes, but what made him unique was harder to pin down, that tantalizing combination of strength and tenderness, that old-fashioned belief in honor …
That male arrogance.
Back to that again.
She’d always hated it.
Well, no.
She hated it in her father, where arrogance equated with dominance. In the men who surrounded him. She hated it in a handful of her colleagues, who sometimes spoke to her as if she were a girl and not a woman.
But her brothers were male to the core; they were incredibly arrogant and yet she loved that in them—their assertiveness, their protectiveness …
Her sisters-in-law, independent females every one, clearly loved those same qualities. Maybe whether you thought a man’s attitude was caring or dominating depended on what you felt for the man. On whether you respected him and admired him.
On whether you loved him—whatever that meant, because she didn’t believe in love. In the very concept of it. In being with one man forever, waking up in his arms, falling asleep with your hand on his heart, feeling peace inside you just because you did something simple like—like sitting in the sun, eating ice cream while you leaned against him …
The cup of gelato slipped from her hand.
“Such a waste,” Draco teased as he scooped it up. Then he saw her face. “Anna? What is it?”
What, indeed? It wasn’t possible. It absolutely wasn’t. She was—she was a victim of her own imagination. The beautiful city. The beautiful man. A hundred movies and magazine articles with Rome as the setting, and that was all it was, this—this sudden gallop of her heart.
“Anna. Answer me. Are you ill?”
“No. No! I’m fine.”
Draco rose and drew her to her feet. “Are you sure?” His eyes were dark with worry.
“I’m positive. Too much sun maybe.” She managed a smile. “Or maybe too much ice cream after too much pasta. I mean, when your usual breakfast is whole wheat toast …”
He was supposed to laugh. Instead, he drew her into his arms.
“I know exactly what you need.”
There it was again. That damnable male attitude. No. She could never—
“In fact,” he said, his voice a rough caress meant for her ears alone, “I know precisely what you need. A cool drink. A cool bed. And my arms, warm around you.”
He was right.
He was right, and whatever that meant was …
It was terrifying.
Over the next few days Draco showed Anna more of his Rome.
