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“Baby poo. Now crap. What a fine sense for similes my sister has.” Anna’s words were brisk, but her hands trembled as she filled the coffeepot with water. “Want some cookies?”
“I want some answers. What happened in Rome?”
“Nothing,” Anna said. “Nothing at all. I saw the Trevi Fountain, the Coliseum, I did a little shopping and—”
“And?” Isabella said, narrowing her hazel eyes.
“And,” Anna said, turning her back to her sister, “and …”
“Anna. Honey, you can tell me anything. You know that.”
Anna nodded. She could. And, really, she had to. She couldn’t carry this around inside her anymore.
“And,” she said in a low voice, “I fell in love.”
Isabella all but collapsed onto a wooden kitchen chair.
“Not you. Not you, Anna!”
“I fell in love.” A sob broke from Anna’s throat. “With the coldest, cruelest, most hard-hearted bastard in the world.”
“What’s his name?”
“Draco. Draco Valenti.” Anna sank into a chair across from Isabella. “Prince Draco Valenti, no less.”
“A handsome prince?”
“An ice prince. All sex, no heart.”
“Wow. That’s quite a description.”
“It’s accurate. But don’t worry. I fell out of love fast enough. I mean, I realized how I really felt two minutes after I walked out on him. I’m just upset, is all. With myself, for having been such a jerk.”
“Oh, honey …”
“Really. It’s okay.” Tears ran down her face as she looked at her sister. “I never actually loved him, Iz. I never would have. Never, not me, not in a billion years …”
Anna folded her arms on the scarred wooden table, laid down her head and sobbed.
Not too far away, in a much trendier part of Manhattan, in a bar that was still a bar and not a cocktail lounge or a club, Raffaele, Dante, Falco and Nicolo Orsini were having their usual Friday-night get-together.
The bar—actually, The Bar—was theirs, which was why it was still a bar despite the fact that the neighbo
rhood, to their enormous distaste, had gone upscale.
Once, this had been the place where they shared talk of dangerous dilemmas and beautiful women.
Now they were all married. Very happily married, but they met anyway and talked sports and business, kids and family, and, yes, once in a while they even talked dangerous dilemmas.
Tonight they were talking about one of their sisters.
“Izzy agrees,” Rafe said. “Something’s up with Anna.”
Nick bit into his burger, chewed, swallowed and nodded. “Yeah. But what?”
Falco lifted his beer to his mouth. “Isabella’s going to try and find out.”
“Could it be a man?” Dante said. His brothers looked at him, and he sighed. “Right. Not our Anna. There’s not a guy alive could bring our Anna down.”
