The Ice Prince

Okay.

A kiss was not sexual assault. It was a kiss. Unwanted, which could maybe make it a misdemeanor …

Not that anyone would call what had landed on her lips just a kiss.

That firm, warm mouth. That hard, long body. That arm, taut with muscle, wrapped around her as if she were something to be claimed …

Or branded.

A little shudder of rage went through her. It was rage, wasn’t it?

Damned right it was.

Absolutely, she should have done something more than slug him.

Where was the gate? Her shoulders ached from the weight of her carry-on and briefcase. Her feet hurt from the stilettos. Why in hell hadn’t she had the sense to change to flats? She’d worn the stilettos to court. Deliberately. It had become her uniform. The tailored suit coupled with the spike heels. It was a look she’d learned worked against some of the high and mighty prosecutors who obviously thought a female defense counsel, especially one named Orsini, would be easy to read.

Nothing about her was easy to read, thank you very much, and Anna wanted to keep it that way.

But the shoes were wrong for hurrying through an airport. Where on earth was that gate?

Back in the other direction, was where.

Anna groaned, turned and ran.

By the time she reached the right gate, the plane was already boarding. She fell in at the end of the line of passengers shuffling slowly forward. Her hair had come mostly out of the tortoiseshell clip that held it; wild strands hung in her face and clung to her sweat-dampened skin.

Anna shifted her carry-on, dug into its front pocket, took out her boarding pass. Her seat was far back in the plane and, according to the annoyingly perky voice coming over the loudspeaker, that section had already boarded.

Perfect.

She was late enough so that the most convenient overhead bins would surely be full by the time she reached them.

Thank you, Mr. Macho.

The line, and Anna, moved forward at the speed of cold molasses dripping from a spoon.

He, of course, would have no such problem. First-class passengers had lots of overhead storage room. By now he probably had a glass of wine in his hand, brought by an attentive flight attendant who’d do everything but drool over her good-looking passenger, because there were lots of women who’d drool over a man who looked like that.

Tall. Dark. Thickly lashed dark eyes. A strong jaw. A face, a body that might have belonged to a Roman emperor.

And the attitude to go with it.

That was why he would have access to a computer outlet, and she would not ….

Anna took a breath. No. Absolutely not. She was not going there!

Concentrate, she told herself. Try to remember what it said on those yellowed, zillion-year-old documents her father had given her.

Hey, it wasn’t as if she hadn’t read them ….

Okay. She hadn’t read them. Not exactly. She’d looked through them prior to scanning them into her computer, but the oldest ones were mostly handwritten. In Italian. And her Italian was pretty much confined to ciao, va bene and a handful of words she’d learned as a kid that wouldn’t get you very far in polite company.

The endless queue drew nearer to the gate.

If only she’d had more time, not just to read those notes but to arrange for this flight. She’d have flown first class instead of coach, let her father pay for her ticket because Cesare was the only reason she was on this fool’s errand.

Cesare could afford whatever ridiculous amount of money first class cost.

She certainly couldn’t. You didn’t fly in comfort on what you earned representing mostly indigent clients.

And comfort was what first class was all about. She’d flown that way once, after she’d passed her bar exams and her brothers had given her a two-week trip to Paris as a gift.

“You’re all crazy,” she’d said, blubbering happily as she bestowed tears and kisses on Rafe and Dante, Falco and Nicolo.

Plus, she’d flown on the private jet her brothers owned. Man, talk about flying in comfort …

“Boarding pass, please.”

Anna handed hers over.

“Thank you,” the gate attendant said. In, naturally, a perky voice.

Anna glowered.

Seven hours jammed into an aluminum can like an anchovy was not something to be perky about.

Not that she disliked flying coach. It was what real people did, and she had spent her life, all twenty-six years of it, being as real as possible.

Which wasn’t easy, when your old man was a la famiglia don.

It was just that coach had its drawbacks, she thought as she trudged down the ramp toward the plane. No computer outlets, sure, but other things, too.

Like that flight to D.C. when the guy next to her must have bathed in garlic. Or the one to Chicago, when she’d been sandwiched between a mom with a screaming infant on one side and a dad with a screaming two-year-old on the other.

“You guys want to sit next to each other?” Anna had chirruped helpfully.

No. They didn’t. They weren’t together, it turned out, and why would any sane human being want to double the pleasure of screaming kids trying their best to drive everyone within earshot to infanticide?

One of the flight attendants had taken pity on her and switched her to a vacant seat. To the only vacant seat.

Unfortunately, it was right near the lavatories.

By the time the plane touched down, Anna had smelled like whatever it was they piped into those coffin-sized closets.

Or maybe worse.

In essence, flying coach was like life. It wasn’t always pretty, but you did what you had to do.