LITMIR.BIZ

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The firm mouth.

      It was a hard, masculine face. A beautiful face…

      “Excuse me.”

      Alessia blinked. The man’s voice was as cold and hard as his expression. And the words were a lie. “Excuse me,” he’d said, but what he meant was, “Why don’t you get out of my way?”

      Her eyes narrowed, the same as his.

      She took a step to the side. “You are excused,” she said, her tone as frigid as his.

      His dark eyebrows rose. “Charming,” he muttered, and strode past her.

      Charming, indeed. The rudeness of him! He had spoken in English; without thinking, she had answered in the same tongue. He was, without question, an American, and everyone knew how they were…

      Wait.

      Had there been something familiar in his voice? Deep. Husky. Silken, despite its sharpness…

      A bustle of noise and motion jerked her back to the present. More passengers had just appeared. It was an interesting parade of humanity but when it ended, it had not included Cesare Orsini. There was no short, rotund figure wrapped in a dark overcoat, an old-fashioned fedora pulled low over his eyes.

      To hell with this.

      Alessia turned on her heel, marched through the terminal and out the exit doors. Her black Mercedes had acquired two more parking tickets. She yanked them from under the wiper blades, opened the car and tossed them inside.

      Her father could deal with this nonsense.

      She had had enough.

      She got behind the wheel. Turned the key. Opened the windows. Started the engine. The Mercedes gave a polite but throaty roar. It had no effect on the pedestrians swarming past the hood. Crossing without acknowledging traffic was a game in Italy. Pedestrian or driver, you could not play if you showed fear.

      Slowly, she inched the Mercedes forward. The crowd showed reluctance but, gradually, a narrow tunnel opened. Alessia pressed down harder and harder on the gas.…

      And struck something.

      She heard the tinkle of glass. Saw the crowd part.

      Saw the broken taillight of the Ferrari ahead of her.

      Dio, what now? she thought as the driver’s door flew open. A man stepped out, strode to the rear of the Ferrari—dammit, of all cars to hit, a Ferrari—looked at the shattered glass, then at her…

       Cavolo!

      It was him. The tall, dark-haired American. He didn’t just look angry, he looked furious. Alessia almost shrank back in her seat as he marched toward her. Instead, she took a long, deliberate breath and stepped from her car, her professional easing-the-tension smile on her face.

      “Sorry,” she said briskly. “I didn’t see you.”

      “You didn’t see me? Am I driving a slot car?”

      She almost asked him what a slot car was and caught herself just in time. All she wanted was to get home—to the villa, which was not really home but would have to do—and kick off her agonizingly painful shoes, peel off her wrinkled suit, pour herself a glass of wine…or maybe two glasses—

      “Well? Do you have anything to say for yourself?”

      His tone was obnoxious, as if this were her fault. It wasn’t. He’d been parked in a no-parking zone. Yes, so had she, but what had that to do with anything?

      “First you try to walk through me. Now you try to drive through me!” His mouth thinned. “Did you ever hear of paying attention to what you’re doing?”

      So much for easing the tension. Alessia drew herself up. “I don’t like your attitude.”

      “You don’t like my attitude?”

      He laughed. The laugh was ugly. Insulting. Alessia narrowed her eyes.

      “There is no point to this conversation,” she said coldly. “I suggest we exchange insurance information. There has been no injury to either of us and only the slightest one to your vulgar automobile. I will, therefore, forgive your insulting attitude.”

      “My car is vulgar? My attitude is insulting, but you will forgive it?” The man glared at her. “What the hell is with this country, anyway? No direct flights from New York. A layover in Rome that’s supposed to take forty minutes and ends up taking three hours, three endless hours because some idiot mechanic dropped a screwdriver, and when I made a perfectly reasonable attempt to charter a private plane instead of standing around, killing time…”

      He was still talking but she couldn’t hear him. Her thoughts were spinning. He had come from New York? A layover in Rome? A longer layover than planned?

      “Do you speak Italian?” she blurted.

      Stopped in midsentence, he glared at her as if she were crazy. “What?”

      “I said, do you—”

      “No. I do not. A few words, that’s all, and what are you, an adjunct to passport control?”

      “Say something. In Italian.”

      He shot her another look. Then he shrugged as if to say, Hey, why not accommodate the inmate? And said something in Italian.

      Alessia gasped.

      Not at what he’d said—it was impolite and it had to do with her mental state but who cared about that? She gasped because what he’d spoken was not really Italian, it was Sicilian. Sicilian, spoken in a deep, husky voice…

      “Your name,” she whispered.

      “Excuse me?”

      “Your name! What is it?”

      Nick slapped his hands on his hips. Okay. Maybe he’d stepped into an alternate universe.

      Or maybe this was the old-country version of Marco Polo. Kids played it back home, a dumb game where they bobbed around in a swimming pool, one yelling “Marco,” another answering “Polo.” It made about as much sense as this, an aggressive, mean-tempered babe—if you could call her a babe and, really, you couldn’t—who had first tried to walk through him, then tried to run him down.…

      “Answer the question! Who are you? Are you Cesare Orsini?”

      “No,” Nick said truthfully.

      “Are you sure?”

      He laughed. That made her face turn pink.

      “I think you are he. And if I am right, you’ve cost me an entire day.”

      “Meaning?”

      “Meaning, I have been here for hours and hours, waiting for your arrival.”

      Nick’s smile faded. “If you tell me you’re Vittorio Antoninni, I won’t believe you.”

      “I am his daughter. Alessia Antoninni.” Her chin jutted forward. “And, obviously, you are who you say you are not!”

      “You asked if I was Cesare Orsini. I’m not. I’m Nicolo Orsini. Cesare is my father.”

      “Your father? Impossible! I know nothing of a change in plans.”

      “In that case,” Nick said coldly, “we’re even, because I sure as hell don’t know about a change in plans, either. Your father was supposed to meet me. If I’d let him meet me, that is, which I had no intention of doing.”

      “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

      “That makes things even. I don’t understand anything you’re babbling about, lady, and—”

      “Where have you been all these hours?”

      “Excuse me?”

      “It

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