LITMIR.BIZ

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been suckered into going to Italy. That story about his mother…Even if it were true, and that was a stretch, why would his father have waited forty years to give her, as he’d put it, a little bit of Tuscany?

      Not that it mattered.

      He’d said he would do this thing. A man was nothing if he broke his word.

      The kettle whistled. Nick made the coffee, gave it a few minutes, then poured some into an oversized mug. Too much champagne or maybe too much Cesare. Either way, a couple of sips and he felt the caffeine kicking in as he emptied the contents of the envelope his father had given him onto the polished stone counter.

      He picked up a document, read a couple of paragraphs, then shook his head in dry amusement. He was due to meet with Prince Vittorio Antoninni the next day.

      “Would have been nice if you’d consulted me first, Father,” he muttered, but a quick meeting would serve his purpose. The sooner this was behind him, the better.

      He drank a little more coffee, then reached for the phone. The Orsini jet was taking Falco and his bride on their honeymoon. No problem. The company used a travel agent; Nick had the guy’s home phone number. It was one of the perks of doing seven figures worth of business with him every year.

      To his surprise, there were no nonstop flights from Kennedy Airport to Florence. He would have to change planes in Rome. That meant the travel time would be longer than he liked, but still, two days for this would be enough. He arranged for a first-class ticket that would get him into the city by 2:00 p.m., arranged for a suite at the Grand Hotel and a rental car he’d pick up at the airport.

      Okay.

      Nick punched a speed-dial number, ordered pad thai from a little place a few blocks away. While he waited for it to arrive, he went through the rest of the Antoninni Vineyard papers, but he learned little more than he already knew. The Antoninni family had owned the land and the winery for five centuries. Prince Vittorio had taken over from his father; his daughter would eventually take over from him, though she seemed disinterested in anything to do with business.

      Alessia Antoninni was a party girl. She called herself a publicist but she spent her time in Rome, running with a fast crowd of people too rich for their own good. He knew what she was like without half-trying. Self-centered. Self-indulgent. And bored out of her empty mind. New York was filled with young women like her.

      Not that it mattered to him.

      His business was with her father. Without question, the sooner it was over with, the better.

      There was a note in the envelope, on heavy vellum adorned with a royal crest. Signore Orsini was to telephone the prince’s secretary when he knew the exact time of arrival. The prince would not simply send a car, he would, himself, be at the airport to greet Signore Orsini. And, of course, Signore Orsini would be his guest at the Antoninni villa in the hills outside Firenze.

      Nick made the call. It was the middle of the night in Italy by then so he ended up leaving a voice mail message in what he suspected was terrible Italian because he’d never picked up more than the basics, confirming he’d be arriving the next day, as planned, but omitting the time and flight information, and politely refusing the offer that he stay at the villa.

      He preferred being on his own when he was checking out possible investment properties.

      The bell rang. It was the doorman with the pad thai. Nick settled down with his dinner and his laptop and went through the Antoninni Vineyards paperwork again.

      By midnight, he had lots of questions and not many answers. He could only hope the prince could provide them.

      The prince, Nick thought, and laughed. This entire thing was like a bad joke.

      Alessia paced the waiting area in the Peretola Airport, the last of her patience rapidly fleeing.

      This was like a bad joke, she thought grimly. If only she could see enough humor in it to laugh.

      The Orsini gangster had left a voice-mail message in the middle of the night. Did he not realize there was a time difference between America and Europe?

      Probably not.

      He was a hoodlum. He would have the IQ of a snail. The message was delivered in incredibly bad Italian. Delivered? Barked, was more like it, in Sicilian-Italian. Such a lower-class patois…but what else would such a man speak?

      He had an interesting voice, she had to give him that. Low-pitched. Slightly husky. A young voice for an old man.

      What counted was that the message was pointless. He would arrive today. Alessia bit back a snort of derision. Of course he would! That was the arrangement he had made with her father. Then there’d been something about hotel arrangements when he surely knew he would stay at the villa. As for his arrival time, the airline he was flying…

      Nothing.

      She’d had to waste time scanning for all the incoming flights that he could take from London or Paris or who knew where. She’d ended with a list of arrivals that ranged from early morning to this last one due in now, from Rome.

      She had been pacing these grimy floors for hours. An entire day, wasted.

      An unladylike word slipped from her lips. A nun, hurrying by, gave her a shocked look.

      “You try putting yourself in my place,” Alessia said to the nun’s retreating back, and then she thought, I am losing my mind!

      A message blinked on the arrivals board. Grazie a Dio! The plane from Rome had landed. Orsini had to be on it. Five minutes for the passengers to disembark. Ten for them to collect their luggage. Another ten to clear passport control…

      Her feet were killing her.

      She had worn Dior heels. Heels? They were more like stilts. Foolish to have done so but they went well with her ivory Armani suit. She had dressed with care, not to impress this Cesare Orsini but to remind him of who she was and who he was and if that seemed wrong, so be it. Heaven only knew what her father had led the man to think about this unholy deal, but since going to work in Rome, she had seen enough deals go sour to know that it was important to establish one’s position as soon as possible.

      This gangster wanted to buy into the Antoninni Vineyards? She would set the rules. That was her right, now that her father had dumped the situation in her lap. And the first rule was that if it had been left to her, the American thug would never have thought to set foot on Tuscan soil.

      Ah. Finally. The passengers from Rome were starting to trickle into the hall. A trio of priests. A middle-aged woman, wheeling a suitcase. Two teenaged boys with backpacks. A harassed-looking mother clutching a wailing child. An elderly man, leaning on a cane. A young couple, hands tightly clasped.

      And a man.

      Tall, dark-haired, impeccably dressed in what was surely a custom-made suit, his stride long and fluid, the look on his face one of such controlled anger that Alessia took an unthinking step to her left.

      A mistake, because he took one to his right.

      They collided.

      No. Too strong a word. His body simply brushed hers.…

      An electric shock seemed to jolt through her.

      He looked at her. He must have felt the same thing, judging by the sudden narrowing of his eyes. Such dark eyes, the color of the strongest, richest espresso. The rest of his features were strong, too, she thought on a little inrush of breath. The narrow nose, with just the slightest dent near the bridge. The square jaw. 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

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