“But you do.”
Surely her face was bright red. From anger, not embarrassment, she told herself. “I do not. I don’t even like you.”
He laughed as if she’d admitted something she shouldn’t have. “And here I thought you didn’t have any feelings at all about me.”
“I’m rapidly changing my mind.”
The look he gave her jolted her to her core. Dark, sensual, breathtakingly intense. “We could have fun in Sicily, Anna. Hot, decadent, pleasurable fun.”
Her heart was thrumming. “Please stop saying we. We aren’t doing anything together, Mr. Jackson.”
He laughed again. “Back to that? Have you ever considered, sweet Anna, that perhaps it’s time you let your hair down a bit? Time to let go of that buttoned-up perfection you try so hard to project and have some fun?”
Anna clenched her hands into fists in her lap. He didn’t know her, didn’t know what he was saying. He was simply guessing, because that’s what men like him did. They got beneath your skin and made you desire them, made you think they understood you when in fact they only understood how to lower your defenses. It was a parlor trick, the kind of thing bogus fortune tellers did every day at the carnival.
She might not be experienced, but she wasn’t stupid.
“You’re grabbing at straws,” she said calmly. “I am well aware I’m not perfect. And I like the way I’m dressed.”
“It’s not a bad way to dress if you’re chairing a board meeting,” he said. “But it’s not your true style.”
“I don’t think you have the first clue about my style.”
“I’m not sure you do, either,” he said. “But we could start with naked and go from there.”
Heat flared in her core, impossible heat. Her limbs were jelly whenever he mentioned the word naked. She was in danger of turning into a slack-jawed nitwit if he kept it up. “Do you ever quit?”
“I do,” he said. “But I don’t think we’ve reached that point yet.”
Anna groaned. It was uncharacteristic of her, but she couldn’t help it. “Why are you torturing me? Why can’t we just fly to Amanti, view the coast and go back to Santina?”
Leo looked at her, his expression suddenly very serious. “Do you really want to go back to Santina? Is that where you want to be today?”
She turned to look out the window. The sea spread in all directions, as far as the eye could see. It was hard to believe they could be in the Mediterranean and it could still feel so remote. As if they were the only two people in the world. There were no boats out here, no other planes, nothing but the blue sky, the bright sun and dazzling water.
She was alone with him, and while he frustrated her, he also made her feel things she’d not felt before: attractive, alive, interesting. She wasn’t quite ready to give that up yet.
“No,” she said softly. And then she turned to face him, her jaw hardening. “No, I don’t want to go back.”
Leo wasn’t sure why, but he wanted her. She was quite possibly the most uptight woman he’d ever met, but for some reason that intrigued him. Like now, when she sat there beside him and tried to look stony. He wasn’t sure she realized it, but stony didn’t really work when you had wide jade-green eyes that showed every ounce of hurt you were feeling, whether you wanted them to or not.
And Anna was hurting. He’d seen her across the room last night, looking so isolated and alone, and he’d wanted to know who she was. Graziana Ricci had laughed dismissively. “Oh, that’s Anna Constantinides. The jilted bride.”
The jilted bride. He’d watched her closely then, wondering what she must be feeling as she listened to the toasts to Prince Alessandro and Allegra. She’d looked so cool, so bored, so perfect and untouchable dressed all in icy white—but then her fingers had strayed to the pearl necklace she wore, and he’d noticed they were trembling. When she’d turned toward him, the light from the chandeliers caught her just right and he’d realized she was on the verge of tears.
Shimmering tears she never once let fall.
She’d been a beautiful ice queen in the center of that gathering, the most regal and elegant of them all—and he’d wanted to see if he could melt the ice surrounding her heart. Leo lived for challenges, and Anna Constantinides was a challenge. It wasn’t simply that he wanted to seduce her. He wanted to make her laugh, wanted to see her eyes light up with pleasure.
Anyone who’d seen the newspapers, who’d read those ugly headlines and even uglier stories, would know she was suffering. It made him think of another time, another woman, who had also been deeply hurt by what the papers had said about her. His mother had kept the articles from when her affair with Bobby had been splashed through the papers. He’d found them in her personal documents when he was eighteen. She’d been dead for eight years by then.
Until that moment, he’d thought the most devastating thing she’d had in her possession had been the positive paternity test naming Bobby Jackson as his father—a fact Bobby had denied until the test was brought out in court after Leo’s mother’s death—but the articles had given Leo a whole new level of understanding about what had happened between his parents.
Though Bobby had raised him from the age of ten onward, their relationship could never be termed ordinary. Bobby didn’t seem to know how to be a father, either to Leo or his siblings. He tried, but he was more of a dotty uncle than anything.
After Leo found the articles and confronted his father, their relationship had soured. Soon after that, he’d gone to the States to forge his way in business. He’d wanted to prove he didn’t need Bobby, or the Jackson name, to succeed. He’d built the Leonidas Group from the ground up, and he’d made more money than Bobby had ever earned, even at the height of his football career.
Since Leo had returned to London recently, he’d been trying damn hard to forge a new relationship with his father. Though it wasn’t perfect, they were finally learning to let go of the past and be friends.
Just then, Anna glanced down at her slim gold watch and turned sharply toward him as she realized how long they’d been flying. “Are we lost? Because we should have been there by now.”
Leo flexed his fingers on the controls. “We aren’t lost, darling. I thought it might be nice to fly for a little while.”
He found flying soothing, especially when he wanted to think.
But Anna was used to structure. Her mouth opened. Closed. Opened again. “But why?” she blurted. “There is much to see on Amanti!”
He glanced over at her. Such an uptight woman. He found himself wanting to unpin her hair and see how long it might be. And he definitely wanted to get her out of that bland suit. Grey. Why was the woman wearing grey? The red of her shirt was the only spot of color in her drab outfit. Didn’t she know she should be dressed all in red? In vibrant, sassy colors that made the green of her eyes stand out even more than they already did?
She was utterly beautiful, and trying so hard to hide that beauty. He found himself wanting to know why.
“And do you really want to be on Amanti today?” he asked coolly.
Her eyes were wide, her expression haunted. He didn’t have to explain what he meant. The newspapers and tabloids couldn’t seem to leave the story of Prince Alessandro’s surprise engagement alone, especially since he’d picked Allegra Jackson—of those scandalous Jacksons—as his bride.
Anna couldn’t help but be dragged into the publicity. She was the antithesis of his family, and probably far more suited to being a royal bride by virtue of her lack of scandalous relations.
Which