The Princes' Brides. Sandra Marton

was why she’d refused to exchange names.

      To make what had happened real would have meant despising herself for what she’d let him do…

      And ever since that night, she’d wanted him to do it all again.

      No wonder he’d looked at her with such loathing today. She loathed herself. But to believe she’d deliberately—

      The ringing of the phone made her jump.

      She didn’t want to talk to anybody. Especially her grandfather and that was probably him calling. He was furious at her. She’d walked out of his office without a word, ignored his demand that she come back.

      Let the answering machine deal with him. She wasn’t going to.

      Another ring. Then the machine picked up.

       Hi. You’ve reached 555-6145. Please leave a message after the tone.

      “Ms. Black, this is Dr. Glassman’s office. Your test results are in. Please call our office between the hours of eight and—”

      She ran for the phone, snatched it up. “I’m here! I mean, this is Ms. Black.”

      “Ms. Black? Please hold for the doctor.”

      Aimee held, imagining the worst. Why not, on a day like this? A brain tumor. A rare blood malady. Or—her breath caught at how stupid she was not to have thought of it sooner.

      Or an illness of the kind people got these days, from having unprotected sex.

      No. Not that.

      Whatever else he was, she could not imagine the Prince of Darkness having that kind of disease.

      “Ms. Black? Dr. Glassman here…”

      Aimee listened. And listened. Then she put down the phone and stared blankly at the wall.

      She’d thought right.

      Nicolo Barbieri hadn’t give her a disease.

      He’d given her a baby.

      She sat motionless for hours, wrapped in her robe, oblivious to the passage of time.

      What to do? What to do?

      She was single. Unemployed. Living on temporary jobs because she refused to let her grandfather support her.

      No money, no prospects, this small apartment in a not-very-good neighborhood…

      This time, it wasn’t the phone that beat shrilly against the silence, it was the doorbell.

      Aimee ignored it. Whoever it was would go away. The UPS man with a package, the super to drill a peephole in the door, something she’d been requesting for months.

      The bell rang again. And again. Whoever was out there was persistent.

      Aimee sighed, rose to her feet and went to the door. She undid the locks. The chain. Cracked the door an inch…

      And felt the blood drain from her head.

      “No,” she said. “No—”

      “Yes,” Nicolo growled, and just as he had that fateful night, he put his shoulder to the door and forced it open.

      Chapter Six

      THEY SAID TIME defused anger.

      The hell it did.

      In the thirty or forty minutes Nicolo had spent looking up Aimee Black in the telephone directory, then taking a taxi all the way downtown, through the tangled snarl of midmorning traffic, his anger didn’t cool one bit.

      If anything, it changed to something so hot and fierce he could damned near feel it inside him.

      It was bad enough she’d been part of the ugly scam her grandfather had designed. If the actual seduction wasn’t part of it, at least the come-on was.

      What was worse was that she’d kept lying to him, not only that night but again this morning.

      She had intended to entice him. He was certain of that. Now, she’d lied about what she’d felt in his arms. She hadn’t intended to get caught up in her own game, but she had.

      He was certain of it.

      He knew women. The little things they did when they wanted to boost a man’s ego. The things they did when their passion was real.

      What Aimee felt had been real.

      The throaty little moans. The soft cries. The lift of her hips to his. Real. All of it. So real, he knew he’d never forget anything they had done together.

      And he was damned well going to force her to admit it. She might have come on to him deliberately but after the first few minutes in his arms, everything had changed.

      Aimee had followed where he led, all the way to ecstasy.

      Dio, just thinking about it was making him hard, and if that wasn’t ridiculous, he didn’t know what was. He was a man who had his pick of women and even the occasional ones who started by pretending his touch drove them crazy soon forgot to pretend.

      There were half a dozen women waiting for his return to Rome. One phone call, he’d have whichever of them he wanted ready to welcome him into her bed.

      But he would be less a man if he didn’t end this in a way that made it clear who was the victor, not just by walking out on the deal James Black had engineered but by forcing the old man’s accomplice-in-crime to admit that what she’d felt in his arms had been real.

      It was the penalty she’d pay for her duplicity.

      Nobody lied to Nicolo Barbieri and got away with it, especially not a woman who had haunted his days and nights for three entire months.

      The cab pulled up in front of a tired-looking, five-story tenement. James Black’s granddaughter, Saturday night’s party girl, lived here?

      Maybe he had the address wrong.

      There was only one way to find out.

      Nicolo handed the cabbie a bill and told him to wait. Then he climbed the grimy steps to the front door. An unlocked front door.

      Not a good idea in a neighborhood like this, but how Aimee lived was not his problem.

      The door opened on a small vestibule, thick with the faint but unmistakable odor of beer and other, less palatable things. The only signs of life were the mailboxes set into a stained gray wall.

      Nicolo scanned the nameplates. A. Black lived in apartment 5C.

      The door that opened into the house itself had no lock, either. None that was usable, anyway. Ahead, a dimly lit staircase with time-worn treads rose into the gloom.

      Nicolo started up.

      By the time he reached the fifth floor and apartment 5C, he was almost hoping he’d come to the wrong place. This was the kind of building that epitomized the things people tried to avoid when they lived in Manhattan.

      So what? he told himself again. How Black’s granddaughter lived was her affair.

      He hesitated. Had coming here actually been a good idea? What would he gain by forcing her to admit she’d enjoyed what they’d done together? Was his ego that fragile, that it needed affirmation from a woman like this?

      Before he could change his mind, Nicolo pressed the bell button.

      Nobody answered.

      He rang again. And then again. Okay. He’d come here, she wasn’t home. That is, she wasn’t home if he even had the correct address, which he doubted…

      The door swung open. Not far, just a couple of inches, but enough for him to see the woman who’d opened it.

      Aimee.

      She stared at him. Her eyes widened. “No,” she whispered,