unlike her, but she couldn’t seem to stop herself. The urge to confront him was unbearable. The limo halted.
“I might have been naive then, but I’m not now. I know the world is a cruel place and that some people who have absolutely everything they could ever want are even crueler than that.” She tossed a stray lock of hair over her shoulder with trembling fingers. “So if I’m spirited, as you say, I had to learn to be that way. It’s a dog-eat-dog world, and I don’t want to be eaten.”
Spirited? She hardly thought of herself that way at all. No, more like she was a survivor because she had to be. Because someone else depended on her. Someone tiny and helpless.
Drago opened the car door and stepped out, and Holly took a step back. He was so tall, so broad, so perfect.
No, not perfect. A jerk!
“Get in the car, Holly,” he said, his voice deep and commanding. “Don’t be so stubborn.”
Holly folded her arms beneath her breasts and cocked a hip. “I don’t have to do what you order me to do, Drago,” she said, using his name on purpose. Reminding him they’d once been intimate and that she wasn’t an employee—or, heaven forbid, a girlfriend—to be ordered around. It felt bold and wicked and brave, and that was precisely what she needed to be in order to face him right now. “Besides, won’t your lady friend be angry if you drag me along for the ride?”
His nostrils flared in irritation. One thing she remembered about Drago di Navarra was that he was not accustomed to anything less than blind obedience. It gave her a sense of supreme satisfaction to thwart that expectation.
“Bridgett is no longer an issue,” he said haughtily, and Holly laughed. He looked surprised.
“Poor Bridgett, tossed out on her gorgeous derriere without a clue as to what she did wrong.”
Drago left the door open and came over to her. He was so tall she had to tilt her head back to look up at him. Her first instinct was to flee, but she refused to give in to it. Not happening. She’d been through too much to run away at the first sign of trouble. She told herself that she was far stronger than she’d been a year ago. She had to be.
She was.
“Get in the car, Holly, or I’ll pick you up and toss you in it,” he growled. It surprised her to realize that she could smell his anger. It was sharp and hot, with the distinct smell of a lit match.
“I’d like to see you try,” she threw at him, heedless of the sizzle in his glare. “This is America, buddy, and you can’t just kidnap people off the street.”
Holly didn’t quite know what happened next, but suddenly she was in the air, slung over his shoulder before she could do a thing to stop him.
“Put me down!” she yelled, beating her fists against his back as he carried her over to the car. The next instant, she was tilting downward again, and she clung to him as if he was going to drop her. But he tossed her into the car instead, tossed her bag in after her, and then he was inside and the door slammed shut.
Holly flung herself at the opposite door, but it was locked tight. The limo began to speed down Canal Street. Holly turned and slammed her back against the seat, glaring at the arrogant Italian billionaire sitting at the opposite end. He looked smug. And he didn’t have a hair out of place, while she had to scrape a tangle of hair from her face and shove it back over her ears.
“How dare you?” she seethed. Her heart pounded and adrenaline shoved itself into her limbs, her nerves, until she felt as if she were wound so tight she would split at the seams. If his anger was a lit match, hers was a raging fire. “If anyone saw that, you’re in big trouble.”
“I doubt it,” he said. He leaned forward then, gray eyes glittering in the darkened car. “Now, tell me where you live, Holly Craig, and my driver will take you home. Much easier, no?”
Holly glared.
“Come, Holly. It’s late and you look tired.”
She wanted to refuse—but then she rattled off her address. What choice did she have? It was late, she was tired, and she needed to get Nicky from Mrs. Turner. If she had to let this man take her there, so be it. At least she would arrive far earlier than if she took the bus. And that would make Mrs. Turner happy, no doubt.
“Do you have a guilty conscience?” she asked when he’d given the driver the address.
He laughed. “Hardly.”
That stung, but she told herself she should hardly be surprised. He’d thrown her out without a shred of remorse, and then refused all attempts to contact him. Heartless man.
“Then why the sudden chivalrous offer of a ride home?”
His gaze slid over her, and her skin prickled with telltale heat. She gritted her teeth, determined not to feel even a sliver of attraction for this man. Before she’d met Drago di Navarra, she’d thought she was a sensible woman in control of her own emotions. He’d rather exploded that notion in her face.
And continued to explode it as her body reacted to his presence without regard to her feelings for him. Feelings of loathing, she reminded herself. Feelings of sheer dislike.
Her body didn’t care.
“Because I need you, cara mia.”
She swallowed the sudden lump in her throat. He’d said something similar to her that night in his apartment. And she, like an idiot, had believed him. Worse, she’d wanted it to be true. Well, she wasn’t that naive anymore. Italian billionaires did not fall in love with simple, unsophisticated virgins in the space of an evening.
They didn’t fall in love at all.
“Sorry, but the answer is no.”
His long elegant fingers were steepled together in his lap. “You have not yet heard the proposition.”
“I’m still sure the answer is no,” she said. “I’ve been propositioned by you before, and I know how that works out for me.”
He shook his head as if he were disappointed in her. “I liked you better in New York.”
Her skin stung with heat. “Of course you did. I was a mouse who did whatever you told me to do. I’ve learned better now.”
And she was determined to prove it.
“You like being a cocktail waitress, bella? You like men touching you, rubbing up against you, thinking you’re for sale along with the drinks and the chips?”
The heat in her cheeks spread, suffusing her with an angry glow. “No, I don’t. But it’s just about all I’m qualified for.”
“And if I were to offer you something else? A better way to earn your money?”
Her stomach was beginning to churn. “I won’t be your mistress.”
He blinked at her. And then he laughed again, and she felt the hot, sticky slide of embarrassment in her veins. Oh, for pity’s sake. After the way the woman he’d been with tonight looked, did she truly think he was interested in her?
But he had been once. She hadn’t dreamed it. Nicky was proof she had not.
“Charming, Holly. But I don’t need to pay a woman to be my mistress. If I were to choose you for that...position...I am certain you would not refuse.”
Holly could only gape at his utter self-confidence. “It’s a wonder you bother with casinos when you have such bad instincts. I’m surprised you haven’t lost everything when you reason like that in the face of such overwhelming evidence to the contrary.”
“Dio,” he said, “but you are a stubborn woman. How did we end up in bed together again?” He didn’t wait for her reply. He nodded sagely as if answering his own question. “Ah, yes, that’s right. You were deceiving me.”
Shame suffused her at that mention of their night