But the sense of urgency and peril. The trail abruptly ended in a small clearing. They had beaten the storm.

  Barely visible through the driving snow and ebbing light was a structure. With towering trees at its back, a tiny cabin faced the clearing. It was like something off a Christmas card, the kind of place he thought probably only existed as nostalgia, a figment of imagination, a longing for simplicity and sanctuary in a busy, complex world.

  With one last huge effort, he launched himself toward the cabin’s promise. They had arrived at safety.

  As Valentino stopped at the steps to the cabin, Erin was already stepping out of her bindings and tossing her skis over her shoulder. He felt like a man who had crossed the desert in search of water and could not be certain that what he was seeing was not a mirage. He took it all in.

  Constructed of logs, long since weathered to gray, the cabin was anchored on one side by a sturdy chimney made of round, smooth river rocks in varying shades ranging from gold to mauve. In the shadow of a large porch that wrapped around the entire structure, a brightly painted red door welcomed. There were red shutters around the square-paned glass of the windows. The snow, stacked up on the roof, was at least two feet deep.

  Valentino was a man who had been raised in grandeur and opulence. The palace of his family was often compared to the Palazzo Brancaccio in Rome, though, as his mother liked to point out to anyone who was interested, it predated that structure by several hundred years. Their house, Palazzo de Oscaro, was arguably the most photographed palace in the Mediterranean.

  He followed Erin’s suit and kicked off his skis, and then tumbled, grateful, through the door of the cottage. He had to put his shoulder against it to close it. It was as if the storm was an intruder, demanding to come in with them.

  With the storm closed out—howling as if angry at its exclusion—Valentino became aware of a feeling he’d never had before when, at this moment, he felt it for the very first time.

  As he leaned his back against the door, he was enveloped in a sense of warmth, a sensation of arriving, finally, after a long, long journey, at the place called home.

  But then, sharing the small entryway with him, Erin yanked off her toque and a cascade of hair tumbled out as golden as ripened wheat. She ran her hands through it, tossed it over her shoulder with a shake of her head. He could smell some heady scent.

  His sense of having found a safe place, a place called home, evaporated. As someone who had grown up royal, he had had it drummed into him from the first small hop of a hormone: do not ever put yourself—and therefore your family—in a compromising position.

  In a world that was always under a microscope and always under control, he had never encountered a situation quite like this one.

  He was going to be snowed in, alone and entirely unchaperoned, with a woman. A very beautiful woman.

  A strange sense of danger, every bit as intense as what he had felt on the mountain and from the storm enveloped him.

  A very pregnant woman, Valentino reminded himself. Thank the gods.

  * * *

  Valentino on Valentine’s Day, Erin thought as she yanked off her toque and ran her hands through her hair, contemplating the option that someone was punking her.

  She glanced over her shoulder at the stranger to see if he was amused. An igloo? It had to be a trick of some sort.

  But the man looked only relieved to be inside. Besides, who could have put such an elaborate trick in play? It would mean someone had known about Paul breaking off with her. It was possible, given that it had happened two weeks ago, that he was slowly letting people know, even if she was not.

  But really? She didn’t know anyone in their circle of friends, thank goodness, who was cruel enough to make a joke out of that.

  Besides, the whole premise rested on a chance encounter on the mountain. And Valentino seemed to genuinely think she was pregnant. So, no, it had to be the universe having a snicker at her expense.

  Well, at least she’d managed to punk back a little bit by letting him believe she was pregnant. And by besting him at skiing. He had skied beautifully, but Erin allowed herself a small snippet of satisfaction that, even so, he couldn’t keep up to her.

  She patted the bump under her jacket, just to get a reaction from him, but it backfired. The reaction was hers.

  Because Valentino lifted his goggles from his eyes.

  Any brief satisfaction she had felt by besting him at skiing evaporated like mist before the sun. His eyes were utterly astonishing. A deep, deep brown flecked with gold.

  Now that she wasn’t, well, taken, and now that they had found sanctuary and safety from the storm, it gave her permission to really look at him as he leaned over and released the buckles on his boots.

  She fought the temptation to look at him longer. Instead, she took out the satellite device and tried for a connection. No go. She typed in a quick text to let people know they had arrived safely. Generally, it would send the next time the device found a signal.

  She accidentally jostled him as she bent over her own boot buckles.

  “Oh, sorry,” she said, annoyed that she was blushing as he regained his balance and kicked off the boots.

  “I’ll set those outside,” she said.

  He passed the boots to her and his hand brushed hers. She still had her gloves on; he did not. It was impossible that she felt the heat of his touch, wasn’t it?

  She was so close to him. In the fading light, his golden-toned skin seemed to glow. She could not help but notice his nose: perfect, strong and straight. He had high, commanding cheekbones. He was clean-shaven, which accentuated a faint cleft in his chin, a feature Erin had not realized she found attractive until this very second.

  A hint of a dark shadow on his cheeks—added to that exotic skin tone—suggested he might have dark hair beneath the custom-painted ski helmet that complimented the rich navy of his jacket and pants.

  For some reason, once her eyes found them, she could not look away from his lips, which were firm and wide. The bottom one was enticingly puffy, the faintest line dividing it in two. What form of madness was this?

  Aside from the fact they were going to be stranded together for at least one night, she was freshly heartbroken! This jolt of pure awareness his lips were causing in her seemed entirely inappropriate.

  It felt as if, given the circumstances, she should be ashamed of her awareness of the sensual fullness of his lower lip. She tried to muster that feeling.

  Instead, Erin was aware of feeling free, like someone who had been inside a house too long suddenly being let out to breathe fresh air.

  It felt liberating, and exhilaratingly so, to just look at a man and appreciate him. It felt good to not be taken, spoken for, committed.

  Erin was shocked at herself and a new and niggling awareness of how superficial she was capable of being. She turned quickly away from him and put the sets of heavy ski boots outside the door. Snow blew in, right up under the porch. When she stepped back in the door, Valentino had not moved, but was studying the interior of the cabin.

  The look on his face was extraordinary. It was as if he was lit from within. Her eyes moved to the puffiness of that lower lip again.

  Then he threw back his head and laughed. Was it because he had noticed her fixation on his lips?

  “Encantado,” he declared softly, his accent unconsciously seductive. And then his eyes came to rest on her. He had spoken in Spanish, so he translated. “I’m enchanted.”

  She felt as if her breath stopped.

  Was he referring to her? To her gazing at his lips? She quickly looked away, over the broadness of his shoulders, and tried to quiet the fluttering of her heart.

  All her life she had lived with her father’s unending appeal to women, and her mother’s bitterness over it. But until this moment, she had not experienced a pull toward someone that felt so compelling. She was shocked to feel something primitive and powerful stir within her.

  She had not felt this before—a naked animal awareness of a member of the opposite sex—and it shook her. After all, she knew nothing about this man who was looking so intently at her with a gaze that set fire in her blood.

  Wanting.

  Wanting what? Erin asked herself primly. She just wasn’t the kind of girl who went around lusting after strangers on the ski hill.

  Erin did not like weakness. And she particularly did not like that weakness. She sighed inwardly. The universe had not only provided her with a Valentino for Valentine’s Day, but one that was going to challenge everything she believed about herself.

  For instance, that she was not in the least impulsive.

  She did not believe people had instincts they could not control.

  She certainly did not believe in love at first sight.

  He took off his jacket and reached to hang it on a peg behind her. He was very close, in fact, and his presence was so electrical that some of her hair reached out and attached to the sleeve of his white, long-sleeved undershirt.

  When she reached out to yank her errant hair back, she realized the undershirt was not wool, but something finer, like alpaca or cashmere. The texture of it made her want to sink her fingers in to it. Or maybe that was the scent that tickled her nostrils, every bit as invigorating as the scent of the coming storm she had detected earlier.

  It was faintly spicy, faintly cold, faintly pure man.

  Then Valentino removed his ski helmet and reached by her again to put it on a peg. Despite ordering herself not to, Erin could not help but stare at him.

  A cascade of damp curls, as black and as shiny as the wings of a raven, had been released from underneath that helmet.

  He shook them and then ran a hand through the tangled mop of his hair. He was so gorgeous, it felt as if her heart would stop.

  She suddenly was not so sure she did not believe in love at first sight.

  That was a thought that had to be resisted wholeheartedly!

  “When’s the baby due?” he asked, a certain tender protectiveness in his tone that could melt a susceptible person’s heart. She was determined she would not be that person.

  “I’m not pregnant.”

  Valentino looked quizzically at her stomach. And then a blush changed the tone of his golden skin. He thought he’d insulted her.

  Harvey, no doubt recognizing they were home, wanted out. Valentino’s eyes widened at the violent wave of motion under her jacket.

  She stepped by Valentino into the main room and unzipped her coat to reveal the rounded hump of baby carrier underneath it.

  “You skied with a real baby?” he breathed, aghast, apparently not familiar enough with baby paraphernalia to realize a head should have been visible if she was, indeed, carrying a real baby.

  “Well, my baby.”

  “But that’s not safe!”

  “This is the same baby carrier my father used to put me in to come here when I was just a baby,” she said. “My family skis as easily as most people walk.”

  “Still,” he said, appalled, “you could have fallen. On your baby.”

  “Think of it like people in Europe riding bikes with babies in the carriers.”

  “It’s not the same—”

  At that moment, Harvey decided he’d had enough. His paws emerged first, over the lip of the carrier. And then he hefted himself up, poking his gray furry head out of the carrier He eyed the stranger in his domain balefully through slitted amber eyes.

  Valentino took a startled step back. “That is not a baby!”

  “Really?” She looked down at Harvey with pretended astonishment. “Where did he come from?”

  Valentino eyed her with such annoyance, a shiver went up and down her spine. He had that look of a man far too certain of himself, a man that people did not cross.

  “You’re not pregnant,” he said, something edgy in his voice.

  “Is there any reason you would sound disappointed by that news?”

  “You let me believe it. You let me think I might be delivering a baby in an igloo.”

  “I’m in no way responsible for other people’s absurd conclusions!”

  “You’re skiing with a cat and you call me absurd?” he shot back.

  “I don’t think I would have been out here skiing by myself if I was that close to having a baby. What do you take me for? An idiot?”

  “I feel as if I’ve been the one played for the idiot,” he said stiffly. “You could have told me right away. Plus, you could have seriously injured your animal.”

  “Not just an idiot! An irresponsible idiot! Believe me, if I had fallen on Harvey, I would have come out of it in worse shape than him.”

  Valentino looked at her with narrowed eyes. She could feel a spark in the air between them. She didn’t like sparks between people! She liked calm.

  But look where that liking had gotten her. Paul had told her, in his little breakup speech, that their relationship was boring. It reminded him of his mother and father’s relationship. It was obvious—look at her relationship with Harvey—that she wanted children. Soon.

  He wasn’t ready. Kids and family felt like jail to him.

  Erin’s focus moved again to the intrigue of that puffy split in Valentino’s bottom lip. She contemplated the feeling that rippled through her. Whatever it was, it was not boring.

  She was annoyed with him. He was aggravated with her. And still, underneath that ran a current of...something. Something she could not encourage, or investigate, given their circumstances.

  Not that she would want to under any circumstances. That kind of spark was dangerous! It could burn a whole forest down before you even blinked.

  They were about to be snowed in here, together, for who knew how long. There was no room in that equation for wanting.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  THERE WAS NO room for wanting, Erin told herself sternly, no matter how delectable Valentino’s lips were. Part of her, to her own disgust, sighed. What would one little taste hurt?

  There would be no such thing as a little taste of those lips. It would be like trying to have only one little bite of fantastic chocolate.

  And there was no room for attractions or sparky arguments, either, even if it did make her feel faintly invigorated.

  “Let’s call a truce,” she suggested. And not look at each other’s lips. “I’m sorry I let you believe I might be pregnant.”

  “For your own amusement,” he said.

  “You obviously did not get the script,” she told him with elaborate and sarcastic patience. “This is the part where you say, ‘I’m sorry I insinuated you were an irresponsible idiot.’”

  Valentino was silent. He looked stern. Almost forbidding. A man who rarely had to give an inch to anyone and who didn’t plan to now.

  “I have food,” she told him. “And wine. And I’m not above bribing you for a truce.”

  “I’m bigger than you. I could just take them.” But finally the stern line around his mouth softened.

  “But you wouldn’t,” she said.

  He cocked his head at her.

  “I can tell by looking at you. And since we’re stuck here together for a while, it would probably be better if we made an attempt to be civil. So, truce?”

  He considered. He nodded. “Truce.”

  Having won that reluctant concession from Valentino, Erin released the cat from the carrier and set him on the floor. Harvey would have normally headed straight to his dish and complained loudly at finding it empty. Instead, he marched over, tail high, and wound himself around Valentino’s legs.

  Despite her call for a truce, she couldn’t believe her cat.

  Traitor.

  She could usually count on Harvey to be an equal opportunities hater. He had held Paul in utter contempt for the entire length of their relationship.

  Valentino squatted and scratched under the scruffy cat’s chin. “You look like an old warrior,” he said.

  She was suddenly not so sure how wise calling a truce had been. Valentino’s deep voice, roughened with affection, sent a tingle up and down her spine. If she was not mistaken, her cranky cat was reacting about the same way. He rounded his back as Valentino’s hands moved from his chin to his tail.

  Erin stared at his hands. They were not the hands of a working man, but rather beautifully shaped and manicured while still being entirely masculine. He must be an executive. Actually, given that take-charge, brook-no-nonsense demeanor, she was willing to bet he owned and ran a very successful company.

  He was doing something with those hands—caressing—that made that wanting leap to the fore more powerfully than when she had first fought it back.

  The cat preened under his touch.

  “How old is he?” Valentino asked, not the least bit aware, thank goodness, that she had become entranced with his hands.

  “I’ve had him since I was eleven,” she said. “And he wasn’t a kitten, then, so he’s at least fifteen, maybe older.”

  “And you travel with him?”

  Was she eager to let him know she was not some eccentric single woman who could not be separated from her cat? It would seem so. But, wait a second, wasn’t she the one who had decided to embrace the single life?

  Looking at Valentino’s hands on that cat, she was embarrassingly aware she didn’t want to be perceived as a career single person and a crazy cat lady!

  “He’s going slowly blind,” Erin explained. “And deaf. He’s nervous when I’m not around, so I’ve increasingly found ways to keep him close to me. He sleeps most of the time now, so it’s no problem to have him under my desk at work. I’m in accounting at the resort.”

  “Accounting?”

  Was she relieved at the surprise in his voice? When had she started being a person who didn’t want to look like she was in accounting?

  About half an hour ago!

 

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