Temporarily His Princess by Olivia Gates

fork.”
    With a look that said fat chance, she preceded him out of her condo.
    She ignored him as he tried to hand her into the front passenger seat of a gemlike burgundy Jaguar he had parked in her building’s garage. He gave up acting the gallant suitor and walked around to take the wheel.
    So. No driver, no guards. He wasn’t making their liaison public yet. Because he hadn’t expected her to sign the prenup, hadn’t considered it a done deal? No doubt he’d planned to coerce her some more during this “momentous occasion” until she did. She wondered what recalculation was going on inside that inscrutable mind now that she’d made further manipulation unnecessary.
    During the drive, she sat barely breathing or moving so his scent and presence wouldn’t scramble her senses even more. Then observations finally seeped into her hazy mind.
    They were leaving the city.
    When she was certain this was no roundabout way to any restaurant or jeweler, she forced herself to turn to him.
    “Where are we going?”
    Still presenting her with the perfection of his profile, he smiled. “To the airport.”

Five
    “T he airport?”
    At her croak, Vincenzo’s smile widened. “We’re going to have dinner on the jet. We’ll fly to where the most exclusive collection of jewelry on the planet awaits you, so you can pick your ring, and anything else that catches your fancy.”
    He was so pleased with himself for stunning her again.
    She was more than stunned. She was working on a stroke.
    “And it didn’t occur to you to ask if I’d agree to this harebrained scheme of yours?”
    His lips twitched at her venom. “A man going out of his way to surprise his fiancée doesn’t tell her in advance of the details of his efforts.”
    Her jaw muscles hurt at his mention of fiancée. “Do save your ‘efforts’ for when you have a real fiancée.”
    “But you already said I can’t have a real one for all the money and power in the world.”
    “Who knows? Lots of women have self-destructive tendencies. And I didn’t say you couldn’t get one, I said you wouldn’t keep her.”
    His eyes twinkled with mischief before he turned onto a route she’d never seen into the airport, and she’d been here countless times. “Well, you’re real enough for me. And for as long as I keep you, I get to go all-out to surprise you.”
    She harrumphed. “Save your energy. And save me from a stroke. I hate surprises. I haven’t met one that wasn’t nasty. Certainly never any from you.”
    He sighed. “I assure you, this trip is anything but.”
    “I don’t care what it will be like. It’s the concept I can’t stand.” She exhaled exasperatedly. “And to think I once thought you were part bulldozer.”
    He slowed down as he took a turn, his eyebrows rising in amused query. “You changed your mind?”
    “Yes. You’re the pure breed.”
    And he did something that almost made her head explode.
    He threw his head back and let out a hearty guffaw.
    When she felt he’d scrambled her nervous system forever, he turned to her, chuckles still reverberating deep in his endless chest, his smile wider than she’d ever seen it.
    “Watch it with the laughter, Vincenzo,” she mumbled, hating it that he affected her to extremes no matter what he was doing. “Doing something so unnatural to you can be dangerous. You’ll dislocate a brain lobe or something.”
    His laugh boomed again. “ Dio, I can get used to this.”
    “Your highness hasn’t been exposed to sarcasm before? Figures, with all the syrupy ass-kissing you have everywhere you turn. Since you’ve been exposed to it from birth, you must have always had social juvenile diabetes.”
    “I was wrong. I’m already too used to getting lashed with your delightful tongue. I hope you won’t ever hold it.”
    “I think it’s a physical impossibility with you around.”
    He chuckled again, this time doing something even more distressing. He reached out for her hand and brought it to his