Free The Italian by Lisa Marie Rice Page B

morning.”
    “Good morning, sleepyhead.” That deep voice sounded amused and completely awake. “Pack a bag for two days. My men will come for you in an hour.”
    O-kay. “What am I packing for?”
    “Sun, swimming and…” He didn’t need to add the third element. It was there in his amused voice. Sex. A surge of electricity went through her.
    “Can I know where we’re going?”
    The amusement fled from his voice. “No, cara , I’m sorry. I can’t tell you. I wish I could. But I can say you won’t be disappointed.”
    No, she wouldn’t be disappointed. She wouldn’t be disappointed if she were flown to an igloo in the Arctic. Stefano would be there. That was enough.
    She packed her bag and, at the last minute, packed her sketchbook and pencils. Wherever they were going, it was Italy and it was going to be beautiful and if she had a spare moment, she wanted to get it down.
    Pity it was the wrong time to try to catch her grandfather. It was one a.m. back home and she didn’t want to risk waking him. Assuming he even was at home.
    She frowned. She’d tried all day yesterday to contact him and the answering service had been turned off. Not answering the phone and not telling her he’d be away was unusual. But if he was sick, surely someone would have called?
    The knock on the door startled her. Stefano’s men. They were here.
    When she opened the door, she submitted to the security protocol with a sigh, even though she was wearing a silk tee, light cotton capri pants and sandals. She was still frisked, as if she could have somehow hidden a bazooka on her person.
    Purse, bag inspected. Inspector Buzzanca hesitated for a moment at her sketchbook and even rifled through it, but not even he could see anything suspicious in renderings of palm trees, cornices and the waterfront.
    He actually checked each pencil, presumably to see if it was a real pencil or…her mind blanked for a second as to what else it could be. Maybe something to squirt poison? But then how could she avoid squirting poison on herself?
    It must be exhausting to be a spy.
    Buzzanca packed everything neatly back into her bag, dark eyes cold and remote, and accompanied her down the stairs and into a waiting police car, the middle one of three.
    The little convoy took off, racing north. She watched as they left the historic city center and entered the concrete wasteland of the suburbs.
    Mafia country. The Mafia here was heavily into concrete. She’d read that often in her preparatory reading for the trip. The buildings looked like the Mafia. Heavy and oppressive and ugly, like the concrete monstrosities Russian Communism had thrown up. The power behind both was the same—brutal and uncompromising.
    These kinds of buildings in a country that worshiped beauty were just the exterior face of the brutal hold the Mafia had. It was what Stefano was fighting. He was not just an amazingly sexy and powerfully attractive man. He was a fighter for justice, risking his life to bring down the forces of darkness.
    She saw his men—even Inspector Buzzanca—in a different light. Looking at Buzzanca’s stiff back in the front passenger seat, his hair badly cut, all duty and no nonsense, she realized that all he wanted was to keep Stefano alive. She wasn’t a threat to Stefano, not in any way, but Buzzanca and his men probably thought she was, or at least that she was distracting him.
    So she sat quietly and waited to see where the car took her.
    It took her to the airport. Or rather, an airport. Not the one she’d flown into upon her arrival in Sicily.
    This looked like a military airport, the planes painted a dull green, with EI— Esercito Italiano , Italian Army—stenciled on the sides. The car drove right onto the runway and stopped in front of a large helicopter. As soon as the car parked, the rotors started slowly spinning. The car door opened and an officer pointed at a short set of steps leading up into the cabin.
    Jamie hesitated. She’d never been