But the lock was frozen!
Panicking, she glanced over her shoulder.
Prince Maximo was striding toward her like a bull, his dark eyes cold and furious. Desperate, she turned it harder.
The key broke off in her hand.
She had no car. No escape.
With a gasp, she turned and stumbled through the snow, crossing the street toward the deserted city park. On the other side of the vast, empty darkness she could see lights and the twinkle of traffic. But she’d barely reached the edge of the park before he caught up with her.
He knocked her into the soft powder, his large, muscled body pressing her into the snow. Grabbing her wrists, he turned her over beneath him. She struggled, but he used his weight against her.
She looked up at his face, so close to hers. With his body so hard and warm against her own, she could barely feel the cold snow beneath her.
“Basta! I told you to stop!” He tightened his hands, shackling her wrists. “You must learn to obey.”
The trees were dark over his head, their snowy branches waving like claws against the gray sky. Scattered moonlight sifted through the clouds, leaving his dark hair in a halo of light.
“I’ll never obey you,” she cried. “Never!”
“We’ll see.” His glance touched her lips, and she suddenly knew he was going to kiss her. In the dark winter wonderland of the park, they were utterly alone. Surrounded by snow and cold, she felt fire in her veins at his touch, and she was helpless to move, helpless to fight.
But she had to fight. Without a mother to protect her, her baby would be vulnerable and alone, tossed into foster care as Lucy herself once had been. She couldn’t give in.
She would fight to protect Chloe to her last breath…
“Let me go,” she whispered. “Please. If you have any decency at all—if you’ve ever loved anyone and lost them—I’m begging you. Let me go.”
Her quiet voice reverberated against the snow, muffled in the thick silence of the night.
He stared down at her with sudden pain in his eyes.
Abruptly he released her wrists and rose to his feet.
“As you wish, cara mia,” he said, sounding almost bored. “Stay here if you wish. I am returning to my hotel.”
Thank you, thank you, thank you, she thought fervently. She scrambled to her feet, turning on her heel, ready to run.
“After all,” he mused behind her, “I want to make sure your baby is sleeping comfortably. And she hasn’t lost that little purple hippo she carries everywhere.”
Her heart stopped in her chest.
Wide-eyed with fear, she whirled back to face him. “What?”
He looked at her with cool disdain. “Oh, did I not tell you? My men picked up your daughter an hour ago.”
CHAPTER THREE
“YOU aren’t going to get away with this,” Lucy ground out for the tenth time as he drove them into downtown Chicago.
Unmoved, Maximo parked his sleek black Mercedes beneath the grand marquee of the Drake Hotel. “You have no idea what I can get away with.”
Furious, she ripped off her blue cashier’s smock, balling it up in her hands and tossing it to the floor. “I don’t know what the laws are like in Italy, but in Chicago, you can’t just kidnap someone—”
“There are laws against kidnapping in Italy, as well.” He abruptly stopped the car. “They do not apply in this case. I did not kidnap your daughter.”
“What do you call it then?”