Anna, hidden in the depths of an oversize wing chair, had started to stand up and tell them they might want to curtail the chatter until she was out of earshot, but before she could, Rafe had said he’d been thinking.
“Thinking,” Dante had said. “You?”
“About, you know, what would be the perfect woman,” Rafe had said, ignoring the dig. “Like, if she stayed the night, she wouldn’t help herself to my razor to shave her legs.”
There’d been murmurs of agreement all around.
“Right,” Nick had said, “and she’d carry her own toothbrush in her purse.”
“And she wouldn’t want conversation in the morning,” Dante had added.
That had elicited a grunt from Falco, Anna remembered wryly.
“What you guys mean is that the perfect woman would appear in your bed when you needed her, and disappear like Tinker Bell when you didn’t.”
The others had laughed like loons, which was the only reason Anna had risen from her chair.
“Whoa,” Nick had said, and Anna had said that whoa was exactly right, that what men really wanted were real-life versions of those vinyl blow-up dolls.
All her brothers had turned beet-red, and after she’d had a good laugh at the sight, she’d told them that she had a big surprise for them.
“Women want the same thing,” she’d said. “A guy who’d show up in bed when you needed him and then vanish.”
If there was a shade that went past beet-red, her brothers had achieved it.
“You’re just trying to embarrass us,” the usually non-embarrassable Falco had sputtered.
Well, no.
She hadn’t been trying to do that—she’d simply been speaking honestly.
Women liked sex, too. At least, most of them did.
It was just that women were brought up to think that good girls never admitted it or, at the very least, good girls wrapped sex with pink ribbons.
Not her.
She didn’t believe in sleeping around—talk about misnomers!—but that didn’t mean you couldn’t be honest about what you wanted. And what you didn’t want.
And what Anna didn’t want, ever, was one man, one woman, that whole foolish thing called forevermore …
Which brought her back to basics.
It was time to wake Draco, tell him this had been wonderful but it was late, she had a full day ahead of her tomorrow and it was time he went home.
Of course, that wouldn’t be news to him. The full-day-tomorrow part. He knew it, because he was going to be part of that day.
Great sex or not, they hadn’t settled anything. He still owned land she’d come here to claim.
Anna nearly groaned.
How could she have forgotten that? Since when did she let emotion get in the way of logic?
What she’d told Draco was true. She’d been attracted to him from the start, even though she’d denied it until tonight. Seeing him at her door had forced her to face the truth, that even while she’d said she despised him, she’d wanted to go to bed with him.
Okay. Desire was one thing, but violating her ethical role in this situation was very much another issue.
She was an attorney, and attorneys didn’t get involved with the respondents in their cases. Assuming there would be a case to be involved in.