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F elix ground his teeth as he surveyed Paulinus, the secretary standing before him. Siro was away to Spoletium in search of Lucretia’s guardian, but Paulinus was a worthy, if slightly jumpy, second-in-command.

“What do you mean, the customs officials are holding my cargo?” Felix demanded.

One of his ships had docked this morning, and Felix should already be well enmeshed in the work of selling its goods to the various merchants who would distribute them down the Tiber to Rome and from there throughout Italy.

It wasn’t unusual for customs officials to make a cursory inspection of incoming boats, but Felix had managed to avoid undue hassle by virtue of always paying his taxes in full, along with a few well-placed bribes. But today, it seemed they were in a mood to be more thorough than usual.

Paulinus clasped his hands, fingers squeezing each other. “They say they have not yet finished their inspection.”

“Did they say how long their inspection would take?”

Paulinus took a small step back, as if to distance himself from Felix’s wrath. “A few days. Maybe a week.”

“A week!” Felix barked.

Paulinus jumped, and Felix took a deep breath. This mess wasn’t Paulinus’s fault. “Do you have any idea why this happened?”

The secretary’s glance flicked around the room, looking anywhere but at Felix. He stared intently at the striped jug of water that rested on the corner of Felix’s desk. “One of the officials I spoke with hinted they’d received some sort of…tip that you might be importing unauthorized cargo.”

“They didn’t say from whom?”

Paulinus shook his head.

Felix had some ideas on that front, but it wasn’t Paulinus’s concern. He let out a tight breath. “I suppose we must let the officials do their work. Please alert me if you receive any further updates.”

Paulinus nodded. “Of course, sir.” He withdrew, leaving Felix alone.

Felix rose from his chair and paced his small office.

He needed to sell this load of cargo in order to pay his captain and crew, not to mention finance another voyage.

If his funds were delayed by a week, his sailors wouldn’t get paid, and they could very well leave his service and find alternate employment.

Then Felix would have to hire another crew from scratch, which would cause even more delays.

He did have significant capital stored at the temple bank, but he was saving that to fund his eventual expansion to new ports. He didn’t want to dip into it unless he had no choice.

While this development wouldn’t cripple his business, it was annoying and frustrating. And Felix didn’t like being annoyed or frustrated.

Well, he supposed no one did, but he found it especially rankling given that he had a fairly good idea of who tipped off the authorities.

This had Lucretia’s handprint on it. She had both the motive to frustrate him as well as the knowledge of how to do it.

He pictured her weaseling her way into the customs office, smiling that intoxicating smile at whatever hapless officials she found, persuading them Felix’s cargo needed investigation.

They would have been powerless to resist her.

He clenched and unclenched his fists as he contemplated her treachery. Lucretia was probably sitting in her office at this very moment, a stone’s throw away, smirking in satisfaction at what she’d done.

Before he realized what he was doing, he was out of the office, legs eating up the distance to Lucretia’s headquarters on the other side of the Square of the Guilds.

He half-expected to be refused entry, but her dark-haired secretary, Dihya, allowed him into the front room with an air of stoic resignation. The woman curtly ordered him to wait while she went into the back.

Felix heard the murmur of two female voices—Dihya’s Berber-accented Latin mixed with Lucretia’s smooth voice—and then Dihya re-emerged. “She’s busy.”

“Busy turning the customs authorities against me?”

Dihya raised her eyebrows in a parody of innocence. “I’m sure I have no idea what you mean.”

He glowered at her, prepared to wait as long as it took.

Luckily, Lucretia emerged from her office only a few moments later, surveying him with a cool gaze that made his skin crawl with awareness.

“I thought you were busy,” he managed, forcing himself to focus on his annoyance with her and not the way he wanted to sink his fingers into the auburn curls tumbling over her shoulders.

Somehow, Lucretia had only become more alluring in the five years he’d known her.

He had thought that women were generally supposed to decrease in appeal as the years passed, and he believed she was a few years older than him to start, but the opposite had happened.

Lucretia the wife was beautiful, but Lucretia the widow wore a mantle of confidence that was as irresistible as her full-lipped smile.

“I am,” she replied. “But I can’t have you hovering about and distracting my second-in-command.” She beckoned him, and he followed her into her private office, where she closed the door behind them.

She arched her delicate eyebrows at him. “Was it not clear after our last meeting that we have nothing further to discuss?”

Felix got straight to the point. “We didn’t, until you made the customs officials hold my cargo on suspicion of smuggling.”

Her calm gaze didn’t waver. “I think you mean, until you tried to steal my investors out from under me.”

He stepped close to her, until he could smell the lavender perfume that clung to her skin. Lavender was one of her key imports from southern Gaul. “I warned you when we last spoke, we are now adversaries.”

“As an adversary, I am entitled to take action against you, then.” Since he had stepped closer, she had to tip her face up to look him in the eye. “Did you expect me to roll over and let you do as you please?”

That sentence sent all sorts of disconcerting images flying through Felix’s mind. Lucretia on her back, creamy skin bared…He blinked in an attempt to clear his head. “No,” he admitted unsteadily.

She took a step toward him, and their bodies brushed.

Heat crept over him, a pleasurable itch that he wanted to assuage and prolong at the same time.

Ever since she refused his clumsy advance five years ago, he had been trying to bury his desire for her, like a forgotten coal in an empty hearth.

But the spark remained, and now it was ready to burst back into flame.

“Are you ready to declare a truce?” she asked, her voice somehow sultry despite the mercenary subject matter. “Restore balance to shipping in Ostia. I will continue my trade in the western Mediterranean, and you can have the east.”

Felix struggled to focus on her words and not the sensations her proximity was arousing. He was no stranger to stirrings of lust, but when they related to other women, such feelings were easily ignored, like a gentle summer breeze.

His reaction to Lucretia, however, was a maelstrom, winds howling and whipping, destructive and powerful. This must be one of Venus’s cruel tricks, to make him long for the one woman he had to destroy.

Her lips parted as she awaited his answer. His body urged him to kiss her, to taste that sweet mouth, but there was categorically no way she would welcome an advance from him, and he didn’t fancy ending this encounter with a slap.

The thought of Lucretia’s horrified reaction if she discovered his feelings toward her doused his desire and cleared his head. “No truce,” he finally managed, voice rasping. Before her allure could ensnare him again, he turned and fled the office.