Anna Nicole Smith Talks About Her Love for Howard K. Stern

By Stephen M. Silverman

11/02/2006 at 08:10 AM EST

Anna Nicole Smith says that she instigated her romance with her attorney, Howard K. Stern.

"I wanted more than a lawyer relationship, and then started kind of flirting with him and we kind of got it on," she says in an interview with TV's Entertainment Tonight and The Insider, the New York Post reports. "I just kind of attacked him and that was it. I kissed him first. He was the shy one."

She adds, "He was like, 'I can't, I can't,' because he always had to go by the books. ? I knew I was in love the first time I kissed him."

Stern, who exchanged vows in a commitment ceremony on Sept. 28, says of their relationship, "This has been going on for years. Unfortunately, we have a lot of enemies who we thought were gonna try and hurt us in certain ways."

The couple have been criticized for holding the ceremony so soon after the Sept. 10 death of Smith's 20-year-old son Daniel, but Stern, 37, says the goal was to help Smith, 38, deal with her grief and fear of loneliness.

"For anybody to try and judge us and to try and say we're doing what's right or what's wrong, there's no way for anybody to understand what Anna was going through when Daniel passed," he says.

"For Anna and for myself, we felt like we needed it and Anna needed it," he continues. "She didn't want to be alone in life."

Smith's response to critics? "Don't worry about us. Worry about your own self."

In preview clips shown on Thursday's Today show, Smith says she's been a virtual prisoner in her Bahamas home because of the interest in her since Daniel's death. "I can't even go outside the door. It's like I'm locked inside the house. ? I can't take my daughter out."

Up to seven drugs were found in Daniel's system, according to toxicology reports. Asked by Today's Meredith Vieira if Smith talks about Daniel's use of various medications during the interview, E.T. correspondent Mark Steines said, "She was aware of certain aspects of that."

Steines also said he asked Smith point blank who is the father of her infant daughter, Dannielynn: Stern or photographer Larry Birkhead, who has filed a lawsuit claiming paternity. "She says it is Howard," he said.