The Tuscan's Revenge Wedding (6 page)

The only thing that had snapped him out of it was
recognizing that same anger burning in Amanda’s eyes.

A woman who could become that infuriated, that fast, must
carry a volcanic inferno of passion inside her. He’d thought so before but was
doubly sure now. It just took a threat to someone she loved to expose it.

He would give much to know what else might set it free.

Nico thought she was calm and in control once more as they
left her brother’s room and traversed the maze of corridors which would lead
eventually to an entrance. He was startled when she came to an abrupt halt. As
he turned toward her, she put her back to the nearest wall, sagging against it
while she hugged herself as if in intolerable pain.

He stepped close, caught her upper arm. “What is it? Are you
ill?”

She gave a swift shake of her head that sent the shining
bell of her hair forward to conceal her face. She was shaking as if with cold,
squeezing her arms harder around her waist as she eased away from him.

“Come, we’ll get something hot and sweet to drink. A
cappuccino, perhaps? Or tea?” This was some form of delayed reaction, he
thought, a response to everything she had been through in the past hours.

“Haven’t you done enough? Leave me alone.” She shifted away,
tugging against his hold. He should let her go, he knew, but could not force
his fingers to relax their grip. Stepping in front of her, blocking the view of
a passing orderly, he reached for her other arm as well, caressing the slender
muscles with his thumbs.

“If you mean what I said just now to your brother, it wasn’t
half of what I felt like telling him.”

“What is the matter with you?” she demanded, flinging up her
head so he caught the full blast of the contempt in the silvery gray of her
eyes. “It isn’t as if he drove off a cliff on purpose.”

“He should have slowed down. He didn’t know the road well,
didn’t understand how tight the curves are just there. Besides—” He stopped,
compressed his lips as he looked away down the hall to where a technician
pushed a cart loaded with electronic equipment.

“What?” She raised her hands between them so they rested on
his chest as if she’d meant to push him away, but lacked the will to actually
do it. “Your sister isn’t worse? I thought you said — But she is, isn’t she?
Her doctors told you earlier.”

He said nothing. It wasn’t simply that his brain had been
short-circuited by her touch, though he could feel her every fingertip through
the fabric of his shirt like tiny electric probes. No, some things were best
kept within the family.

She lowered her gaze, her face changing, becoming closed in
and so somber it almost seemed she picked up his thought. “Forget I asked. It’s
really none of my business.”

It would very likely become her business, he reasoned while
making circles with his thumbs, testing her resilient flesh under her jacket
sleeve. It wasn’t as if the secret could be kept indefinitely. Amanda Davies
could, in a few months, become a part of his family.

With abrupt decision, he said, “Your brother did more than
drive my sister off a cliff.” He met her gray gaze, lifted a shoulder in a
fatalistic gesture. “She is pregnant. Carita is lying back there in a coma
while his child grows inside her.”

Amanda Davies drew a breath so swift and deep her breasts
touched his chest. “You’re sure?”

Outrage raced along his veins at this slur upon his sister’s
honor, also on his own as the head of her family. “You dare suggest Carita is
promiscuous? She is not quite twenty and has been well protected until now.
She’s barely had time or opportunity for one lover, much less enough to cause
doubt as to the father of her child.”

Answering anger flashed in the eyes of the woman he held.
“Then I pity her if she’s been as repressed as you make it sound. I meant
nothing against her, nothing at all. I was only asking if her doctors are
certain she’s pregnant.”

“Repressed? My only care has been to keep her safe from
playboys like your brother.”

“Jonathan is no playboy! He’s only at loose ends.” Her anger
faded as concern softened the gray of her eyes. “Oh, but — does he know?”

“I have no idea.” Her distress was so clear to him that he
almost pulled her into his arms to offer comfort, in spite of everything. The
brush of her thighs against his as he stood so close urged it even more. She
would not appreciate it, he was sure, and the effort it took to resist stoked
his temper even as it tested his willpower.

“Maybe that’s why he’s so frantic to see her,” she said with
discovery in her voice. “He’s afraid they won’t care for her with that in mind.
Or they will do something, give her something that may harm the baby.”

“He can stop worrying,” Nico answered with finality. “The
child will be a De Frenza. No one will dare do anything that might bring harm
without my express permission.”

She watched him while thoughts flickered in her eyes like
lightning through a rain cloud. “It seems a miracle she didn’t miscarry. Are
they quite sure she’s all right?”

“Perfectly, according to the gynecologist called when tests
revealed the danger. She may yet lose the baby, but every hour that passes
makes it less likely.”

“No wonder her doctors were in a stir. They must have been
terrified to tell you.”

He gave her a scowl. “I am not such an ogre.”

“Just a man who expects everything to go according to his
exact wish,” she said, an ironic twist of her lips that made him long to put
them to better use. “But what if Carita needs all her strength to recover? What
will happen if—”

“If she cannot live unless the baby is aborted?”

The woman he held flinched at his plain speaking, or perhaps
the harshness in his voice. Still, she tipped her head in assent.

“I am head of my family and bound by honor and duty to do
what is best for every member,” he answered in grim precision. “This decision,
if it must come, will fall to me. I pray I am not forced to make it.”

“You are the head? Not your father?”

“He died of a heart attack a decade ago.”

“And your mother, Carita’s mother?”

“Gone as well. She left us a month after Carita and Carisa
were born, but succumbed to breast cancer a few years later.”

Amanda gave a small, sympathetic shake of her head. Seconds
later, her eyes widened as the implication in the similar names and timing of
the births reached her. “Carita is a twin?”

“As you say, though not identical. Carisa is—” He stopped in
an abrupt return to discretion. Amanda would discover the difference soon
enough.

“That’s why you were so furious with Jonathan just now,” she
said slowly, “because what he has done may require you to make a decision about
which will live, your sister or her baby.”

She understood him a little too well for comfort, he
thought. He met her eyes with hard intensity, and when he spoke his voice
carried the iron of ancient tradition. “That is why I would like to kill him.
That’s why I may well kill him if Carita does not live.”

“You can’t mean it.”

Down the hall, the young dark-haired nurse walked out of
Davies’s room and turned to give them an indignant stare. Nicholas made no
answer to Amanda Davies’s protest, but released her with an abrupt, open-handed
gesture and stepped back. Inclining his head, he indicated that she should
precede him along the corridor.

~ ~ ~

He didn’t, couldn’t intend what he’d said,
Amanda told herself as she walked beside Nicholas. He was a sophisticated,
modern businessman fully integrated into the electronic world. His threat
against Jonathan was a figure of speech, not a vow based on some old-fashioned
idea of vengeance for a wrong.

And yet something in his voice left her cold and aching
inside. The look on his face made her wary of being anywhere near him.

The exit they took from the hospital was not the same one
where they’d entered, but lay beyond a small, rather barren courtyard. It
decanted onto a quiet side street that was almost deserted at this hour. At
least, the only traffic seemed to be workmen or residents heading for their
jobs. There was no sign of the paparazzi.

Nicholas had taken out his phone as they walked, punching in
a number and issuing a brief order. They stood less than a minute before the
limo rounded a corner and glided to a stop in front of them.

“If you don’t mind, you can drop me at a hotel,” she said as
they pulled away from the curb. “Anything will do as long as it’s not too far
away or too expensive.”

The Italian made no answer but sat staring out the side
window. For all she could tell, he might not have heard her.

The driver did, and apparently understood English, for he
glanced up into the rearview mirror. He looked back toward the street ahead of
them, then into the mirror again as if awaiting an order. When it did not come,
he cleared his throat. “
Signor, signorina
, a suggestion?”

Nicholas replied then in a brief spate of hard-edged
Italian. Reaching for a small knob on the arm beside him, he held it while a
screen of smoked glass closed off their back section from the driver. He returned
his gaze to the street scenes beyond the windows.

She really did need to learn the language, Amanda told
herself in irritation. As it was, she had no idea if Nicholas had reprimanded
his driver for speaking out of turn or given directions to a hotel already
selected for her.

She should question it, she knew, but could not find the
energy. It seemed just as well to wait and see.

It wasn’t that she was intimidated by the man, certainly
not. It was simply that he was a stranger and she was shut into a confined
space with him at the moment. Given the state of his temper, it seemed best not
to provoke another argument, even if she had the heart for it.

She glanced at him, wondering a little at his silence. His
appeared remote, completely unfamiliar in the dim light that was now
pink-tinged with the beginnings of sunrise. She was aware again, as she had
been off and on in the past hours, of his diabolical attraction. The flutter it
caused in the pit of her stomach was beyond exasperating, as was the near
compulsion she felt to stare at him.

He sat in somber contemplation, as if turning over some
knotty problem in his mind. And so he might be, considering the serious weight
of his responsibilities. His hair looked as if he had run his fingers through
it in either frustration or anger, and his eyes were shadowed from weariness.
How long had it been since he had slept, she wondered. Forty-eight hours?
Longer?

He must have sped to the hospital at once from wherever he
had been when news of the car crash came to him. Surely he had waited there many
hours, until he knew his sister’s condition was stable. He had flown to the
States, then spent time searching for her before flying back again. He had not
slept on the plane for even the short time she had. He must be exhausted, and
yet he made nothing of it.

He was a formidable man but not indestructible, she thought
with an odd constriction around her heart. No one was, least of all those who
cared about others.

Nicholas was watching over his sister with endless concern
and a brother’s protective love. What would he not show toward a lover? What
would it be like to become the center of such fierce devotion, especially with
passion added to the mix?

Bone-deep yearning spiraled through her, warming her blood
so its heat pooled in her pelvis. He had supported her there in the hospital
hallway. She could still feel the places on her arms where his thumbs had
smoothed in absentminded yet sensual caress. His full attention would be an
erotic onslaught of stunning proportions she was sure, a conflagration of
feeling.

Not that she was likely to find out. No, nor wanted to if it
came to that. It was perfectly possible to have a fleeting fantasy about a man
without acting upon it. Just because she felt as hot and liquid inside as
melted chocolate didn’t mean she was ready to fall into his arms.

They were virtual strangers. And so they would remain, given
all that stood between them.

Her thoughts were so far removed from her surroundings that
it was a minute or two before she noticed that the wider city thoroughfares had
faded away behind them. The big car was gliding along less crowded streets past
gas stations, garages, garden shops stocked with stone columns and life-size
statuary, and villas revealed only by gates inset in tangles of greenery.

“Where are we?” She swung from her side window to stare at
the man beside her. “Where are we going? I thought you were taking me to a
hotel.”

The look he gave her was implacable. “That would not be at
all practical. You have no transport for hospital visits or the shopping you
require. Besides, I brought you here. It’s my responsibility to see that you
have a place to stay where you can be both comfortable and safe.”

“Safe.”

“You have forgotten the paparazzi already?”

“They won’t be around forever.”

“They will have discovered the connection between us by now,
just as they discovered news of the accident. It’s unlikely they will rest
until they know why you and I arrived together.”

“So I’ll tell them exactly how it came about.”

His smile had an ironic twist. “But will they print that
when they can make up a better story, one that will sell more photographs and
papers.”

“There’s nothing to tell.”

“No? Try this:
The De Frenzas and Their American Lovers —
Brothers and Sisters in Quadrangle of Passion!”

“
That’s obscene!” The heat of a flush scalded her
face, though as much for the derision in his voice as the headline he
suggested.

“It’s only one step more as your brother has already been
labeled my sister’s lover. Of course, they might go for bigger fish with
something like
De Frenza Rushes to Sister’s Bedside with Lovely American
Clamped to His Side!”