The Tuscan's Revenge Wedding (Italian Billionaires #1)(33)

“I’m sure you mean well,” she said finally.

“So kind of you.” The glance he gave her mocked her diplomacy.

She frowned at the road ahead. “Have you reason to think Carita might not want to marry Jonathan?”

“I can hardly answer that as I wasn’t aware she was seeing him.”

He made that sound like a personal failure, or so it seemed to Amanda. “You said that before, but your grandmother and aunt knew. Jonathan has been a guest at the villa, after all. It’s not as if anyone was keeping it from you.”

“Isn’t it? You would think someone might have mentioned his name, if only Carisa.”

She gave him a straight look. “If you had been told, would you have forbidden Carita to see him?”

“Forbidden is too strong a word,” he said, his gaze on the road.

“But you would have discouraged it.”

“In other words, it’s my own fault that I wasn’t told.”

She wasn’t about to answer that one, though omission probably had the same effect. “Jonathan isn’t a bad risk as a husband. He’s invested his winnings from the racing circuit from the beginning, so is well able to keep your sister in the manner you might prefer.”

“I am aware.”

Her gaze widened. “You mean—”

“I had him investigated, of course,” he answered in impatient tones. “How could I not?”

How indeed, when his sister’s happiness was at stake. “I see. And did you have me investigated as well? I mean, beyond what it took to locate me in Atlanta?”

He sent her a fleeting glance, due perhaps to the coolness of her voice. “Only as a part of his family.”

“Then you know we aren’t criminals, but just normal people.”

“I know your brother allows you to work as some managing director’s assistant.”

She gave him a cool look. “He doesn’t allow me to do anything. Jonathan respects my need to be independent.”

“And you think I should do the same for Carita,” he said in derision.

“Unless you want her to depend upon you all her life.”

“It isn’t what I want, but what is best for her. You must understand that being of the De Frenza family puts her at more than the usual risk.”

“She isn’t Carisa. We all have to learn to make our own decisions.”

“And suffer the consequences?” Something bleak and layered with regret flashed in his eyes. “My sister made one, it seems, and see how it turned out.”

He blamed himself for what had happened, Amanda saw with sudden insight, thought he had failed in his duty toward his sister and his family. It was a revelation.

“There is such a thing as an accident,” she said quietly.” The same thing might have happened with someone who had your full approval as a future husband.”

“But it didn’t. It happened with your brother.”

“And no one regrets it more than Jonathan. I’ve never seen him in such pain. He loves her desperately, would do anything, anything at all, to make it right. He’ll die if she—”

“Don’t. Just don’t.”

That request was an indication of his silent anguish. Amanda looked away toward the blue line of the sea’s horizon that had appeared alongside the road. “No. I’m sorry. I just hope you will allow Jonathan to be a real husband to her, won’t expect this marriage to be for show only. He will be a good to her, I promise he will, and an excellent father to her child. He will quit the racing circuit, I’m almost sure, as he would never want his son or daughter to be brought up as—” She stopped abruptly, aware she had said too much.

“As he was?”

There was quiet insistence in the question. It was doubtful he could be diverted from what she had been about to say. She sighed, and then told him something of the rootless childhood Jonathan had endured, of how little attention he had been spared from either of their parents, and how much their deaths had affected him.

“Your brother had you,” Nico pointed out, his dark eyes watchful as he studied her.

“We had each other.”

“And now he has Carita.”

Did he think she minded that her brother had found someone else to love? She could settle that point for him, at least. “So he does. I couldn’t be happier, as she will be like the sister I never had.” She paused. “That is, if you think she will have him.”

It was a moment before he lifted a shoulder. “That she was intimate with your brother suggests an unusual degree of commitment, but young women these days? Who knows?”

The idea of the young woman who lay so pale and still in her hospital bed actually defying Nico to go her own way as a single mother seemed so unlikely that Amanda could not take it seriously. There were other points to be determined, however. “If there is a wedding, will it be a large affair or something quiet that can be dissolved by divorce later?”

Nico’s gaze was hard as it turned it toward her. “This is Italy. It might not be impossible to dissolve a marriage, but neither is it as easy as in your country.”

“I’m glad of that, really,” she said.

“In any case, my family doesn’t do things by halves. My grandmother and my aunt may not insist on a huge affair, but there will be something more than a mere civil ceremony.”