Page 15 of Fiancée for the Cameras

Andrea’s cheeks crested with guilty heat while his heart jumped with joy that his brother had...scored, as tasteless as that sounded. It meant Romeo’s heart was also healing.

“While I appreciate the grand sacrifice you were about to make on my behalf,” Romeo said dryly, “it is unnecessary.”

“Don’t be so sure that I wouldmake the sacrifice,” Andrea said, still feeling the pinch of acute selfishness. “I simply would have said may the best man win.”

A flicker of shock passed through his brother’s eyes before he scoffed. “Just what Monica would like, no? You and me fighting over her like she was a bone.” Then his gaze searched Andrea’s, as if it had only now dawned on him what his brother had unwittingly betrayed. “You’re thinking at less than your usual capacity if you think Monica will be easy to bend to your...strategies. Mama, like the world, only sees part of her.”

“Cristo, my own family thinks I’m some kind of...twisted monster, getting ready to prey on the innocent lamb.”

Romeo laughed, grooves forming around his mouth. “I understand the bind you’re in, even if Mama doesn’t. I know you need to take aggressive action. Against the scandal and against Brunetti.”

“And?”

“I know the tack you’re going to take. Probably the only one available to you. And I know where it will lead.”

“Romeo—”

“I have seen the way you looked at her just now, Andrea, when she was laughing in my lap. I will even admit that Ionce felt what you feel—the selfish want that takes you out at your knees, when you as a Valentini man should be the one in control. The one to whom everything should bend and bow.”

“And you’re going to warn me off?”

“Cristo, no. Mama does you a grave injustice by behaving as if I was the only one who lost something in that accident. Why would I warn my brother against something he desperately wants, something that makes him look like he’s gloriously alive for the first time in a decade?”

Andrea thrust a hand through his hair, shaken by his brother’s depth of perception. Shaken by how his deepest desire sounded so...stark and all-consuming when put into simple words.

“What of your little friend?”

“Mylittle friendhas more courage in her pinky finger than the rest of the world. You know the biggest gift she’s given me in the last four years, Andrea? She showed me what a glorious, wild, wonderful world is out there and how much I still crave to experience it. She just needs to come to that realization, too. And if something does happen to her once she sets her tremendous will to it—” Romeo’s gaze, so much like their father’s, pinned Andrea to the spot “—then she has me on her side. But I cannot bubble wrap her, just like you can’t do to me.”

Andrea bent and kissed his brother’s rough cheek, feeling a wellspring of gratitude for the woman who had shown his brother who he could be with the simple, expansive, unconditional gift of her friendship.

“You got all the wisdom from Papa. All I got were his good looks,” he said, blinking away the tears that rose to his eyes.

Romeo thumped him on his shoulder, his serrated laughter music to Andrea’s ears, and wheeled himself along the path back to the house by Andrea’s side. “You’re not alone in this either, Andrea. If this merger falls through, I mean.”

Andrea nodded, feeling like his world might finally be settling into a new place after being shattered a decade ago. It would never be the same without Papa, but it wasn’t as horrible as he had let it get over the past few years.

It was like entering a treasure vault, if the treasure was the inside of Andrea Valentini’s intensely private mind and life. With each step she’d taken up the stairs, Monica felt as if she was embarking on some momentous journey that she could not turn back from.

The odd day or two she’d stayed here in the past, and even the past three weeks, she’d always stayed in the guest suite, close to Flora’s own. She’d never even been up here.

His suite on the first floor was a paradise made for solitude, different from his steel-and-chrome office. Here it was all glass and wood, with minimum decor, while sunlight poured in, bathing everything in a warm, golden glow. And yet, the space was also innately masculine, sober and serious like the man himself.

One entire wall was taken up with bookshelves, which on further scrutiny revealed to be on racing cars and other extreme sports as well as some business tomes. There were even a few glittering trophies, but Monica’s attention was quickly commandeered by the other wall.

By a large portrait of Andrea and Romeo and their father, Giovanni. His arms around his sons’ shoulders, Giovanni was clearly full of pride and joy. Tall and distinguished, he had been a handsome man, like his sons, but the thing that radiated from him was an easy kindness that Monica had found in few people in her life. Even with him gone for so many years—in the same accident that had hurt Romeo’s legs, Flora had told her—she could sense the older man’s legacy in his sons and in the company ethics Andrea so staunchly upheld. To have known such love as they did... That sweet ache for something she’d never known came back to her chest.

Monica lingered in the cool foyer until Andrea swept past her to the massive desk in the adjoining study. For a moment, she wondered if he’d forgotten that he’d invited her up here. Then, his gaze was potent on her back, like a physical caress.

“You were supposed to recover here. Not lose weight.”

The chastisement was the last thing she’d expected. She wrapped her arms around her belly self-consciously, her skin feeling far too tight to hold the sensations quivering through her. If she’d known he would be visiting, she’d have covered herself up from head to toe. “I’m sorry my body doesn’t perform automatically to your wishes and desires,” she said, shocked at her own daring.

His laughter at her back felt like a reward. “Your spirit seems to have more than recovered.” The tiny hairs at the nape of her neck prickled with awareness as his gaze moved over her back, mostly left bare by threads of fabric holding the crop top together. Going without a bra suddenly seemed liked the worst idea she’d ever had.

“No pain anymore?”

“None at all.”

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