"Then where are the newspapers?"
"I took them with me to read over coffee."
"Read about the Royal Wedding Scandal, you mean."
"Where did you hear about that?" The mask of indifference he'd been wearing slipped, proving his deception. Louisa glared at him. "Princess Christina called me this morning to ask how I was doing. She wanted me to know she and Prince Antonio didn't care what people were saying."
"See? Didn't I tell you that your friends would stand by you?"
Yes, he had, and Christina's phone call had meant more to her than she could say. That wasn't the point at the moment, however. "Don't try to change the topic. This is about you keeping information from me."
Nico sighed. "I was trying to protect you from useless gossip."
"Useless or not, you don't have the right to decide what I read and what I don't read." She rubbed her arms. Despite the sun beating down, her skin had turned to gooseflesh. She felt as though she'd had this conversation before with Steven. Only then the argument had been in her head because she'd not dared to speak her mind. Today was the first time she'd said the words aloud.
"I'm sorry. You were so upset by the headlines the other morning, I wanted to save you further distress." While talking, he pulled a grape off the vine and crushed it between his fingers. "I hate seeing you sad," he added, staring at his stained fingers.
The sweetness behind his answer dispelled a little of her anger. Only a little, however. "That's not your call to make, Nico. It's not your job to protect me from the headlines."
"No, just the paparazzi," he replied.
Louisa winced. He had her there. She was using him for protection, making her indignation over the newspapers sound more than a little hypocritical. "Do you want me to move back to the palazzo?"
"Do you want to move back?"
She toed the dirt with her sandal. Short answer? No. She liked having him nearby. Which meant maybe she should move back. "I don't know."
"Oh." He grabbed his satchel, which sat on the ground by his feet, and headed down the row.
She followed him. Thankfully the workers had moved to another row, leaving them in privacy. "That's all you're going to say?"
"You're not a prisoner, Louisa. You can do whatever you want."
Though cool, she could still hear the hint of hurt in his voice. Problem was, what she wanted scared her. She wanted the security she felt when she was wrapped in Nico's arms. Which is exactly the opposite of why you came to Italy in the first place. What happened to standing on your own two feet for a change?
"So what did the headlines say anyway?" she asked.
"You mean you didn't go online and look?"
"No." Her cheeks burned. Going online would have been the easy solution, but she'd been too busy being indignant to turn on the computer. "I came looking for you instead."
"Well, you didn't miss much," Nico replied.
"Apparently I did, or you wouldn't have taken the papers." And he wouldn't be studying the Sangiovese leaves so intently. The winemaker had two very distinct stares, she'd come to realize. His intense "never missed a beat" stare that made her skin tingle, and his "I'm not telling you the whole story so I'm going to look at something else" stare. "Tell me."
"No doubt Christina told you about the royal wedding part. Halencia's government is afraid you might try to entice the royal family into making dubious investments."
"She told me." That wasn't the whole story, though. Not based on how Nico continued to stare at the vines. He took a deep breath. "They also interviewed my former fiancée."
CHAPTER SIX
"OH." IT WAS not the answer Louisa expected. She had suspected the papers would continue plumbing their erstwhile romance, but, in her self-involved haze, she hadn't thought about them digging into Nico's past. Dozens of questions came to mind, but the only words she could manage to say out loud were "I didn't realize you'd been engaged."
He shrugged. "It was a long time ago."
But not so long ago the memory didn't bother him. "Did she say something bad?" Was that why he continued to avoid her eyes?
"Actually she was surprisingly diplomatic. But then, Floriana was-is-a very good person."
If she was so good, why then why was she an ex? Louisa tried to picture the kind of woman Nico would propose to. Someone beautiful, no doubt. And smart. She would have to be smart to keep up with him. More questions came to mind, like what had kept them from the altar? From the shadows filling his expression, the decision hadn't been his, at least not completely.
Her annoyance from before all but forgotten, she reached out to touch his arm. "I'm sorry if it dredged up a lot of bad memories."
At last, he shifted his gaze, turning from the grapes to where her fingers rested on his forearm. As always happened, when his eyes fell on her, the attention made her body tingle. "Not everyone is made to get married."
True or not, his answer, with its lonely, resigned tone, hurt her to hear. Louisa found it hard to think of Nico as ever being lonely-the concepts Nico and alone seemed like polar opposites. But lines had suddenly appeared around his mouth and eyes as he spoke, lines that could only be etched from sadness.
"Sometimes we just pick the wrong person the first time around, is all," she said, thinking of her own mistake.
"Sometimes. I should check the Brix content on these vines." Pulling away from her touch, he reached for his satchel.
He didn't want to talk about it. Fine. If anyone understood the need to bury past mistakes, she did, and if changing topics took the sadness away from his eyes, all the better.
Nico wasn't the only one who hated to see another person sad.
"Are they ready for harvest?" she asked.
"You tell me." Picking a grape, he pressed it to her lips. Louisa could taste the sweetness the moment she bit down. Once she moved past the feel of his fingers on her lips, that is. "Mmm, delicious."
"If the sugar content matches up, I'll tell the foreman to have his team start working this field tomorrow. By the time we finish, the other fields, yours, should be ready."
"You mean they aren't all ready at the same time?" She stole another grape. The fruit was still sweet, but it didn't make her lips respond like the one he fed her had.
"Grapes on the northern side of the vineyard always ripen sooner. They're on a slope angled to get the most sun throughout the day. Carlos used to call Northern grapes favorito della Natura because they got the most sunshine."
"Nature's favorites?"
"He had names for all the fields. The ones in the southern field he called scontroso-grumpy-because they were often slow to ripen."
"Wouldn't you be grumpy, too, if the other field was the favorite?"
"That's what I used to tell him."
Louisa smiled, imagining the two men walking the rows, nicknaming the plants. "Carlos sounds like a character."
"He was a very wise man. A born winemaker."
Whose fields would be ruined, but for Nico's care. Guilt kicked at her conscience. If only she could have claimed her inheritance sooner. "I had no idea any of the Bertonellis ever existed," she said. "My mother never talked about my father's family." Never talked about her father, period, actually. Geoffrey Harrison was a smooth-talking liar best left unmentioned.
"Don't feel bad. I never knew he had relatives in America."
"Tight family bonds, huh?" she said. The sarcasm came out more bitter than she meant.
"Trust me, family bonds aren't always so wonderful. They can get in the way, too. Like baby sisters deciding you need to entertain them when they are pregnant and bored."
Who did he think he was kidding? He'd loved Marianna's visit yesterday and they both knew it.
"I would have killed for a brother or sister," she said. "Most of my life, it was just my mom and me. We used to joke it was us against the world."
"Must be upsetting for her to see her daughter being lambasted in the press. Have you talked to her?"
"No. She...um..." It was her turn to study the grape vines. How did she explain that she'd screwed up the one good relationship in her life? She'd love to blame Steven again, but this time she had only herself to blame. "I don't want to bother her."
Just as she recognized his evasion tactics, Nico recognized hers. "You don't think your mother's aware of what's going on?" he asked.