The Tuscan's Revenge Wedding(7)

“Have been, I guess.” His lips formed a grin though he could not hold onto it. “Figured you’d come. Told Carita’s big bad brother so.”

“So that’s how he knew where to look for me. I did wonder.”

Jonathan grimaced. “Not happy with me. Don’t blame him. But Carita — have you seen her?”

“Not yet.”

“Ah, Mandy, they won’t let me. I’ve got to see her. Can’t you make them? Can’t you take me to her?”

She glanced at his tubes and blinking monitors. “I don’t think that’s a good idea just now.”

“That’s — what the nurse said.” He heaved a deep sigh, lifted a hand that was wrapped with tape and tubing, then let it fall again. “I pulled out my IV a couple hours ago, trying to get out of bed.”

“Oh, Jonny.”

“Fell flat on my face like an idiot. Such a commotion. Scared them, I guess.”

Her heart twisted as she glanced again at his bandaged chest and the cast on his leg. She reached for his hand, gently smoothing the scraped knuckles of his fingers with the pad of her thumb. “I’m sure it did.”

“Yeah. They were afraid of — of what Carita’s Nico would say, I think, since I was brought in with her.”

Nico. It seemed to fit the macho Italian better than Nicholas, though she could not imagine calling him that herself.

Pain twisted Jonathan’s pale, bruised face. “They tell you anything? About Carita, I mean? They won’t — won’t talk to me about her. They won’t let me see her. Not even for a minute.”

Amanda swallowed on the lump in her throat as she recognized that her brother was rambling, repeating himself in his anxiety and maybe because of the sedatives he’d been given. She thought of the disturbing news Nicholas had apparently been told about the girl Jonathan obviously cared for so very much. She must choose her words with care. “I don’t think she’s awake yet.”

“God, Mandy, it was awful out there on the road. She was so white, so still. She had so much blood in her hair.” He turned his head from side to side, squeezing Amanda’s hand. “I held her until the ambulance came. They made me let her go then, wouldn’t let me go with her.”

“Don’t think about it,” she whispered, worried by his growing agitation.

“I have to, don’t you see? I love her so much. She — she’s everything to me.”

Carita de Frenza was everything to him, and the girl might not live. Could Jonathan stand losing another person he loved? Amanda could hardly bear thinking he might be forced to do it.

“I’ll go and check on her for you, shall I?”

“Please, if you would. Or if you can. Don’t let them put you off with a lot of bull, either. I have to know she’s all right.”

The faintest wheeze of the pneumatic outer door was the only warning they had. An instant later, Nicholas spoke behind her.

“My sister is still unconscious, if that is what you would ask. She may come out of it in a few hours, or it could be days or even weeks. Her concussion is severe, but there is no apparent brain damage and, so far, no dangerous swelling inside the skull.”

Tears rose to shimmer in the dark pools of Jonathan’s eyes before he turned his head toward the window. His nostrils flared as he breathed deep in the effort of control. “Thanks,” he said in gruff gratitude, after a moment. “I’m so — so damn glad to know something. I thought maybe — maybe she didn’t make it and no one wanted to tell me.”

“Carita is alive thus far.”

Jonathan looked back up to Nicholas. “God, I’m so sorry. I should have made her wear her seatbelt, should never have—”

“No, you should not,” Nicholas said with brutal precision. “Not if you refer to driving her off the road. If she dies, you will be prosecuted for vehicular homicide. I will see to it personally.”

Amanda, watching blank incomprehension replace the unbearable anguish in her brother’s tear-wet eyes, felt hot fury explode inside her. Jonathan never cried, not for anything. Only the pain of his injuries and his fear for Carita brought him to it now.

“Don’t!” she said, thrusting out her hand to clamp her fingers on Nicholas’s taut forearm. Meeting his scorching gaze as he swung toward her, she glared at him with outraged warning. “Don’t you dare, not right now.”

Nicholas’s eyes narrowed. The muscles of his arm hardened under her hand as if about to throw off her hold. His lips parted with a sound like the beginning of a growl.

“Per favore!”

That annoyed cry came from a pretty, dark-haired nurse as she rustled into the room. She continued in a spate of Italian that required no translation, obviously declaring her patient should not be harassed or upset. If they would continue their quarrel, she must ask them to leave.

She smoothed Jonathan’s brow, studied his eyes, and popped a thermometer into his mouth. Swinging around, she stared in amazement at finding them still there, then made shooing motions with her hands.

Amanda released her grasp, stepped back from Nicholas. She would have moved to Jonathan’s bedside again, but her way was blocked.

“We will go for now,” Nicholas said. “We can return later.”

“What? But we only just got here!” Amanda protested.

“We trespass before normal visiting hours, should not be here at all. It will be some time before we are allowed in again.”

“Surely if you ask—”

“I have already used more influence than I should. Added to that, your brother is in pain, I think, and requires medication. It will be better if he rests now that his mind is somewhat at ease. You should rest also.”

“Don’t worry about me, Mandy,” Jonathan spoke up as the thermometer was removed from his mouth. “I’m hard to scare. And I’m not sure how you got here so quickly, but you have to be tired from the trip.” He eyed with weary disfavor the hypodermic needle the nurse was unwrapping on the table beside his bed. “Anyway, Nico is right. Sister Maria is about to send me to la-la-land again.”

She could not fight three against one. Amanda clenched her jaws together to prevent further objections. Leaning over the bed, she pressed a kiss to Jonathan’s forehead. “Take care of yourself, love,” she whispered.

“Always,” he said, though his smile did not reach the desolation in his eyes.

~ ~ ~

Amanda Davies was livid, Nico knew, and perhaps she had cause to direct her anger his way. He should not have threatened a man flat on his back and in pain from his injuries. Still, seeing Carita lying so waxen and motionless while surrounded by tubes, wires and monitors, knowing everything that reckless young fool had done to her, put him in a killing rage.

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.