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“Sorry. I have a lot going on right now.”
“Exactly why you need a little break.”
“You aren’t going to let this go, are you?”
“Not until you come with me.”
She climbed into the car. The leather seats were so soft it felt as though they’d been wrapped around her. After Leo climbed in the driver’s seat, he fired up the powerful engine. It purred, but Bianca sensed the purr was deceptive. A little pressure on the accelerator and they roared off, down the driveway.
As he adjusted the rearview mirror, she asked. “Are you allowed to do this?” When he glanced at her with a questioning arc of his brow, she added, “You know, go off on your own. After all, you’re the crown prince.”
A smile lit up his face. Oh, my, was he handsome. Her heart swooned. The traitorous thing.
“It took a lot of negotiating but I’ve been allowed a certain bit of freedom.”
“I bet the queen wasn’t happy about that.”
He laughed. The sound was warm and rich. “It’s not the queen that I had to convince. It was Sir George.”
“Who is Sir George?”
“He’s the head of my security detail. In fact, he’s the head of the royal protection for the palace and the family. But he personally oversees my protection and I’ve been a challenge to him over the years.”
“And he agreed that you could go out driving by yourself?”
“Hardly. Behind us is a dark SUV filled with heavily armed guards. If anyone were to stop this vehicle, they would have an ex-military team to deal with. I can assure you, we are quite safe.”
The low-set car clung to the road as they whipped around the mountainous curves. Bianca’s hand tightened around the door handle. It’d been a long time since she had been in a sports car. She remembered not long after her brother started to drive that he would be given the task of driving her to visit with friends. He drove so fast, as though he were a race car driver, only he’d had a lot less experience at the time than Leo had now.
Still, Enzo had been a good sport. Without him, she wouldn’t have been able to see her friends since they lived so far apart. And her parents were always busy. Her father with the winery and her mother with the horses and the gardening. None of which interested Bianca all that much.
But Enzo made sure she didn’t get forgotten in the rush of everyday life. She smiled at the memory. Maybe the distance between them now was something that could be overcome. Maybe they could be close once more. She didn’t realize until that moment that it was something she wanted, something she wanted as much as—no, more than—she wanted to win the contest.
“What are you thinking about?” Leo’s voice interrupted her thoughts.
“My family. Actually, my brother.”
“And that made you smile?”
“Yes, it did. Riding in this sports car reminded me of him when I was a kid and how he would drive me around so I could see my friends. I’d forgotten about it—about how we’d crank up the music and I would sing at the top of my lungs. He’d laugh and we, well, we just had fun.”
“And you two don’t have fun any longer?”
She glanced down at her hands. “We haven’t in a lot of years. We drifted apart when I was a teen. I was more worried about my hair and my clothes than hanging out with my family.”
“Isn’t that normal for a teenage girl?”
She shrugged. “Maybe. But once the distance was there, we were never able to overcome it.”
“By the smile on your face when you thought of your brother, I don’t think it’ll be hard to repair your relationship.”
“It might be harder than you’re imagining.” And then the story of finding her mother’s diary and the fact that one of the three siblings was not a Bartolini by blood all came spilling out.
She didn’t know why she’d confessed to Leo. She’d been intending to keep the secret until the DNA results proved what she already surmised—she wasn’t a Bartolini. But it felt good to get it out—even if the results were not what she wanted for herself or either of her siblings.
Leo took his gaze off the road for a moment to glance at her. Sympathy reflected in his dark eyes before he focused back on the road. “You shouldn’t assume you are not a Bartolini. It could be any one of you. Or maybe you misunderstood—”
“There was no misunderstanding.” Bianca wrung her hands. “It makes sense that it’s me.” Her voice crackled with emotion. “I never lived up to my parents’ expectations. I always marched to a different drummer. I wasn’t like my brother or sister.”
