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“Si. Nico.” He smiled. “No one ever called me Nico before.”
“Never?”
“Never. My governesses always referred to me as Principe.” He chuckled. “Except for one daring Englishwoman who called me Master Nicolo.”
“Were there many governesses?”
He nodded. “My parents were always traveling. My great-grandmother lived with us but she was already very old when I was born, so I was raised by governesses. And whenever my parents came home, they’d find fault with the governess of the moment and fire her.”
“They were that awful?”
“Some were better than others but none were ‘awful.’”
“Then, why?”
Nicolo sighed. “It took me a while to figure it out but I finally realized it was jealousy. My mother would see my attachment to a governess and that was the kiss of death.”
Aimee framed his face between her hands.
“If your mother wanted you to love her, why didn’t she stay home and take care of you herself?”
“It was just the way they were, cara, she and my father. Their lives were all about self-gratific
ation. No responsibility. No money, either. The palazzo was falling down around my ears by the time I inherited it—but that was how they lived, on their titles and the largesse of their friends.”
“And now?”
Nicolo lifted his mouth to hers for a kiss. “And now, amante mia, it no longer matters. They are both gone. A plane, taking them to a polo match in Palm Springs…”
“Oh, I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right, sweetheart. To tell the truth, I didn’t know them well enough to miss them.”
“A child shouldn’t grow up that way.”
The fervor in her voice made him smile.
“No. I agree.” He stroked his hand down her back. “And you, cara? How was life with James Black…Or do I not have to ask?”
Aimee sighed. “He took me in when my parents died. I’ll always be grateful to him for that. I was very little, you see, and there was no money…My father had married a woman Grandfather didn’t find suitable, and…”
“And,” Nicolo said, trying to control his sudden anger, “he did his best to make your father pay for it and to hell with how it affected you or your mother.”
There was a time Aimee would have defended her grandfather. She’d have said he’d done what he thought was right, but now she’d married a man who had done what he thought was right and it had nothing to do with what he’d wanted for himself but only with what he wanted for others.
For her and their unborn child.
“Yes,” she said softly, “he didn’t care about anyone but himself. But my parents were happy, Nicolo. They adored each other and they adored me. I loved them so much and then—and then they died and I went to live with Grandfather, and—and—” She gave a sad little laugh that almost broke his heart. “There he was, stuck with the child of a woman he’d never acknowledged. A girl child, at that.”
“I’m sure he didn’t hide his disappointment,” Nicolo said, his voice harsh.
“I wasn’t what he wanted. I had no desire to learn to become the perfect wife to his idea of the perfect husband.”
“A man he’d choose,” Nicolo said, rolling her beneath him. “A captain of industry, with blood as blue as your grandfather’s.”
Aimee ran her fingers through Nicolo’s tousled black curls. “Were you listening to all those conversations?” she said with a little smile.
“A man who could control you, as he had not been able to do.”
