They were part of each other, Raffaele, Dante, Falco and him. Close in age, close in looks, in temperament, in everything that mattered.
Was that going to change? It had to. How could things remain the same when one after another, the Orsini brothers had taken wives?
Nick tossed back the rest of his champagne and headed for the bar that had been set up at one end of the conservatory. The bartender saw him coming, smiled politely as he popped the cork on another bottle of vintage Dom Pérignon and poured the pale gold liquid into a Baccarat flute.
“Thanks,” Nick said.
Unbelievable, he thought as he watched Rafe dancing with his wife, Chiara. His brothers, married. He still couldn’t get his head around it. First Rafe, then Dante and now even Falco. I-Am-An-Island-Unto-Myself Falco…
Absolutely unbelievable.
His brothers had fallen in love.
“So will you, someday,” Rafe had said last night, as the four of them had toasted Falco’s coming nuptials in The Bar, the Soho place they owned.
“Not me,” he’d said, and they’d all laughed.
“Yeah, my man,” Dante had said, “you, too.”
“Trust me,” Falco had said. “When you least expect it, you’ll meet the right woman and next thing you know, she’ll have your poor, pathetic heart right in the palm of her hand.”
They’d all laughed, and Nick had let it go at that.
Why tell them that he’d already been there, done that—and no way in hell was he going to do it again.
Sure, it was possible his brothers would end up on the positive side of the grim statistics that said one in four marriages wouldn’t last. Their wives seemed sweet and loving, but that was the thing about women, wasn’t it?
They played games.
To put it bluntly, they lied like salesmen trying to sell ice to Eskimos.
Nick scowled, went back to the bar and put his untouched flute of champagne on its marble surface.
“Scotch,” he said. “A double.”
“I’m sorry, sir. I don’t have Scotch.”
“Bourbon, then.”
“No bourbon, either.”
Nick narrowed his dark eyes. “You’re joking.”
“No, Mr. Orsini.” The bartender—a kid, maybe twenty-one, twenty-two—swallowed hard. “I’m really sorry, sir.”
“Saying you’re sorry isn’t—”
A muscle ticked in Nick’s jaw. Why give the kid a hard time? It wasn’t his fault that the only liquid flowing today was stuff that cost two hundred, three hundred bucks a bottle. Cesare’s idea, no doubt. His father’s half-assed belief that serving a classy wine would erase the stink that clung to his name.
Forget that. Falco would have paid for the wedding himself, same as Dante and Rafe had done. That was the deal, the only way any of them had agreed to hold the receptions in what their mother insisted would always be their home. Isabella had done the flowers, Anna had made the catering and bar arrangements. If he wanted to bite somebody’s head off, it would be hers.
That did it. The thought of taking on his fiery kid sister—either one of them, actually—made him laugh.
“Sorry,” he told the kid. “I guess I only thought I was all champagned out.”
The kid grinned as he filled a flute. “No problem, Mr. Orsini. Me, I’m all weddinged out. Did one yesterday afternoon, another last night and here I am again. Comes my turn, my lady and I are definitely gonna pass on this kind of stuff.”
Nick raised his glass in a mock salute. It was the appropriate reaction but what he really wanted was to say was, Hell, man, why get married at all?
Still, he knew the answer.
A man made his mark in the world, he wanted to make it last. He wanted children to carry on his name.
So, yeah, he’d marry some day.
But he wouldn’t pick a wife by fooling himself into thinking it was love.
Outside, visible through the walls of glass, the sky was graying. Rain, the weatherman had said, and it looked as if he’d got it right for a change.
Nick opened the door and stepped onto the patio.
When he was ready to choose a wife, he would do it logically, select a woman who’d fit seamlessly into his life, who would make no demands beyond the basic ones: that he support her comfortably and treat her with respect. Respect was all he would ask from her in return.
Logic was everything, in making business decisions, in planning a marriage. He would never make an emotional decision when selecting a bank to take over, or a stock to ride out. Why would he do it in selecting a wife?
Relying on emotion was a mistake.
Once, only once and never again, he had come dangerously close to making that error.
At least he hadn’t been fool enough to tell anybody. Not even his brothers. He hadn’t planned it that way; he’d just kept what was happening to himself, probably because it had all seemed so special. As a result, there hadn’t been any “Oh, man, we’re so sorry this happened to you” bull. Not that his brothers wouldn’t have meant it, but there were some things a man was better off keeping to himself.
Things like learning you’d been used.
It had happened four years ago. He’d met a woman on a business trip to Seattle. She was smart, she was funny, she was beautiful. She came from a family that was as close to royalty as you could get in America but she’d made it in business on her own as the CFO of the small private bank he’d gone to the Northwest to buy.
To consider buying.
And that had turned out to be the key to everything.
She’d been in his bed by the end of the first day. And he’d wanted to keep her there. Before he knew it, they’d set a pattern. He flew to Seattle one weekend, she flew to New York the next. She said she missed him terribly when they weren’t together; he admitted he felt the same way.
He had been falling in love, and he knew it.
A month into their affair, he decided he had to tell her about his father. He’d never done that before. A woman either knew his old man was a crook or she didn’t. Who gave a damn? But this was different. This was—he’d avoided even thinking the word in the past—a relationship.
So, one night, lying in her bed, he told her.
“My father is Cesare Orsini.” When she didn’t react, he told her the rest. That Cesare was the head of a notorious famiglia. That he was a gangster.
“Oh,” she purred, “I already knew that, Nicky.” A sexy smile. “Actually, it’s a turn-on.”
A muscle knotted in his jaw.
The revelation should have set off warning bells. But the part of his anatomy with which he’d been thinking didn’t have the luxury of possessing bells, warning or otherwise.
A long holiday weekend was coming. He’d asked her to spend it with him. She said she couldn’t. Her grandmother, who lived in Oregon, was ill. She’d always been Grandma’s favorite; Saturday morning, she’d fly out to spend the weekend with her, just the two of them, alone. She smiled. And she’d tell Grandma about the wonderful man she’d met.
Nick said he understood. It was a sweet thing to do.
And then,