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back more. Amanda hurried to keep up
with them, running a few steps now and then. When she began to lag behind,
Nicholas paused, swept a hard arm behind her back and set off again.
    “What is it?” she asked breathlessly as she tried to keep
up. “What are they saying?”
    “You should learn Italian,” he said without slackening his
pace.
    “I won’t be here that long,” she snapped back with some
annoyance. “Is Jonathan all right? What are they telling you about him?”
    “It isn’t about him,” Nicholas answered with a bite in his
voice, and turned back at once to the medical briefing.
    The news was about his sister, then. It didn’t appear to be
good.
    Chill distress moved over Amanda. She wanted to offer
comfort, but could think of nothing to say. She would be the last person he
would want to hear it from anyway, as he blamed her brother for his sister’s
critical condition. Without another word, she allowed herself to be led to
Jonathan. She couldn’t get there fast enough to suit her.
    Her brother’s bed was surrounded by monitors and he lay in
what appeared to be a tangle of tubing that ran into his veins. He was so still
and pale under the sheet that it was difficult to be certain he was alive.
Stitches made a black line across his right temple. Bandaging wrapped one
shoulder and his chest, and his leg in its cast was propped on a foam support
that looked far from comfortable. Gloom filled the small, square room, the only
light coming from a long, dim fixture above the bed and a glimmer of dawn light
through the window blinds.
    Amanda moved to take Jonathan’s lax hand, staring down at
him for long moments. He looked so young, with his lashes resting on shadows as
dark as bruises that lay beneath his eyes and all care smoothed from his brow.
He might have been a boy again, as when she had rocked him to sleep. She lifted
his hand to her lips for an instant, since that seemed the only place on his
body that might not hurt. Releasing him, she drew up a chair and sat down
beside the bed.
    She was alone. Nicholas had delivered her to this private
room and then walked on with the doctors who escorted them. No doubt he was
with his sister by now. She hoped he had found her in no worse shape than
Jonathan.
    Would the Italian return for her later? She had no idea, but
it didn’t matter. She was where she should be, where she needed to be.
    “Mandy?”
    She roused at that whisper, aware that she had closed her
eyes while allowing her mind to drift, coming somehow to the moment on the
plane when she had walked in on Nicholas de Frenza. Banishing it, she leaped to
her feet and moved close to the bed.
    “You’re awake,” she said in husky greeting. “I thought they
were keeping you sedated.”
    “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