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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!”