Throughout her contemplation of the incredibly attractive man seated across from her, he’d worked himself up.
“What do you suppose is wrong?” Massimo asked, ever attentive despite the fatigue lines etching his hard-boned features. The steward had just cleared away their breakfast trays.
She was tempted to reply that the baby wanted Shawn and Pietra, but of course he knew that. Instead she said, “He might need to burp, but I imagine he’s missing his own bed.”
“Aren’t we all.”
“It would take a big hammock for a man your size,” she said without thinking.
His lips twisted. “You’ve watched too many Indiana Jones films. These days we use cots.” He got to his feet and reached for Nicky. “You need a break. I’ll take him for a walk. Hopefully it will distract him.”
The baby looked so tiny in his uncle’s arms. Julie glanced away in an effort to block out the sight of his well-defined chest covered in a pearl-gray cotton sweater.
The open neck revealed a tanned column of throat. She could tell there was a fine dusting of hair, as well. His sleeves were pulled up to the elbows, revealing the hard sinews of his forearms.
Expelling a controlled breath, she decided now would be a good time to use the restroom. Her hair needed a good brushing. She could refresh her lipstick.
When she returned to her seat a few minutes later, she was surprised to discover he’d come back. Nicky lay facedown across his powerful thighs encased in expensive-looking charcoal trousers. Using a bronzed hand to rub the baby’s back, Massimo had managed to quiet him.
“I should have thought of that. I’m jealous.”
One corner of his so very male mouth curved, causing her pulse to race. Since she’d first met him outside his hotel room, it had been doing that on a regular basis despite her reservations about him.
“We can thank Dante. He told me to try it.”
“How old are his children?”
“Fourteen and seventeen. I presume having been a father twice, it’s like riding a bicycle. Once you’ve learned, you never forget.”
“Did all your cousins marry young?”
His black eyes flickered over her. “My uncle insisted on it. Their wives were handpicked.”
“Judging from your bachelor status, you were the only one not afraid of him.”
“He wasn’t my father. Though the strictures of Uncle Aldo’s household could be daunting, to a certain degree I was able to get away with being a nonconformist. Much to my cousins’ chagrin,” he added on a more sober note.
“Like what, for instance?” Her curiosity was going to get the better of her.
“He believes an unmarried man past twenty-one is a menace to society.”
“Uh-oh. Did your aunt have any say in the matter?”
“None. It didn’t help that she was sickly throughout their marriage and needed waiting on. She died a year after Pietra and I went to live with them.”
How completely different from Julie’s family, where her mother’s need to be in charge had eventually beaten down her father.
“I thought it was the other way around in Italian households.”
He studied her through shuttered eyes. “You watch too many made-for-TV movies.”
“According to you I watch too many movies period.”
His brief white smile caused her insides to dissolve. “I’ll concede the point.”
“Was Pietra a rebel, too?’
“Afraid so. She took after me,” he admitted ruefully. “No one was going to do her choosing for her. I wasn’t surprised when she told me she’d fallen in love with Shawn.”
Julie’s throat swelled. “Pietra was the best thing that ever happened to my brother. They didn’t have very long together, but they were two of the happiest people I’ve ever seen. She wasn’t intimidated by our mother.”
“Our uncle did a good job of preparing her in that department.” His remarks kept hinting at a dark history.
“Does he live in Bellagio, too?”
“No.”
That was definitive enough. The one-syllable answer filled her with relief.
“Wh-what about your cousins?”
The furrow between his black brows deepened. “No need to worry. The Di Rocche family are Milan born and bred. My mother came from Bellagio.”
“Pietra showed me pictures of your parents when they were very young. Your mother was a great beauty. Were those their wedding photos?”
The second she asked the question, his hand stilled on Nicky’s back for a moment before he said no.
Without more of an explanation, it was clear the discussion was over. The sudden tension radiating from him made her mouth go dry. If Massimo had no wish to volunteer anything else, that was his prerogative.
Feeling uneasy, she got to her feet. “The baby’s fallen asleep.” She quickly lifted him off Massimo’s legs and fastened him back in the seat harness of his baby carrier.
After covering him with a light blanket, she sat down again. “If I’ve irritated you by asking questions, I … I apologize. Having come from a divorced home, I prefer to keep certain family matters private myself.”
No one understood that better than Julie, who loathed having to discuss her parents’ breakup with anyone. She certainly couldn’t blame him about his reticence in that regard.
Yet the second the words left her lips, she realized how ludicrous she must sound after the aspersions she’d cast on him the first time they’d met and had yet to apologize for.
He studied her through brooding eyes. “As you so succinctly reminded me at the hotel, I come from a Machiavellian world, one I’d hoped to have put behind me. You enter it at your own risk.”
Her heart missed a beat. “Are you saying you had another agenda for hiring me? Like for instance using me to test your tea before you drink it?” She wanted an honest answer from him, but had couched it to sound tongue-in-cheek.
Some of the frown lines relaxed. “I didn’t mean to imply anything quite that sinister. But I will ask your compliance in one regard. I expect you to come to me if something doesn’t seem right, or if someone makes you uncomfortable.”
He was serious! Her heart picked up speed.
“By someone you mean—”
“Anyone in the family,” he supplied. “While you’re in Italy you’ll be living under my roof where my rules apply. No one else’s. Understood?” The question veiled an implicit demand.
“Yes. Of course.”
“You can trust Guido and Lia. They run the villa.”
Julie was starting to get confused. Everything he said and did was putting cracks in her mind-set.
“If the climate is that fraught with intrigue, why are you taking Nicky back there?” So much for not asking more questions.
He gave an elegant shrug of his shoulders. “This is his Italian birthright, the one I can help him claim. When he’s old enough, I’ll make certain he explores his American roots. By giving me guardianship, his parents made it clear they wanted him comfortable in both worlds.”
Shawn and Pietra couldn’t ask for more than that, where their son was concerned.
The longer she was around Massimo, the less she realized she understood or knew. Much as she hated to admit it,