“Nothing gets past you,” Geno said.
“Geno, you’re in so much trouble.” Lucca looked gleeful.
“We were just assuring Geno you were in love with him and weren’t going anywhere,” Salvatore told her. “I saw the look on your face when he went down. He worries that youcan’t live with a man like him. With the way he is. He can’t change who he is. Fundamentally, at his core, he’s a man who protects his family. He protects his woman, his family. Lucca. Me. And here’s the thing, Amara. You’re our sister. You’re family to me. To Lucca. We’re exactly like Geno. We’ll be the same way. Stepping in if we think you’re in danger.”
Geno’s breath caught in his lungs. He’d spent so much time trying to get Amaranthe to move away from the fact that he’d almost died, and now they’d circled right back to it. He should have known Salvatore would be direct and honest with her. His brothers might tease her, but they wouldn’t lie to her.
Amaranthe made a little moue with her lips and then nodded slowly. “It’s taken me most of the night to process the fact that Geno has nearly died twice now because he’s insisted on taking poison in my place and that he won’t stop.”
“Wait.Twice?” Salvatore glared at his brother. “You sent us away to safety and brought these murdering fuckers straight down on you.”
“Itriedto send you away,” Geno corrected. “Neither one of you stayed where you were told. I think we need to have a family meeting and reset the ground rules.”
“Don’t change the subject yet,” Lucca said. “I’d like to hear what Amara has to say.”
She smiled at him. “Thank you, Lucca. All I wanted to point out is, just as I have to get to know and accept all of you as you are with your personalities, you have to get to know me and accept my personality traits. That might take a little more time. You look the part of big, strong men with iron wills. I look more like what you were teasing me about—the delicate little ballerina. I assure you, I’m not.”
Geno didn’t like the little confident smirk in her mind or the mysterious smile that was all too feminine and told them nothing but that she was going to be trouble.
“What does that mean?” Salvatore asked. He shot Geno a quick glance, hoping for an interpretation. “What does she mean by that?”
Lucca answered. “I’m afraid she means we took her size and the fact that she was a dancer at face value. What you’re telling us, little sister, is that you very well could throw yourself in front of one of us.”
“Don’t give her any ideas, Lucca,” Salvatore said. “She’s damn fast.”
“She already has them,” Geno said. “I’m counting on both of you to be faster. You’d better step up your training with me.”
Lucca groaned and wiped his hand over his face. “You’re just using her as an excuse to make us work out with you every day.”
“You already work out with me every day. I’m talking about working out twice a day.”
“Adding ballet in will help with balance as well as endurance,” Amaranthe added with a straight face. “Football players and boxers often take ballet to help improve their balance and endurance.”
Lucca looked horrified. “I’m drawing the line. You’re not getting me into tights, Amara. I know where you’re going with this. Geno might want to prance around for you, but that’s not happening with me no matter how cute you are.”
Amaranthe collapsed face-first on the bed, her laughter muffled by the duvet. Geno exchanged a grin with his brothers. The sound of her mirth was so musically pitched, filling the room and lifting them up, making them feel lighter.
She sat up facing them, pushing at the clouds of hair tumbling around her face. “The visual is killing me. If the three of you wore tights and pranced around my studio, I don’t think I could ever unsee that particular sight. As it is, I have a vivid imagination, and you’ve planted that in my head. Please don’t ever do it again.”
“You deserve it for making the suggestion in the first place.” Lucca had no sympathy. “You can talk my brother into anything.”
“Hey,” Geno objected. “That’s not true.”
“It’s clear she’ll be able to.” Salvatore backed Lucca. “Look at those eyes. And her eyelashes. If she asks me for anything, I’m not going to look at her.”
“The lot of you are crazy.”
“We always envied our cousins having Emmanuelle. And our cousins in LA and San Francisco. Both families have girls. We didn’t get a female in our family. Just us,” Geno said.
Lucca nodded. “Then we have the prophecy. We always say it’s a crock, but deep down we really believe it.”
“The prophecy?” Amaranthe echoed.
“I told you about it,” Geno reminded. “The eldest Ferraro rider finds his true love and then the other family members find theirs.”
“Geno is a...” Lucca looked across at his brother and waved his hand. “Hard-ass,” he settled on. “He isn’t going to change. We didn’t think any woman would see past the stone mask to his heart. He’s also extremely intelligent and needs someone with a quick mind to keep up.”
“In other words,” Salvatore interpreted, “he gets bored with conversation, men or women, in five minutes, if he lasts that long. We didn’t think we had a chance in hell of the prophecy being fulfilled.”
