“I can’t imagine owning this whole place and leaving it empty,” she said.
“It’s hardly empty,” said Olivia with a laugh. “My family lives here.”
Ann-Sophie’s face heated. “Sorry.”
Olivia waved off her apology, and her expression turned more serious. “When the twins’ grandfather bought this villa, the surrounding wall was crumbling, threatening our town. The old owner didn’t have the money to fix it, and the state wasn’t going to take on the project. Everyone in the village was grateful the Carandinis did. If the family had not bought that property, half of the village’s houses would likely be rubble at this point. One of the winter rains would have certainly swept away the wall, taking with it the whole village. Before they came, some breach of the wall took out a few houses on the hillside below. So in the eyes of the town they are welcome to come and go as they please as long as they continue to maintain the place. And both Massimo and Alessandro have promised that.”
How nice that Olivia found Alessandro reliable. Trustworthy. Pretty much the opposite of her experience.
“Ah, it’s my brother, who is supposed to be at the villa negotiating a marriage that won’t singlehandedly destroy our family’s reputation we have worked so hard to fix,” said Massimo as he leaned against the door to his office, his hands in his pockets, his intense gaze unrelenting. His tone was deceptively casual, but Alessandro could hear the bite in his brother’s subtle rebuke. Alessandro had never cared much about his own reputation, but both his grandfather and Massimo had dedicated their lives to the family name. He had spent his teens making both their lives more difficult, and he had sworn he would not do that again. Now, Massimo was invoking the family name, what all their work was supposed to be for.
“Are you back in the office to announce the date of your nuptials?”
“I will take care of it in the next couple weeks,” grumbled Alessandro.
He kept his eyes on the screen in front of him, though he had no illusions that Massimo would believe he was reading. The truth was that he had spent the entire morning staring at the same pages. Going word by word through a document had always taken a great deal of concentration, and today it seemed impossible. In truth, he had never spent much time exploring adaptations that could have helped. Maybe the label of laziness was not so far from the mark. Both his parents treated that label with indifference, which Alessandro found far less painful than the scorn they reserved for a learning disability. Looking back, Alessandro wouldn’t have called any of his choices during his teens conscious ones. They had been more intuition, which had been his saving grace for so much of his life. Until now.
“Catarina and I would like to attend your wedding. In addition to my hopes that you will also find a path to love…” His brother paused, as if he was thinking of his own surprising path. “I want to head off any speculation that this marriage is a last-minute decision so the child is not born out of wedlock.”
Alessandro met his brother’s gaze. “It is a last-minute decision so the child is not born out of wedlock. For the family.”
This truth was so much easier to speak than the turmoil of emotions that had exploded inside him the moment he had felt a tiny kick from inside Ann-Sophie’s stomach. It was no secret that he and Massimo had both dedicated their adult lives to rebuilding the companyfor the family. Just one generation ago, his parents’ volatile, explosive relationship had bankrupted the family business and ruined every ounce of good will that his grandfather had carefully built up for his entire career. His parents’ relationship had consumed them, so caught in indulgence and petty jealousies and social one-upmanships that it didn’t leave time for anything as mundane as running a business. Let alone raising two boys.
The previous year, when Massimo’s and Alessandro’s acumen, strategy and dedication to their business had still not been enough to quell the speculation that the brothers would get distracted by the kind of relationship that had sunk the Carandini family’s reputation and fortune, Massimo had arranged a marriage for the explicit purpose of extinguishing these worries. The plan had worked, both as a public-relations campaign and also privately, to the unexpected satisfaction of his brother. That was supposed to be the end of it.
Now, Alessandro’s unanticipated baby threatened the balance that Massimo had gained for the family. Alessandro had made sure he was held to a different standard, that affairs should be expected and would not affect any other part of his life. But, as his brother had rightly pointed out, people would tolerate that behavior only so far.
When Massimo didn’t respond, he added, “This is not the direction I saw for my life.”
As the words came out of his mouth, the image of Ann-Sophie on his bed that had come to him in Nice reappeared in his mind. He had, in fact, imagined this life, and that image had filled him with an emotion too volatile to handle. “But I will not allow another generation to be brought up the way we were. I will be there for my child.”
“I understand,” said his brother, his voice softer. “I also want to show that the family is behind you.”
Alessandro gave Massimo a nod of gratitude. His brother would always be behind him, even if they didn’t always understand each other.
“Your well-known charm is noticeably absent,” added Massimo, raising an eyebrow. “This is the one time all those years of practice should be used.”
Alessandro could have answered with a flippant comment and moved on, but he didn’t. Instead, he tried to put into words something he had been stewing on all day.
“Some part of me just shuts down.” He frowned and added, “I learned to be charming for a reason.”
Even saying those words were painful. They brought him back to a time when his selfish anger had controlled him.
His brother frowned. “You are not the same man you were then.”
“I am not the same man because I have kept all these impulses in check. I don’t think I’m capable of anything that looks like what a family should.” The emotions he had felt when he and Ann-Sophie kissed had been so full of the hurt he had built himself up from all those years ago. “Our parents were not suited to have children, and neither am I.”
His brother looked like he had plenty more to say on that subject, but he just shook his head. “Save that problem for after the wedding. Right now, you need to get this woman to the altar before she has a baby out of wedlock.”
“For the family,” Alessandro added with a humorless smile.
“Go back, and I will cover you for the next two weeks,” said his brother. “Keep me updated about the wedding.”
He couldn’t bring himself to resent Massimo’s focus on the weddingfor the family—a plan that Alessandro himself had come up with back in Stockholm. Maybe it was the universe’s idea of payback, since he had pushed his own brother into a marriage to a person he had never met? At least Alessandro had chosen his partner himself. And they were undeniably well-suited in the bedroom. Too well-suited, he thought darkly.
As Alessandro left the city behind and drove into the countryside, the rolling hills of his childhood spreading out on either side, Massimo’s advice ran through his head: Focus on the wedding, and deal with the rest later. It was questions concerning the future that provoked the eruption of his long-controlled feelings. Until he had secured her agreement, he would block these thoughts from his mind.
Alessandro turned off the main road, through the olive grove, and entered the little village that had been his home for the first years of his life. It had been a long time since he had spent time here, and he made a mental note to ask Olivia about the best bakeries, the most charming areas to show to Ann-Sophie. Would she agree to raise their child here? By the time he climbed the staircase and walked the long, familiar hall, he felt more like himself than he had in the last two days. Anything that was uncertain, he would put off until after the marriage.
