Her Shameful Secret by Susanna Carr Page B

and relaxed he was with his friends. He was much more formal with his mother, and had been watchful and cautious with his brother. If she wanted to understand Antonio she needed to know the source of the strain between him and his relatives.
    But Isabella was hesitant to ask. She bit her bottom lip as Antonio drove back to his apartment in comfortable silence. She didn’t want to ruin a perfect evening, but she didn’t have a lot of opportunity to find out before she left Rome.
    “Antonio, why did you have such a difficult relationship with your brother?”
    Antonio frowned, and she felt the mood shift in the small confines of the car. “It’s not something I like to talk about.”
    “I know, but I feel like I’m missing a huge piece of the puzzle.” If she had known their history she could have avoided so much heartache. But some instinct warned her that Antonio would have kicked her out sooner or later even without his brother’s interference. “What happened between you two?”
    Antonio felt Isabella looking at him, curious and expectant. He knew he owed it to her. It wasn’t just about him and his brother. Isabella had been affected, too.
    “My brother and I were close when we were young,” he said, looking straight ahead as he drove through the busy streets. A smile tugged at the corner of his mouth as he remembered how much fun he’d once had withhis brother. “My parents didn’t have any more children so it was just the two of us. I often heard us described as the heir and the spare.”
    “Ouch. That’s not very nice. Did they said that to you ?”
    He didn’t care about the label anymore, but he found Isabella’s indignation a comfort. “The servants or guests would say it when they didn’t think I understood. Or when they thought I was out of earshot.”
    “Still, that’s not something anyone should say about a child. It’s something he’d carry with him. Either he tries to live up to it or fight against it. It would have the power to define him.”
    “I knew there was some truth to it,” he admitted. “My parents loved me, and I was cared for, but Gio was the center of attention. There were times when I felt envious and resentful, but as I got older I realized I was the lucky one.”
    “Lucky? How can you say that?” she asked. “Your parents played favorites.”
    Antonio glanced at Isabella. She was curled up against the passenger side door with her arms crossed. If she was trying to keep her distance she was failing miserably. Isabella was already taking sides in his story.
    “I was lucky because I wasn’t pressured to perform better. My parents had high expectations for both of us, but I was lazy and unfocussed. Everyone knew that Gio was smarter, faster and better than me,” he said matter-of-factly.
    “That’s not true,” Isabella said.
    “It was at the time,” he said, frowning as he noticed how Isabella leapt to his defense. She’d used to do that when she read an unflattering news item about him,even when she didn’t have all the facts. “Or it could have been my family’s mindset. He was firstborn. He was the heir. Of course he was the best at everything.”
    “That is so unfair,” she muttered. “I don’t know how you could have stood it.”
    “Don’t worry, it didn’t last long,” Antonio said. He glanced at Isabella as the streetlights flickered through the window. She looked upset for the child he’d used to be. “I hit my stride in my late teens.”
    “Uh-oh,” she said. “You shook up the status quo?”
    He nodded. “We started getting competitive. Gio needed a challenge, but he never thought I would eclipse him. I was tired of hearing, ‘If only you were more like your brother …’ I wanted someone to say that to Gio. And they did, but not in the way I wanted.”
    Isabella leaned closer. He caught a faint hint of her scent.
    “What happened?”
    Antonio shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “One day my father told us that he thought the