“That poor girl. Thank God you and Taviano got her out of there.”

“You understand why we’re limiting the people she’s around for now. She’s overwhelmed. I promise the next two we’ll introduce to her will be you and Emme. Just a few new people at a time.”

Francesca sighed, and nodded her agreement. “That makes perfect sense, Stefano. Actually, it’s best anyway. I would have been going for the wrong reasons. I do want to meet her and hopefully become friends with her, but I really wanted to go to be with you.”

“I’m sorry, Francesca.” He was disappointing her and that was the last thing he wanted.

“No, don’t be. I’ll be staying in today, so come back as soon as you can. Take Emilio and Enzo with you. They’ve been doing women things for the last few days and they’re pouting. I’ll be safe here in the penthouse.”

He threw back his head and laughed. She could do that so easily, make him smile. Make him laugh. His arms tightened around her and he nuzzled her neck. “The idea of Emilio in a dress shop or shopping for china is hysterical. I should have asked you and Emme to take pictures or a video of his face.”

Her laughter joined his. “The expression on his face was priceless. In all honesty, Emme and I worked really hard to come up with a dozen places the boys would have to go with us, just so we could see that look on their faces. Enzo was just as bad, if not worse. They looked like a couple of bulls going to their doom.”

“I can imagine the places Emme decided to make them accompany you.”

“We hit every single sexy lingerie store close to us. Emilio and Enzo did a lot of groaning. They were quite the hit in a couple of stores. At one of them, two women insisted on coming out of the dressing room in their sexy getups and asking the boys their opinions. I swear we didn’t pay them to do that, but Emilio and Enzo think we did.”

“Emme probably did behind your back. It’s something she would do. She was always getting the two of them. She likes to get back at all of us for being what she calls ‘overprotective.’”

Francesca laughed at him, her arms circling his neck. “Stefano, you know full well all of you are overprotective of Emme. You probably made her teenage years a nightmare.”

“Ha. She made our lives a nightmare when she was a teen. She’s a rider, bambina. That means she could get out of her room whenever the mood struck her. On top of that she’s a little on the wild side.”

Her eyebrow shot up. “Emmanuelle is wild? I don’t think so. You don’t see her picture splashed in every magazine with two women hanging on her arm. That’s Ricco and your brothers.”

“If she had two men hanging on her arm”—Stefano couldn’t keep the menace or the grim out of his voice—“they’d find those same men in the morgue the next day.”

“That is so not fair,” she declared. “You really are chauvinistic.”

“That’s right,” he said without apology. “Keep that in mind when we have a daughter. You might want to warn her.”

She rolled her eyes at him. “I’m sure she’ll figure it out very quickly. With you for a father and her four uncles as well as cousins everywhere, she’ll most likely know it by the time she’s three.”

“You certain you aren’t going anywhere today? No fittings for your wedding dress? No looking at cakes or flowers?”

“No.”

Francesca was decisive about it, so much so that he had a hard time not laughing. She wasn’t thrilled with all that making wedding plans entailed, especially on the scale Eloisa and Emmanuelle were making them. There was no point in fighting his mother and sister for control of the wedding, not even for his woman.

“Emmanuelle said she’d drop by and check on Theresa Vitale today, see if she needs more soup, or anything at all in the way of medicine. I think she’s on the mend, but even with her grandson watching over her, we decided not to take chances. With Emme taking care of that, I don’t have a thing to do but veg out.”

“All right, dolce cuore, I won’t be gone too long. I’ll take Emilio and Enzo with me and we’ll drop by the office to collect everything I need on the way back so I can work from here for a couple of days.”

“I’d love that,” she agreed instantly.

Stefano changed to his three-piece suit, standard wear when outside his home. It was a drawback at times being a rider and always wearing the suit, as classy as it was. Wearing it meant he could disappear at any time into the shadows, but it also meant he was overdressed on occasion.