He threw back his shoulders, his fabulous bone structure fiercely pronounced. ‘What I said to you that day was—
is
—unforgivable,’ he accepted tautly. ‘All I can say in my defence is that I did not remember you. And Phebe…’ he stopped to swallow, his expression raw and ravaged ‘…Phebe and I were both left in deep comas after the accident. She—she did not come through it…I did…’
Raw agony scored his elegant cheekbones—survivor guilt, Cassie recognised, feeling the pain with him, though she wished that she didn’t.
‘The day you made that call to me was the same day we buried her…’ he went on once he found the control to do so. ‘It was,
cara
, the worst day of my life.’
Oh, dear God…Cassie spun away again, her hand jerking back up to cover her mouth. Nothing—nothing she had been feeling back then had felt as bad as this did right now.
‘I was in a mess,’ Sandro continued starkly. ‘I was barely functioning as a human being. I don’t remember deleting your calls from my mobile’s memory, and know now that I blocked them out afterwards as I had blocked out everything else about you…’
Cassie closed her eyes, trying to think past the strangle of emotions twisting around inside her and couldn’t. She hurt for poor Phebe. She hurt for Sandro, for herself and the twins.
‘When we met again—’
‘Please,’ Cassie whispered. ‘Don’t say anything else.’
She’d heard enough—
understood
enough. Phebe, poor, beautiful Phebe, had been Sandro’s real love and he’d cheated on her. Blocking out everything about her had been the only way he could live with his guilt. That did not make him a bad man, just a—a flawed one.
For six long years she had seen herself as Sandro’s sleazy one-night stand. Learning about his accident and his lost memory had given her back her dignity, the right to lift herself up from that lowly place. Now here she was, sunk right back down in the sleaze by the introduction of the beautiful Phebe Pyralis, who, if she had not died in that wretched car accident, would be blissfully married to Sandro by now, probably surrounded by the gift of their own children, and she and the twins would still be cast out of his life like unwanted garbage.
Instead, and because of a trick of fate, she had been offered the star prize in Phebe Pyralis’s stead: marriage to Sandro. A father for her children.
Great
, she thought emptily.
Aren’t I the lucky one
?
Compared to Phebe Pyralis—yes, a cold little voice inside her said.
Her tormented dark eyes fixed on the array of bags and boxes still lying where she’d dropped them by the chair. Her stomach began cramping again when she caught herself listing what was inside them—her carefully chosen bridal outfit aimed at romance because that reflected exactly how she had felt. A pretty dress for Bella aimed to fulfil her daughter’s fairy-tale expectations. An outfit she’d hoped was going to pass Anthony’s critical ideas about what a five-year-old boy would wear to a wedding.
A wedding.
On a clutch of raw hurt she swung her back to Sandro and closed her eyes as they began to sting.
‘Cassie…’
She shook her head to silence him. ‘I want you to leave now,’ she whispered. ‘The twins will be home soon. I would prefer it if you weren’t here when they arrive.’
Silence met that, a long, taut, pulsating silence that forced her eyes open and made her turn to look at him. His dark head was back, his squared chin jutted, the whole repertoire of his handsome arrogance etched in gold marble on his face. His eyes were burning. His mouth drawn flat. There wasn’t a bone in his magnificent body that wasn’t stretched and locked. The sheer physical power in his pulsing tension made the room seem to darken and shrink.
‘You’re chucking me out,’ he breathed through his tightly clenched teeth.
‘Wh-what did you expect me to do,’ Cassie countered, ‘just shrug it all off and carry on as we were?’
The way he seemed to vibrate where he stood made her wonder if that was exactly what he expected of her. ‘You believe you can wrench my children from my arms and walk away with them!’
‘M-my children too.’
Wrench
from his arms…? ‘And I don’t recall saying I would do that!’
‘It’s what you’re thinking!’ he charged angrily. ‘You want to punish me! You want to dismiss me from your life!’
‘Isn’t that what you did to me six years ago?’
As if she’d struck him right below the belt, Sandro reeled on his heels and swung away from her. As she stood there, watching him bunch and flex his impressive shoulder muscles, Cassie wished that she had! She wished he would drop into one of his blackouts so she could just…step over him and walk out!
‘Just go, Sandro.’ She spun away again. ‘I can’t
cope
with any more from you right now.’
Her hand jerked up to cover her mouth again. She was a mess. Her insides were a mess, trembling and fluttering, her limbs were shaking, her heart grabbing only the occasional thick beat.
Behind her another thick, brooding silence began to suck the oxygen out of the atmosphere. In front of her she watched as the first spots of rain hit the window. The skies had darkened while they’d been fighting, bringing a two-week Indian summer to an abrupt ending. Now the twins will get wet, was the one hazy thought to enter her head.
A sound of sudden movement behind her made her tense sharply and turn. Sandro was closing the gap between them, and she did not like the look on his face as he did. Acting on pure impulse, Cassie made a dive for cover behind the sofa because something in him had changed—his
mood
had changed.
Electric sensation fizzed up through her blood. ‘Don’t you dare come near me!’ she choked out.
As if the sofa was going to stop him, she mocked her mode of defence when all he did was grab hold of it and shift it out of his path, forcing her backwards until her shoulders hit the wall behind.
‘Wh-wh-what do you think you’re doing?’ Her clenched hands jerked up to push at his chest when he just kept on coming, making her slender arms bend until her fists were crushed between her breasts and his rock-solid chest. She’d never known him behave so physically threateningly, never seen that strange, burning look in his eyes. She wondered if she should be scared, but she wasn’t scared, she was—
‘I am about to check if you can cope with any more from me,’ he teethed out, then speared his long fingers into her hair and used them to tilt back her head.
Her tear-spiked eyelashes trembled and her breathing feathered as the full, unfair, determined beauty of him swam close. ‘I don’t want—’
The rest was lost—stolen from her by the marauding pressure of his mouth and the pillaging invasion of his tongue. Her defences tumbled like poorly constructed blocks. Her clenched fingers straightened out then clutched at his shirt. Her limbs turned to liquid. Her wretched, traitorous body filled with desire. He explored her mouth with a sensual expertise that won her hungry response. It just wasn’t fair, she thought helplessly as his grimly determined seduction spilled over into mindless passion and she gave herself up to it.
When he finally eased the agony of it and lifted his head to look into her dazed, glazed eyes, his soft and taunting, ‘You can cope,
cara
. You can cope with a hell of a lot more from me,’ made her cringe in shame.
Releasing his grip on her, he turned away and strode back across the room. ‘I will see you at our wedding venue tomorrow at eleven-thirty.’ He even calmly straightened the sofa as he went. ‘Don’t be late.’
‘I won’t be there.’ Cassie’s arms were back like bands around her shaking body.
‘You will be there,’ he countered. ‘You cannot afford not to turn up.’
Catching her breath, she stared at him. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
He’d reached the door by now. A tall, dark, lethal example of male arrogance steeped in unshakable self-confidence. Making the half-turn he required to look at her, ice-shot, inkblack eyes fixed on her pale face, his whole cool attitude and taut, elegant stature declaring that he was firmly back in control here, armed and ready to take on the fight.
‘I own right of say over your monthly salary,’ he reminded her with the smooth, calm thrust of a steely knife. ‘Perhaps what you don’t know is that I also own right of say over your reduced rent for this place. If you need confirmation of that, call Angus,’ he suggested. ‘He will tell you I bought his property portfolio at the same time I bought BarTec.’
Cassie’s strangled gasp hurt her throat. She needed to stay leaning against the wall because her legs had gone hollow with shock. ‘I suppose you’ve been dying to tell me that from the beginning,’ she breathed hoarsely.
‘On the contrary, I would have preferred not to play these cards with you.’ The hard cast of his face took on a bleak, sardonic smile. ‘However, we don’t have enough time left to allow you to prevaricate while you…salve your wounded pride over something neither of us can do anything about.’
‘What pride?’ Cassie choked out. ‘I don’t have any. You’ve stripped me of it!’
Even the wall wasn’t going to hold her up now, she realised as her hollow legs turned to jelly along with her queasy stomach, and her quivering heart. Almost stumbling like a blind woman she groped her way around the sofa and sat down on it, curling into the corner of it like a cowering whipped dog.
‘Look…’ he sighed, clearly not liking the whipped-dog look ‘…we have to—’
‘Shut up. I hate you. Get out,’ she whispered in fierce loathing.
‘When someone breaks the rules they must expect to pay for it!’ Sandro suddenly rasped out. ‘Six years ago I broke the rules, but you have been the one paying for it. Now I must and I
will
repay that debt to you!’
He was talking about marriage again. But did he really believe that marrying her was
repaying
her for what he’d done? ‘I will not be the cross for you to bear on your rotten guilt crusade!’
‘That wasn’t what I meant.’
‘It’s how it sounds!’
‘All right, I will rephrase it.’ He took in a deep breath. ‘I broke the rules. The
twins
have been paying for it. Now it is time for me to repay my debt to
them
.’
‘Well, that just about crowns the insults you’ve been piling on me, doesn’t it?’
His answering sigh came with a frown that sent his fingers shooting up to his brow. Like someone riding on a see-saw of violently swaying emotions, Cassie felt the stomach-riddling clutch of her hatred switch to a heartsqueezing wrench of concern.
‘Don’t you dare black out on me, Sandro!’ she launched at him furiously.
‘I’m not—’
‘Yes, you are!’ On a groan of sizzling frustration Cassie unfolded her curled figure and rose to her feet.
She saw him tense as she approached him, then still when her fingers gripped his arm. Another second later and he was dropping his shoulders and swaying sideways to prop himself against the frame of the door.
‘What caused it this time?’ she questioned reluctantly.
He sketched out a half-smile. ‘The sweet, loving tone of your voice?’
‘Don’t joke,’ Cassie husked, her other hand already covering the thankfully steady beat of his heart. ‘You need to sit down—’
‘What I need is for you to stop fighting me.’
‘And do what instead—forgive you for your sins?’
‘Sí
.
’
He dropped the hand from his face and looked at her, those deep-set dark eyes framed by unfairly long eyelashes reflecting a sombre beauty that clutched like a vice at her heart. ‘You have bought the dress,
cara—
I saw the shopping. You know deep down you care about me.’ Reaching up, he scored a thumb across her kiss-warmed, trembling mouth. ‘Hate me later, after we marry. I will be able to deal with it better then.’
Cassie drew her head back, away from his caressing finger. ‘And how can you be sure of that?’
He offered a tense smile. ‘Call it instinct.’
Instinct, she mocked. What he was doing was playing tunes on her sympathy. He was ruthlessly jumping on her moment of weakness that had brought her over here to him! His brow still wore the ghost of a pained frown, his stance still relied heavily on the door frame. And his hand was covering her hand now, pressing it into the heated shirt stretched over his beating heart.
‘I vow to you, on my own life, you will not regret it.’
Pressed, pushed, feeling the hurt again and aching with it, she snatched her hand away and walked back to the sofa to curl down into it, waging angry battles with herself now, as well as with him.
‘Think what it will do to the twins if you pull back from me now.’
Her eyes slid to her pile of shopping. She did as he said and thought about the twins. They needed him now—
wanted
what he was offering them. She could not take their happiness away from them because she had deep problems with what Sandro was.
‘I won’t sleep in your bed.’ The condition leapt from her lips without her knowing she was going to say it.
She didn’t look up when, after a few seconds, Sandro said quietly, ‘Fair enough,’ and left the apartment without saying another word.
A tactical retreat from the conniving, lying, manipulating general, she recognised, not liking herself one little bit for weakening her stance against him.
S
ANDRO
glanced at his watch, his tension tangible as he paced the town-hall foyer like a jungle cat constrained in a cage. Happening to glance up, he glared at the two men who were standing watching him.
‘Say a single word and I will hit the pair of you,’ he growled as he put in a couple more restless strides.
‘They are on their way,’ Gio Rozario dared. ‘The traffic is bad.’
‘If you’re this uncertain about her, Alessandro, then maybe you should think twice about—’
‘You might be my brother and a damn good doctor, Marco, but you have no clue what it is you are talking about!’ He swung around forcefully on his brother. ‘So keep your damned opinion to yourself.’
The way Marco held his hands up in a gesture of surrender and backed right off only made Sandro feel as if there was still a chance that he was going to lash out anyway.
He turned on his heel and strode back the way he had come. His brother had issues about what he was doing. But then, despite his medical training, Marco could not see what was going on inside his head. Marco could scan it, give an expert diagnosis on it, declare it perfectly healthy other than for a six-year-old scarring that would never go away. But he could not read its thoughts or the emotions that ranted through it—or the urgency that was driving him and, through him, Cassie into this marriage.
He’d waited six long, blacked-out years for this moment—for this woman to become his wife.
‘The car has arrived,’ Gio said quietly.
Swinging round to stride back to the doorway, Sandro was in time to watch his driver lift Bella out of the car and set her down on the pavement at the bottom of the town-hall steps and felt a hand grab hold of his heart then close into a fist. His beautiful, golden-haired daughter looked the perfect image of her own idea of how a princess should look in a frivolously pretty pink dress.
Cassie had done that—fulfilled Bella’s dream for her, though she did not want the dream for herself.
His son arrived next, scrambling out of the car under his own steam to immediately start jumping on the bottom stone step. He was wearing jeans and trainers and a blue and red checked shirt. His son’s mother had not made the mistake of offending the small boy’s dignity by dressing him in fancy wedding clothes.
That fist around his heart tightened its grip.
Then tightened some more as he watched a pair of slender, very female legs slide out of the car, followed by the rest of this beautiful creature who was his reluctant bride. She was wearing white, a silky white skirt that floated around her slender knees and a lacy jacket that nipped her tiny waist. Strappy white high-heeled shoes elevated her delicate ankles, and she’d dressed her hair up with a single pink-petalled rose.
He watched her look up, watched her go still, watched her dense, dark, fabulous green eyes flutter a glance down his full length. His body fired up, his tension levels along with it.
Cassie found herself pinned to the pavement by an all-over sensation of prickly heat. From down here at the bottom of the steps Sandro looked taller than he really was, and darker than he really was, and ten times more stunningly attractive than she wanted to believe that he was. His suit was black, beautiful, devastatingly elegant, his shirt so white it blinded her in the sun. Skin like warm olives, eyes as dark as pits and powerfully intense, his mouth so arrogantly firm yet so inherently sensual her lips gave a sting in recognition of what his could do to them.
She had to lower her eyes before she could make herself move again, her slender-heeled shoes suddenly feeling too fragile to support the odd new whirlpool heaviness that had taken over her legs. The twins were already running up the steps towards him, shouting out to him, expecting and receiving the kind of warm, smiling welcome they’d already become used to receiving from him.
Cassie followed at a slower pace, aware that she should not be doing this—did not
want
to be doing this, yet every nerve-ending she had was urging her onward as if Sandro was drawing her there with his indomitable will.
Bella was doing twirls for him, Anthony tugging on one of his hands while telling him something she didn’t think Sandro heard because his attention was still fixed on her. And her heart was pounding, the knowledge that she should not be feeling anything for him acting like a tormenting sting in her throat. When she reached the top of the step and was finally forced to lift her chin and look up at him, that all-over feeling of prickly heat changed to a quivering wash of helpless female awareness she wished so badly she didn’t feel.
Dense, dark brown eyes grabbed hold of her eyes. He reached for her hands and lifted them to his lips. ‘You look sensational,’ he told her.
Then Ella came running up the steps, looking harassed and breathless. ‘Sorry I’m late. The traffic is crazy…’
And her friend’s arrival saved Cassie from saying something stupid back to Sandro like—so do you.
Sandro picked up the polite duties of host, introducing everyone to each other—one of her hands held firmly trapped in his.
Marco sent her a brief wry smile. ‘It is a pleasure to meet you properly at last.’
But was it? Cassie found herself questioning as she laid her free hand in his. There was something restrained about his smile and his manner and even his tone of voice. Did he disapprove of her? Was he comparing her with the beautiful Phebe Pyralis and finding her lacking? Was he thinking about her and Sandro’s past association as he drew his hand from hers and turned away to greet her friend?
Her throat went so dry she couldn’t even swallow. Finding a smile for Gio Rosario actually hurt her tense mouth. When the registrar appeared to invite them to follow her, Cassie froze so totally she had a horrible feeling she might just be going to faint.
Great cop-out but—yes, please, she begged silently.
Then Sandro was feeding his hand across her tense back, his long fingers curving into her waist. He urged her forward, his own grim, silent tension telling her that he was aware she was still fighting with herself about going through with this.
‘My reluctant bride,’ he drawled sardonically as his car sped them away towards the airport, leaving Gio and Ella standing on the town-hall steps, planning where to have lunch. Sandro’s brother had excused himself and rushed off directly after the ceremony was over, claiming a heavy work schedule.
Cassie wondered if the word
‘ceremony’
covered what had been just thirty short minutes of soulless promises before she was elevated from plain Cassie Janus to the super-elegant Mrs Alessandro Marchese.
‘When you lost your voice halfway through your declaration, I half expected someone to stride through the doors and announce you were not lawfully free to marry me,’ Sandro mocked.
Her quick-witted daughter had come to her rescue. Bella had tugged on her skirt and whispered, ‘You haven’t finished yet, Mummy,’ while everyone else had begun shifting their stance.
I, Cassie Janus, take Alessandro Marchese…
No wonder she’d frozen up. She’d finally been forced to refer to him by that name.
‘Look at the way your ring is sparkling, Mummy,’ Bella piped up, reminding them both that the twins were travelling with them.
The perfect killers of adult conversation, Cassie mused with a smile at the twins. She glanced down at the sparkling diamond ring slotted on her finger next to the wedding ring which matched the one she’d almost dropped to the floor, she’d been trembling so badly as she’d tried to slot it on Sandro’s long, brown, rock-steady finger.
Sandro reached across the twins’ heads and stroked one of those long fingers down her pale cheek. He didn’t speak. When she glanced up at his face he still said nothing, but there was a possessive glow burning in his dark eyes that spread a warm flush right through her tense body.
His wife, her husband—for better and for worse now that the deed had been done. And the reason for that sat here between them, a small boy and girl wearing happy, contented faces.
Oh, come off it, Cassie
, she then told herself impatiently. In the end and no matter what you’ve been fighting or thinking or saying—you’re exactly where you want to be right now!
The sun was beginning to set by the time they sank through the air in a sweeping circle around the kind of house and gardens that took Cassie’s breath away.
To reach this far they’d travelled by private jet to Vespucci Airport in Florence, then transferred to one of Sandro’s private helicopters to make the sixty-kilometre trip south to arrive here, at the Marchese private country estate.
The twins were tired, the bubble of overexcitement which had carried them through the start of their long journey chiselled away by too many hours of confinement, and they were unimpressed by this first view of their new home.
On the other hand Cassie was beginning to truly realise just what kind of man it was she had married. She had known the Sandro of six years ago had come from money by his air of self-assurance, the quality of his clothes and the kind of flashy red sports car he had driven her around in then. When she’d met him again two weeks ago, she’d had to push him further up the moneyed ranking because of the sheer nature of who he had become as the controlling head of Marchese Industries.
However, this huge square stone villa with its apricot stuccoed walls blushing warmly in the dying sunlight, surrounded by the kind of gardens you usually only saw in travel magazines, pushed him even further up the rankings to a place beyond her present ability to comprehend.
‘Welcome to the Villa Marchese,’ he murmured as they settled down on the ground. ‘What do you think?’ he asked Cassie curiously.
‘It’s—big,’ was all she could find to say.
‘It’s not a castle,’ their daughter said in disappointment.
‘So I can’t please anyone today.’ Sandro sighed out whimsically.
‘I saw a huge swimming pool,’ Anthony chipped in. ‘Can we swim in it now?’
‘Except for my son—a little,’ Sandro added ruefully.
Opening the door, he climbed down then turned to lift the twins out. As though they’d been set free from a cage, they ran off towards the villa, putting Cassie’s heart into a fluttering panic because she had never let them move so far away from her before.
‘Sandro, catch them!’ she cried in alarm, moving without thinking what she was doing, so when she swung her legs out of the helicopter and went to lower herself to the ground she discovered the scary way that she was much higher up than she’d realised.
By then it was already too late, and that first impulsive move continued to carry her forward. Her heart gave a thump, that fizzing feeling you got when you knew you were going to fall washing agitated tingles down her legs, and she let out a frightened yelp.
Spinning around, Sandro ripped out a soft curse then came to her rescue, his strong arms banding around her body and gathering her up to hold her securely flattened to his long, hard length. Without even thinking about it, Cassie flung her arms around his neck and clung on for dear life.
‘I knew you would fall for me all over again once you’d seen my house,’ he said lazily.
‘It isn’t a joke!’ Firing a shaken look up at him, Cassie caught the smiling glint of his white teeth—the genuine laughter that reflected in his eyes. The dying sunlight was bronzing his fabulous features, his smooth forehead, his vibrant cheekbones, his jawline, the glowing patina of health that glossed his fleshless cheeks. Finally she collided with those sizzling gold flecks sparkling in his eyes, and that sinking feeling shot through her for a second time, only this one was down to the dizzying swoop of her own aching emotions, fighting against the hard, cold clutch of reality that he’d used her terribly six years ago for a one-night stand.
‘Put me down,’ she instructed.
And watched the laughter die. Instead of setting her feet to the ground he strengthened the muscles in his arms. She saw what was coming, and her fingertips curled tensely into his shirt collar.
‘Sandro, no,’ she jerked out.
‘Dio
, Sandro, yes,’ he delivered in a deep voice roughened by his intentions, and lifted her higher at the same time as he lowered his dark head to capture her mouth.
And he took it with a fire-hot hunger. The old electric excitement dragging a helpless whimper from her in response. With a muffled groan of raw desire he drove his tongue deep into her mouth on a passionately sensual exploration that blew her defences wide apart. Her head fell back against his shoulder; her heart began to pound. It was dreadful and wonderful at the same time, because she needed this kiss so badly it was no use trying to kid herself any more.
She wanted him. She was hungry for him, confused and mad and wild—and she kissed him back with every bit of singing, pulsing, throbbing passion that she had in her, yet aching tears filled her eyes when he finally allowed their mouths to part so they could draw breath.
‘You should have told me about her,’ she sobbed out painfully.
‘I couldn’t.’ His voice sounded harsh, thick, unsteady. ‘I’d hurt you too much already by abandoning you. I could not hurt you again by telling you about her.’
‘You loved her—’
‘No,’ he denied fiercely, banding her more tightly to him. ‘We did not have that kind of relationship. She was my friend before she became my betrothed. We kind of drifted into the idea of marriage because it suited our two families but—
damn
,’ he husked, ‘she was
nice
!’
Cassie shivered, wondering how he would have felt if poor Phebe had described him as just
nice
.
‘I loved her, but not in the way I should have done. I know that now but I did not understand then,’ he breathed raggedly. ‘She did not need my money because she had her own money. She did not need me to elevate her place in society because she already had that too. She did not expect great passion from me and she did not mind that I was more into work than being romantic.’
‘If you’re about to confess that the two of you made love by appointment then I don’t want to hear about it,’ Cassie sparked up brokenly.