‘We never made love!
Hell—damn…!
’ Setting her down on her feet, he fell into a rage of Italian curses while Cassie stood trembling and stared at him in stinging disbelief.
There was just no way she was going to believe that one, knowing the depth and strength of his passions the way she did!
‘Before I left to come to England, we had even talked about calling our engagement off!’ he delivered harshly. ‘Because our betrothal was so high-profile we decided we should use the time I was away to think about it before we decided to cause some pretty heavy family waves.’
‘That’s a lousy let-out—’
‘You bet it’s a lousy let-out!’ Sandro agreed forcefully. ‘Do you think I’m not aware of that?’ he demanded. ‘Do you think I am not aware that the moment I set foot on British soil and saw you, I was using that damned excuse like some kind of mantra that absolved me of sin? Do you think I am not also aware that I shut all memory of you out because that had to be my punishment for wanting you more than I wanted her?’
‘Y-you think you killed her, I can understand that, but—’
‘What are you talking about?’ His head shot back, gold-flecked dark eyes pinning her with a stunned stare. ‘I didn’t kill Phebe—she almost killed me!
She
was driving the car! Didn’t you read the stuff about the accident Pandora put on Facebook?’
Eyelashes trembling, Cassie shook her head. ‘I w-was scared there would be photographs of your injuries.’
‘There were.’ Sandro swallowed tensely. ‘It took them hours to cut us out of the car. For myself I don’t remember anything about it and I have only thin sketches of what came before. But I remember that Phebe was tense, distracted, telling me something—’ he lifted his fingers to his brow ‘—I can’t remember what, but I can see her tension—feel it. But I blamed it on my own tension because I knew I had to tell her about you, then—
Dio
,’ he swore when he saw the tears running down Cassie’s cheeks. ‘Don’t you dare weep on me,
cara
,’ he warned, ‘or I will not be responsible for what happens next, or
where
it happens!’
Cassie controlled the tears with an inelegant sniff. Sandro muttered something else in Italian then stepped in close to ravage her soft, quivering mouth.
‘You—’
‘Just shut up,’ he groaned when she tried to speak again, his next kiss bruising her mouth as if he wanted to punish her for thinking at all. ‘Can’t you tell when a man is crazy about you?’ he demanded roughly. ‘Is it not enough that you embarrassed me when you made me drop like a stone at your feet?’
‘Your guilty conscience did that—’
‘You
did that!’ he countered fiercely. His eyes were fierce, the way he was crushing her to him again was fierce. ‘You, with your beautiful green eyes spitting hell at me—
you
!’
They were still standing on the gravel platform built to take the helicopter. Neither had noticed that the pilot had quietly slipped away or that their children’s voices had faded, or that the grey-framed windows in the apricot-stuccoed villa were lined with interested faces.
But Cassie remembered the children now. ‘Sandro, the twins have disappeared!’ A flare of alarm set her wriggling in his arms.
He pulled her back again. ‘There is an army of staff employed here, every one of them capable of watching over two children without my having to relinquish what I have here.’
‘And what do you have?’ Cassie looked at him.
‘A wife,’ he said. ‘My woman, shackled to me in more ways than one.’ The tension in his arms made sure she was aware of at least one other way she was shackled to him. ‘You love me. You’re as crazy about me as I am about you. Why don’t you give in and just tell me so I can relax my guard and move this on?’
A small frown puckered the top of Cassie’s nose as she continued to look at him. Her teeth fastened into her kiss-swollen bottom lip. He was shamelessly arrogant, and shamelessly sure of himself. But…there was something else about him that was niggling at her right now.
‘Move this on where?’ she asked cautiously.
His tense mouth broke into a wry kind of smile. ‘Well, not to a girly pink bed, that’s for sure,’ he drawled.
And that was it—the thing that had been nagging at the back of her mind right through this whole heated conversation. ‘You’ve remembered everything!’ she choked out.
‘Mmm,’ he smiled.
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘Because I needed to hang on to your sympathetic side until I had you caught, tethered and incarcerated here,’ he explained. ‘Allowing you to believe I was going to drop to the ground whenever we had a fight made your defences crumble.’
‘But that’s—’
‘Sneaky, devious, underhand?’ Sandro suggested.
‘When?’ she demanded. ‘When did you remember?’
‘At Angus’s house….’ he said without a single hint of remorse. ‘I spent the next three days in my brother’s care while my head bombarded me with six forgotten weeks of pure hell and misery. Letting you continue to believe I was still struggling with flashbacks was the perfect diversion tactic to keep you focused on what really mattered.’
‘Which was you, of course,’ Cassie sighed out.
‘And what you really felt about me,’ Sandro extended.
The children came tearing around a corner of the house then, with several members of his staff in hot pursuit. From being travel-tired they’d suddenly found a new lease of energy that made Sandro sigh.
‘I don’t suppose you would like to tell me you love me before we have to break this off for a while…?’ he murmured hopefully.
Not before you say it first
, she thought.
‘Mummy, you’ve just got to come and see how big this house is!’ Anthony called out excitedly.
‘It almost as big as a castle!’ his twin enthused. ‘And they—’ Bella pointed towards the cluster of people standing back now that the twins had reached their parents ‘—won’t let us jump in the swimming pool.’
‘I don’t think they understood us when we said we can swim,’ Anthony explained.
‘I think they did,’ their father murmured indistinctly, then very casually to Cassie, ‘I will punish you later for holding out on me,’ he warned.
‘Well, that sounds—interesting,’ she responded primly.
And found herself scooped unceremoniously off the ground. ‘Excuse us,’ he said to their surprised assembly. ‘We have a…tradition to get out of the way.’
Then while Cassie clung to him, red-faced, he sent the twins a reassuring smile. ‘Your mother is…tired. I’m going to put her to bed. If you really want to swim, use the heated indoor pool—but not without at least two grown-ups to accompany you, got that?’
The twins nodded. So did Sandro, then he dealt out a smooth set of instructions to his hovering staff, which boiled down to them keeping the twins entertained and out of their way for an hour or two—or three—then he strode off towards the house with the sound of their children whooping as they turned their excited attention on the waiting staff.
‘An outdoor
and
an indoor pool?’ Cassie murmured in wonder.
‘Impressed?’ He glanced down at her.
She nodded. ‘And these…traditions you mentioned?’ she prompted.
‘A threshold to negotiate,’ he answered. ‘A marriage bed to find. And a very large, disgustingly ostentatious, very, very sexy diamond necklace to unearth from my pocket. I have other traditions to attend to,’ he added loftily, ‘but they require a few special magic words to…set them in play.’
Staring up at his cool, dark features, Cassie slid her arms a little further around his wide shoulders. The tip of her tongue appeared to run a delicate line across her upper lip. The glossy thickness of his eyelashes folded downwards to watch the telling little action, then lift upwards again to pin her with a deadly look.
Sexy, unbearably sexy, Cassie thought as her pulse began to drum to a heavier beat. Sandro stopped walking. The tension heightened, simmering like electricity between them both.
‘Well?’ he prompted.
They were still standing out in the dying sunshine, the solid shape of the villa still several long strides away. Cassie moved in his arms, snaking that bit closer to the intimate lure of his stubborn mouth. ‘You say it first.’
‘What you really want is my beating heart laid out on a platter, don’t you?’ he murmured narrowly.
‘Mmm,’ Cassie confirmed. ‘You see, I have these terrible words still rolling round my head I have not forgiven you for…’
She was referring to the telephone call. Sandro knew that, just as he knew what she was not saying here. He was going to have to work very hard to overwrite that piece of brutality.
‘You have to know,
bella mia
, that those words were not spoken by the man you see standing here,’ he imparted soberly. ‘That guy lost himself six long, miserable years ago and only found himself when he set eyes on you again. If you think about it, that’s a hell of a statement to make about loving you.’
Put like that, he was right, and it was one hell of a statement, Cassie acknowledged, vulnerable, river-green eyes floating over the solemn beauty of his face. Six years ago she’d fallen in love with Sandro Rossi. When she made that fatal phone call to him, a different, broken version of him had taken his place. Even when they met up again it was not that Sandro she’d fallen in love with but a guy called Alessandro Marchese—for once the different name started to make a mad kind of sense.
‘OK,’ she said softly, ‘that’s fair enough. So I love you too,’ she returned unsteadily. ‘I never stopped loving you throughout your six miserable lost years. I’m glad you found yourself again, Alessandro Marchese, and even more glad that you found me.’
The sober expression eased out of his features; a smile took its place. ‘Now, that,’ he said as he started walking again, ‘deserves a reward.’
‘Mmm,’ Cassie said, making herself more comfortable in his arms, ‘this sounds…interesting.’
The villa waited. Cassie didn’t see any of its breathtaking beauty as Sandro carried her up the wide, curving staircase. She didn’t even see the unapologetic baroque splendour of the bedroom he carried her into with its rich red velvet drapes and pale damask walls, and gilt-wood furniture set on a vast and glossy parquetry floor, or the huge bed he laid her on that was an extravagant vision hung on four corners with burnished gold silk.
She only saw the man as he came to stretch out beside her, dangling a gold chain from his long fingers with its totally ostentatious diamond droplet trailing across her mouth.
‘I’m going to make love to you until you think you’re dying,’ Sandro murmured as if it was a soft, deep, sensual threat.
Parting her lips, Cassie licked the diamond. ‘Oh, yes, please,’ Cassie said.
All the characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author, and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all the incidents are pure invention.
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First published in Great Britain 2009
Harlequin Mills & Boon Limited,
Eton House, 18-24 Paradise Road, Richmond, Surrey TW9 1SR
© Michelle Reid 2009
ISBN: 978-1-408-91275-1