‘Alessandro was vulnerable too, Cassie,’ Angus pointed out. ‘He was as close to tears as you and Bella.’
It had been a horrible few seconds when nobody could find a thing to say that might have taken the edge off his distress. Bella kept on sobbing and Cassie had gone to hug her. Anthony had just stood glaring at Sandro while Sandro looked helplessly back.
‘I’m amazed now that I never noticed the likeness before,’ Angus put in thoughtfully.
‘Why should you?’ Cassie asked. ‘You didn’t know Sandro and I had even met each other.’
‘Anthony has his father’s hair and eyes and features, and his intense personality,’ Angus said, ‘as Bella possesses your golden beauty and fiery nature.’
‘I’m not fiery!’ she protested. In fact, she’d always believed herself to be a very calm and placid person—except with Sandro, of course, she was forced to acknowledge. Where he was concerned she—
‘And he seemed to know instinctively how to handle them.’
Yes, he’d just taken control of his own emotions, reached out and gently taken Bella out of Cassie’s arms, turned the little girl around and encouraged her to weep on his shoulder. When Anthony aimed a kick at him for touching his sister, he’d ignored the kick, smiled at his son then held out his free hand to him.
And Anthony had taken the hand, Cassie recalled as the lump in her throat, which had rarely been missing since she’d witnessed that wrenching little scene, thickened some more. Sandro had lowered himself into a chair still holding Bella against him, drawing a reluctant Anthony towards him until the small boy stood glowering at him from his wooden stance by Sandro’s thigh. Then he’d talked to them. He’d talked and he’d talked in his low, soft accented voice that held the two children totally engrossed and turned Cassie’s emotions inside out.
‘He doesn’t even remember me,’ she whispered to Angus, unwittingly revealing how much that little truth hurt.
‘No…’ Angus sounded thoughtful. ‘Human instinct is a fascinating thing when you think about it. He doesn’t remember you yet he looks at you as if you are already his wife.’
His wife? Cassie shot to her feet on a surge of new-found energy. ‘I don’t know what it is you’re cooking up in your head, Angus,’ she said sternly, ‘but I can tell you straight, I am not going to marry him!’
Her father’s old friend smiled one of those I-know-you-better-than-you-know-yourself kind of smiles that softened some of the ravages of his illness out of his thin face. ‘Fiery, as I said.’
Ignoring that, ‘Has Sandro mentioned this marriage thing to you?’ she demanded sharply.
Making a gesture with one of his long, frail, bony hands, ‘That’s something you will have to take up with him, not with me,’ he replied.
Not while I live and breathe, thought Cassie, frowning fiercely because she couldn’t understand why she was getting so het up about something that just was not going to be. Unsettled, restless now, unhappy about the feelings suddenly running around inside her, she glanced at her watch.
‘It’s time for us to leave if we want to catch our train,’ she mumbled, turning towards the French windows with the intention of calling in the twins.
‘Running away, Cassie?’ Angus said gently. ‘Perhaps you are living with the badly mistaken fear that the man you see out there playing with his children is going to disappear out of your lives as quickly as he came into them.’
Her shoulders tensed. ‘He did it once.’
‘Due to a car accident that came at a very inopportune time for the two of you,’ Angus pointed out. ‘Now here you both are, being given an opportunity to put right something which perhaps would not have happened if Alessandro had not been so…incapacitated. Think about it, Cassie. Fate does not hand out these chances so often that you can afford to pass them by because you are feeling hurt by what you still think of as his desertion.’
‘Forgive and forget?’ She laughed, a glimpse of her old dry humour creeping out. ‘Perhaps I need a knock on the head, then, to help even things out a bit between us!’
Angus laughed too. ‘Meeting him halfway would be much less painful.’
Meet him halfway over what though? The twins? Well, she’d already accepted she had to do that for their sake.
‘If it helps, I think your father would have approved of him.’
Turning round, Cassie walked back to Angus and leant down to press a kiss against his cool, bony cheek. ‘Stop playing Cupid for your own amusement,’ she scolded, then added more softly, ‘And you look tired, so we’re going to leave before you exhaust yourself trying to soften me up for Sandro.’
But Sandro didn’t need Angus to champion his cause because he’d found two much better candidates for the role—as she discovered ten seconds later when the French windows suddenly flew open to let the twins run inside along with a gust of cool air.
‘Guess what, Uncle Angus,’ Bella announced, ‘our mummy and daddy are going to get married!’
‘And we’re all going to live in Italy!’ Anthony tagged on.
Having spun around in time to catch the excited glow on the twins’ faces, Cassie raised her eyes to meet with Sandro’s steady gaze and just froze.
He’d planned all of this with the precision of an army general. She could see it declared right there in the cool expression stamped on his face. He’d taken the neutral ground she’d offered him for this meeting at Angus’s home and invaded it before she’d even got here. Then he’d moved on to phase two, by wooing the twins into accepting him as their father, then wooed them some more with what must amount to them as the solid gold prize!
Marriage—a real family unit. A home together in an exciting new place. And he’d mapped it all out for the twins during an improvised game of football played out on Angus’s lawn.
Clever, smooth, stunningly slick, she allowed him as she continued to stand there taking in his supremely relaxed almost arrogant stance, while the twins shot past her to go and lean on the arms of Angus’s chair. They were telling him everything, though Cassie barely listened. They were ordering him to hurry up and get well so he could come and visit them in Italy. And throughout this minor commotion they were creating, Sandro did not let his gaze drop from hers.
Sandro suspected that if they’d been alone she would be issuing another hit to his face. He’d outmanoeuvred and trapped her before she’d been aware there was a trap to be sprung.
Marriage. ‘The only answer,’ he announced under cover of the twins’ excited chatter.
He watched her lips part and quiver. He watched the ice in her eyes melt to a dull shade of green. Hurt, he recognised with a twinge of remorse which still did not touch his resolve. ‘Next week,’ he extended. ‘Arrangements are already in place for a quiet civil ceremony here in London. We will do the proper wedding thing later, once we are…settled as a family.’
‘Why?’ she breathed.
Breaking his lock on her eyes, instead of answering he flicked a glance towards Angus. Like a puppet pulled by the younger man’s strings, the older man rose up from his chair and led the twins out of the room on the promise of a snack before they had to leave.
The silence their departure left behind hung around Cassie’s throat like a noose. Sandro moved away from the French windows to place the twins’ coats down on a chair then turned back to face her. The cool breeze outside had blanched his skin of some of its warm colour and she could smell the fresh air still permeating his clothes. Like herself, he was wearing casual jeans and a sweater, the difference being that his outfit was designer quality whereas hers was made up from the cheapest high-street bargains she could find. But then everything about Sandro was like that, she mused bleakly—designed to impress: his dominating height, the undeniable physical attraction built into his long, masculine framework, the silky blackness of his hair even when it had been ruffled by a breeze, and the stunning bone structure that made up his too-handsome face. Naked he looked fabulous, dressed he looked fabulous—but did the
quality of the inner man match the quality of the outer shell?
No. Inside he was a sneaky, conniving, ruthless operator with his attention concentrated solely on himself. On what he wanted. On what he decided suited him.
Folding her arms tight across her slender ribcage, ‘Talk to me or I walk,’ she threatened when he still made no effort to justify what he’d done.
‘No, you won’t,’ he countered evenly. ‘You’re too committed to putting the twins’ feelings before your own.’
The fact that she knew he was right about that did not make Cassie feel less hostile towards him. ‘Is that why you set me up like this?’
‘Backed you into a tight corner?’ He dared to arch one of those super-smooth black eyebrows. ‘Of course.’ He added a super-smooth shrug. ‘You would have fought me to hell and back otherwise. Unfold your arms, cara,’ he went off track to instruct as he walked towards her. ‘You look like a fisherman’s wife ready to go on the warpath.’
She’d barely breathed a gasp of protest before he’d done it for her, reaching out and taking hold of her forearms and urging them to part.
‘I want my children legally bound to me, and I want you,’ he declared without releasing her arms from his grasp. ‘We could have spent weeks…months creeping around the subject of marriage; now it is done. You can be as mad with me as you want to be but we both know you won’t attempt to change a thing if it means upsetting the twins. You gave them a father today, cara…’ his voice deepened to husky ‘…now you must accept the consequences of your—generosity. So we marry next week.’ He even named the date and the venue. ‘Then we go to Florence to live.’
‘And does your mistress come along with us?’ Her acid response flew right out of the centre of her burning frustration because he’d hit her with too many inarguable truths.
Sandro looked at her curiously. ‘Does this very fortunate woman have a name?’
Fortunate…? Cassie tried to pull free of him but he refused to let her. ‘Everyone at BarTec knows Pandora Batiste is your lover—Let go of me,’ she bit out.
‘Pandora is my lover?’ His dark eyes began to gleam, the sensuous shape of his mouth daring to stretch into a grin. ‘I must warn her to be discreet from now on, then.’
Cassie rose to the bait without thinking about it; wrenching an arm free, she threw the flat of her palm at his face! Only this time Sandro was ready for her. He caught the hand before it had a chance to make contact with its target, his long fingers gently imprisoning her tense fingers, the golden flecks in his eyes spinning out a warning into spitting, sparking, icy green as he used her captured hand to tug her closer. Shutting down the space between their two bodies he brought his mouth down onto hers.
An angry kiss was a dangerous kiss, she discovered two seconds later when she went into it like the fisherman’s wife he’d just accused her of being, squirming and fighting him and kissing him back as if she’d been dying to do it for days. When he let go of her captured wrist so he could wrap his arms around her she attacked him with her nails, clawing them down the length of his back and making him heave out a shuddering curse yet arch his body into her so she felt the full power of his burgeoning response. His hands gripped her slender hip bones, holding her clamped against him, his tongue exploring her mouth. When he decided to pull back from her the desperate need to wound him somehow sent her teeth scoring the inner tissue of his lower lip.
‘You little witch,’ he gasped, eyes glinting like gold fires transmitting his surprise.
‘I hate you!’ Cassie seared at him feverishly.
‘You want me,’ he translated. ‘And—per Dio—you are going to have me night after night after night once I get you safely hitched to me!’
‘With the fortunate Pandora to supplement your daytime needs?’
‘That is up to you. Will I need her?’ He was still touching his lip with a careful finger. ‘And who the hell taught you to be such an aggressive kisser?’ he raked out. ‘It damn well wasn’t me.’
‘How do you know that it wasn’t you?’ Cassie countered.
It happened again like a thunderbolt tossed at his rock-solid jaw. His head went back. He tensed up all over, his eyes turning into deep black holes in his head as he took a step back from her then staggered.
Seeing what was coming, Cassie cried out on the sharp edge of alarm when she thought he was going to drop to the floor the way he’d done twice before. ‘Sandro—don’t—!’
With an impressive shift of his reeling body, he ensured Angus’s chair took his weight with a shudder. With no awareness as to how she had arrived there, Cassie was on her knees between his spread thighs. ‘Sandro,’ she murmured, one of her hands already covering the racing beat of his heart.
‘I’m OK.’ His fingers were at his brow again. ‘I’ve got it…covered.’
But he wasn’t OK! ‘This has got to stop happening!’ she burst out. ‘Every time we get confrontational you almost black out on me!’
‘I’m a big boy, cara. I can take confrontation without blacking out.’
‘Then what the heck triggered it this time?’
He released an odd laugh. ‘Could be the mind-blowing way you kissed me,’ Sandro suggested, still struggling to deal with the real trigger that had almost knocked him to the floor this time, ‘which is going to make ours an interesting marriage.’
‘Shut up about marriage.’ Frowning fiercely now, unable to stop her other hand from reaching up to touch her fingers against the worrying clammy skin covering his cheek, she added, ‘You shouldn’t have brought the subject up at all. If you ask me we shouldn’t even occupy the same room!’
‘No comment about your kissing technique, then.’
The lid almost blew off Cassie’s temper. Only the sight of his dreadful pallor kept the lid on. His eyes were still closed, the skin covering his face drawn tight across the bones, and she was worried and scared, her insides were churning around like mad and he was turning it into a joke!
Sitting back on her heels, Cassie released a tense breath. ‘You’ve got as much sensitivity as a doorstop.’
On a sigh, he dropped his hand and opened his eyes to pin her with an inky black stare of dead certainty. ‘We are getting married.’
‘Why?’ she cried out. ‘Because of the twins?’
‘Because we both know that marriage between us has to be the logical solution, so you tell me, why do you feel the need to fight against it?’
The answer to that was simple. ‘You don’t even know me.’
‘I know myself and I know I would have been there for you and the twins from the beginning if I had not had the accident and lost my memory. Marriage between us would have been an essential part of that.’
Would it? Cassie wasn’t sure.
Getting to her feet, she paced away from him, that inner core of uncertainty nagging at her as she walked. Swinging around, ‘Tell me,’ she said, ‘who else did you forget about in your missing weeks?’
‘No one—that I know of.’ He frowned at her. ‘What has that got to do with anything?’
‘Hasn’t it occurred to you to wonder why your brain singled me out to wipe from your head?’
His frowned deepened. ‘Probably because you are the only person I met for the first time during those weeks.’ Fingers going up to rub at his brow again, he sat forward on the chair. ‘I don’t see that it matters.’
Well, it mattered to Cassie. ‘I could be anyone, then. I could be feeding you a pack of lies, for all you know.’
He dropped the hand. ‘Why would you want to do that?’
‘Money?’ she suggested. ‘The pot of gold from the filthyrich man? Security for my children?’
Sandro suddenly launched to his feet. ‘Don’t try telling me they are not my children!’
‘I’m not!’ she denied, tensing up all over because she didn’t like the way he swayed before he gained control of his stance. ‘But without a chance meeting in a restaurant bar last week, you could have lived the rest of you
r life not knowing the twins and I even existed! And are you sure, Sandro—can you be positively certain that they are yours? If I were in your shoes I would be demanding DNA tests to make sure before I committed myself to anything.’
He uttered a thick laugh. ‘You sound like my legal advisors.’
‘So they’ve said the same thing?’ Cassie picked up. ‘Have they also advised you to have me investigated?’
He sighed impatiently. ‘I might not remember you but I do know you,’ he insisted. ‘There’s this…link between us which keeps on lighting up inside my head that tells me I know you, though it will not stay around long enough for me to capture it thoroughly.’
‘You might be catching brief glimpses of a clever golddigger, for all you know—a greedy little scrubber with an eye on the main chance!’
‘I might have gaps in my memory but not in my intelligence,’ he threw back. ‘I still possess the ability to recognise greedy little scrubbers when I set eyes on them. And you are not one of them.’
‘Then what other reason can you come up with for making me the only person you’ve wiped out of your head?’
A strange expression crossed his face before he blanked it out with a hiss of impatience. ‘I don’t understand why you are obsessing about this.’
‘Because it hurts!’ Cassie flung at him. ‘I don’t understand it, and it hurts! And I won’t let you talk me into a marriage with you, Sandro, when I will be constantly waiting for your memory to come back and tell you why you needed to forget me!’
In the sizzling silence that followed her outburst, if it was possible his face bleached even paler than it already was. Cassie could feel his stress, his simmering tension. And that scary blank look was back in his eyes, as if he was remembering something else. She watched him fight with it, watched his eyelids fold downwards to half cover the look with a tense black frown that made her hold on to her breath because she knew—just knew he was about to tell her something so devastating to her it was going to rip her to shreds.
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