Marchese's Forgotten Bride

‘Then repeat it. How long?’ he bit out rawly.

Pressing her lips together, she had to push herself beyond the shame barrier before she could answer, ‘Two w-weeks.’

‘Two weeks,’ he echoed in a thick, cursing voice. Then he really scared her by dropping like lead into the nearest chair and made that gesture with his fingers, pushing them up against his brow. ‘Are you claiming that we managed to conceive twins in only two weeks?’

‘N-no.’ Having to bite back the desire to object to the way he had put that, Cassie gave in to her own trembling legs and walked over to a chair to sit down. ‘It took you two weeks to get me to go to bed with you and only one n-night to conceive the twins. The next morning you said you had to fly back to Florence. You promised you would be gone for only a few days but you never came back.’

‘I couldn’t come back.’ Lowering his hand from his brow, he continued the story from his point of view. ‘The accident happened and I lost six seemingly vital weeks of my life.’

‘Will you stop this, Sandro?’ A sudden flush of hot anger launched Cassie back to her feet. ‘Your lost weeks have nothing to do with this!’

His head shot up. ‘How the hell do you come to that crazy conclusion?’

‘But I told you this too,’ she cried out. ‘I called you on your mobile. You barely gave me the opportunity to speak before you hit me with, “I don’t know you. I don’t want to know you. Please don’t ring this number again…”’ As he jerked to his feet Cassie shuddered because those harsh words were etched in fire on her brain. ‘It was quite a brush-off,’ she continued with a thin laugh that didn’t even touch base with humour. ‘If I had been in a better frame of mind I m-might have appreciated just how callous you could be. But at the time I was more concerned about myself and the—the twins I’d just found out I was carrying. When I tried to tell you about them you put the phone down on me!’

‘But I do not remember this telephone call!’ he thrust out angrily.

Eyes like green fire leapt into contact with his eyes. ‘That conversation took place eight weeks after you left me, Sandro. Are you now saying that your memory loss scans eight weeks instead of six?’

In the thickening silence that gathered after that piece of blazing sarcasm, Cassie wondered why she was bothering to repeat any of this when once again he gave no reaction, not even a wince.

‘Even if you did not remember m-me,’ she went on unevenly, ‘a less callous man would have hesitated long enough to ask himself if there was a chance I could belong to his lost weeks.’ And she’d been so scared, almost weeping, begging him to listen to her. ‘But you weren’t interested enough to want to bother to do even that, were

you?’

Still he said nothing. And he was emulating a slab of rock now—because he could no longer defend himself against what she’d said?

Probably, Cassie decided as the feelings of bitterness flooded back into play and she turned to walk over to the side-table and picked up her purse. ‘Just do me a favour, and stay right away from me,’ she husked out shakily. ‘If you decide you want contact with my children then you will have to go through my solicitor because I don’t want you anywhere near them.’

And this time she was leaving, Cassie told herself. This time she was not going to look back.

As she walked to the door the sound of something falling shattered that vow almost as soon as she’d fixed it inside her head. She swung around, her blood already running cold because she knew what she was going to see even before her eyes locked on to Sandro lying stretched out on the livingroom floor.

Like an action reply of the last time he’d done this, she was on her knees beside him before she’d realised she’d moved.

‘Sandro…’ she breathed, reaching out to touch her trembling fingers to his cheek. His skin felt horribly cold and clammy and the grey cast to his face sent alarm bells jangling up through her insides.

Getting to her feet again, she raced out of the room and down the hall to the kitchen. A minute later she was back on her knees beside him again with a damp cloth and a glass of water that was pretty useless, she thought wildly when he was still showing no sign of coming round.

‘Come on, Sandro…’ she urged tensely, pressing the dampened cloth to his brow then his mouth then his brow again—touching him because she needed to touch him but without a single clue as to what she should be doing to help him.

Another minute went by and he still wasn’t moving. And like a safety switch built inside her, the more practical side of her nature swung into play. He needed a doctor—maybe even an ambulance. Glancing around for her purse, she saw it lying halfway across the room where she must have dropped it as she’d run. She was about to scramble up and get it, when another phone started ringing and her eyes spun dizzily to look at Sandro’s suit jacket still lying across the back of a chair where he’d draped it.

Without thinking about it she stretched out to drag the jacket towards her then reached into the pocket and pulled out the phone.

‘Alessandro, it’s Gio. I’ve just had a call from—’

‘Oh, thank God,’ Cassie breathed with shaking relief. ‘Gio, it’s Cassie. Sandro has collapsed again. He needs a doctor or an—’

‘Leave it to me.’ To his credit, Gio didn’t waste time demanding explanations, he just said, ‘I’ll have someone there in a few minutes.’

The next five minutes dragged by in a frightened haze while Cassie sat beside Sandro, hugging her knees to her chin with one tense arm while the other hand rested against his chest so she could feel the comforting beat of his heart. He still hadn’t come around by the time the door bell rang, forcing her back to her feet to go and answer it.

Gio stood on the doorstep along with the man she’d seen in the foyer when they’d first arrived here this evening.

Gio said, ‘This is Marco, Alessandro’s—’

‘Brother. Yes, I know.’ Cassie glanced at the other man with a strained smile quivering on her lips, which he did not return.