Marchese's Forgotten Bride

‘Look,’ she said, straightening her wilting shoulders and hunting around for an explanation that would shut Ella’s curiosity up, ‘I don’t know him exactly but I—I used to know an…acquaintance of his…’ which wasn’t an outright lie, she reflected grimly ‘…and that’s it. No mystery.’

There followed a long silence that made Cassie’s tense fingers pluck at the quilt covering her bed. Then Ella spoke again. ‘He knows the twins’ father.’

Cassie closed her eyes on a silent groan. ‘Will you please put your imagination to bed?’ she pleaded. ‘And while you’re at it put yourself to bed at the same time, because that’s where I’m going!’

‘Yeah, right,’ mocked Ella. ‘To dream of no-good Italian love-rats that get a girl pregnant then dump her, and their handsome acquaintances that drop down dead in shock when the twins are mentioned.’

‘Weird dreams for you to have, sweetie,’ Cassie mocked right back. ‘I wonder what the bodybuilder would think if he knew…?’

‘Clever,’ Ella acknowledged. ‘Now tell me where you disappeared to with him.’

As she discovered she was staring at the black dress on its hanger, Cassie’s next excuse lit like a lightbulb in her head. ‘I managed to drench my dress in the—commotion,’ she said, telling yet another lie that wasn’t quite a lie. ‘His driver brought me home.’

And right there on the back of that second twist on the truth, she realised she’d found a couple of reasonable excuses which would allow her to show her face at work on Monday morning. Sandro was a distant acquaintance. He’d sent her home in his car.

‘Listen, Ella,’ Cassie murmured seriously, ‘I want you to keep your suspicions to yourself about my connection to Mr M-Marchese—’ she hated saying that name ‘—being more than a distant acquaintance to me. I can’t afford to put my position at BarTec at risk because rumours go rife that make it too uncomfortable for us to work together there.’

‘Calm down,’ sighed Ella, ‘I’m your friend, not your enemy. You should know I wouldn’t dream of saying any of this to anyone else but you!’

‘Thanks,’ Cassie mumbled. ‘Sorry,’ she added.

‘So I should think. You know,’ her friend added slowly, ‘Jason Farrowalso shot his big mouth off about your father and Alessandro Marchese’s father both being friends with Angus.’

‘Really?’ Cassie was so surprised by that piece of information she couldn’t stop letting Ella know it.

‘If you need a good excuse to let loose on BarTec’s curious minions, I would use that connection if I were you. Especially since the MD has already started that ball rolling for you.’

‘Bless you, Ella,’ Cassie whispered, feeling stupidly weepy now.

‘Don’t mention it,’ Ella replied. ‘Maybe one day you’ll trust me enough to give me the real story, hmm?’

Maybe, Cassie thought, knowing that Ella already had a pretty good handle on it anyway.

The weekend passed by on a whirl of busy normality with no sight or sound of Sandro—if she didn’t count the number of times he visited her dreams, waking her up with the hot drive of his body joined intimately with hers. Dreams like that were so very shocking she’d huddled beneath her duvet, horrified by the vividness of her imagination and ashamed by it. She hated him, she tried telling herself. She didn’t understand what had made her do what she’d done with him. It whittled away at the self-belief she’d spent all these years earning back since the last time he’d done his best to wreck it.

The shy and introverted twenty-two-year-old working hard to prove her junior position at Jay Digital, as well as recover from her father’s recent illness and death, just hadn’t acquired the necessary weapons needed to deal with someone as handsome and charming and sexy as Sandro Rossi when he strode into her life. He’d wooed her like some old-fashioned suitor. He’d been so intense when he told her he’d fallen in love with her. He’d vowed to make her happy for the rest of her life. He’d said and done all the right things in the right order to make her fall in love with him. When she finally caved in and let him make love to her, discovering she was a virgin had stunned him, and he’d promised to marry her the way an honourable suitor would have.

Then he’d gone home to Florence to tell his family about her and it hadn’t occurred to her once to wonder why, if he was serious about loving and marrying her, he hadn’t taken her with him, as well. She’d just waited and waited like a fool for him to come back again. Long, empty days that had stretched into long, dragging weeks, and her only way to contact him had been via his mobile phone. She’d rung, she’d texted and eventually—after having her every message ignored—she’d finally received the painful hint that he didn’t want anything more to do with her. So that last call she’d made to him eight long weeks later had really been a frightened cry for help.

And if she ever had to remind herself why she needed to hate Sandro then she’d just done it, Cassie told herself. Because even knowing now about his car accident and memory loss, she still would never forgive him for the brutal way he had cut her out of his life during that call.

Walking into work on Monday morning to find the way already smoothed for her by Ella’s chatty mouth kept the cloud of normality hovering just above her head and she slipped comfortably into work mode. In fact, she went to great pains to present herself as the calm-mannered professional everyone at BarTec was used to seeing her as. She answered any questions tossed her way about Friday night—and there were plenty of them—with a cool humour that played the whole thing down until she let herself believe her curiosity value had died a quick death. She even managed to concentrate on some complicated financial projections and picked the phone up when it rang on her desk without thinking twice about who might be on the other end of the line.

So when Sandro’s deep voice arrived in her ear she just froze in dismay. ‘I am using Angus’s old office,’ he informed her coolly. ‘I want to see you, Cassie. Now.’

‘For goodness’ sake,’ she whispered fiercely into the mouthpiece, while slanting a hunted glance around the room to check if anyone was looking at her, ‘I’m not coming anywhere near you in this building—or ever again, come to that!’

Ignoring that last part, ‘Then I will come to your office,’ he said.

‘No!’ She stood up so fast that she caught Ella’s attention, the other girl’s eyes opening wide in surprise at the abruptness with which she uttered that single negative. Fighting to get her voice under control, ‘I’ll be there straight away,’ Cassie responded with only the barest bite of ice.

Refusing to look at anyone directly, including Ella, she walked out of the office. Angus’s old inner sanctum was situated behind the pair of double doors she could see directly in front her at the far end of the corridor, which meant she had to walk between two rows of glass-panelled offices beyond which anyone who was interested could witness the path she took. And that wasn’t the end of her cheek-stinging journey because on the other side of the pair of doors was a large outer office where Angus’s secretary had used to sit in peaceful isolation.

Now the poor woman was being forced to share her space with half a dozen of Sandro’s team, each one of whom stopped what they were doing to stare at Cassie as she stepped through the door. It was like having to walk a line of a thousand curious eyes. She didn’t have a clue as to what these particular people believed had taken place on Friday evening but the hum of their total silence buzzed like a wasp trapped against her eardrum.

Pinning a distant smile to her tense lips, she just kept on going, refusing to glance to her left or her right. She didn’t even pause between her short knock and turning the handle to open the door which led the way to Sandro himself. However, trying to appear professional at all costs meant she was trembling inside by the time she’d closed the door behind her again, and anger was fizzing away in her blood.

At least he was alone, she saw, her sparking green gaze tracking across the room to where he stood behind Angus’s old desk with his attention seemingly fixed on the view beyond the window. He was wearing another dark business suit that looked as if it had been tailored exclusively for him and the October sunlight was shining on the silk gloss of his hair.