Marchese's Forgotten Bride

An unwanted wash of physical awareness dragged on the tense muscles surrounding her abdomen, followed instantly by a sinking wash of shame. She’d been suffering from the same two sensations all weekend each time she caught herself thinking about him—the sexual drag, the sinking shame, usually joined by a thick lump of tears to block her throat. Only this time the constriction was due to tension not tears as she stood waiting for him to turn and acknowledge her presence.

But he didn’t turn. As the silence stretched between them Cassie began to wonder if he’d heard her come in the room.

Tugging some air into her lungs, ‘I’m here on your time, Sandro,’ she announced herself coolly.

‘Alessandro,’ he corrected without turning, ‘when we are here anyway.’

Never. Her chin shot up in direct defiance of that comment. She was never going to refer to him by that name. She’d met him as Sandro. He had left her as Sandro. As far as she was concerned he’d come back into her life as Sandro, and until he came up with a good excuse as to why he’d lied to her about his name he was staying Sandro.

‘I was in the middle of something important,’ she infor

med him stiffly, ‘and summoning me here like this is going to set the tongues wagging again. So if you would just tell me what you want, I would rather get out of here again as quickly as I can.’

‘Feeling the strain?’

‘Are you?’ she threw right back at him.

He turned at that, the glimmer of a smile playing with the hard compression of his mouth. ‘If that was your sweet way of asking me how I am feeling today, then the answer is lousy.’

‘Oh,’ Cassie said, disconcerted by that honest answer.

He looked it too, now he was letting her see his face. Oh, his undeniable good looks were all there in his clean, smooth, vibrant features, but his colour wasn’t good and there was tension around his eyes which matched the tension she could see in his mouth.

‘Come and sit down.’ With a wave of a hand he invited her forward, and, because she was beginning to feel like an idiot hovering by the door, Cassie complied.

He watched her all the way, much as his team had watched her cross the outer office, but Sandro did it with his eyes halfhidden by the low droop of his eyelids that made her acutely aware of her grey tailored suit that had seen better days, and the prim way she’d stuck her hair in a knot at the back of her head.

Her eyes therefore sparked him a glance of cold challenge as she reached the chair set in front of the desk and sat down on it.

‘You’re angry with me,’ he murmured.

‘If you’ve brought me here to talk about…personal matters then you should not have done,’ Cassie replied. ‘I’ve spent the whole morning being as careful as I could be squashing curiosity about us. One phone call from you and I might as well have walked in here this morning and blasted out the whole truth.’

‘But you didn’t.’

‘No.’

‘In fact, you’ve played it very cool, from what I’ve been told. Apparently Angus plays a very big role in our…acquaintance.’

‘Blame Jason Farrow for that,’ she said. ‘He’s the one who put it about that both our fathers were friends with Angus.’

‘He also told everyone I couldn’t take my eyes off you all evening. He’s been very busy.’

‘He likes to believe he’s more important than he is.’

‘You don’t like him.’

Lifting her cool gaze to meet his, she replied, ‘Does it matter if I do or I don’t?’

Sandro offered a shrug. ‘Not really.’

‘Then why are we having this conversation about him?’

‘In an attempt to smooth your ruffled feathers before we move on to discuss you and me and the twins…?’

Cassie dropped her gaze as her icy composure cracked right down the middle because she just had not expected him to say that about the twins.

‘There’s nothing to discuss.’ Staring down at her fingers where they lay on her lap, she watched them pleat together in a white-knuckled clench. ‘They’re my children. My responsibility.’