Marchese's Forgotten Bride

‘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.