He looked so tall and lean and sense-stirringly vital, the dappling sunlight seeping down through the trees just loving his healthy, warm golden tan. His dark eyes glinted as he looked down at her through the framework formed by his luxurious eyelashes, which made the look frankly as sexy as hell. But his mouth wore a grim look of disapproval that made her suddenly stingingly aware of her old grey suit she’d flung on without much thought this morning, and the way she’d carelessly scraped back her hair. She even clenched her fingers to stop them from lifting up to check how untidy her hair actually was.
Whereas Sandro’s hair was fabulously groomed to suit his elegant features; same with the dark silk suit he was wearing that looked as though this was the first time it had ever seen the light of day. His shirt was white with a fine red stripe running through it, his slender silk tie a darker red colour that drew her unwilling gaze down its length until she met with the narrow bowl of his hips. And the power hinted at in his long, darksuited legs should be censored, she decided as her mouth ran dry and she had to drag her eyes away from him, restless fingers clenching even tighter because she wanted to rip the elegant suit of clothes right off him so she could look at the man.
The physically potent and sexual man.
She wanted him. It was that quick, that hot and violent. She wanted him naked and flat on his back somewhere. She wanted to check him all over with her eyes and her hands and her mouth.
‘Where have you been?’ The question shot from her more sharply than she intended.
Sandro wondered what she would say if he told her he’d spent the last three days closeted in his apartment with his brother, enduring a living kind of hell. It did not help his stinging conscience to know that his three days of hell had finally given him back his memory. Learning the truth—knowing the full truth at last about what had really taken place six years ago—did not alter the miserable fact that this woman he was looking at here, with her pale complexion and her dark green defensive eyes and her fragile, tense posture, had paid the full price for his own bloody sins.
‘Enjoying my last few days of freedom,’ he replied to her question with a grim satire that he knew would fly right over her head.
In Florence with Pandora? Cassie wondered. ‘Well, I hope it was worth it.’
‘Very much so,’ he assured—then he struck with the lightning speed of a jungle cat, bending to take hold of her by her shoulders and draw her to her feet.
Next thing Cassie knew she was plastered against him; a second after that and she was on the receiving end of a hot, very possessive and hungry kiss. Just like that, and out here in broad daylight with Ella looking on avidly, he explored her mouth with the determined intimacy of a man staking claim on what he perceived to be already his.
And Cassie didn’t just let him, she encouraged him, arching into his long length, letting her fingers trail up his jacket to his shoulders then further until they’d buried themselves in the silky black hair at his nape.
By the time he released her mouth she was weak and dizzy, her breathing a thick, gasping sound of complaint.
‘You missed me,’ he said with fierce satisfaction, sending a surge of heat pouring into her cheeks.
‘I was worried, that’s all. You said you would call me.’
‘Well, I’m fine and I’m here.’ He claimed her mouth for a second brief burn of possession. ‘Enjoy the rest of your lunch,’ he said to Ella then, and without so much as offering the other girl a glance he banded an arm across Cassie’s back and turned them around and walked them away.
‘That was just so rude!’ Cassie gasped out in protest.
‘Your friend has witnessed enough from us to make her flavour of the month at BarTec,’ Sandro countered arrogantly.
‘Ella isn’t a gossip.’
‘Then you can make it up to her by inviting her to our wedding.’
‘I haven’t said that I will marry you!’
‘But you will.’
He fed her into his waiting car before she could answer, forcing her to slither quickly across the seat again as he followed her inside. When she turned to face him, ready with a stinging objection to his cool assurance, Sandro was ready for it.
‘You prefer to hurt and disappoint our children?’ he challenged, settling his long frame into the plush leather seat.
‘I have a right to consider my own feelings too!’
‘Then perhaps you prefer me to use more ruthless methods to convince you,’ he offered, using those ink-dark eyes to convey his meaning to her.
He was talking about sex, reminding her of the clinch they’d just shared in the park and her own lack of control. Cassie’s lips parted and trembled revealingly. Heat drenched her bones. She could fight him any which way there was to fight him—except when he touched her. She hated the fact that Sandro knew it. This physical hold he had over her laid waste to the six years she’d spent rebuilding her respect for herself.
Sandro didn’t remember her but, like any good-looking, sexually active male, he could pick out an easy target and go for it—because it was there to take. The difference with her was that he was prepared to offer marriage because of this turn of fate that linked them via the twins. Without them she would be just another notch on his bedpost, another conquest to love and leave. And no amount of justification due to his lost memory was ever going to rid her of the gut feeling that even without the car crash he would have left her anyway.
I don’t know you. I don’t want to know you. Please don’t call this number again.
A shiver ran down the length of her taut backbone. Cassie wrenched her eyes away from him, wishing badly she could wipe those words from her memory, then maybe she wouldn’t feel so at war with herself, as well as with him.
Had he spent the las