Marchese's Forgotten Bride

‘You did that!’ he countered fiercely. His eyes were fierce, the way he was crushing her to him again was fierce. ‘You, with your beautiful green eyes spitting hell at me—you!’

They were still standing on the gravel platform built to take the helicopter. Neither had noticed that the pilot had quietly slipped away or that their children’s voices had faded, or that the grey-framed windows in the apricot-stuccoed villa were lined with interested faces.

But Cassie remembered the children now. ‘Sandro, the twins have disappeared!’ A flare of alarm set her wriggling in his arms.

He pulled her back again. ‘There is an army of staff employed here, every one of them capable of watching over two children without my having to relinquish what I have here.’

‘And what do you have?’ Cassie looked at him.

‘A wife,’ he said. ‘My woman, shackled to me in more ways than one.’ The tension in his arms made sure she was aware of at least one other way she was shackled to him. ‘You love me. You’re as crazy about me as I am about you. Why don’t you give in and just tell me so I can relax my guard and move this on?’

A small frown puckered the top of Cassie’s nose as she continued to look at him. Her teeth fastened into her kiss-swollen bottom lip. He was shamelessly arrogant, and shamelessly sure of himself. But…there was something else about him that was niggling at her right now.

‘Move this on where?’ she asked cautiously.

His tense mouth broke into a wry kind of smile. ‘Well, not to a girly pink bed, that’s for sure,’ he drawled.

And that was it—the thing that had been nagging at the back of her mind right through this whole heated conversation. ‘You’ve remembered everything!’ she choked out.

‘Mmm,’ he smiled.

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘Because I needed to hang on to your sympathetic side until I had you caught, tethered and incarcerated here,’ he explained. ‘Allowing you to believe I was going to drop to the ground whenever we had a fight made your defences crumble.’

‘But that’s—’

‘Sneaky, devious, underhand?’ Sandro suggested.

‘When?’ she demanded. ‘When did you remember?’

‘At Angus’s house….’ he said without a single hint of remorse. ‘I spent the next three days in my brother’s care while my head bombarded me with six forgotten weeks of pure hell and misery. Letting you continue to believe I was still struggling with flashbacks was the perfect diversion tactic to keep you focused on what really mattered.’

‘Which was you, of course,’ Cassie sighed out.

‘And what you really felt about me,’ Sandro extended.

The children came tearing around a corner of the house then, with several members of his staff in hot pursuit. From being travel-tired they’d suddenly found a new lease of energy that made Sandro sigh.

‘I don’t suppose you would like to tell me you love me before we have to break this off for a while…?’ he murmured hopefully.

Not before you say it first, she thought.

‘Mummy, you’ve just got to come and see how big this house is!’ Anthony called out excitedly.

‘It almost as big as a castle!’ his twin enthused. ‘And they—’ Bella pointed towards the cluster of people standing back now that the twins had reached their parents ‘—won’t let us jump in the swimming pool.’

‘I don’t think they understood us when we said we can swim,’ Anthony explained.

‘I think they did,’ their father murmured indistinctly, then very casually to Cassie, ‘I will punish you later for holding out on me,’ he warned.

‘Well, that sounds—interesting,’ she responded primly.

And found herself scooped unceremoniously off the ground. ‘Excuse us,’ he said to their surprised assembly. ‘We have a…tradition to get out of the way.’

Then while Cassie clung to him, red-faced, he sent the twins a reassuring smile. ‘Your mother is…tired. I’m going to put her to bed. If you really want to swim, use the heated indoor pool—but not without at least two grown-ups to accompany you, got that?’

The twins nodded. So did Sandro, then he dealt out a smooth set of instructions to his hovering staff, which boiled down to them keeping the twins entertained and out of their way for an