Marchese's Forgotten Bride

‘If I am willing to take the leap then why can’t you take it with me…?’

Cassie opened her eyes to stare at him. There was no hint of strain blanching out his lean golden features, no sign at all of that terrible weakness that usually befell him after a memory flash like this. He was simply Sandro, lean, dark, beautiful Sandro, with the disgustingly long, curling black eyelashes framing dark, dark sexy brown eyes and the warm, smooth, achingly sensual mouth she just wanted to…

‘OK!’ she snapped out in resentful surrender. ‘I’ll marry you! But don’t think for one second that your lousy lost memory means I forgive you for what you did to me because it doesn’t!’ She rose up on the back of that surrender. ‘And nor will I forgive you for the unscrupulous way you dragged the twins into this!’

His response was im

mediate and downright arrogant. With a fast, graceful movement of his long body he had her imprisoned in her own corner of the seat. Her quivering gasp of surprise found a vent in a stinging, ‘You’ve unfastened your seatbelt!’

‘The car is stopped; now I can do what I want with you.’

And he did. It was no use pretending she didn’t let him when she didn’t put up even a token fight to the hot, consuming demand of his kiss. She came out of it breathless and disheveled, her jacket spread open, her blouse buttons undone and the twin peaks of her breasts stinging against the flimsy lace bra cups because they wanted his caressing fingers back on them. Her hair flowed around her shoulders now, though she couldn’t recall him setting it free, and her mouth tingled hot and bruised and swollen.

‘There…’ with husky satisfaction he ran the tip of his tongue along her pulsing upper lip ‘…leap of faith, sealed with a kiss. Now let’s go shopping….’

CHAPTER NINE

CLIMBING out of the car to find the driver had parked in the middle of Bond Street put a deeper blush into Cassie’s already hot cheeks. For a moment she froze, agonisingly aware that she’d barely been given time to do up enough blouse buttons before Sandro had caught hold of her hand and pulled her out onto the street.

And they’d stopped outside one of the most famous jewellers in London. Staring at its elegant glass frontage, she saw none of the glistening riches set out on display because she was staring at her own reflection in shocked dismay.

She looked like a lush again, a tousle-haired, deepcleavaged blonde lush with a thoroughly kissed mouth and dazed, dark, river-green eyes. It took only a glance at Sandro’s expression to know that he was very happy with what he saw as he looked back at her. And he looked no different from the way he had when he’d first appeared in front of her in the park. His clothes were still immaculate, his hair smooth and neat. Yet she knew, because she’d watched him do it, that he’d had to adjust certain parts of his anatomy before he’d opened the car door.

And recalling why he’d had to do that did not ease the heat from her cheeks as he walked her across the pavement, or what was still taking place between her trembling thighs.

‘I really do hate you,’ she whispered as they waited for a liveried security person to swing the jeweller’s shop door open for them.

‘I know…’ he bent his dark head to touch his warm lips to her ear ‘…fabulous hatred, amante mia. I can’t wait to enjoy it some more.’

With that rich promise ringing in her head, he walked them into the shop, her hand secured inside his. The way he received instant gushing attention kept her quiet and meek because—well, there was only room for one ego in the shop and to watch Sandro turn his arrogant Italian ego full on was something she discovered she would not have liked to miss.

They were escorted to a private room from where he plied her with diamonds and rubies and sapphires. He waved away the emeralds with long-fingered contempt because, ‘They cannot compete with your beautiful eyes, bella mia,’ he told her. When she lifted those beautiful emerald eyes to stare at him as if he’d turned into some weird caricature of himself, his lazy grin told her he knew exactly how he was behaving and was enjoying doing it.

He was different all round, Cassie realised, light-hearted, more expressive, expansive in his language and his warm, sensual drawl. He draped her in diamonds, necklaces, bracelets, and made her cheeks burn like fire when he used the tips of his long fingers to delicately position a huge white diamond droplet between the thrusting warmth of her breasts.

‘Will you stop it?’ she hissed at him when the assistant moved off to collect another tray of mind-boggling trinkets. ‘I’m not going to let you buy me any of them. And I feel like a bimbo!’

‘I’m buying you this one,’ he said, leaning against the table while she stood in front of him. ‘I’m going to eat it on our wedding night as a sexy side dish while I am eating you.’

‘You’re mad,’ she breathed helplessly.

‘Crazy,’ he agreed. He didn’t need to extend that to ‘crazy for you’ because it was written in his eyes as he caught up the diamond droplet and lifted it to his lips before settling it between her breasts again.

Cassie knew she had started to fall fathoms deep in love with him again when it occurred to her that this madly extravagant display he was putting on was not about playing games or about his ego or even the shockingly sexual atmosphere he was generating deliberately.

He was, quite simply, being the other Sandro she’d met years ago. The relaxed, light-hearted, teasing, charming, gorgeously expressive Sandro she’d spent two amazing weeks falling deeper in love with every day. This was Sandro being happy. It hit her really hard just how unhappy he had been since they’d met up again—and the reason for the change…?

She’d stopped fighting him. She’d given him what he wanted and agreed to marry him. She didn’t think this was even about the twins. He might not remember her but, as he kept on saying to her, he knew her. He’d slipped back into wanting her from almost the first moment their eyes had met again, and now he was courting her—because this crazy romantic side to his nature came so beautifully naturally to him.

That had to mean something, didn’t it? It had to mean that his instincts were not playing him false and if—when—his memory did return it was not going to reveal some terrible, dark reason as to why he’d shut her out in the first place.

They chose a diamond cluster ring that sparkled on her finger. And matching wedding rings studded with tiny bright diamonds set into rich yellow gold.

From there he changed his mind again and decided to take her to lunch at a busy pub, where they had to stand up at a bar table to eat and the lunch crowd pressed in all around them but they didn’t notice because they were talking—really talking the way they had used to do, about everything and anything.

Engrossed.

Touching, always touching each other without really being aware of doing it, his fingers toying with her fingers, stroking her cheek, the tumbling waterfall of her hair. Her fingers feeding him crisp slices of green apple from her dessert dish he bit into with his even white teeth, always making sure he grazed her tingling fingertips at the same time. Other women stared covetously at him and enviously at her. And the sexual magnetism purred around the two of them like the idling engine of a dangerously powerful car.