Marchese's Forgotten Bride

She didn’t want to read on but like a fool she just couldn’t stop herself. There were photos and articles about the glittering couple, links to reports on the accident she couldn’t bring herself to click on. Then her own face was suddenly looking back at her from a picture taken at the restaurant, followed by a damning exposure which placed Cassie as Sandro’s secret lover at the time his fiancée had been killed. The existence of the twins was mentioned, followed by the assumption that their affair had taken place virtually beneath Angus’s roof, though nothing could be further from the truth. If she’d met Sandro through Angus she would have known all about him and there would have been no affair—and ultimately no twins.

Nausea took a sudden hold of her, sending her lurching to her feet and rushing for the bathroom, but she didn’t make it there because someone put their fingers on her doorbell, keeping it pealing like a Klaxon in her throbbing head and forcing her to go and answer it even though she didn’t want to see or speak to anyone.

Sandro was standing there. He looked different—tough strains of tension locked onto the taut contours of his face.

‘OK,’ he spoke quickly. ‘I should have told you.’

A strangled sob and Cassie tried to shut the door in his face. His hand snaking out to slam against the wood stopped her so she spun around and walked away. She heard the door click into its housing as she took up position in front of the casement window.

He followed her into the room, filling the doorway. She found her eyes grazing down his full length, dressed to its usual impeccable high standards in a steel-grey silk suit. He looked what he was, she thought bitterly, a lean, sleek sexual predator with a ruthless streak that cut right through to the core of him.

His angry eyes flicked around the room as if looking for something.

‘They’re not here,’ Cassie told him. ‘If they had been I would not have let you in.’

He shifted his tense, wide shoulders as if shaking off her cold stricture, his gaze alighting on the laptop standing open on the table where she’d left it. Grim lips biting together, he strode over to it and with a touch from a long finger made the screen leap into life. His stillness clawed at her raw nerve-endings as she watched him watch his own history roll across the screen. The glittering betrothal, the tragic car accident, then the final exposure of her role in his life and the twins.

Wrapping her arms around her body, she tightened them until her ribs hurt. ‘You turned me into the other woman and I didn’t even know it,’ she whispered.

‘I’m sorry,’ he murmured.

‘I don’t want to hear you tell me you’re sorry!’ Like a wounded animal she went on the attack. ‘I just want you to tell me why you lied to me!’

‘I did not lie.’ Reaching out, he closed the laptop.

‘Oh, I forgot, you don’t remember me.’ Her sarcasm hit a nerve because he turned on her then.

‘All right!’ he flung at her. ‘So I’ve known since the first night we met again why I had forgotten you! Guilt is why I wiped you out of my head, Cassie! Sheer, gut-crucifying guilt!’

Hearing him actually voice the stark, crawling truth of it drained the blood from her head. Sandro didn’t look as if he was feeling any better. He was standing there rigid, looking as stunned as she was by his own confession.

His guilty confession! It was no wonder he kept on blacking out—he couldn’t live with himself! This big, strong, dynamic male with the body of a warrior and the machinating mind of a general had learnt the hardest way possible that he actually possessed a conscience!

‘You bastard,’ she breathed with the frailest flimsiness because she didn’t dare test the strength of her voice against what was backing up behind it.

‘Sí,’ he agreed.

‘The way you treat w-women, I can actually understand why Pandora did what she did!’

He stiffened his backbone. ‘What is that supposed to imply?’

‘Hell has no fury,’ Cassie supplied with thick, tremulous mockery. ‘She was your lover before I came along. You must have—’

‘She was not my lover.’

‘What was she, then?’

‘My assistant,’ he said. ‘My—’

‘Personal assistant?’

‘No!’ he raked out. ‘And quit with the sarcasm,’ he growled impatiently. ‘My relationship with Pandora is purely professional! OK…’ He sighed out harshly when he read her expression. ‘So I knew she had…feelings for me. I decided to do something about it to help her get over her…infatuation, by removing her out of my sphere and putting her in charge of BarTec while I turned my attention to other things! She did not like it but she did look forward to the challenge so accepted the opportunity! Then you came crashing back into my life, and it’s clear now that she allowed her feelings for me to override her professional common sense!’

‘Did you ever sleep with her?’

‘No.’

‘Did you ever want to sleep with her?’