Power: Marchese's Forgotten Bride / Ruthlessly Bedded, Forcibly Wedded

‘I am not the proud parent of twins.’

As if he’d reached across the gap between them and grabbed her by her throat, Cassie gave a choking gasp then froze. She’d forgotten the twins! How could she have done that? How could she have let herself forget that this man—this cold, heartless man—had rejected both her and her children before they’d even been born?

‘I am presuming that you are not married,’ he prompted in the same even tone.

He’d shifted his attention to her face now, carefully shielded eyes watching her expression in a way that made Cassie wish she knew what was going on inside his head.

‘No,’ she husked out.

‘So who is taking care of them while you’re out tonight—a live-in boyfriend perhaps?’

Her heart began to beat like a hammer drill. Where the heck was he intending to go with this line of questioning? ‘No,’ she said again.

‘Then who?’ he persisted.

‘M-my neighbour.’

‘So where is their father?’

Feeling as if he was reeling her in like a fish, ‘Stop it, Sandro!’ she hissed, her control just snapping.

‘Stop what?’ he questioned with skin-shaving innocence.

‘Toying with me again!’

‘I’m not toying with you,’ he denied and even added a half-convincing frown.

‘Then what are you doing? You know about the twins because I told you about the twins!’

He dared to look shocked. ‘I don’t recall—’

‘What—again?’ Cassie pealed out.

The car came to an elegant standstill. Twisting her gaze back to the window, she saw they’d stopped outside the entrance to a block of fancy apartments. The stark comparison to the apartments she’d just been thinking about clawed like a mockery down her spine.

Well, if he thought she was going in there with him he had another think coming, she determined. She’d taken more than enough of his madness tonight without having to deal with the pride-crushing effect of seeing how well he lived, while his children…

The chauffeur opened her door for her. Blinking up at him for a second, Cassie pushed out a stifled, ‘Thank you,’ then scrambled out of the car. The night air was chilly and she’d started shivering as she bent her head to open her tiny evening purse.

‘What are you doing?’ Sandro arrived beside her.

‘I need my mobile to ring for a taxi—’

The hand that took the purse from her was smooth and slick. ‘Not before we talk.’

As she stared up at him in gasping protest, he then took possession of her wrist with a grip like a velvet manacle and started trailing her towards the apartment-block entrance.

‘But I don’t want to go in there with you,’ she told him furiously. ‘I want my purse back and I want to go home!’

‘Stop panicking,’ he drawled. ‘It’s only ten o’clock. Your babysitter cannot be expecting you back yet.’

‘That has nothing to do with it.’ She tried a tug on her wrist. ‘I have a right to decide for myself what I—’

His soft curse cut her off mid-sentence, sending her eyes shooting up to his face in alarm because she thought he was about to suffer another of those weird dizzy fits. But his expression was angry, not creased by pain. And when she followed the direction in which he was looking, Cassie saw through the plate-glass doors into the foyer a man standing leaning against the reception desk, chatting sedately to the security guard seated on the other side.

As the doors in front of them swung open like magic she saw recognition hit the stranger’s face as he straightened up and smiled. He was young, smart and Italian if his dark good looks were anything to go by. Sandro bit out something in Italian which turned the other man’s smile into a frown. A heated discussion struck up between them, which seemed to involve Sandro asking curt questions and the younger man replying with some firm questions of his own. The whole cut-and-thrust argument held Cassie fascinated and the porter engrossed. He seemed to understand them but Cassie didn’t. When the stranger glanced at her and said something about her, Sandro exploded with a volley of words and a flick of his hand which she loosely translated as ‘Keep your nose out of my business and get lost’.

Next Sandro was trailing her across the foyer and into the waiting lift. As the doors slid shut, Cassie had a final view of the other man’s frowning impatience.

‘Who is he?’ she couldn’t resist asking.

‘My brother,’ he answered.

Cassie looked at him. ‘Why did you row with him?’

‘Does it matter?’ was the cool response that came back.

No, she supposed that it didn’t. If Sandro liked to throw his weight around in that kind of manner with one of his family then it was none of her business, she told herself. And anyway, the lift doors were opening again and her attention returned to the way she was now being trailed out of the lift into the kind of inner foyer that screamed money at her from each luxurious corner, and revealed only one wide, glossy white door.

Using a card swipe, Sandro tapped a pin number into the wall-mounted keypad and the door swung free of its lock. On the other side of it was a large square entrance hall that her daughter would describe as ‘really posh’.

With his long, arrogant stride he drew her across the hall’s width and only dropped her wrist once they’d entered a beautiful living room with big and chunky brown leather chairs and sofas lit by soft golden lighting.

While Cassie was taking all of this in, he tossed her purse onto a side-table then was loosening his collar and tie again as he strode across the room. What she did not expect him to do was to throw himself down on one of the sofas. The moment he did it she noticed that the pallor was back along with the pain creasing his smooth brow.

‘My apologies,’ he murmured. ‘I just need a few seconds to—shake this off.’

Silence clattered down while Cassie hovered, trying to decide what she should do next. Eyeing her discarded purse, then Sandro again, she knew exactly what she should be doing. She should be taking her chance while she had it, grabbing her purse and getting out of here. She didn’t want this talk he kept on threatening her with. She didn’t want to be here with him at all. He’d refused to let her talk six years ago when he’d rejected her panicked plea for him to listen to her. More important, he’d rejected the twins at the same time.

So why she was still hanging around here like a glutton waiting for more of the same punishment bothered her even as her feet took her across the floor until the front of her legs hit the arm of the sofa Sandro was stretched out upon. It was a huge thing, long and deep, but he easily measured its full length.

‘Shake what off?’ she asked him.

He didn’t answer.

Feeling that unwanted stab of concern prick her defences. ‘This is silly.’ She sighed out. ‘Sandro, you need to see a doctor….’

A half-smile twitched the corners of his mouth. ‘A glass of water would be appreciated more.’

‘Right…’ Something to do. Cassie had already turned away when his voice came again.

‘You will find some bottles in the fridge. The kitchen is—’

‘I’ll find it,’ she interrupted him. ‘I might be blonde but I’m not completely dumb. Hunting down a kitchen has got to be within my meagre mental capabilities even in this vast place.’

‘Were you always this feisty?’ he quizzed curiously.

‘You mean you can’t remember?’ Cassie fired back. ‘That’s quite a selective memory process you’ve got going there, Sandro. You remember me but you don’t remember me.’