Marchese's Forgotten Bride

‘That’s what we’re doing—’

‘No, you’re not. You’re trying to bully information out of me that you have no right to demand. Is he drunk?’ she asked sharply then. ‘Has Sandro turned into a drunk, as well as a—?’

‘As well as a what?’ a different voice prompted from behind her.

Shooting to her feet, Cassie spun around to find the man himself standing in the office doorway. Her throat dried up. He looked dreadful, still as pale as death even if he was standing on his own two feet. And his eyes were too dark—as black as deep caverns hollowed into his skull.

‘Are you all right?’ She couldn’t stop the strained question from leaving her aching throat.

He didn’t answer. Flattening out his mouth, he just moved his eyes away from her to look at his two assistants and dismissed them with the barest shift of his dark head.

‘Damage control,’ he instructed as they both shot away from the desk in unison. ‘Jet lag, migraine—I don’t care what excuse you use so long as you make it convincing,’ he added as they walked towards him, ‘then find me a route out of here that does not require an audience.’

The door closed behind their retreating figures, leaving Cassie blinking at the mute obedience Sandro had commanded from them. If Pandora Batiste was his lover then she had to be a pretty darn subservient lover to take that kind of attitude on her beautiful chin.

As he returned his gaze to Cassie, she felt her own small chin shoot upwards in a defiant gesture brought on by what she had just witnessed. She was regretting now that she’d asked him how he was feeling, because he was clearly very all right, going by that tough performance. And if he was standing there like that and looking at her like that because he intended to bully her around in the same way, then he had another think coming.

Tension sparked in the atmosphere, generated mostly by her defiant stance. And still he said nothing, just slowly drifted his eyes over her as if he was carefully dissecting her inch by nerve-stripping inch.

How old was he now? she questioned as she suffered his scrutiny without allowing herself to flinch. Thirty-two—thirty-three? If he’d told her the truth about his age six years ago, that was. He’d given her a different name, so why not a different age? Anyway he looked years older right now as he stood there, leaning heavily against the door and with his face still drawn by the ravages of whatever it was that had sent him crashing to the ground in the first place.

Nor did he look so sensationally elegant, she noticed, her eyelashes flickering as she glanced down to where his shirt hung open at its snowy white collar and the knot of his tie rested low on his chest.

‘You have not answered my question.’

Cassie lifted her cool gaze back to his. ‘I have absolutely nothing to say to you,’ she informed him.

‘You had plenty to say to my two assistants.’

‘You think so?’ Her arms snapped up to wrap around her narrow ribcage in a piece of body language that had to be screaming self-protection at him. ‘Then why don’t you go and ask them for your answers so you won’t need to hold any kind of conversation with me?’

There was a short silence while his eyes narrowed. Her insides started to sting as if she were being attacked by a swarm of bees. ‘You are very hostile,’ he murmured eventually.

‘Yes, aren’t I?’ Cassie agreed. ‘And you don’t think I should be?’

To her surprise he offered up a gut-stingingly attractive half-twist of a smile. ‘To tell you the truth, I’m not sure.’

Baffled by that answer, Cassie pressed her lips together and waited to find out where he intended to go with this weird conversation. She had been expecting anger, she’d been expecting threats. He couldn’t want the ugly truth about the real him to come out because it would tarnish his supercharming image. Closeting himself away in this room with her was, in her view, only helping to increase the fever of speculation that must already be rife out there.

‘Look,’ she said when she couldn’t stand the silence between them any longer, ‘neither of us wants this confrontation, Sandro. So why don’t you move away from the door and I’ll just leave?’

‘Sandro,’ he echoed and uttered an odd laugh, then he lifted his hand to rub at his forehead when it suddenly creased with pain again, triggering a twinge of concern inside Cassie she did not want to feel.

‘I think you need to sit down,’ she advised stiffly.

‘Mmm,’ he responded but made no move to leave the door.

Watching him rub at his brow for a few seconds longer, she let out a sigh and gave in to the growing pulse of concern that was nagging at her. Picking up the chair she had been sitting in earlier, she carried it across the room to set it down against the wall next to the door.

‘Here,’ she said abruptly. ‘Sit down before you fall down again.’

When he swayed a little she was compelled to reach out and grasp his arm. Firm, warm skin and solid muscle flexed against her palm and her fingers as he allowed her to guide him into the chair, folding his long body down onto it before leaning forward to rest his forearms on his knees.

‘My apologies,’ he said as Cassie snatched her hand away, his voice sounding thick and slurred.

Cassie said nothing, hating what was running through her now because it was all too complicatedly wrapped up in her son and the way Anthony could look when he was feeling poorly but trying his hardest to deny there was anything wrong with him until she gave him no choice but to accept it.

‘I am not drunk,’ this father of her children insisted from under cover of his massaging fingers.

So he’d heard her say that? ‘Fine,’ she responded. ‘Whatever…’ she added with a heck of a lot more indifference because she didn’t like the way she was beginning to feel.

‘I do not drink alcohol,’ he persisted, probably driven to do so by her tone. ‘If you had been observing me during the evening you might have noticed that I still had the same glass of wine I began the evening with…until it smashed to the ground when I did, of course,’ he added with a dryness which seemed to give him back some energy, and he straightened in the chair.

He still looked like death. Cassie suppressed the need to shudder. ‘Then you’re sick,’ she said, ‘and if you’re sick you need to see a doctor.’

‘S?,’ he acknowledged. ‘I will do so after we talk…’

That threat alone was enough to slam all her defences right back into place again. She tensed up, her body going rigid inside the little black dress. ‘I don’t think so,’ she refused.

‘You know me, yes?’ he persisted. ‘But for some reason you prefer to deny it.’

‘What is this?’ Cassie flashed out on a flare of anger. ‘Some kind of weird game you’re trying to play with me, or has your English deteriorated along with your ability to stand up on your own?’

He stood up, long, powerful legs thrusting up off the chair without a hint of a stagger, and, letting out a sharp gasp, Cassie was suddenly regretting the taunt when she found herself standing toe to toe with the lean, hard, very vital version of Sandro towering over her, as intimidating as hell.

‘This is no game, I promise you,’ he stated grimly. ‘You speak to me as if I am your enemy. What is it you are trying to hide?’

‘I’m trying to hide something?’ Cassie’s green eyes opened wide. ‘Let’s get this straight, Sandro. You blanked me! You turned your back on me! When you had no choice but to face me at the table you greeted me like I was some absolute stranger then still had the damn barefaced cheek to ask me if we’d met before!’

‘So you do know me!’ Something bright burned out of the centre of his eyes and he stepped even closer, almost blocking out the light in the tiny back room.

Cassie started trembling, her senses clamouring like maniacs because he was too close now and they certainly knew him. They could feel him, smell him, even taste him. Six years without her so much as setting eyes on him meant absolutely nothing to them, she was discovering, especially when she had never let another man get this close to her since him!

‘Back off,’ she urged, turning her hands into ready clenched fists tucked tightly in against her ribs.

He didn’t seem to hear her, and his colour was coming back, pouring rich olive tones into his skin, the power emanating from him now showing no hint of the weakness he had been displaying a minute before. ‘You know me,’ he repeated as if it was some kind of major breakthrough. ‘What I need to know is how you know me!’

‘I don’t know you, Mr Alessandro Marchese,’ Cassie flared up in hot opposition to his intimidating stance. ‘Briefly, however, I used to know a real rat of a man called Sandro Rossi!’

There—it was out. He’d made her say it.

‘Happy now?’ Her green eyes blistered him a hostile glance. ‘Though, why you needed me to admit to something we both clearly would prefer to forget is a complete mystery to me. Now back off,’ she repeated icily, ‘before I start yelling for help at the top of my voice!’

He went one step further and turned his back on her, reeling on the heels of his shoes. ‘Dio mio,’ he breathed. ‘Somehow I knew it.’

‘Knew what?’ Cassie all but shrilled at him.

‘That we had met before.’