A shaft of pure sexual fire stroked right down her middle, catching Cassie out so badly she sucked in her breath. The breath forced her lips apart and made his fabulous eyelashes flicker as he honed his attention on to her mouth, and her whole body stung and tightened in direct response to that luminous dark glance. She didn’t want to feel like this. She wanted to be left cold by the sight of him and she was appalled that that was not how it was!
Like a man slowly tracking old pleasures, he lifted his gaze to take in the waterfall shine of her pale gold hair brushing against her trembling white shoulders, then dropped to where the strapless structure of her dress hugged the creamy thrust of her breasts. The message powering out of his eyes was so hot and so elementally sexual Cassie felt a terrible flush of agonised awareness prickle her fair skin. She wanted to cry out in shrill, pained, angry protest but she couldn’t. She had never felt so agonisingly exposed to her own wretched weakness in her entire life.
It did not occur to her that it had taken him this long to recognise her, until he finally lifted his eyes back to her eyes and she watched his lazy, searching expression alter to a look of shock. For the next few taut seconds she actually thought he was going to keel over, the way his eyes widened then turned as black as Hades and his face drained of its beautiful bronzed tan. She stopped breathing—she stopped doing anything—breathing, hearing, thinking…
Then he stiffened his long body up and abruptly turned his back on her, blanking her out with a cruel, ruthless economy that was like having a door slammed in her face.
Again.
Left totally, utterly stunned and shaken by the sheer brutality of his rejection, Cassie thought that she was the one going to faint. Someone accidentally knocked her arm, almost spilling her drink, but she barely noticed. Someone else spoke to her but she couldn’t work out a single word that they said. She knew she’d gone pale because she felt pale; a clammy kind of chill had settled over her flesh. And worse—much worse—was the way an already badly wounded part of her was cracking open like a fissure forming a fresh wound over a jagged old one in recognition that he could still do that to her after all of these years and here of all places, in full view of all her work colleagues.
Somehow—she didn’t really know how—she managed to turn away from him. She managed to draw in a few shallow breaths. She was feeling so badly shaken up inside it took all her control not to start moving like a battering ram in her desperation to get out of the now suffocating crush.
‘Do you think they’ll let us go and eat now?’ she heard Ella murmur wistfully.
And it came as a further shock to realise that the whole shattering incident must have only lasted a few seconds. ‘Yes,’ she breathed like a metal-encased robot set on automation.
Who was she…?
The question lit up Alessandro’s brain like a bolt of lightning and sent a too-familiar pain whipping across the front of his head, forcing him to lift a hand up to rub at his brow.
And he felt weird, as if something was scooping him out from the inside.
Could instant sexual attraction be so strong it could threaten to take the legs from beneath you? he wondered. It was years—he couldn’t remember the last time the sight of a beautiful woman had felled him so completely as the blonde had just done. And he was angry with himself for letting it happen here of all places, with a woman who’d just become one of the newest members of his international workforce. It was unprofessional—and damned inconvenient when he—
‘Headache, Alessandro?’ Always aware of any change in his mood, Pandora spoke, her voice reaching him softly laced with concern.
‘No.’ Dropping the hand from his face, he found himself turning to narrow another look at the blonde.
Even her rear view sent that same instant shaft of fire burning through him, almost knocking him sideways with its power. And her hair—her hair…there was something about the colour of her hair and the way it caressed her slender white shoulders—
‘You’ve gone a worrying shade of pale, cara,’ Pandora persisted. ‘Are you sure you—?’
‘Jet lag,’ he dismissed with irritation, most of his attention still fixed on the blonde. ‘We have just arrived here straight off a fifteen-hour flight. Don’t fuss, Pandora. You know it annoys the hell out of me.’
Who was she…? And why was he getting this gut-shaking feeling that he had seen her somewhere before…?
‘And you worked instead of resting…’ His companion ignored his warning. ‘One day, Alessandro, you will—’
Beside him, Jason Farrow suddenly clapped his hands together, drowning out the rest of what Pandora was saying and making Alessandro fight the need to wince as the unwelcome sound crashed through his aching head.