Marchese's Forgotten Bride(33)

‘I’m sorry I was so brutal with you,’ he murmured, seemingly able to read her mind when he couldn’t even read his own. ‘I wish I could remember doing it—I feel I deserve to remember being so brutal.’ His hand lifted up to cover his frowning brow again. ‘But I promise you I will never let it happen again.’

Fine words, Cassie thought, knowing she had to accept them because—what other choice did she have? She could continue to resent him to hell and back for his cruel rejection but he would always remain the father of her children. Nothing, not even an apology, was going to change that.

So, pressing her lips together, she just nodded and closed her fingers around the contact cards then turned and walked back to the door. As she reached it she paused, the uneven beat of her aching heart telling her what she was going to do next before she had even formed the words.

‘I’m going to visit Angus on Saturday,’ she announced with an unsteady thickness. ‘Perhaps you could turn up there too. Th-the twins love it there…I can let them loose to run wild in Angus’s garden…It—it’s as neutral a place I can think of for the three of you to m-meet.’

‘Sí…Yes…Thank you,’ Sandro responded with a rough catch in his voice.

Cassie stared down at her shoes. ‘Their names are…’

‘I know their names, cara,’ he inserted gruffly, ‘Anthony and Isabelle….’

Cassie nodded. ‘Sh-she—Isabelle prefers to be called Bella,’ she managed to push past the constriction trying to strangle her throat. ‘Bella was born first, three minutes before her brother. Th-the Bella name stuck because—because it was the way Anthony first said her name, whereas he…’ She had to stop to swallow. She wasn’t facing him but she knew he wasn’t moving a single muscle and tears were pushing at the backs of her eyes now. ‘H-he’s always Anthony because Bella never had trouble saying his name. But then…but then Bella is like that, sh-she’s sharp and quick and—Have a good trip and we’ll see you on Saturday.’

Unable to hang around here for another heart-wrenching second of this, Cassie found herself standing on the other side of his office door experiencing her second sense of déjà vu in as many minutes—this one spinning her back to the restaurant on Friday night.

The big difference this time being that she now found herself standing here with her composure shot to pieces and staring at a room full of curious eyes instead of a thankfully empty space. She felt her face drain of colour, her eyes moving on what felt like guilty wings to focus on the narrow-eyed glitter spitting out from the black eyes of Pandora Batiste.

Guilty fire came to lick up her neck to burn a mortified path to her cheeks. If the other woman was Sandro’s lover then she had every right to pin her to the door with a look like that, Cassie accepted. Did she know—could Pandora know what she and Sandro had done on Friday night?

Telephones suddenly started ringing—half a dozen of them bursting simultaneously into life. Watching smart-suited people jump to their workstations, Cassie took her chance while she had it and hurried across the room. As she slipped out through the door she heard a cumulative murmur of, ‘Sí, Alessandro,’ and almost felt the backlash as a dozen or so bodies made a mass move towards Sandro’s office door.

He’d done it to divert their attention away from her, she realised with a small laugh that deteriorated into a strangled choke.





CHAPTER SEVEN




‘HE’S very good with them, don’t you think?’

‘Yes.’ Cassie nodded, wishing she knew whether to laugh or to weep, as she watched Sandro go down in a huddle on the lawn in his bungled attempt to stop the ball Bella had just kicked into his improvised goal area, marked by two anoraks provided by the twins.

Bella certainly found it hilariously funny because she was jumping up and down and squealing with delight as the ball rolled right past him, setting Anthony running to go and catch it.

The afternoon was bright and sunny but way too cool to tempt Angus outside. Electing to stay inside with him, the two of them now sat by the French windows with Angus occupying his favourite chair that Sandro had carried there so he could watch the children play. Seated on a low stool beside him, Cassie leant forward so she could rest her chin on the heels of her hands.

All in, she’d had a pretty lousy week, she reflected bleakly. Monday she’d felt wrecked by her confrontation with Sandro. Tuesday she’d felt wrecked by the discovery that Pandora Batiste was the real new boss Sandro had put in Angus’s place. Sandro should not have even been at BarTec on Monday. The fact that he’d arrived there and commandeered Angus’s office—which was now Pandora’s office, apparently—exclusively to be private with Cassie had gone down with Pandora like a lead balloon.