Sighing, Cassie sank more deeply into the chair. ‘Yes.’
There was a short, sharp pause before Ella murmured, ‘You’re a dark horse, Cassie Janus. I called him a rake on the take yesterday and you went out of your way to deny it, when all along you knew the guy’s fiancée died in the same accident! He left you to go back to her, didn’t he? You weren’t just a babe in the arms of that handsome rat, you were the rejected third of a sleazy love triangle. No wonder he hit the floor when he saw you again—his damn guilty conscience sent him there!’
Cassie was floundering in a dizzy world of too much traumatic information. For several seconds she believed she was going to be the one to black out.
‘Come on, Cassie—give!’ Ella’s voice spiked her eardrum.
‘H-how did you get to hear about this?’ she whispered.
‘BarTec’s buzzing with it,’ Ella enlightened. ‘It’s even on Facebook! That vindictive bitch Pandora put it there!’
The phone rang again five minutes later. Cassie was still sitting in the chair. This time when she picked up the receiver it was Sandro.
‘Cassie…’ he said urgently.
He knew. He’d been warned.
‘I hate you,’ she whispered and put down the phone.
Sandro had been engaged to marry someone else when he’d pursued her in Devon. He’d used a different name so he couldn’t be found out and all that rubbish about two names had been just a cover-up. He’d lied to her and he’d betrayed his fiancée.
Had she had an old Italian name like Sandro? Had she been beautiful? Had she been lovely and sweet and innocent and nice? Had she died, unaware that her fiancé had cheated on her? Was she allowed to cling to that small hope at least?
Like someone trapped in a daze, she got up from the chair and walked over to the cabinet where her laptop was housed when she wasn’t using it. Five minutes later she was sitting at the dining table, staring at the most beautiful, dark-haired creature she had ever seen. Her eyes were blue, her smile was warm, and she was standing next to Sandro with his arm securing her to his side.
…Alessandro Marchese Rossi, the eldest son and heir to Italian industrialist Luciano Marchese, and Phebe Pyralis, the only daughter of the Greek industrialist Anton Pyralis, celebrating their engagement, which forges an alliance destined to set the industrial world on its ears…
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.