‘Did she—your fiancée know about me?’ she spun at him chokily.
‘No,’ he roughed out.
One tiny chink of relief in a black storm of shame and misery, Cassie thought painfully.
‘She came to meet me at the airport the day I left here,’ he continued heavily. ‘We hit an oil spill on the way into Florence. She—died later…’ He took another thick pause for several long seconds before he added, ‘I think that’s all you need to know.’
Cassie nodded as a sickly quiver of muddled emotions riddled her insides. She felt sorry for poor, tragic, beautiful Phebe Pyralis. She even felt a pang of sorrow for Sandro and what he had lost that night. A six-week black hole in his memory seemed like nothing now when held up against the vivid images he had just sketched out.
Two people, a car, an oil slick, two broken bodies…Her hand went up to cover her mouth. Two lives shattered in the skidding grind of twisting metal. Three more lives—her own and the twins’—spinning off into the black hole Sandro’s mind had become.
‘“I don’t know you. I don’t want to know you,”’ she whispered. ‘No wonder you said those words to me.’ His brain had refused to let him remember her on any level, even her cry for help.
He threw back his shoulders, his fabulous bone structure fiercely pronounced. ‘What I said to you that day was—is—unforgivable,’ he accepted tautly. ‘All I can say in my defence is that I did not remember you. And Phebe…’ he stopped to swallow, his expression raw and ravaged ‘…Phebe and I were both left in deep comas after the accident. She—she did not come through it…I did…’
Raw agony scored his elegant cheekbones—survivor guilt, Cassie recognised, feeling the pain with him, though she wished that she didn’t.
‘The day you made that call to me was the same day we buried her…’ he went on once he found the control to do so. ‘It was, cara, the worst day of my life.’
Oh, dear God…Cassie spun away again, her hand jerking back up to cover her mouth. Nothing—nothing she had been feeling back then had felt as bad as this did right now.
‘I was in a mess,’ Sandro continued starkly. ‘I was barely functioning as a human being. I don’t remember deleting your calls from my mobile’s memory, and know now that I blocked them out afterwards as I had blocked out everything else about you…’
Cassie closed her eyes, trying to think past the strangle of emotions twisting around inside her and couldn’t. She hurt for poor Phebe. She hurt for Sandro, for herself and the twins.
‘When we met again—’
‘Please,’ Cassie whispered. ‘Don’t say anything else.’
She’d heard enough—understood enough. Phebe, poor, beautiful Phebe, had been Sandro’s real love and he’d cheated on her. Blocking out everything about her had been the only way he could live with his guilt. That did not make him a bad man, just a—a flawed one.
For six long years she had seen herself as Sandro’s sleazy one-night stand. Learning about his accident and his lost memory had given her back her dignity, the right to lift herself up from that lowly place. Now here she was, sunk right back down in the sleaze by the introduction of the beautiful Phebe Pyralis, who, if she had not died in that wretched car accident, would be blissfully married to Sandro by now, probably surrounded by the gift of their own children, and she and the twins would still be cast out of his life like unwanted garbage.
Instead, and because of a trick of fate, she had been offered the star prize in Phebe Pyralis’s stead: marriage to Sandro. A father for her children. Great, she thought emptily. Aren’t I the lucky one?
Compared to Phebe Pyralis—yes, a cold little voice inside her said.
Her tormented dark eyes fixed on the array of bags and boxes still lying where she’d dropped them by the chair. Her stomach began cramping again when she caught herself listing what was inside them—her carefully chosen bridal outfit aimed at romance because that reflected exactly how she had felt. A pretty dress for Bella aimed to fulfil her daughter’s fairy-tale expectations. An outfit she’d hoped was going to pass Anthony’s critical ideas about what a five-year-old boy would wear to a wedding.
A wedding.
On a clutch of raw hurt she swung her back to Sandro and closed her eyes as they began to sting.
‘Cassie…’
She shook her head to silence him. ‘I want you to leave now,’ she whispered. ‘The twins will be home soon. I would prefer it if you weren’t here when they arrive.’