Bella was doing twirls for him, Anthony tugging on one of his hands while telling him something she didn’t think Sandro heard because his attention was still fixed on her. And her heart was pounding, the knowledge that she should not be feeling anything for him acting like a tormenting sting in her throat. When she reached the top of the step and was finally forced to lift her chin and look up at him, that all-over feeling of prickly heat changed to a quivering wash of helpless female awareness she wished so badly she didn’t feel.
Dense, dark brown eyes grabbed hold of her eyes. He reached for her hands and lifted them to his lips. ‘You look sensational,’ he told her.
Then Ella came running up the steps, looking harassed and breathless. ‘Sorry I’m late. The traffic is crazy…’
And her friend’s arrival saved Cassie from saying something stupid back to Sandro like—so do you.
Sandro picked up the polite duties of host, introducing everyone to each other—one of her hands held firmly trapped in his.
Marco sent her a brief wry smile. ‘It is a pleasure to meet you properly at last.’
But was it? Cassie found herself questioning as she laid her free hand in his. There was something restrained about his smile and his manner and even his tone of voice. Did he disapprove of her? Was he comparing her with the beautiful Phebe Pyralis and finding her lacking? Was he thinking about her and Sandro’s past association as he drew his hand from hers and turned away to greet her friend?
Her throat went so dry she couldn’t even swallow. Finding a smile for Gio Rosario actually hurt her tense mouth. When the registrar appeared to invite them to follow her, Cassie froze so totally she had a horrible feeling she might just be going to faint.
Great cop-out but—yes, please, she begged silently.
Then Sandro was feeding his hand across her tense back, his long fingers curving into her waist. He urged her forward, his own grim, silent tension telling her that he was aware she was still fighting with herself about going through with this.
‘My reluctant bride,’ he drawled sardonically as his car sped them away towards the airport, leaving Gio and Ella standing on the town-hall steps, planning where to have lunch. Sandro’s brother had excused himself and rushed off directly after the ceremony was over, claiming a heavy work schedule.
Cassie wondered if the word ‘ceremony’ covered what had been just thirty short minutes of soulless promises before she was elevated from plain Cassie Janus to the super-elegant Mrs Alessandro Marchese.
‘When you lost your voice halfway through your declaration, I half expected someone to stride through the doors and announce you were not lawfully free to marry me,’ Sandro mocked.
Her quick-witted daughter had come to her rescue. Bella had tugged on her skirt and whispered, ‘You haven’t finished yet, Mummy,’ while everyone else had begun shifting their stance.
I, Cassie Janus, take Alessandro Marchese…
No wonder she’d frozen up. She’d finally been forced to refer to him by that name.
‘Look at the way your ring is sparkling, Mummy,’ Bella piped up, reminding them both that the twins were travelling with them.
The perfect killers of adult conversation, Cassie mused with a smile at the twins. She glanced down at the sparkling diamond ring slotted on her finger next to the wedding ring which matched the one she’d almost dropped to the floor, she’d been trembling so badly as she’d tried to slot it on Sandro’s long, brown, rock-steady finger.
Sandro reached across the twins’ heads and stroked one of those long fingers down her pale cheek. He didn’t speak. When she glanced up at his face he still said nothing, but there was a possessive glow burning in his dark eyes that spread a warm flush right through her tense body.
His wife, her husband—for better and for worse now that the deed had been done. And the reason for that sat here between them, a small boy and girl wearing happy, contented faces.
Oh, come off it, Cassie, she then told herself impatiently. In the end and no matter what you’ve been fighting or thinking or saying—you’re exactly where you want to be right now!
The sun was beginning to set by the time they sank through the air in a sweeping circle around the kind of house and gardens that took Cassie’s breath away.
To reach this far they’d travelled by private jet to Vespucci Airport in Florence, then transferred to one of Sandro’s private helicopters to make the sixty-kilometre trip south to arrive here, at the Marchese private country estate.
The twins were tired, the bubble of overexcitement which had carried them through the start of their long journey chiselled away by too many hours of confinement, and they were unimpressed by this first view of their new home.