Cassie shivered, wondering how he would have felt if poor Phebe had described him as just nice.
‘I loved her, but not in the way I should have done. I know that now but I did not understand then,’ he breathed raggedly. ‘She did not need my money because she had her own money. She did not need me to elevate her place in society because she already had that too. She did not expect great passion from me and she did not mind that I was more into work than being romantic.’
‘If you’re about to confess that the two of you made love by appointment then I don’t want to hear about it,’ Cassie sparked up brokenly.
‘We never made love! Hell—damn…!’ Setting her down on her feet, he fell into a rage of Italian curses while Cassie stood trembling and stared at him in stinging disbelief.
There was just no way she was going to believe that one, knowing the depth and strength of his passions the way she did!
‘Before I left to come to England, we had even talked about calling our engagement off!’ he delivered harshly. ‘Because our betrothal was so high-profile we decided we should use the time I was away to think about it before we decided to cause some pretty heavy family waves.’
‘That’s a lousy let-out—’
‘You bet it’s a lousy let-out!’ Sandro agreed forcefully. ‘Do you think I’m not aware of that?’ he demanded. ‘Do you think I am not aware that the moment I set foot on British soil and saw you, I was using that damned excuse like some kind of mantra that absolved me of sin? Do you think I am not also aware that I shut all memory of you out because that had to be my punishment for wanting you more than I wanted her?’
‘Y-you think you killed her, I can understand that, but—’
‘What are you talking about?’ His head shot back, gold-flecked dark eyes pinning her with a stunned stare. ‘I didn’t kill Phebe—she almost killed me! She was driving the car! Didn’t you read the stuff about the accident Pandora put on Facebook?’
Eyelashes trembling, Cassie shook her head. ‘I w-was scared there would be photographs of your injuries.’
‘There were.’ Sandro swallowed tensely. ‘It took them hours to cut us out of the car. For myself I don’t remember anything about it and I have only thin sketches of what came before. But I remember that Phebe was tense, distracted, telling me something—’ he lifted his fingers to his brow ‘—I can’t remember what, but I can see her tension—feel it. But I blamed it on my own tension because I knew I had to tell her about you, then—Dio,’ he swore when he saw the tears running down Cassie’s cheeks. ‘Don’t you dare weep on me, cara,’ he warned, ‘or I will not be responsible for what happens next, or where it happens!’
Cassie controlled the tears with an inelegant sniff. Sandro muttered something else in Italian then stepped in close to ravage her soft, quivering mouth.
‘You—’
‘Just shut up,’ he groaned when she tried to speak again, his next kiss bruising her mouth as if he wanted to punish her for thinking at all. ‘Can’t you tell when a man is crazy about you?’ he demanded roughly. ‘Is it not enough that you embarrassed me when you made me drop like a stone at your feet?’
‘Your guilty conscience did that—’
‘You did that!’ he countered fiercely. His eyes were fierce, the way he was crushing her to him again was fierce. ‘You, with your beautiful green eyes spitting hell at me—you!’
They were still standing on the gravel platform built to take the helicopter. Neither had noticed that the pilot had quietly slipped away or that their children’s voices had faded, or that the grey-framed windows in the apricot-stuccoed villa were lined with interested faces.
But Cassie remembered the children now. ‘Sandro, the twins have disappeared!’ A flare of alarm set her wriggling in his arms.
He pulled her back again. ‘There is an army of staff employed here, every one of them capable of watching over two children without my having to relinquish what I have here.’
‘And what do you have?’ Cassie looked at him.
‘A wife,’ he said. ‘My woman, shackled to me in more ways than one.’ The tension in his arms made sure she was aware of at least one other way she was shackled to him. ‘You love me. You’re as crazy about me as I am about you. Why don’t you give in and just tell me so I can relax my guard and move this on?’
A small frown puckered the top of Cassie’s nose as she continued to look at him. Her teeth fastened into her kiss-swollen bottom lip. He was shamelessly arrogant, and shamelessly sure of himself. But…there was something else about him that was niggling at her right now.