‘Move this on where?’ she asked cautiously.
His tense mouth broke into a wry kind of smile. ‘Well, not to a girly pink bed, that’s for sure,’ he drawled.
And that was it—the thing that had been nagging at the back of her mind right through this whole heated conversation. ‘You’ve remembered everything!’ she choked out.
‘Mmm,’ he smiled.
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘Because I needed to hang on to your sympathetic side until I had you caught, tethered and incarcerated here,’ he explained. ‘Allowing you to believe I was going to drop to the ground whenever we had a fight made your defences crumble.’
‘But that’s—’
‘Sneaky, devious, underhand?’ Sandro suggested.
‘When?’ she demanded. ‘When did you remember?’
‘At Angus’s house….’ he said without a single hint of remorse. ‘I spent the next three days in my brother’s care while my head bombarded me with six forgotten weeks of pure hell and misery. Letting you continue to believe I was still struggling with flashbacks was the perfect diversion tactic to keep you focused on what really mattered.’
‘Which was you, of course,’ Cassie sighed out.
‘And what you really felt about me,’ Sandro extended.
The children came tearing around a corner of the house then, with several members of his staff in hot pursuit. From being travel-tired they’d suddenly found a new lease of energy that made Sandro sigh.
‘I don’t suppose you would like to tell me you love me before we have to break this off for a while…?’ he murmured hopefully.
Not before you say it first, she thought.
‘Mummy, you’ve just got to come and see how big this house is!’ Anthony called out excitedly.
‘It almost as big as a castle!’ his twin enthused. ‘And they—’ Bella pointed towards the cluster of people standing back now that the twins had reached their parents ‘—won’t let us jump in the swimming pool.’
‘I don’t think they understood us when we said we can swim,’ Anthony explained.
‘I think they did,’ their father murmured indistinctly, then very casually to Cassie, ‘I will punish you later for holding out on me,’ he warned.
‘Well, that sounds—interesting,’ she responded primly.
And found herself scooped unceremoniously off the ground. ‘Excuse us,’ he said to their surprised assembly. ‘We have a…tradition to get out of the way.’
Then while Cassie clung to him, red-faced, he sent the twins a reassuring smile. ‘Your mother is…tired. I’m going to put her to bed. If you really want to swim, use the heated indoor pool—but not without at least two grown-ups to accompany you, got that?’
The twins nodded. So did Sandro, then he dealt out a smooth set of instructions to his hovering staff, which boiled down to them keeping the twins entertained and out of their way for an hour or two—or three—then he strode off towards the house with the sound of their children whooping as they turned their excited attention on the waiting staff.
‘An outdoor and an indoor pool?’ Cassie murmured in wonder.
‘Impressed?’ He glanced down at her.
She nodded. ‘And these…traditions you mentioned?’ she prompted.
‘A threshold to negotiate,’ he answered. ‘A marriage bed to find. And a very large, disgustingly ostentatious, very, very sexy diamond necklace to unearth from my pocket. I have other traditions to attend to,’ he added loftily, ‘but they require a few special magic words to…set them in play.’
Staring up at his cool, dark features, Cassie slid her arms a little further around his wide shoulders. The tip of her tongue appeared to run a delicate line across her upper lip. The glossy thickness of his eyelashes folded downwards to watch the telling little action, then lift upwards again to pin her with a deadly look.
Sexy, unbearably sexy, Cassie thought as her pulse began to drum to a heavier beat. Sandro stopped walking. The tension heightened, simmering like electricity between them both.
‘Well?’ he prompted.
They were still standing out in the dying sunshine, the solid shape of the villa still several long strides away. Cassie moved in his arms, snaking that bit closer to the intimate lure of his stubborn mouth. ‘You say it first.’
‘What you really want is my beating heart laid out on a platter, don’t you?’ he murmured narrowly.
‘Mmm,’ Cassie confirmed. ‘You see, I have these terrible words still rolling round my head I have not forgiven you for…’