Michelle Reid - Power

Talk? He still wanted to talk?

‘I h-hate you,’ Cassie hissed out feverishly. ‘That’s talking.’

Keeping her clamped to his side, he set them moving and said nothing. She barely reached his shoulder and he was almost carrying her in his grim effort to keep her flimsy weight off her even flimsier shoes.

Electric storms came in different forms, she decided wildly as the electric storm Sandro was now generating sparked with a ferocious determination that held all the way to the lamp-lit main street and straight into the back of a waiting limousine conveniently parked at the kerb.

Shuffling inelegantly across the plush leather seat because he was not bothering to go around and climb in on the other side of the car, she felt his athletic bulk arrive beside her, folding down onto the seat, while Cassie was anxiously tugging her ruched skirt back into place over her exposed thighs. She dared a glance at him then wished she hadn’t because he looked so stern, so grim and remote. It was only when he said something in curt Italian which set the car moving that her head twisted the other way and she realised they had a chauffeur to drive them. Even as she registered this unexpected mode of transport for a man who had used to drive himself everywhere in a racy soft-top, a black grated partition was sliding up in front of them and blocking the front compartment out.

Or them in.

‘He—the driver—n-needs to know my address,’ she pushed out in an attempt to snatch some control back here.

‘If he were driving us there I would agree, but he’s not.’

Stirred by his cool sarcasm, ‘I suppose you think it’s very macho to play the arrogant heavy!’ Cassie flung out. ‘But I can still see the fall-down drunk who embarrassed himself in front of his new workforce!’

His face swung around to slice a look at her. ‘You never used to be this acid-tongued,’ he hit back. ‘Six years without me around to keep you in line has turned you into a harridan, cara !’

‘I thought you didn’t remember knowing me before,’ Cassie returned sharply.

It shook him. She saw it happen. She watched his face drain of its wonderful colour and the pain come back to crease his brow. Shifting forward in the seat with an alarmed jerk, she went to bang on the partition because she thought he was going to pass out.

‘Be calm,’ he murmured, sensing rather than seeing what she was about to do because his eyes were shut. ‘I have it controlled this time…’

This time what , though? Cassie wondered tensely as she remained perched on the edge of the seat, ready to call for help if she needed it, while Sandro continued to sit there with his dark head resting back against the leather seat and his long, powerful body looking worryingly sapped of strength.

And it was only then that she allowed it to truly sink in that something much more serious than too much wine was making Sandro behave like this. He looked really ill.

‘Are y-you all right?’ she asked when she couldn’t stand his stillness any longer.

‘Sí…’ It was low and husky and it ran down through her like a hotline wired to her hips and thighs.

Cassie drew in some air, let it out again then, moistening her lips, which still felt hot and swollen after that terrible kiss, she gave in to the need nagging at her and reached out with a tentative hand and gently placed it on his knee.

‘Sandro, please,’ she begged huskily. ‘You’re frightening me.’

I’m frightening myself , Alessandro thought in an attempt to dry-humour himself out of this thick cloud which kept on blanketing him after each lightning strike. He managed to lift a limp hand and dropped it down on top of her hand as she would have withdrawn it from his knee. Small and fragile though her fingers felt to him, they seemed to possess a power of their own because he felt his energy begin to seep back through him.

‘I suppose, Cassie Janus, you are wondering if this alcoholic requires a couple of shots of hard whisky to supplement his wine-soaked blood.’

‘It isn’t a joke,’ she rebuked him sharply. ‘And stop saying my name like that.’

‘Like what?’ Opening his eyes, he looked at her pale, strained, heart-shaped face with its beautiful emerald eyes darkened by concern for him.

‘Like you’re mocking me.’

Alessandro allowed a wry smile to stretch his lips. ‘And here I sit believing I was mocking myself.’

‘ And you talk in riddles…’ Sliding her hand out from beneath his and retreating into the seat, Cassie put as much distance as she could between them then sat staring out at London’s night glitter, recognising famous landmarks which put them right in the centre of one of the city’s most prosperous districts.

No cheap inner-city housing here, she thought dully. No dismal tenement blocks taken over by developers and crammed to their doors with as many apartments they could pack into them. Her own rented apartment shared the floor with two other tenants. She had two tiny bedrooms, a cramped living-dining room, a rabbit hutch for a kitchen, and the tiniest bathroom in the world. The hallway was not much bigger than the vestibule at the bottom of the restaurant steps back there where Sandro had—

Oh, don’t go there , she groaned silently, shutting off her brain with a painfully tight swallow.

‘You wear no wedding ring…’

‘What?’ Startled, she jumped, her head twisting round on her slender neck to find he was studying her hands.

‘No rings,’ he repeated.

‘No. Why should there be?’ she demanded defensively, her fingernails coiling into her palms.

‘I did not say it as a criticism, merely as an observation.’

Her guarded gaze fluttered down to where his long-fingered hands lay relaxed on his lap. ‘You wear no rings, either.’

‘I am not the proud parent of twins.’

As if he’d reached across the gap between them and grabbed her by her throat, Cassie gave a choking gasp then froze. She’d forgotten the twins! How could she have done that? How could she have let herself forget that this man—this cold, heartless man—had rejected both her and her children before they’d even been born?

‘I am presuming that you are not married,’ he prompted in the same even tone.

He’d shifted his attention to her face now, carefully shielded eyes watching her expression in a way that made Cassie wish she knew what was going on inside his head.

‘No,’ she husked out.

‘So who is taking care of them while you’re out tonight—a live-in boyfriend perhaps?’

Her heart began to beat like a hammer drill. Where the heck was he intending to go with this line of questioning? ‘No,’ she said again.

‘Then who?’ he persisted.

‘M-my neighbour.’

‘So where is their father?’

Feeling as if he was reeling her in like a fish, ‘Stop it, Sandro!’ she hissed, her control just snapping.

‘Stop what?’ he questioned with skin-shaving innocence.

‘Toying with me again!’

‘I’m not toying with you,’ he denied and even added a half-convincing frown.

‘Then what are you doing? You know about the twins because I told you about the twins!’

He dared to look shocked. ‘I don’t recall—’

‘What— again?’ Cassie pealed out.

The car came to an elegant standstill. Twisting her gaze back to the window, she saw they’d stopped outside the entrance to a block of fancy apartments. The stark comparison to the apartments she’d just been thinking about clawed like a mockery down her spine.

Well, if he thought she was going in there with him he had another think coming, she determined. She’d taken more than enough of his madness tonight without having to deal with the pride-crushing effect of seeing how well he lived, while his children…