Michelle Reid - Power

The chauffeur opened her door for her. Blinking up at him for a second, Cassie pushed out a stifled, ‘Thank you,’ then scrambled out of the car. The night air was chilly and she’d started shivering as she bent her head to open her tiny evening purse.

‘What are you doing?’ Sandro arrived beside her.

‘I need my mobile to ring for a taxi—’

The hand that took the purse from her was smooth and slick. ‘Not before we talk.’

As she stared up at him in gasping protest, he then took possession of her wrist with a grip like a velvet manacle and started trailing her towards the apartment-block entrance.

‘But I don’t want to go in there with you,’ she told him furiously. ‘I want my purse back and I want to go home!’

‘Stop panicking,’ he drawled. ‘It’s only ten o’clock. Your babysitter cannot be expecting you back yet.’

‘That has nothing to do with it.’ She tried a tug on her wrist. ‘I have a right to decide for myself what I—’

His soft curse cut her off mid-sentence, sending her eyes shooting up to his face in alarm because she thought he was about to suffer another of those weird dizzy fits. But his expression was angry, not creased by pain. And when she followed the direction in which he was looking, Cassie saw through the plate-glass doors into the foyer a man standing leaning against the reception desk, chatting sedately to the security guard seated on the other side.

As the doors in front of them swung open like magic she saw recognition hit the stranger’s face as he straightened up and smiled. He was young, smart and Italian if his dark good looks were anything to go by. Sandro bit out something in Italian which turned the other man’s smile into a frown. A heated discussion struck up between them, which seemed to involve Sandro asking curt questions and the younger man replying with some firm questions of his own. The whole cut-and-thrust argument held Cassie fascinated and the porter engrossed. He seemed to understand them but Cassie didn’t. When the stranger glanced at her and said something about her, Sandro exploded with a volley of words and a flick of his hand which she loosely translated as ‘Keep your nose out of my business and get lost’.

Next Sandro was trailing her across the foyer and into the waiting lift. As the doors slid shut, Cassie had a final view of the other man’s frowning impatience.

‘Who is he?’ she couldn’t resist asking.

‘My brother,’ he answered.

Cassie looked at him. ‘Why did you row with him?’

‘Does it matter?’ was the cool response that came back.

No, she supposed that it didn’t. If Sandro liked to throw his weight around in that kind of manner with one of his family then it was none of her business, she told herself. And anyway, the lift doors were opening again and her attention returned to the way she was now being trailed out of the lift into the kind of inner foyer that screamed money at her from each luxurious corner, and revealed only one wide, glossy white door.

Using a card swipe, Sandro tapped a pin number into the wall-mounted keypad and the door swung free of its lock. On the other side of it was a large square entrance hall that her daughter would describe as ‘really posh’.

With his long, arrogant stride he drew her across the hall’s width and only dropped her wrist once they’d entered a beautiful living room with big and chunky brown leather chairs and sofas lit by soft golden lighting.

While Cassie was taking all of this in, he tossed her purse onto a side-table then was loosening his collar and tie again as he strode across the room. What she did not expect him to do was to throw himself down on one of the sofas. The moment he did it she noticed that the pallor was back along with the pain creasing his smooth brow.

‘My apologies,’ he murmured. ‘I just need a few seconds to—shake this off.’

Silence clattered down while Cassie hovered, trying to decide what she should do next. Eyeing her discarded purse, then Sandro again, she knew exactly what she should be doing. She should be taking her chance while she had it, grabbing her purse and getting out of here. She didn’t want this talk he kept on threatening her with. She didn’t want to be here with him at all. He’d refused to let her talk six years ago when he’d rejected her panicked plea for him to listen to her. More important, he’d rejected the twins at the same time.

So why she was still hanging around here like a glutton waiting for more of the same punishment bothered her even as her feet took her across the floor until the front of her legs hit the arm of the sofa Sandro was stretched out upon. It was a huge thing, long and deep, but he easily measured its full length.

‘Shake what off?’ she asked him.

He didn’t answer.

Feeling that unwanted stab of concern prick her defences. ‘This is silly.’ She sighed out. ‘Sandro, you need to see a doctor….’

A half-smile twitched the corners of his mouth. ‘A glass of water would be appreciated more.’

‘Right…’ Something to do. Cassie had already turned away when his voice came again.

‘You will find some bottles in the fridge. The kitchen is—’

‘I’ll find it,’ she interrupted him. ‘I might be blonde but I’m not completely dumb. Hunting down a kitchen has got to be within my meagre mental capabilities even in this vast place.’

‘Were you always this feisty?’ he quizzed curiously.

‘You mean you can’t remember?’ Cassie fired back. ‘That’s quite a selective memory process you’ve got going there, Sandro. You remember me but you don’t remember me.’

‘I remembered you while I was kissing you,’ he returned huskily, ‘and it was the sweetest thing I’ve tasted in years.’

Cassie stopped, her narrow shoulders wrenching backwards so her hair slithered like a silk curtain between her shoulder blades. ‘Only an unprincipled rat would select that particular memory to mention,’ she iced out.

Then she walked out, taking a teeth-clenching pleasure in pulling the door shut behind her with a slam she hoped doubled the pain in his head!

She came back to find him still stretched out on the sofa where she had left him but his jacket and tie were missing, which told her he’d attempted to get up, only to end up having to lie back down again.

Feeling that same stab of concern attack her insides as she walked across to where he lay, she stood trying to fight it for a good thirty seconds, then gave in with a sigh, and sat down next to him to reach out and place her fingers against his brow.

‘You’re cold,’ she murmured worriedly.

‘Never.’ His mouth gave another one of those amused twitches. ‘I am Italian. We don’t do cold.’

‘Be serious.’ She frowned. ‘Perhaps you have a virus or—’

‘Mothering me, cara?’ he taunted softly. ‘If I remain lying here, looking pale and pathetic, will you soften your hostility towards me enough to listen to what I have to say?’

Cassie ignored the taunting tone. ‘Why do you think you’re feeling like this?’

Catching hold of her hand, Sandro lifted it away from his brow, long fingers enclosing her fingers, the dark, curling sweep of his eyelashes rising upwards to reveal the cavern-darkness of his eyes, now swept by fine golden flecks she’d only ever been able to see in them when she was this close. Those golden flecks gave the darkness life, added a glittering strength and shimmering vitality that was at odds with his pallor and his physically weakened state. And they held her captive, as they’d always been able to hold her captive. He was unfairly—too dangerously—attractive. He possessed the kind of dominating height and masculine body that probably turned most women weak at the knees. Yet, for all of his other assets, those eyes had been the pinpoint centre of Cassie’s attraction for him from the first time she’d looked into them. And they still had the same power to draw her in, closing down her brain to a hazy, mesmerised state which made her feel totally exposed and hopelessly vulnerable to his magnetic pull.