A scowl wrecked the shape of his attractive mouth. ‘No—’ springing up from the desk like some lithe hunting animal
annoyed by the self-built cage of his own response ‘—not unless I have to,’ he temporised.
In other words he was threatening her! Cassie wrapped her arms around her middle, crushing the fabric of her grey suit jacket against her ribs. She wanted to call his bluff and tell him to get lost but she knew she couldn’t. She just didn’t possess that much power over the truth. And the truth was—love it or hate it—Sandro was the father of her children. If he wanted to meet them, what right did she have to throw obstacles in his way? She couldn’t do that to the twins or to him. Her own feelings couldn’t come into it. They—the three of them—had a given right to know each other even if it meant she had to put her own grievances with Sandro aside in order to make it happen.
But what was it going to mean to her to have Sandro stroll in and out of her life at his leisure? To see him interact with the two people she loved beyond anything else in the world?
Watching her stand there fighting a battle with herself scraped at the inner walls of Sandro’s chest. He knew this was tough on her. He knew she would rather slap his face again and tell him to go to hell. He’d left her. He’d walked away to leave her to cope on her own. He’d rejected her in the most brutal way a man could do it. I don’t know you. I don’t want to know you. Please don’t ring this number again… Those words had been eating him up since she’d quoted them back to him. It didn’t matter that he could not remember having said them. The point was he had to have said them. He didn’t dare let himself wonder what she must have felt like to be on the receiving end of such brutality.
A spark of pain sent his fingers up to rub at his brow. He needed to remember but all he kept getting were these flashes that seared through his head, only to lock him out again.
‘I want to meet them, Cassie,’ he repeated determinedly.
‘Three nights ago you didn’t even know you had two children!’ she cried out painfully. ‘You can’t even remember me! N-no,’ she refused yet again, trying desperately to control her shaking voice, ‘not yet at least, n-not until I can be sure…’
‘Be sure of what?’ he prompted when the rest dried on her tongue.
Cassie pulled in a breath. ‘Be sure that you m-mean to stay around for them.’
‘And you don’t think I will?’
Lowering her eyes, she just shrugged and said nothing.
‘On what evidence do you make this judgement of my character?’ he demanded haughtily.
Was he joking? No, he wasn’t, she saw by his taut, proud stance. ‘Since you’re the man I spent two weeks with and didn’t see again for six years, I don’t know how you dare stand there and say that.’
‘And you hold this against me though I’ve explained the circumstances?’
Yes, that was exactly what she was saying, Cassie had to concede. ‘Look.’ She sighed, accepting that he had a point. ‘I just think it’s too soon to bring the twins into this. They’re so young and vulnerable, Sandro! Letting you walk into their lives because you’re curious about them and because you feel you have the right to do it does not—’
‘So at least you accept that I do possess the right!’
Moistening her lips, Cassie nodded. ‘But I think you need more time to consider what it’s going to mean to your life before you decide to meet them.’
‘If they are my children then I don’t need to take time to decide anything,’ he declared stiffly.
‘If,’ Cassie picked up. ‘If they’re your children? You see, you don’t really even know for sure!’
It was stalemate. He knew it, Cassie knew it. Releasing a hard sigh of frustration, he lifted a hand up to rub at his brow.
Cassie watched tensely as the colour began to drain from his face. It was happening again, and the aching thrum of concern for him began to war with her need to maintain her defences against him. She was scared of what he could do to her, scared of this man called Alessandro Marchese because of the power he possessed over the most important things in her life—her children and her job. Sandro Rossi had been a different person. Younger, way less intimidating because he had not worn the hard shell of maturity and the aura of power and inner strength she was seeing now, despite the physical weakness presently troubling him.
And she was even more scared of how he could make her feel. Even now her muscles were twitching with a need to go back across the room to him, her heart thumping heavy and slow in her chest because…because no matter which name he went by there was this fine-wire link of intimacy at work between them, tugging so strongly on her emotions that in the end she had to give in to it.
Walking back to him, she reached up to touch the back of his hand. ‘OK?’ she questioned huskily.
‘Sí,’ he responded.
Lips trembling, she parted them to take in a small breath before asking, ‘Have you remembered anything over the weekend?’
Sandro gave a shake of his head. ‘Nothing I can hold on to before it is gone again.’
‘Did—did you see your…your brother, the doctor, again?’
Compressed mouth stretching into a smile, he lowered his hand and Cassie found herself drowning in the rueful glow in his dark eyes. ‘I know what’s wrong with me, Cassie—my memory is trying to return to me. What can any doctor do other than to advise me to be patient and expose myself as much as possible to the trigger that’s helping me to remember? You and I both know that you are that trigger.’ Reaching up, he touched a gentle finger to the corner of her mouth. ‘Your face, your hair, your sparkling green eyes, your smooth, slender body and this soft, quivering mouth I want to lean in and kiss so badly that I’m aching again.’
The last part made Cassie blink then take a jerky step backwards. Watching her do it brought back his wry smile.