Grimly trying to shake off the strange sensations running through him, Alessandro took in the full impact of a hundred pairs of eyes honed exclusively on him.
He knew her. The more he thought about it the more sure he became that he’d met her somewhere before. Her pale golden hair, her luminous green eyes, her full, soft, sexy pink mouth…He tried not to frown as he tracked through his memory banks looking for clues as to how or where he knew her, with that weird, hollowing-out feeling increasing as he did…
Her gently moulded cheekbones and small, straight nose, her cute, slightly pointed chin…
He disentangled himself from Pandora’s clinging hand, shocked suddenly by how appalled he felt to have her show such intimacy with him.
‘Can I ask you all to offer a warm welcome to the new owner of BarTec, Alessandro Marchese…?’
Having been forced to turn around again, Cassie saw that Sandro—or whatever it was he called himself these days—was still frowning as if something had thoroughly ruined his day. Well, join the club, she thought as a flow of acid contempt for him thankfully cleared out her battered feelings of hurt and dismay. Who the heck did he think he was that he felt he had the right to blank her as if she were nobody?
She listened to the second wave of applause ripple through the bar area, though she didn’t bother to join in. She would rather cut off her hands than applaud this man. She hated him. Now that she was looking at him without the first incapacitating rush of shock cluttering up her emotions, she was remembering just how much she hated and despised Sandro Rossi—or, in this case, Alessandro Marchese.
‘Grazie molto per la vostra accoglienza calorosa…’
the man himself responded in a rich, deep, sensually delivered Italian which caused a collective gasp of delicious appreciation from the females present in the bar, while his beautiful companion touched his arm and murmured something to him that turned his frown to a grimace, then a short second later into a smile that clutched Cassie’s stomach muscles in a vicelike grip and just captivated everyone else.
‘My apologies,’ he murmured, ‘allow me to repeat that in English…Thank you very much for your warm welcome…’
‘Oh, my,’ Ella breathed beside Cassie. ‘Now, that was very, very sexy indeed. Do you think he deliberately set out to disarm us all with the piece of theatre?’
Probably, Cassie thought cynically, fighting to keep her bitter feelings from showing on her face. In truth she was surprised the sharp-eyed Ella hadn’t noticed what had been passing between her best friend and their new boss—surprised that the whole darn room hadn’t noticed!
Sandro was now busy charming everyone as he mapped out his plans for the company, and he did it by conveying an air of smoothly polished self-assurance aimed to allay everyone’s fears about their future at BarTec. Lowering her eyes, Cassie listened without really hearing, unwillingly tuned in to the flowing resonance of his voice but without catching more than the odd word because her mind was elsewhere, rolling back the years to a time when she’d first heard that voice.
It hadn’t changed—
he
hadn’t changed. Whatever he preferred to call himself these days, he was still the man who’d used those sexy dark base tones and his easy-going charm to make her fall in love with him before casting her aside once he’d enjoyed the pleasures of her body, leaving her desolate, pregnant and alone.
A second crash of applause woke her up with a shudder. Sandro had finished speaking and was now smiling down at the woman in the red dress. Cassie wanted to leave. It was horrible just how badly she wanted to just walk through that door and go. But Sandro was still blocking the exit along with his cluster of smartly dressed minions, who all looked as slick and as sharp as he did.
Could she squeeze past them without him noticing? Would he care that she was leaving if she did? The sizzle of temptation fizzed through her body alongside the angry bitterness already swimming through it.
‘At last we get to be fed.’ Ella’s dry comment forced her to take note of the way everyone was beginning to make a move towards the stairs which led to the restaurant above, and grim common sense arrived as Cassie felt herself swept up in the general exodus.
She knew she could not afford the luxury of just walking out of here. She needed her job at BarTec. She did not need the rash of questions bound to fly at her if she did decide to go.
Tagging along beside Ella, she listened to her friend chattering away ten to the dozen about their gorgeously interesting new boss to those crowded around them while Cassie just felt completely shut off.
I don’t know you. I don’t want to know you. Please don’t ring this number again…
Those cold words of rejection echoed around her head. From fierce, dark, passionate lover to contemptuous stranger in the blink of an eyelash. To hell with the fact that he’d been her first lover, or that he’d left her pregnant and terrified and bewildered. Sandro had taught her the hardest way possible that men like him had no conscience whatsoever when it came to pursuing a woman they desired until they’d caught her, and no honour at all when it came to dumping them after their desire had been slaked.
C
ASSIE
and Ella found themselves placed at the same table in the farthest corner of the restaurant along with the rest of their colleagues from the accounts department. The only stranger at the table was a very good-looking, smartly presented man who introduced himself as, ‘Gio Rozario, one of Alessandro’s team.’
The meal progressed through its different courses with everyone firing eager questions at him, which he fielded with friendly ease and a return volley of questions of his own. He seemed genuinely interested in all of them. He
charmed
them all the way his employer had done downstairs in the bar.
Barely touching her food, Cassie watched and listened and contributed very little. She’d already noted that each table had at least one team member sitting at it, and it didn’t take many brain cells to work out that the seating had been intentionally arranged this way so the spies in their midst could gather in information and impressions about BarTec employees, which they were bound to feed back to their boss.
In other words, the Marchese mob was deep into work mode while the rest of them were off-duty and off-guard. Clever, she thought grudgingly. The wine was still flowing freely and she would be prepared to bet that by the time this evening was over few of them would walk out of here with many secrets intact.
Without her wanting them to do it, her eyes drifted across the room to the huge circular table set in the middle of the restaurant where her one major secret sat dining with the members of the board. He looked relaxed, like his team, in control of the conversation happening around him—a smooth and sophisticated corporate giant with the body of an athlete and the profile of a heartbreaker.
And he had the same vibrant dark hair and eyes as Anthony…
Oh, God—not bothering to fight the need to escape any longer, Cassie got to her feet. ‘Excuse me,’ she mumbled, ‘I need to visit the ladies’ room,’ then she picked her up her evening purse and walked blindly towards the stairs.
Under cover of his half-lowered eyelids, Alessandro watched the slender blonde traverse the room towards the stairwell. She must be going to use the wash room which was situated downstairs in the bar area, he judged, tension singing along the corded sinew of his groin as he followed the sensual grace with which she moved.
This first full view he’d had of her without the crush blotting most of her out sent his gaze flowing down the delicate curves of her slim figure displayed inside the little grey and black dress she was wearing that did a lot to enhance the creamy smoothness of her skin. Fine-boned, he observed, slightly built with a nicely curving, neat behind and fabulous long legs with neat ankles elevated by the heels of her shiny black mules.
She started walking down the staircase, her silky, pale hair swinging forward as she bent her head to watch her footing on the shiny white marble steps, an elegant white hand reaching out to grasp the banister rail. Something stung across his front, like sensual fingernails scoring the hairs covering his chest, and once more the bolt of lightning shot through his head.
He frowned, having to fight the need to lift his hand up and rub at his aching brow again. At the bend in the staircase he saw her stop to fumble in her evening bag and watched her lift a mobile phone to her ear.
Who was it she wanted to talk to? A lover? A husband?
Lips flattening back against his teeth, he wished he knew why the prospect of either was having a gut-grinding effect on him.
‘Cassie Janus,’ Jason Farrow inserted smoothly beside him.
Forced to look in the other man’s direction, Alessandro schooled his expression to reveal absolutely nothing but a mild question as to what it was the other man was talking about.
‘I noticed your interest earlier,’ the current MD confided as if it should earn him brownie points.
Sandro said nothing, though he was absolutely sure Jason Farrow had not said all that he wanted to say. And anyway, he was waiting to find out if the name
Cassie Janus
made some kind of connection in him.
It didn’t.
‘She heads our accounts team,’ the older man supplied helpfully. ‘Has a mind like a calculator, though you wouldn’t think it to look at her, heh?’
Alessandro had been predisposed to dislike Jason Farrow before he’d even met him but that sexist remark tied it up for him. If Farrow had dared to add a conspiratorial wink Alessandro suspected he would have stood up and hit him.
A company the size of BarTec was small fry by comparison to the big fish he usually liked to bury his teeth into. However, the company had developed some ground-breaking technology in microelectronics he would much rather have safely caught under the Marchese umbrella than let his competitors get hold of it. So when Angus Barton decided to sell BarTec due to ill health, he’d jumped at the chance to buy him out. Angus was a close friend of his late father’s. Even if he had not been interested in anything BarTec had to offer he would have lifted the load of responsibility from Angus’s weary shoulders based on that long friendship alone. It was Angus who’d confessed he’d made some rash decisions during the months before he decided it was time to sell. Elevating Jason Farrow to the position of managing director had been one of those decisions. ‘He’s a self-opinionated bully. He certainly bullied me, anyway.’ The sad grimace his father’s old friend had offered up had not been a comfortable thing to behold because it had shown a man who knew he was losing the will to fight his many battles.
This evening had been arranged as a way of easing the troubled minds of those employees important to him, as to what he meant to do with the company, and to weed out those who were not going to make it beyond the scrutiny of his team. Jason Farrow was fast becoming the name at the top of that throw-away list. He looked what he was, a well-shod, well-fed, self-promoting dinosaur who dared to see power in voicing such observations to him. When he got to know him better, he would learn the hard way that it wasn’t the case.
As it was…‘You have a problem with women in the working environment?’ Alessandro prompted casually.
‘God, no, they lighten my day!’ Farrow declared with a nerve-needling grin. ‘Though I still have to be convinced that women are capable of giving one hundred per cent to their careers, female hormones being what they are,’ he confided. ‘Cassie’s situation makes her one of the luckier ones working at BarTec—she was Angus’s little pet. Angus employed her when really she wasn’t up to taking on the commitment required of her. Still—’ Farrow shrugged, unaware that Sandro’s eyes had lowered and narrowed as he bit back the desire to question Farrow further as to what stopped Cassie Janus from giving her full commitment to her job. ‘That’s what you get when you let personal feelings get in the way of good business sense,’ BarTec’s managing director continued in a slightly peevish tone. ‘I had a much better candidate lined up for Cassie’s job but Angus knew her late father, so…’
Behind his lowered eyelids Alessandro’s brain shut out the rest of what Farrow was saying when his instincts suddenly sharpened on what he saw as a link between himself and the woman who’d managed to knock his senses for six.
Angus…Had he met her during one of his weekend stays with Angus Barton?
‘You of all people must agree that there is no place in business for sentimentality,’ he tuned back in to catch. ‘She’s easy on the eyes, as you’ve already noticed, but a pretty face and figure can be a distraction best kept out of the office, in my opinion.’
Alessandro had heard enough. ‘Pandora…’ he drawled to catch the attention of the member of his team sharing this table with him.
Pandora Batiste turned her glossy dark head and smiled the kind of naturally sensual smile that had the power to blow most men’s libido to bits.
‘Tell Mr Farrow what you do to earn the outrageous annual salary I pay to you,’ Alessandro urged casually.
Pandora laughed. ‘Outrageous indeed. I earn every euro and you know it, Alessandro,’ she scolded him, then turned her drop-dead smile on Jason Farrow. ‘As from Monday morning you and I will be working closely together to make my transition into Angus Barton’s venerable shoes as painless for everyone as we can possibly make it, Mr Farrow,’ she enlightened. ‘I hope I can rely on your loyalty and support…’
The message was as clear as the ruddy hue that flooded into Jason Farrow’s face. He was about to find out the tough way that there was indeed no room for sentimentality or distraction in business with the beautiful Pandora around to pull rank on him.
Alessandro picked up his barely touched glass of wine and rose to his feet. ‘If you will excuse me, it’s time for me to circulate,’ he murmured smoothly and strode off, grimly satisfied Farrow had received a mental kick in the teeth in return for his sexist remarks and for bullying Angus.
Angus…His frown came back as he crossed the stairwell, aware that his feet wanted to take him down those stairs to confront Cassie Janus about his suspicion that they’d met before but even more aware that with Farrow’s eyes burning a hole in his back he could not afford to be seen to be singling her out.
She was a distraction, he acknowledged, if only to himself. And why did Farrow believe he had a right to question her commitment to the company? Was this a case of another rash decision Angus had made as his illness began to take hold?
Cassie was standing in the now-empty bar area with her eyes closed as she listened to the soothing voice Jenny, her next-door neighbour, was using to reassure her that the twins were OK. ‘All tucked up in bed and fast asleep,’ Jenny told her. ‘They’ve been absolute angels. You should let me do this for you more often, Cassie. It’s a real treat for me to play granny when my own grandchildren are so far away. And I have to admit,’ she added with a chuckle, ‘it’s lovely to be able to watch anything I like on television other than Larry’s endless football.’
The
angels
had been angels because Cassie had witnessed the deal being struck between them and Jenny when they thought she wasn’t paying attention. Having eagerly presented Jenny with a box of chocolates, the twins had then gone into a dance of miming appeals which translated as ‘Just one chocolate each without Mummy knowing and we’ll go to bed when you say’. Jenny had played along with them, of course, and of course Cassie had let them get away with it. She now had this cosy image of her next-door neighbour stretched out in the stuffed old armchair in front of the TV set with her shoes off and her feet resting on top of the old coffee table while the box of half-ravaged chocolates rested conveniently on her lap.
‘So what did you decide to watch?’ she asked, feeling a smile relax some of the tension from her mouth at last.
Jenny named a romantic movie from the stack she’d brought with her. ‘You don’t rush back home, now,’ she ordered. ‘I’m nicely set up here for at least a week! Oh, and Bella said, if you rang, to remind you to take a photo of your new boss on your phone so she can see what he looks like!’
Well, that was a promise she was going to break, Cassie thought bleakly as she put her phone away. Nothing on this earth was going to make her risk her sharp-eyed daughter noting the similarities between her twin brother, Anthony, and Alessandro Marchese.
She even shivered at the prospect as she made herself go back up to the restaurant. The first thing she saw as she turned the bend in the stairs was Sandro standing by one of the tables across the room. Her gaze swept down the length of his back and his long, powerful legs trapped inside the elegant cut of his suit, then stayed lowered, her lips pressing together as she walked back to her own table and slipped into her seat as a burst of laughter erupted across the room.
‘That guy knows how to make a good first impression,’ she heard Ella say.
‘Alessandro believes a relaxed and friendly working environment aides good will and increased productivity,’ Gio Rozario responded loyally. ‘You will like him, I promise you.’
I just bet,
thought Cassie, unable to stop herself from watching Sandro move on to the next table and realising belatedly what he was doing. He was visiting each table in turn and she’d badly timed the moment she’d used the loo excuse because it was clear that he was moving around in this direction.
Now she was trapped, and knowing it heightened her tension to a point that she became acutely aware of his every move, every smooth syllable in his deeply modulated and beautifully accented voice. Each table he approached his designated spy came respectfully to his or her feet, then followed through by introducing each individual at the table complete with a pocket résumé, which fed Sandro fodder to weave into his disarming charm aimed to put everyone at ease with him.
Cassie was impressed by his tactics, though she didn’t want to be. She was annoyed with herself for the way her senses were sending tingling shock waves to every nerve-ending the closer to their table he came.
‘Does he hire himself out?’ Ella murmured curiously. ‘I could do with someone like him around the next time I visit my family.’
Gio—they’d already been told to use his first name—laughed. ‘Ask him,’ he invited. ‘Alessandro is pretty good with families, coming from a large one himself. Good at smooth set-downs too.’
He’s pretty good with families…? Cassie felt a bubble of hysteria rise to her throat. For a horrible moment she thought it was going to break free. Then her slender spine stiffened as she picked up Sandro’s presence arriving at the table directly behind her. She could even smell his subtly unique scent and feel the heat from his body, he was standing so close to the back of her chair.
Why Sandro? she asked herself tautly while everyone else was busy talking, joining in the light banter Gio Rozario and Ella were generating between the two of them. Why did
he
have to be the new owner of BarTec?
A flood of laughter suddenly erupted from the other table, encouraged to do so by a final comment made by the big man himself, then Cassie felt him turn to face them. Like a puppet pulled by his master’s strings, Gio rose to his feet.
Snatching her hands down onto her lap, she balled them together in a tense-fingered clench as she listened to Gio begin the round of smoothly toned introductions and just prayed the screaming tension she was feeling was not showing in her posture or her face. He was standing so close to her one of his long, powerful thighs was in danger of brushing her naked shoulder so the skin there itched and tingled with tension and burned as it absorbed his body heat.