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The naue like a sensual fantasy Cassie suffered a stinging, sharp jolt to her chest Alessandro Marchese? Was Ella looking at a different man?
‘Youat a few billion dollars of hot Italian breeding standing over there, cara,’ Ella ing to his arene…’
The lady in red…
Wrenching her gaze sideways, Cassie confir at the salossy black-haired creature wearing an exquisitely cut blood-red dress as clinging to his ar They looked at ease with each other—inti time
And Ella was right, they did suit each other—in the same way that the name Alessandro Marchese suited him far better than the plain Sandro Rossi Cassie had known him by did!
As she dragged her eyes back to hi, sick bitterness dried up her throat when she discovered that he’d lifted his head up and she was now getting a full-on view of his face—a face that had lost none of its raw masculine impact in the six years since she’d last looked at it, she acknowledged painfully Those long, lazy eyelids, the straight, fleshless nose, the slender and fir a death wish, Cassie drank in the sh cheekbones and the way his lavishly long and thick black eyelashes al cheekbones as he turned a wry, sexy smile on the woman in the red dress
If she’d had the strength in her legs she would be walking over there to slap that s to kid? Was he a crook or so that he had to use an assumed name these days? Or was she the one who’d been lied to? The one who’d been sucked in by his fabulous dark looks and his gorgeously intense sincerity, the one who’d been so skilfully rohly seduced then left like an unwanted breakfast when he’d swanned off back to his native Italy to get on with his real life?
The sting of betrayal stalked down her backbone like taunting fingers as she studied the way he was standing there exuding the supremely relaxed self-assurance which caued, sexually confident brutes Cassie hated hi on hi down the colu, bronzed throat to the width of his broad shoulders set inside a superbly crafted dark lounge suit, and across the white shirt that did absolutely nothing to subdue the hard-, lean physique
And she rehened power of his rich golden torso, with its satintight abdo satin to touch, and the sleek, corded sinehich angled so dramatically down the narrol of his hips to the—
She had to get out of here—
The need struck with a startling punch of delayed reaction that sent her slender body jerking up straight As if he picked up the violence in her reaction, he lifted those heavy eyelids and looked directly into her face, forcing her into a head-on collision with a pair of piercingly deep-set blacker-than-black eyes that she’d wished, hoped, prayed she would never have to look into again!
Tiht, noisy chatter filling the bar just stopped as if so the two of the his an to rae around her head
Sandro laughing…Sandro s that dryly amused s her…kissing her…Sandro oh, so gentle then turning hot and fierce and devouringly intense as they made love
A shaft of pure sexual fire stroked right down herCassie out so badly she sucked in her breath The breath forced her lips apart and made his fabulous eyelashes flicker as he honed his attention on to her htened in direct response to that lulance She didn’t want to feel like this She wanted to be left cold by the sight of him and she was appalled that that was not hoas!
Like a aze to take in the waterfall shine of her pale gold hair brushing against her tre white shoulders, then dropped to where the strapless structure of her dress hugged the crea out of his eyes was so hot and so eleonised awareness prickle her fair skin She wanted to cry out in shrill, pained, angry protest but she couldn’t She had never felt so agonisingly exposed to her oretched weakness in her entire life
It did not occur to her that it had taken hinise her, until he finally lifted his eyes back to her eyes and she watched his lazy, searching expression alter to a look of shock For the next few taut seconds she actually thought he was going to keel over, the way his eyes widened then turned as black as Hades and his face drained of its beautiful bronzed tan She stopped breathing—she stopped doing anything—breathing, hearing, thinking…
Then he stiffened his long body up and abruptly turned his back on her, blanking her out with a cruel, ruthless econo a door slammed in her face
Again
Left totally, utterly stunned and shaken by the sheer brutality of his rejection, Cassie thought that she was the one going to faint So her drink, but she barely noticed Sole word that they said She knew she’d gone pale because she felt pale; a clammy kind of chill had settled over her flesh And worse—much worse—was the way an already badly wounded part of her was cracking open like a fissure fornition that he could still do that to her after all of these years and here of all places, in full view of all her work colleagues
Soed to turn away froed to draw in a few shallow breaths She was feeling so badly shaken up inside it took all her control not to start et out of the now suffocating crush
‘Do you think they’ll let us go and eat now?’ she heard Ella murmur wistfully