Power. Michelle Reid
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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.
Gio’s short potted history of each one of them was handed to his employer with a light touch which gave Sandro clues as to what to say to put each person at ease. He was fabulous at it, a true social connoisseur with that beautifully relaxed tone of voice and an accent that could probably turn the hardest female to melting mush. Half a dozen times Cassie tensed up inside when he reached out with an arm across her shoulder to shake the hand held out opposite her. Each time her awareness of him intensified to a place somewhere between a wildly hot resentment and sizzling self-defence.
Had he done it deliberately? Had he chosen to stand directly behind her chair so he could put off until the very last moment the point when he had to look her full in the face and acknowledge her?
‘Ella Cole…’ She picked up Gio’s voice as if from a foggy distance. ‘Ella is, she assures me, the lynchpin which keeps the accounts department running smoothly.’
‘A secretarial tyrant in other words,’ Ella happily described herself. ‘Scary but nice,’ she added as Cassie watched with the unblinking eyes of a bat as that long-fingered hand attached to a luxuriously dark silk-suited arm swept across her front to take Ella’s hand.
It would be her turn next. She was the only one left. She was about to be forced into touching the hand that knew her body more intimately than any other man’s hand, and she didn’t know if she could bear it, didn’t know if she could bring herself to touch him, be polite to him, pretend that all of this hurt and bitterness and anger crawling around inside her wasn’t there.
‘And Cassandra Janus.’ Cassie tuned in to the sound of her own name being spoken, and felt a sickening tension grab her stomach as Sandro took a step to one side of her chair so that he could face her side-on.
This was it, she warned herself. Any second now he was going to offer her that hand and she was going to have to accept it—look up into his handsome, lying face and—
‘Cassie is the bright new star in the accounts team…’ Gio explained as the hand oh, so predictably appeared in front of her.
Cold now, so cold her fingers would not allow her to straighten them out of the tense clench she held them in, Cassie flicked her eyes up to his face. It was like being hit full on by six long years of agony. This close up he was even more shockingly spectacular to look at than she’d allowed herself to remember.
‘Cassandra Janus…’he repeated slowly, turning Janus into the evocatively sexy Janoos the way he had used to do all those years ago, which dried Cassie’s throat until she felt parched. And his eyes, those deep-set, heavy-lidded, rich dark brown eyes, were daring to look at her with such cool, polite interest as he added, ‘I feel I should know the name from somewhere… Have we met before by any chance?’
Had they met before…? Was he joking? Or was this his ruthless way of warning her to take care what she said? Dear God, Cassie thought as hysteria almost erupted from her in a shriek of high-pitched laughter.
Having to draw on every ounce of composure she had stored