Marchese's Forgotten Bride. Michelle Reid

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