‘I’m trying to hide something?’ Cassie’s green eyes opened wide. ‘Let’s get this straight, Sandro. You blanked me! You turned your back on me! When you had no choice but to face me at the table you greeted me like I was some absolute stranger then still had the damn barefaced cheek to ask me if we’d met before!’

‘So you do know me!’ Something bright burned out of the centre of his eyes and he stepped even closer, almost blocking out the light in the tiny back room.

Cassie started trembling, her senses clamouring like maniacs because he was too close now and they certainly knew him. They could feel him, smell him, even taste him. Six years without her so much as setting eyes on him meant absolutely nothing to them, she was discovering, especially when she had never let another man get this close to her since him!

‘Back off,’ she urged, turning her hands into ready clenched fists tucked tightly in against her ribs.

He didn’t seem to hear her, and his colour was coming back, pouring rich olive tones into his skin, the power emanating from him now showing no hint of the weakness he had been displaying a minute before. ‘You know me,’ he repeated as if it was some kind of major breakthrough. ‘What I need to know is how you know me!’

‘I don’t know you, Mr Alessandro Marchese,’ Cassie flared up in hot opposition to his intimidating stance. ‘Briefly, however, I used to know a real rat of a man called Sandro Rossi!’

There—it was out. He’d made her say it.

‘Happy now?’ Her green eyes blistered him a hostile glance. ‘Though, why you needed me to admit to something we both clearly would prefer to forget is a complete mystery to me. Now back off,’ she repeated icily, ‘before I start yelling for help at the top of my voice!’

He went one step further and turned his back on her, reeling on the heels of his shoes. ‘Dio mio,’ he breathed. ‘Somehow I knew it.’

‘Knew what?’ Cassie all but shrilled at him.

‘That we had met before.’

‘And this,’ she muttered, ‘is the craziest conversation I’ve ever been involved in!’

‘You don’t understand…’ As he spun around again, severe shock lashed his skin to the fabulous bone structure, making Cassie’s stomach churn into trembling knots. ‘You see, I don’t remember you…’

Standing trapped by her own open-mouthed disbelief, ‘How dare you say that?’ she breathed.

He frowned. ‘You are confused. I understand that.’ Lifting a hand out towards her, when her green eyes sparked and her creamy shoulders racked backwards in violent protest, he sighed and dropped the hand again. ‘This is the reason I said that we need to talk.’

Talk…? Pushing out a deeply scornful laugh, she said, ‘When you can toss out lies as glibly as you do, Sandro, trust me, talking with you is a complete waste of time!’

‘I do not tell lies!’ he denied, stiffening up in furious objection to the charge.

‘Then what about the one when you promised to come back for me then didn’t bother?’ Cassie challenged, firing up with hurt along with the question that had been burning holes in her heart for six long years. ‘Or the one on the telephone when you denied we’d even met?—“I don’t know you. I don’t want to know you. Please don’t ring this number again!”’ she quoted word for crucifying, thick and hurtful word.

‘I said that…?’ He’d gone totally white again.

‘Give me a break.’ Dragging her eyes away from him because she did not want to see or accept that the way he kept changing colour like that had to mean he was being hit hard by something pretty shattering tonight. ‘Once upon a long time ago I might have been an easy target where you were concerned—but not any more!’

‘I do not believe I said something as cruel as that to you,’ he breathed in thick denial, his long brown fingers clenching at his sides. ‘It is not in my nature to speak to anyone like that!’

‘Well, you said it to me.’ Cassie had to tug her lips together when they tried to wobble uncontrollably because nothing had ever wounded her as much as those cruel words of rejection had done. ‘Am I allowed to leave here now or have you got anything else you want to talk about?’

‘No one has attempted to stop you from leaving,’ he husked out.

Caught by the raw strain she’d heard in his voice, Cassie made the stupid mistake of glancing at him again and saw that the hand was back up at his brow. Something creased up her insides to see such a big, powerful man standing there like that, but she refused to give the feeling room to grow.

‘Thank you,’ she said with icy curtness, and with a twist of her body she made herself turn to face the door.

Two seconds later she was on the other side of it with her eyes closed and her heart pounding as if she’d just run a mile. She had a feeling he’d swayed again but she had not hung around long enough to find out.

I don’t remember you, her brain threw up at her in a seething flash of derision. If he didn’t remember her then why had they had that confrontation at all?

The sudden sound of movement sent her eyes shooting open. The first thing she became aware of as her gaze became focused was that the whole restaurant seemed to have emptied while she’d been shut inside that tiny back room. The next thing to hit her was the low, buzzing sound of conversation floating up the stairwell and she realised that everyone must have moved back down to the bar.

Hovering at the top of the stairs, she swallowed tensely, trying to pull her ragged senses together before she had to go down there and face up to the full battery of BarTec curiosity she was certain would be waiting for her.

And she was trembling all over with reaction now. In the last couple of hours she felt as if she’d been fed through the emotional wringer a hundred times! First the shock of seeing Sandro standing in the restaurant bar entrance, then the stomach-curdling humiliation when he’d blanked her out.

I don’t remember you…

He’d remembered her OK when he’d plied that heated scan down her body! And he’d remembered her when the delayed look of shock hit his face!

And—no, she couldn’t go down there and face everyone. What was she supposed to say? Oh, we knew each other once. The memory of it drove him to drink wine until he was drop-down drunk.

I am not drunk…

Just another lie he’d fed to her. For what other excuse was there when a strong, healthy man just collapsed like that?

‘There is another exit,’ his deep accented voice quietly murmured.

Cassie swung around on her slender heels, so startled her heart burst back into an overloaded beat. Sandro had come out of the office without her hearing him and was now in the process of closing the door. Her defences shot back up, her insides catching her with a tight, dizzying squeeze because he looked so different—again—as if he’d pulled up his own defences and now the cool, smooth corporate giant was back on show. He’d even done up his shirt collar and straightened his tie, she saw, her mouth going dry when her head decided to throw up an image of her teasing fingers doing that for him on the morning he’d left for Florence, all those years before.

‘H-how do you know?’ She had a fight to push the question beyond the fresh lump of hurt blocking her throat.

‘I spoke to Gio.’ He started walking towards her and as she tensed automatically Cassie thought she saw an angry glint move across his eyes but he strode right past her, though his voice fed out the same moderate coolness when he said, ‘Follow me if you prefer to leave quietly. It’s this way…’

Continuing to hover for a few more moments, Cassie wavered between her two choices that really were not choices at all. She either bit the bullet and ran the gauntlet waiting for her down there in the bar or she bit the bullet and let Sandro lead her out of here by a back door.