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.
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
