Chapter One
“I’m desperate, Robert,” she declared, weary resignation pouring from her words, her eyes and the exquisite persona of the sensuously endowed woman. The two sat at the window table of Café Aria, lunching on vichyssoise, cheese and tossed greens. Robert added oysters to his meal. Their waiter wore tails.
“Sasha, you are always desperate,” Robert Dante remarked, as his manicured hand reached for a wine goblet and he took a drink.
Sasha sipped hers. She batted her eyes at him with a flirtatious twinkle, reduced to charming him, since he was not responding to desperation. Picking up the white linen napkin, she dabbed an end at the corner of her mouth while two gold charm bracelets tinkled on her wrist. Despite the meal, her red lips looked freshly painted.
Sasha Casella’s chestnut hair was severely coifed, pulled back from her amber hued face and tied with a smart black bow at the base of her neck. Long ago she ceased hiding her facial expressions with curls of hair—once she realized how her strong features communicated more than just beauty. She moved through the world with authoritative ease, commandingly, never a victim to the lesser souls she met—except perhaps for Robert—the one man she could never own regardless of her desire to do so.
“I am desperate now, my love, Gabrielle will be the death of me—and herself.” She sighed heavily as she languished against the table, leaning forward purposely to engage his sympathy.
“You are blatantly over dramatic, Sasha,” Robert answered. He popped another oyster into his mouth. “Suppose you tell me why all this now?”
“Oh! Why do you eat those awful things!” She looked on his feast of oysters with a judgmental eye.
“Because I know how you hate them,” he quipped.
“Please Robert, take her for a few weeks. Settle her down as you so sportingly do—until she has a little more appreciation for authority, and this whole legal thing blows over.”
“You’re still speaking in riddles, Sasha, be a little more blunt. That’s never been a problem for you.”
He was as severe a man as Sasha was a severe women—the two looked like a sparring king and queen on an elegant chess board. Notably, his near-blac
