A Savage Betrayal
LYNNE GRAHAM
Destination revenge!Once upon a time, Mina Carroll fell in love and into the bed of her powerful boss, Cesare Falcone —only to find herself dismissed as a gold-digger, accused of misconduct, and very much pregnant!Four years later, Mina discovers that the new investor in her charity is none other than Cesare! It takes only seconds to confirm that the attraction between them is lethal as ever. But when Cesare discovers the secret that Mina has hidden from him, there is only one solution; make her his bride to give their daughter a name and allow him to pursue his revenge at leisure!
is one of Mills & Boon’s most popular and bestselling novelists. Her writing was an instant success with readers worldwide. Since her first book, Bittersweet Passion, was published in 1987, she has gone from strength to strength and now has over ninety titles, which have sold more than thirty-five million copies, to her name.
In this special collection, we offer readers a chance to revisit favourite books or enjoy that rare treasure—a book by a favourite writer—they may have missed. In every case, seduction and passion with a gorgeous, irresistible man are guaranteed!
LYNNE GRAHAM was born in Northern Ireland and has been a keen Mills & Boon
reader since her teens. She is very happily married, with an understanding husband who has learned to cook since she started to write! Her five children keep her on her toes. She has a very large dog, which knocks everything over, a very small terrier, which barks a lot, and two cats. When time allows, Lynne is a keen gardener.
A Savage Betrayal
Lynne Graham
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
CHAPTER ONE
‘AND this is my executive assistant, Mina Carroll.’
Mina shook hands and smiled as yet another introduction was made by her boss, Edwin Haland. Elegantly attired in an Armani suit, her golden hair swept up into a loose Edwardian knot, she could easily have been mistaken for a wealthy patron, rather than one of the organisers of the charity benefit. Nobody would have guessed that this was the first time she had been invited to play such a prominent role or that she was a last minute stand-in for her immediate superior, who had come down with the flu.
A hand curved round her elbow, drawing her aside. ‘Where on earth did you get that suit?’ Jean, their junior PR officer, hissed. ‘Did you rob a bank?’
‘My sister’s wardrobe,’ Mina whispered with dancing amethyst eyes.
‘I wish we could swap sisters. Mine’s into Doc Martens and vampire make-up,’ Jean groaned. ‘And even if I was insane enough to want to borrow something, I’d have to mug her to get it! Yours must be an angel.’
Mina laughed. ‘Not quite.’ She frowned at the untouched buffet and the hovering waiters. ‘Why isn’t the food being served?’
‘Our VIP’s flight has been held up.’ Jean grinned. ‘Of course, I forgot. You’ve been on holiday. You won’t have met our newest sponsor yet. What a treat you have in store!’
‘He must be some VIP if Mr Haland won’t start without him.’
‘Socially prominent, mega-rich, background of family philanthropy,’ Jean told her in a mocking undertone. ‘Manna from heaven. Our directors did everything but kiss his feet. The more humble office mortals looked, longed and languished—even Polly, our man-hating tea lady.’
Mina’s beautiful face was wreathed with amusement. ‘Polly—you’re joking?’
‘Polly went out and bought a cream cake for him——’
‘You’re kidding me!’
‘I’m not. He’s drop-dead gorgeous. I was in the lift with him, praying it would break down…not that I expect he would have done anything with the opportunity.’ Jean sighed, smoothing her hands over her ample hips. ‘But you never know. Italians are supposed to like women well-stacked, and you can’t say I’m not that.’
‘He’s Italian?’ Mina had stiffened slightly.
‘And there he is.’
‘Where?’
‘Heavens, where are your eyes?’
Mina’s searching gaze shrieked to a halt on the tall, black-haired man striding down the room, flanked by two of Earth Concern’s directors. Her heart gave a frantic leap behind her breastbone and every muscle pulled taut. She could feel the blood draining from her face, the sudden cold, clamminess of her flesh. She was in the grip of a shock so extreme she was paralysed by it.
‘Cesare Falcone,’ Jean whispered. ‘Falcone Industries. Quite a coup, don’t you think? Apparently, Mr Barry gave him a copy of our newsletter at some dinner and he was so impressed, he set up a meeting the same week! He even mentioned my article on waste recycling’
‘Did he?’ Mina unpeeled her tongue from the roof of her dry mouth. Waste recycling? Cesare?
Her stomach cramping with sudden nausea, Mina turned on her heel without a word and headed for the cloakroom. Mercifully it was empty. She braced her hands on the edge of a vanity unit and slowly breathed in, struggling to combat the sick dizziness assailing her. To see Cesare again where she had least expected to see him…when, indeed, she had never expected to see him again. Dear God, but life could be cruel, she thought with sudden raw bitterness.
Anger currented through her, squaring her shoulders, stiffening her spine. Four years ago, fresh out of college with a fistful of top grades, Mina had walked into what had appeared to be the plum job of her year. Cesare Falcone had hired her as his executive assistant. Three months down the line she had been sacked without warning and in the most humiliating way possible denied entrance to the Falcone building.
And, as if that had not been bad enough, she had been refused a reference. That refusal had put a big black question mark on her employment record. It had been well over a year before Mina had found another job and she had had to settle for a low-paid position without responsibility. Cesare Falcone had wrecked her career prospects in the City.
But he hadn’t done it alone, she conceded with painful self-loathing. She might not have deserved the brutal treatment she had been dealt but she had played a part in her own downfall. One slip…one mistake. She had fallen in love with her employer. She had become vulnerable. Her heart had got in the way of her head. Common sense had taken a hike. And when, late one evening, Cesare had broken out the champagne over a particularly successful deal, Mina had served herself up as supper…
She closed her eyes tightly, shutting out the memories, hating them, hating herself for ever having been that naïve, that reckless, that stupid. If it hadn’t been for that night, she would have sued for wrongful dismissal, but shame had choked her and kept her quiet when in any other circumstances she would have fought him to the last ditch for daring to terminate her contract on such terms. Gross misconduct. She shuddered in remembrance.
She had to drag herself back out of the cloakroom, feverishly aware that at some stage of the evening she would be forced to face Cesare. Edwin Haland was making a short opening speech by the time she returned to the crowded function-room. Everyone was already seated with their plates heaped high. Jean gave her a frantic wave from a nearby table.
Mina dropped down gratefully into the vacant seat beside the other woman. Noting her pallor, Jean frowned at her. ‘You’re not coming down with this flu bug, are you?’
‘I’m just a bit tired.’ Without appetite Mina studied the plate that Jean had helpfully filled for her.
Cesare would be seated at the top table. Mina tried hard not to look in that direction but a compulsion stronger than she was triumphed. Her heartbeat slowed to a dulled thud. ‘Drop-dead gorgeous’, Jean had called him and, ironically, the one time Mina hadn’t noticed those sensational looks of his had been at her interview when he had stretched her with so many difficult questions that she had emerged afterwards inwardly wrung out and possessed only of the memory of dark, deep-set eyes which had seemed to be cruelly willing her to trip up and fall apart under the pressure.
After all his sardonic references to her lack of experience, she had been amazed when she had got the job. But within a week of entering employment in the Falcone building she had assumed that it was her sex which had made him put her through hoops of fire. She had discovered that she was the only female above the level of secretary on the executive floor and that the men in the boardroom unashamedly rejoiced in their chauvinism, reacting to her arrival in their midst with horror and downright resentment. Staying the course had been an uphill battle from day one…
She sank back to the present, and discovered that she was still staring, her attention roaming over his strong, dark features in profile, so familiar, even after all this time, she couldn’t believe it. Her stomach clenched tight again, sudden comprehension shuddering through her to make her cringe from her own blindness.
Of course those features were familiar to her…feminised and in miniature. Hadn’t she lived with those high cheekbones, those winged brows and those dark golden eyes for over three years? Her daughter, Susie, wore her parentage like a banner.
‘You’re nervous about the directors’ meeting tomorrow,’ Jean decided, finally noticing that Mina wasn’t eating. ‘I wouldn’t worry if I were you. Your promotion’s in the bag.’
Grateful to be distracted from her painful reflections, Mina sighed. ‘Nothing’s in the bag, Jean.’
‘Mr Haland’s very keen for you to head up the finance section, and the other directors will accept his recommendation,’ Jean asserted in a bolstering tone.
‘There were other candidates.’
‘I doubt if they had your qualifications, and I would say your invitation to stand in for Simon tonight is as good as an advance announcement.’
Mina had been hoping the same thing but she didn’t say so. Her self-confidence had dive-bombed in the dole queue four years ago, and her streak of bright-eyed, bushy-tailed youthful ambition had taken a similar battering. Throughout her two-week vacation, which she had spent, as she always did, at her sister’s home, Mina had crossed her fingers and prayed that she would win that promotion, and not because she was eager for the higher status or the challenge of greater responsibility. No, not at all. Mina was quite simply desperate for the considerable rise in salary which would come with the position of finance manager.
Edwin was rising from the table, ushering his VIP guest to the podium. Below the lights Cesare’s ebony hair had the sheen of silk, and Mina was attacked without warning by a tormentingly painful image of her own fingers sliding through those thick dark strands. Her skin burning, she dropped her head and lifted her glass of wine with an unsteady hand. Cast back in time, frantically struggling to rescue her self-discipline, she didn’t absorb a single word of Cesare’s speech.
But it must have been witty and amusing. Laughter broke out several times, interspersed by that appreciative silence which was the reward of a speaker talented enough to play his audience like a professional. But all she actually heard was the sound of Cesare’s deep, rich voice, backed by the indolent purr of his accent. Her brain seemed incapable of taking in anything more profound.
‘No wonder the directors are walking on air tonight,’ Jean murmured. ‘Cesare Falcone could take Earth Concern into the major leagues all on his own. Look how many journalists are here…we’ve never had a press turnout this good!’
People were rising from their tables and starting to mingle. Edwin signalled to Mina. With all her being she wished it were possible to ignore that gesture. She stood up, relieved to see that Cesare was being mobbed. Little wonder, she reflected cynically.
So many of their patrons only supported them because to be seen at such events lent one a certain cachet. And the chance to rub shoulders, however briefly, with Cesare Falcone, a true member of the glitterati, who when in London moved only in the most select social circles, was a chance few of their patrons would wish to miss.
‘A tremendous speech, don’t you think?’ Edwin remarked, curving a light arm to her back, making her stiffen in surprise, as he surveyed the crush which had engulfed Cesare with unhidden satisfaction.
‘Very impressive.’
‘Where on earth did you get to earlier?’ the older man demanded with faint irritation. ‘I wanted you to sit with us at the top table.’
‘I had no idea…sorry.’ But it was a challenge to look sorry. As Mina realised what a narrow escape she had had, she felt quite light-headed with gratitude. With a little luck she would be able to slip off home soon, pull herself together and decide how she would handle being introduced to Cesare, as she surely would be sooner or later.
Tell him now, a little voice urged her. She should tell Edwin that she had once worked for Cesare, even though that fact had not appeared on her carefully doctored c.v. Edwin would be surprised, but he was highly unlikely to go back and check that same document.
‘I suppose it was my fault.’ He smiled, looking down at Mina, whose tiny, delicate stature never failed to remind him of his late wife. ‘I should have asked you to join us.’
Picking up her courage in both hands, Mina parted her lips. ‘Edwin——’
‘Do you realise that this is the very first time you have called me by my Christian name?’ he chuckled.
Mina flushed. She was always very formal with the directors.
‘Please don’t apologise,’ he told her cheerfully. ‘Being called Mr Haland all the time makes me feel as old as the hills.’
‘Which you’re far from being,’ Mina said politely, a little disconcerted by the warmth she read in his eyes.
‘I certainly don’t feel it when I’m fortunate enough to be in the company of a very beautiful young woman. Indeed I feel privileged,’ Edwin asserted with vigour, shocking her into rigidity as she glanced back up at him.
‘Mr Haland?’ someone intervened from behind them.
The older man’s arm lifted from her narrow back with a reluctance that could be felt. Mina’s cheeks were pink, embarrassment and dismay having taken hold of her. She had always been aware that Edwin Haland liked her as a quiet, hard-working member of staff, but it had not until now occurred to her that he might be attracted to her.
‘Where have you been hiding yourself all evening, cara?’
Her downbent head flew up and then tipped back, amethyst eyes wide with apprehension, the colour highlighting her complexion evaporating fast as her gaze connected with molten gold.
‘Cesare…’ she whispered tautly, striving manfully to recover her composure, telling herself that she had had plenty of time to adjust to the prospect of such a confrontation but discovering to her horror that that fact seemed to make no difference to her shattered response to his sudden looming presence less than a foot from her.
‘Sì, Cesare…who remembers you well,’ he murmured in a flat undertone that chilled her, intent narrowed dark eyes scanning her pale face. ‘Do I warn the old goat that he’s about to fall into the alligator pit? Or do I keep my mouth shut?’
‘I beg your pardon?’ Mina framed without comprehension.
‘From the outside it looks as though you have your sights set on a wedding-ring, but I wonder if that’s true. You’re a devious little bitch,’ Cesare told her in a conversational tone that made what he was saying all the more shocking, ‘but you’re predictable. Evidently you’re still sleeping with the boss.’
Totally unprepared for such an offensive attack, Mina gazed back at him in utter disbelief. ‘How dare you——?’
‘At the table Haland was like a dying swan in search of his mate. It didn’t occur to me that it was your absence which was making him so restive, but it should have done,’ Cesare told her with derision. ‘There has to be some very good reason why you’re working for small bucks in a charitable enterprise. Let’s face it, Pollyanna you’re not!’
Starting to tremble, wondering crazily if Cesare Falcone had gone mad, Mina whispered jerkily, ‘Why are you treating me like this…saying such things?’
Cesare laughed softly. ‘That look of injured innocence, cara…I award you full marks for trying but I’m not a lonely old fool, hungry for the attention of a young, sexy woman. I’m Cesare Falcone…and if you hadn’t disappeared into thin air four years ago I’d have shredded you limb from limb, a piece at a time, for what you did to me!’
Unable to drag her eyes from him, Mina took an instinctive step back. She was in such shock, she couldn’t even think straight. ‘For what I did to you?’ she repeated shakily.
‘But the good news is…a Sicilian never forgets being stabbed in the back, and if he has to wait a year or two…?’ Cesare spread a frighteningly expressive lean brown hand in the air between them and smiled with such chilling satisfaction that the blood in her veins ran cold. Involuntarily, she was mesmerised. ‘Even better. The desire for revenge merely becomes keener, sharper…altogether more intense. I’ll break you.’ He closed his long fingers into his palm as if he were crushing something and laughed with wolfish amusement. ‘Running was a major mistake.’
The smouldering silence thundered in her eardrums, making her feel dizzy, disorientated.
‘I see you’ve already met Miss Carroll, Mr Falcone.’ Edwin’s voice intruded, making her flinch as she belatedly recalled that there were people all around them. Like a sleepwalker, suddenly woken up, Mina attempted to regain an awareness of her surroundings, but it was hopeless. Cesare’s insane behaviour was already exercising her brain to full capacity.
‘Mina and I require no introduction,’ Cesare drawled very softly, shooting Mina’s locked facial muscles a glance of veiled amusement. ‘Didn’t she mention our prior acquaintance?’
From somewhere, heaven knew where, Mina summoned up the self-possession to say, ‘I haven’t actually had the opportunity——’
‘Strive for a little candour, cara,’ Cesare cut in smoothly. ‘She probably didn’t mention the fact that she once worked for me because I sacked her.’
Sick to the stomach, absolutely shattered that Cesare should have calmly and smoothly dropped that shameful fact without a moment’s hesitation, Mina swerved dazed eyes to Edwin. The older man’s scrutiny had narrowed in astonishment and then his mouth tightened as he pressed a supportive hand to Mina’s whip-taut spine. ‘From the first day of her employment with us, Miss Carroll has proved herself to be an excellent, committed member of our team,’ he retorted very stiffly.
‘Sì…Mina’s ability to commit one hundred per cent is one of her most memorable qualities.’ Cesare laughed suggestively half under his breath while Mina stared at him in the appalled stasis of ever-deepening incredulity. She just couldn’t believe that this nightmare was really happening to her because she could not think of one single reason why Cesare should wish to humiliate her to such an extent. ‘But, sadly, she is a distraction one should not risk in the office.’
Mina drew herself up to her full five feet one inch. ‘If you will excuse me——’
‘You’re excused, cara,’ Cesare incised in a careless aside as if she weren’t there, his full attention coolly angled on Edwin Haland’s efforts to conceal his outrage.
‘Please excuse both of us, Mr Falcone.’ The older man breathed tautly, his anger visibly warring with his uneasy awareness that Cesare was a very wealthy patron whom he had no wish to offend.
Blocking out Cesare, Mina lifted her head high, but her face was paper-white. ‘I think it’s time I went home.’
‘I’ll take you,’ Edwin offered abruptly, and for some wild reason Mina felt a hysterical giggle clogging up her convulsing throat.
‘That won’t be necessary,’ she muttered tightly, moving away a step.
‘Let her back off,’ Cesare suggested with the same unbelievable calm, the only one of the three of them in supreme control. ‘She’s in a tight corner and she doesn’t want to answer awkward questions right now.’
‘How dare you talk about me as if I’m not here?’ Mina hissed.
‘Got a little above yourself while you’ve been away from me, haven’t you, cara?’ Cesare glued her to the spot with an icy look of warning. ‘Lose the habit fast.’
‘Mr Falcone——’ Edwin began.
Mina abruptly spun on her heel and walked away and it was the hardest thing she had ever had to do in her life. She reached the far side of the room, perspiration beading her upper lip, a terrible trembling quivering through her slender body in waves. Abstractedly, she registered that she was shaking with simple shock.
Had Cesare deliberately sought her out to be offensive? He had not been surprised to see her. How and why could he speak to her like that in front of her employer? Why would he set out to humiliate her in public? Why should he feel the need to smear her reputation in the most offensive possible way?
His assumption that she was sleeping with the older man had shattered her, and as for his threats…his reference to a desire for revenge…And he had accused her of running away four years ago! Mina prided herself on her quick intelligence but none of it made sense. The entire episode had the quality of a nightmare. The inexplicable only happened in nightmares. Why should Cesare hate her?
He hated her. Yes, he did. Mina lifted a slim hand to her throbbing brow but all that was travelling through her chaotic mind was, Why? Why, why, and why again? He had no reason to hate her. But Mina had every good reason to hate Cesare Falcone. Quite apart from what he had done to her career prospects, he had been the man she had loved and he had hurt her very badly. In the aftermath of that evening she had been made to feel like the cheapest, lowest of one-night stands. He had punished her for an episode in which he had played a more than equal part.
‘I never mix business and pleasure, cara,’ he had murmured that night, but she hadn’t even suspected that at the same time as he was making love to her he was also planning to sack her!
Her sister, Winona, had said bluntly, ’Could you work for him after that?’ and she had known that she could not. For Cesare, that night had been a mistake and he certainly hadn’t wanted her around the office after it. In one weak instant of surrender, Mina had apparently lost all claim to any form of respect or consideration.
If he had been so determined to get rid of her, he could have done so with decency. He could have offered her a transfer; Falcone Industries had branches in several other countries. Or he could at least have given her time in which to find other employment. Instead she had been ignominiously sacked on a trumped-up charge of misconduct which had blighted her prospects ever since and forced her to start again at the very bottom of the ladder.
Dear God, hadn’t she suffered enough? Why did he now confront her and seek to cause her more damage? Was he off his rocker? Cesare ran a conglomerate of companies whose worth ran into multi-millions. But, insane as it might seem, maybe Cesare Falcone had a screw loose somewhere in that brilliant innovative mind…and maybe there was something peculiar about her which somehow drew out this streak of wildly illogical and destructive aggression…only how come nobody else had ever had experience of his strange behaviour?
‘Do you want your coat?’
Mina blinked and found a bored-looking cloakroom attendant staring at her expectantly.
She was sliding stiff arms into her jacket when Edwin Haland appeared, looking flushed and troubled. ‘Mina…you’re leaving,’ he noted awkwardly.
‘It would appear to be the wisest solution,’ she replied.
‘I was quite appalled by his rudeness. It was inexcusable.’ The older man hesitated and then pressed on in a careful undertone, ‘When did you work for him?’
‘Just after I came out of college. It only lasted three months. He did sack me.’ Mina lifted her chin, her amethyst eyes strained but unflinchingly clear. ‘But let me assure you that that had nothing to do with my ability as an employee. I’m afraid that the reason I was dismissed was rather more personal than that,’ she completed, dry-mouthed.
Edwin looked pained, and frowned. ‘It’s most unfortunate. I can only hope Mr Falcone refrains from further comment in the presence of my fellow directors,’ he said with grave emphasis. ‘They would be most perturbed by his attitude. Mr Falcone is making a most generous contribution to our campaign, and naturally we don’t-want any friction between him and any member of our staff.’
Paler than ever, Mina whispered, ‘I understand.’
‘I’ll see you tomorrow.’
His offer of a lift hadn’t lasted long, not that she would have accepted it anyway. But she had noticed the determined formality he had pasted over his discomfiture. His usual rather old-fashioned friendliness had died a death in the interim since she had walked out of the room. And she wasn’t at all surprised. Cesare might as well have lifted a Tannoy and called her a cheap little tramp for the benefit of the room at large.
Edwin had been shocked, had initially sought to defend her, but a few minutes’ careful reflection had cooled him down and probably made him suspicious of her. After all, Cesare Falcone was a highly respected and very successful European businessman. Naturally, Edwin was now wondering what kind of behaviour it took to provoke such a derisive attack from a man of Cesare’s education and social standing this long after the event.
A hammerbeat of tension pounded now behind her temples. She had probably lost all chances of promotion. The position of finance manager, the successful candidate to be announced after tomorrow’s monthly directors’ meeting, would go elsewhere. Common sense told her that Edwin had to have reservations now. How likely was it that he would still recommend her when he knew that Cesare Falcone despised her?
The commissionaire at the exit offered to call her a taxi. Mina shook her head. A taxi was a luxury she couldn’t afford. She lived like a church mouse, gratefully accepted her sister’s cast-off clothing, and slept in a room no bigger than a cupboard during the week, just existing for Friday nights when she could catch the train back down to her sister’s home in Oxfordshire. The train fares cost her a fortune but Mina never missed a single weekend. They were too precious. But Sunday nights broke her heart and habit hadn’t lessened the pain of those partings from Susie. She walked down the well-lit street, fighting not to give in to despair, but it was the prospect of those Sunday-night partings stretching into infinity ahead of her which she could not face.
A car purred to the kerb several yards ahead of her. The passenger door fell open. As she hesitated, Cesare emerged from the driver’s side and stood contemplating her over the roof of his low-slung silver Ferrari. ‘Get in. I’ll give you a lift.’
‘The knight of the road,’ Mina framed shakily, wondering whether to scream or laugh, no longer sure what might qualify as an appropriate response. Nothing she had said or done had had the slightest effect on him. He was like that truck in Steven Spielberg’s first film, Duel. She had the terrifying feeling that no matter what she did he would keep on coming at her.
‘We have unfinished business.’
Mina dropped her head, shutting out those eyes of sizzling gold which seemed to reach out and utterly intimidate. ‘Leave me alone.’
‘Sending me to Coventry isn’t going to stop me,’ Cesare murmured harshly. ‘Get in the car.’
There was no hiding from the obvious. She had to find out what he meant by ‘unfinished business’ and straighten out whatever ludicrous misunderstanding lay behind his extraordinary behaviour. Stress had calmed her down, constrained the wilder reaches of her imagination. Cesare was ruthless, hot-tempered and as volatile as a slumbering volcano but he was not crazy.
She climbed in.
‘I’ll give you a choice,’ Cesare drawled, making no attempt to start the car again.
‘A choice?’ she echoed blankly.
‘You resign from your job.’
‘Resign? Are you out of your mind?’ Mina gasped in disbelief.
‘If you don’t resign, conscience demands that I drop a warning word in the relevant quarter,’ Cesare delivered in a grim undertone. ‘Finance manager—you? Sì…I know that you’re in line for promotion. And there is no way I can stand back and let you get your greedy little paws into charitable funds.’
Mina had been sitting there staring woodenly out through the windscreen, determinedly not looking at him. Now her head spun round as though he had jerked a wire. ‘Are you actually insinuating that I can’t be trusted with money?’ she spelt out in a strained whisper, her wide eyes incredulous at the suggestion.
‘I know you can’t be trusted.’ Cesare slanted her a look of stony derision. ‘Nor am I impressed by this infantile act of innocence. You committed a criminal offence four years ago and the law may not have been fast enough to pick up on the trail…but I was,’ he drawled in a seething undertone, shooting her a smouldering glance of menace. ‘I still have the evidence that could send you to prison——’
‘Prison?’ The single word exploded from between her dry lips, shrill and strangled, as she stared back at him in disbelief.
‘Insider dealing. The courts frown heavily on the offence. You could still be tried for it.’
Every scrap of colour had drained from her cheeks. Mina tried and failed to swallow. Insider dealing. He was accusing her of having used confidential information to trade for her own benefit on the Stock Exchange. The practice was illegal.
‘You’re crazy…I would never have done anything like that,’ Mina protested in a voice that was weak from sheer shock that he could believe her capable of such an act.
‘You’d have done it more than once if I’d given you the chance,’ Cesare asserted with icy bite, his profile golden and granite-hard in the street-light slanting through the windscreen. ‘But I didn’t. I sacked you and you took your ill-gotten gains and disappeared off the face of this planet!’
‘That’s not true. There weren’t any ill-gotten gains because I didn’t do it!’ she exclaimed shrilly, her heart pounding madly with fright against her ribcage.
Cesare’s ice-cold stare told her just how unimpressed he was by her protests.
‘I thought you sacked me because—because I slept with you!’ She had to force out the statement and she couldn’t bring herself to look at him.
‘Dio mio! The jury will surely break down and cry when they hear that defence,’ Cesare said with flat derision. ‘It is on record that you were sacked for gross misconduct.’
‘I know, but I——’
‘Popular report suggests that some prisons harbour big butch women. At seven stone and built like a doll, maybe you should consider getting into training.’
Mina was in such turmoil that she shrank back against the passenger door in horror. ‘I’m not going to prison…I haven’t done anything!’
‘Well, you’re certainly not about to do anything in the charity world.’ Cesare shot the assurance at her with cold threat. ‘With your talent for accounting, you could work any number of scams. I want you out of there as of now——’
‘But I haven’t done anything…I’m not dishonest!’ Mina slung back at him in helpless repetition and growing apprehension.
‘If you push me I’ll tell Haland, and I can back my allegations up with cold, hard evidence,’ Cesare returned with slashing cool. ‘And a man like Haland, with all those fine, upstanding principles, might just feel that when he’s informed of an illegal act it is his duty to report it to the authorities——’
‘And if you were so convinced I was guilty, why didn’t you call them in?’ Mina demanded wildly, fighting to find some angle on which she could base a defence.
‘It would have been like reporting a murder without the corpse. You’d vanished like a thief in the night.’ Cesare lounged back with indolent relaxation and surveyed her intently, eyes slivers of molten gold beneath the luxuriant fringe of his ebony lashes. ‘And I did entertain myself briefly with a vision of you becoming a prison mascot, but ultimately it didn’t satisfy me. I think the punishment should fit the crime——’
‘I haven’t committed any crime…why won’t you listen to me?’ she gasped.
‘You used pillow-talk for profit——’
‘Pillow-talk?’
‘You ripped off that information like a professional. You made a fool of me. I could have been dragged down in the dirt with you. Guilty by association. I have no doubt you intended to say that you traded on my behalf if you were caught,’ Cesare told her very softly, every accented syllable dropping into the throbbing silence. ‘Pull the dumb dizzy blonde act and insist you had no idea that what you were doing was against the law.’
‘You’re out of your m-mind!’ Mina was white, barely able to vocalise.
‘Say you were seduced, used,’ Cesare continued with harshened emphasis, pinning her to the spot with smouldering dark golden eyes that burned. ‘If you were a man I’d have killed you…but you’re a woman and I intend to use you exactly as you used me…’
CHAPTER TWO
‘I BEG your pardon?’ Mina was still reeling with shock, her brain thrown into total chaos by the shattering accusation that Cesare Falcone had dropped on her four years after the event.
There was too much for her to take in all at once. But, devastated though she was, there had been a terrifying ring of reality to his derision when she had tried to protest her belief that she had been fired for the sin of once sharing his bed. No matter how insane his allegations, she suddenly had no doubt that he truly believed that she had committed a crime. It explained his attitude towards her. Both in the present and in the past. His hatred and his aggression now made sense out of what had earlier seemed like insanity.
Her mind was working in slow motion, one tiny step at a time. Cesare thought she had been guilty of insider dealing. Worse, he believed she had used information which he had given her in trust. Worse still, he was convinced that if she had been apprehended by the authorities she would have lied and said she had been acting on his behalf and not her own.
‘I shall use you as you once set out to use me,’ Cesare asserted.
She cleared her throat with difficulty. ‘And how are you planning to do that?’
‘How do you think?’ Cesare dealt her a look of grim amusement. ‘I don’t think you’ll ever tangle with a Sicilian again.’
Mina drew in a deep, shaky breath. ‘I intend to take legal advice about the allegations you have made against me.’
‘Cast-iron allegations with proof.’
‘You couldn’t possibly have proof of something I didn’t do!’
‘If you’ve got any of that money left, I intend to take it off you. By the time I am finished with you——’
‘You’re not even going to start with me!’ Mina told him, suddenly frantic to get out of the Ferrari but wanting to do so with dignity.
A hard smile slashed Cesare’s expressive mouth. ‘Don’t tell me I can’t do what I’ve already begun. Did you really think that I would let you get away with it? You should have known I would be on your trail. It made my day when I saw your photo——’
‘My photo?’
‘On the front of Earth Concern’s newsletter. That was a careless move, but then you were unlucky. My staff deal with the charity flyers. Rarely have I had such literature thrust at me at dinner parties,’ Cesare said very drily. ‘But there you were, looking all prim and proper, standing beside Haland at some fund-raiser.’
Mina had forgotten that she had featured in that same newsletter which Jean had mentioned as having ignited Cesare’s interest in the charity. She had assumed that their meeting tonight had been a ghastly coincidence and that he had not realised that she worked for Earth Concern until he’d seen her. The news that he had had that prior knowledge shook her.
‘A lying, conniving little confidence trickster like you working in a position of trust for a charitable concern,’ Cesare outlined softly. ‘A concern no doubt full of well-intentioned people, motivated more by environmental awareness than good business sense and strict control of their funds. And along comes Mina like a fox into a coop of little fluffy chicks waiting to be plucked. Haland’s blood would freeze in his veins if he knew what you were capable of!’
‘How dare you call me a confidence trickster?’ Mina objected strickenly, her breath rasping in her throat. ‘There has been some hideous misunderstanding——’
‘And it would appear to be on your side.’ Cesare treated her to a look from hooded golden eyes that was curiously chilling. ‘I’ve tracked you down and I know exactly what you are. Don’t preach to the converted. Watching you simper up at Haland and blush took me way back. And you’re so cute, you’re so little,’ he stressed, studying her slight figure with blistering derision, his mouth twisting and then compressing into a bloodless line. ‘You make men feel protective. You stitched me up, too. I don’t blame the old goat for falling for the fragile feminine act hook, line and sinker. Dio mio, didn’t I fall for it too?’
The atmosphere was explosive. Suppressed rage quivered through every syllable in that final statement. Anger so fierce that she could taste it vibrated in him. Her mouth was dry, ‘Cesare, I——’
He reached out a powerful hand, closed it round one slender wrist and yanked her bodily forward. ‘Shut up,’ he intoned with vicious bite. ‘I won’t ever fall for it again, cara. I know how clever you are, but your greed betrays you as surely as a streak of fundamental stupidity. You’re a treacherous bitch, but life as you know it is about to change. Betraying me was a big mistake.’
Trembling, trapped by his immensely greater strength, she gaped at him. ‘I didn’t betray you!’
‘You betrayed me in every way there was. As an employee and as a lover!’ Cesare raked at her. ‘One unforgettable night when my every fantasy was fulfilled. A virgin, but a whore in the making!’
Mina lifted her free hand and hit him a crack across one hard cheekbone that numbed her fingers. And then she froze, appalled by the violence that had roared up inside her from a place she didn’t know. She had never struck another human being before.
‘Relax…you were the best I ever had.’
Mina went white, her lower lip wobbling. Cesare hadn’t even flinched from that ringing slap. Disorientatingly, he smiled, and that smile chilled her to her bones. It was like the smile on the face of a tiger after drawing first blood. He knew she had lost control and he was triumphant, even amused. With a soft laugh, he released her wrist.
Her breath sobbed in her throat as she made a frantic attempt to get out of the car, but the door wouldn’t open.
‘It’s locked,’ Cesare said gently, and fired the engine.
‘Where are you taking me?’
‘Back to your pathetically poor bed-sit. Presumably chosen to yank at Haland’s heart-strings. He must be very naïve,’ Cesare delivered. ‘Ain’t no way what you’ve got on your back fits the poverty-stricken image you’re striving to put out for his benefit.’
‘The suit is borrowed,’ Mina said jerkily, and she didn’t even know why she was bothering to make that trivial explanation. Her nerves felt like elastic cruelly stretched and ready to snap.
‘Sure it is,’ Cesare mocked. ‘Fits like a glove, too. You just happen to have a best friend as short as you are?’
Mina pressed an unsteady hand against her throbbing temples. ‘How do you know where I live?’
‘I know.’
‘Please let me out of this car.’
‘So that you can scarper? One false move in that direction, cara, and you’ll live to regret it for the rest of your life.’
‘Stop threatening me!’
‘Beginning to feel those claustrophobic prison walls closing in around you, cara?’ he chided.
‘Since there is not the remotest chance that I could be in danger of going to prison for something I haven’t done,’ Mina stressed in the sudden fury that finally broke through layer after layer of shock, ‘I’m not too bothered!’
‘Liar…you’re shaking in your child-sized shoes. But it ought to be a relief to escape the shackles of the cleanliving, do-gooding role you’ve been playing for Haland’s delectation. Not that you appeared to enjoy having your image dented this evening,’ Cesare reminded her without remorse.
‘What you said was unforgivable!’
‘I told the whole truth and nothing but the truth. I was tempted to tell him a whole lot more but I would have looked tacky then,’ he conceded wryly.
‘I am not resigning from my job.’
‘Then I bring the roof down on you. I withhold my donation to Earth Concern’s excellent work in the field of environmental awareness——’
‘You wouldn’t!’ Mina exclaimed in horror.
‘And I explain that I cannot place such a large sum of money in the control of a charity employing a woman I know to be untrustworthy and dishonest.’
Mina bent her head, utterly shattered by the speed of that unflinching assurance.
‘I should think you would be as welcome at the office as a blizzard in July after that.’
‘I could sue you for defamation of character!’ Mina threw at him wildly.
‘And the evidence I would produce would throw the case out of court on the first day and leave you facing other, even less palatable options. I’d nail you to the wall—why risk marking that beautiful skin?’
He could not have evidence of something she hadn’t done! But evidently someone in Falcone Industries, someone at board level had been insider dealing. Cesare had found evidence and mistakenly traced it back to her. Was that some horrible accident or was it possible that the real guilty party had deliberately laid a false trail which implicated her? Was she being paranoid? Her flesh chilled at the idea that four years ago somebody she worked with might well have set her up as a target to protect his own back.
In the thundering silence Cesare pulled the Ferrari into the kerb and killed the engine. ‘Where do you go at weekends?’ he murmured lazily.
Mina went rigid, her golden head spinning round, stricken amethyst eyes wide before she hurriedly veiled them.
Cesare lounged back in his seat, his vibrantly handsome features hard as marble in the shadows. ‘Every weekend…every vacation,’ he spelt out, toying with her by revealing how much he already knew about her movements. ‘Do you have a husband tucked away somewhere—a partner in crime?’
‘Don’t be r-ridiculous!’
‘A lover, then,’ Cesare decided with complete impassivity. ‘He’s out. I won’t be giving you weekends off——’
‘What on earth are you talking about?’
Or the freedom to sneak into other beds. Though I doubt that you’ll have the energy. You’ll be fully occupied keeping me happy, and I’m not that easy to live with round the clock,’ Cesare mused, quite untouched by the stunned look on her face. ‘I’m low on patience, high on demand——’
‘I’m not going to be living with you,’ Mina mumbled in a choked voice.
‘I don’t care what you call it, but you are most certainly going to be the leading feature in my bed every night.’ Cesare rested his ebony head back with indolent grace and appraised her with eyes that glittered diamond-hard, his relaxation emphasising his innate confidence that he had the whip-hand.
‘You’re off your trolley!’ Mina snatched in a jagged breath, outrage taking over. ‘I’d throw myself off a cliff before I’d let you touch me again!’
‘I don’t think so…’
‘I know so!’ Mina launched back.
‘You got something else to trade for my silence?’ Cesare enquired smoothly as he slanted a sardonic smile at her.
As the ramifications of that question sank in, Mina’s shattered gaze clung to his cool gold one. ‘You’re trying to blackmail me,’ she whispered in horror.
‘Has to be the knock-on effect of the low company I’m keeping.’ Cesare cast her an intent look, unconcerned by her accusation. ‘And it’s not one quarter as sordid as what you did to me. You traded sex for information and profit. You sold me out for the requisite thirty pieces of silver. What does that make you? You used me——’
‘I wouldn’t use anyone like that!’
‘Pay-back time, cara. Don’t bother working out your notice for Haland. That’s over and he’ll never know what a narrow escape he had, thanks to my intervention. I’ll pick you up tomorrow night at eight. OK,’ he positively purred, and it wasn’t a question. ‘You can go and get your beauty sleep now.’
Mina swallowed hard and began to slide out of the car, but Cesare moved too and reached for her before she could register what he intended. He tugged her back across the seat as if she were a doll. ‘Come here…’
‘Get your hands off me!’ she exploded.
‘I want something on account first.’
Anchoring long fingers into her silky hair, Cesare held her fast, sweeping her upturned face with heavily lidded golden eyes.
‘Let…go…of…me,’ Mina told him breathlessly.
‘Take up the weight training—you’re likely to be in dire need of it.’ His accented drawl had thickened and fractured, spilling out warning flares into an atmosphere already vibrating with fierce tension.
‘No…’ she mumbled, clashing unavoidably with the scorching charge of his heated gaze.
‘Never say no to me,’ Cesare intoned huskily. ‘When you slam a door in my face, I kick it down.’
She had forgotten—oh, dear God, how could she have forgotten?—how he could make her feel. It was terrifying… It was as though a physical force-field enclosed her, locking out every brain-wave. Her own heartbeat pounded in her eardrums. Excitement, raw and dangerous, leapt through every single skin-cell. Her breasts were already stirring beneath the thin barrier of her bra, her nipples pinching into sudden painful tightness.
‘Stop it…’ she framed unevenly, yet she was trapped in unmoving stasis.
‘But I’m not doing anything…yet.’ He lowered his gleaming dark head slowly. Her breath hung suspended and then he pressed his mouth hotly to the tiny pulse flickering wildly above her collarbone. Every bone in her body melted in a burst of feverish heat. Her head fell back, her throat extending. She trembled violently, an upswell of sensation suddenly released with devastating force. Her hands flew up of their own volition, one finding his shoulder, the other spearing into his hair, and just touching him again felt so good that she ached.
Raising his head, he ravaged her soft mouth with a sudden devouring hunger that took her by storm. He prised her lips apart with the tip of his tongue and then plundered the tender interior with carnal expertise. Her fingernails dug into his shoulder, a passion wilder than anything she had ever known consuming her as she answered that sensual demand, returning his kisses with all the fire of her own response.
Without warning, Cesare tore himself free. Hard hands clamping round her slender forearms, he thrust her back from him, fierce derision stamped in his lean features as he looked down at her and released his pent-up breath in a hiss. ‘Natural talent like you wouldn’t believe,’ he drawled with contempt. ‘Maybe I picked the wrong punishment…or maybe you’re stupid enough to think you can con me into leaving you cosily ensconced in that charity.’
Mina wiped the back of her hand across her reddened mouth in a violent gesture of shuddering self-disgust. Her amethyst eyes shimmered with hatred. Wrenching at the door, she shot out of the car and stood on the pavement, ashamed to discover that her legs felt weak and shaky.
‘If you don’t leave me alone, you’ll find that you’re digging up a whole lot more trouble than you’ll want to handle!’ she told him tightly.
‘Is that a threat?’ Cesare enquired softly.
Mina wanted to scream. Briefly she closed her burning eyes. ‘No, Cesare, that’s not a threat, because, unlike you, I don’t make threats. It’s a warning. You wrecked my life four years ago and only now do I find out why…’ As her throat closed over, her voice cracked and she threw her head back, snatching in oxygen to continue. ‘But whoever it was who traded information for profit it wasn’t me! You’ve got the wrong culprit——’
‘Like hell I have!’
‘I won’t allow you to victimise me again,’ Mina swore tremulously, a tide of dammed-up tears gritty behind her eyelids. ‘I need my job and I’m not resigning from it! So leave me alone!’
‘Tomorrow night—eight,’ Cesare specified, and slammed the door.
Minutes later, Mina sank down on her bed in her tiny room and covered her working face with her hands. Insider dealing—how could he have believed that of her? How many twenty-two-year-olds fresh out of college would be up to such illegality? Where was she supposed to have got the funds which would have been necessary even to begin playing the stock market? Four long years, and she was only finding out now that that was why he had sacked her!
He had accused her of disappearing into thin air. That meant that he must have tried to contact her again. She loosed an embittered laugh. She had received the notice of her termination of employment outside working hours. It had been delivered by special messenger and it had come all the way from Hong Kong, where Cesare had been at the time.
She had been within days of moving into a new flat, but the loss of her job had meant that she could no longer afford to make that move. It had also meant that she had to surrender the sizeable deposit she had put down. If Roger and Winona had not returned from France because her brother-in-law’s father was seriously ill, she might well have found herself homeless. Only three months out of college, her financial situation had been anything but buoyant.
But not too many weeks had gone by before Mina was forced to face the fact that her wrecked career, her broken heart and her savaged sense of humiliation could be completely overshadowed by the hard reality of an unplanned pregnancy. Cesare’s child, conceived in love, passion and irresponsibility. Mina had been devastated by the discovery that she was expecting a baby. After a great deal of heartache and soul-searching, she had reached the painful conclusion that the best option for her unborn child was adoption.
‘We’ll see,’ Winona had said quietly. And when her baby was born Mina had found that she could not bear to part with her, and the past three years had been one long, tough struggle to give her daughter the best she could, and for over two years that had meant living apart from Susie during the week and seeing her only at weekends.
Dear God, she hated Cesare, and yet when he had hauled her into his arms, when he had kissed her… Furiously she scrubbed at her swollen mouth again, loathing herself. How could he make her feel like that again? Her response had been mindless, wanton and utterly divorced from intellect. Four years ago she had been head over heels in love, and the passionate desire he had awakened in her had for the whole of one unforgettable night seemed as natural a part of that love as breathing.
But the events which had followed had taught her to bitterly regret her own lack of control. She could not even say that Cesare had misled her as to the exact nature of his intentions. They had gone in the space of minutes from the first kiss to the nearest bed, and she hadn’t once thought about what she was doing—indeed, had fondly imagined that Cesare had been similarly swept away by an explosive passion.
Now a little older, and she hoped a lot wiser, she knew differently. Cesare had simply taken what he realised was on offer and she had been pitifully naïve, the victim of her own equally silly romantic fantasies, to think for one moment that it meant anything more to him than the slaking of a momentary lust for a female body.
And tonight he had reached for her in a macho powerplay, seeking to humble her even further. Instead of angrily fighting him off, she had welcomed him, unable to resist the raw potency of his attraction. The acknowledgement filled her with shame. Was it any wonder that Cesare fondly imagined she was promiscuous? Maybe that was preferable to him thinking that she was sex-starved and a push-over, she decided, inwardly cringing from the painful revelation of her own weakness.
On a rolling wave of angry defiance, she got into bed. Tomorrow she was going into work. She would call his bluff. Tonight Cesare had had the advantage of surprise, and she had been so shocked by his accusations that he had walked all over her. But if he showed up tomorrow night she would call the police and accuse him of harassing her! See how he liked that…
Who the heck did he think he was? Not content with falsely accusing her of a crime, he then tried to deny her the right to earn a living, and he threatened her! Then, she knew Cesare’s temperament. Cesare was a creature of deep, dark moods where his emotions were concerned, and Cesare had been seething for the past four years.
It was funny how that made her feel good—the thought of him seething quite took her headache away. Susie had that temper too, she reflected, and then pushed the too intimate acknowledgement away again. Suddenly she began looking at the situation from his point of view, and on some insanely illogical level his viewbriefly—tickled her pink.
Cesare believed she had run rings round him. He might be all smooth sophistication on the surface, but underneath he was as liberated as Stone Age man. The mere idea that a woman had put one over on him must have been a deeply devastating blow to his ego. A concept so injurious to his pride was an insult to his masculinity. Therefore the slur had to be wiped out, the balance redressed…but in private. Well, if Cesare thought for one slippery moment that she was dumb enough to be blackmailed back into his bed, it was time he thought again!
Mina was on the phone at about eleven o’clock when Edwin Haland made his first appearance the next morning. He looked tired and strained and he avoided her gaze as he passed by her desk and entered his office. A few minutes later, he called her in.
He cleared his throat awkwardly. ‘I’m late in because I had an appointment at Falcone Industries.’
Mina tensed, her brows drawing together.
‘After what I witnessed last night, I felt I had to enquire further into the reasons for your dismissal.’
She turned very pale, her spine tautening. ‘I gather you weren’t satisfied with my explanation——’
‘It wasn’t a question of personal feelings,’ he said heavily. ‘But I was troubled that you had concealed the fact that you had formerly been employed by Cesare Falcone.’
Mina stiffened and flushed but she made no comment. An honest c.v. wouldn’t have got her a job with Earth Concern and she had been desperate to find employment at the time.
‘There’s no point in dragging this sorry business out.’ Edwin Haland sighed with unhidden discomfiture. ‘I’m afraid that dishonesty with money is not a matter which can be overlooked in an enterprise such as this.’
In a daze of sick shock, Mina flinched. Cesare had brought the roof down on her exactly as he had threatened to do, yet for some ridiculous reason she did not want to accept that even Cesare could expose her to this level of appalling humiliation. ‘But I——’
Edwin moved a silencing hand. ‘I really don’t want the details, Mina.’
‘Have you ever heard of innocent until proven guilty?’ Mina probed shakily.
He turned his head away and made no response. ‘I would like to ask you to tender your resignation without dragging us all through a great deal of unpleasantness. During your time with us you have been an excellent worker, and I am willing to give you a reference on the basis of those two years.’
‘You want me to leave because Cesare doesn’t want me here and you’re scared he’ll withhold the funds he’s promised for the campaign,’ Mina translated between clenched teeth. Woodenly, she nodded. ‘Fine. I’ll leave now. But when I clear my name, Edwin, you will apologise to me, because I believed that you, at least, knew me better than this!’
Never mind the promotion you were worrying about, what about the job you thought you did have? she thought as she left his office. In the space of twenty-four hours, Cesare had shattered her life again. And she couldn’t believe it. Of course, she could have stayed on at the charity until they found a real reason to sack her, but her pride was too great to stand the mortification of working beside a man who thought she was some kind of a thief and who could no longer meet her eyes! As it was she had a reference and Edwin’s assurance that he would not tell anyone why she had chosen to leave.
Everything up in smoke! Acrid tears burned her eyes. How long would it take her to find another job? How long to prove herself again? Her plans to bring Susie up to London to live with her as soon as she could afford somewhere better to live had been blown to smithereens, and she had worked so long towards that goal.
Now, all of a sudden, she was back where she had been three years ago but far less optimistic. Dear heaven, why had she ever got involved with Cesare Falcone? He was like a curse following her around. What had she ever done to deserve this? Awash with rage and humiliation, Mina’s sense of injustice was bitterly intense, but beneath all of that was this terrible pain that Cesare could have sunk so low.
She was walking down the street where she lived when she saw the Ferrari. Ferraris were not a regular sight there. The glossy paintwork gleamed in the sunshine, a jewel in a sea of beat-up cars. She knew it was Cesare. When she was within twenty feet, he sprang out and strode round the bonnet.
She stopped dead, smitten with bloodlust at the sight of him, finding every single detail of his immaculate appearance offensive: the light grey Italian suit, tailored to a perfect fît over those wide shoulders and long, lean legs, the pale blue silk shirt which accentuated the all-the-year-round gold of his skin, the hand-stitched shoes. A couple of giggling teenage girls on the other side of the street wolf-whistled at him. Par for the course for Cesare. He was a visual feast, she conceded with a spasm of self-hatred.
‘Mina…’
‘Come to gloat?’ she slashed back at him, wondering why he wasn’t smiling like the shark he was. In fact, as he stilled in the sunlight, she noticed his tension. It sprang out at her in the tautness of stance, his clenched jawline, the darkness of his deep-set eyes below his level brows.
‘It wasn’t me who spoke to Haland. I was out of the office,’ he intoned flatly.
Why did that sound so much like a plea for understanding? What a crazy idea, she thought, consigning it to oblivion. Cesare knew how to do an awful lot of things, but pleading didn’t feature in the list. And what did he mean by saying that he hadn’t spoken to her former employer?
‘He saw Sandro,’ Cesare completed.
Cesare’s brother, Sandro the creep, Mina reflected with an inner shudder of distaste. Her stomach heaved at the awareness that Sandro was apparently acquainted with the murky details of her so-called dishonesty.
A mere year Cesare’s junior, Sandro was a foulmouthed, workshy, ignorant boor who without the protection of his big brother would not have been employed by any reputable company. That Sandro had been in a position to destroy her reputation in a cosy little chat with Edwin Haland was somehow the most gross betrayal of all. It was the ultimate humiliation.
‘It doesn’t really matter who saw him, does it? Unless you’re back-tracking on what you said last night and were planning to mount a cover-up on my behalf!’ Mina vented a sharp little laugh at that ridiculous idea and surveyed him with unhidden loathing.
Cesare was oddly pale beneath his bronzed skin. His gaze flared gold as he connected with that look of hers, and his beautifully shaped mouth twisted. Mina stood there, quivering with bitter resentment and distress, and damned him with her eyes.
‘We need to talk,’ he murmured in a taut undertone.
‘The only person I need to talk to right now is a solicitor, and I am so grateful that your slime-bag of a brother has put himself in the hot seat beside you, because now I can kill two birds with one stone…and, believe me, I intend to!’ Mina slung at him rawly, yet knowing even as she spoke that there was no way she would carry out such a threat. ‘Now get out of my way!’
His strong jawline clenched. ‘I would not advise approaching a solicitor——’
‘Oh, boy, I just bet you wouldn’t! After all, it’s a free world, isn’t it? It’s OK for you to go around telling filthy lies about me and putting me out of yet another job, but no, it wouldn’t be a good idea for me to try and defend myself. Who do you think you’re kidding?’ Mina demanded aggressively, her fists clenching when he still neglected to step out of her path. ‘Move, Cesare!’
Cesare continued to stare at her as though he was mesmerised, brooding golden eyes intently fixed on her. Outraged by his lack of response, Mina planted a small hand against his broad chest to thrust him out of her way. A lean hand whipped up and unexpectedly trapped hers, preventing her from withdrawal.
‘What the heck are you——?’ she began.
Without the smallest warning he grabbed her right there in the middle of the street. Two strong hands clamped to her waist as he lifted her up against him and brought his mouth smashing down on hers with an explosive sexual hunger that travelled through her like forked lightning.
A stifled gasp of shock escaped low in her throat and then, equally abruptly, Cesare was lowering her back to the pavement again, sliding her with instinctive sensuality against every fiercely taut line of his long, powerful body.
Her head swimming, her mouth tingling, every thought an effort, she discovered for herself what had provoked that sudden assault. Her cheeks burned as she felt the unmistakable thrust of his male arousal. In the middle of an argument, too, she conceded, hopelessly disconcerted by the mysteries of the masculine libido.
‘Dio!’ he grated in a seething undertone. ‘I want you so much, I ache…’
CHAPTER THREE
SUDDENLY appalled by the awareness that she was standing submissively in the circle of his arms, Mina broke free, clumsily side-stepped him and vanished through the battered door a few feet behind him. She thudded up the narrow stairs, reaching the top landing in record time as she fumbled for her key and stuck it in the lock. She only heard Cesare behind her as she pushed open the door.
‘Go away!’
In one long stride he was in front of her, preventing her from slamming the door in his face. ‘Per amor di Dio…’ he whispered, looking over the top of her head at the tiny, claustrophobic room as bare and tidy as a cell.
‘I don’t want you in here!’ Mina snapped.
With an arrogant hand, Cesare pressed her back and stepped inside. There was very little floor space. There was a bed, a small table against one wall to carry a two-ring burner, and a curtained alcove for storage on the other. He surveyed his surroundings with an air of incredulous distaste.
‘It’s clean. You’re not likely to catch anything.’ Mina was horribly embarrassed but struggling not to show the fact. ‘Maybe you’d like to conduct a search for the loot you’re so convinced I’ve got!’
Cesare angled his dark head back to her. ‘You cleared over a quarter of a million pounds on the stock-market. I assume you have it salted away somewhere safe—perhaps in property down in the country where you spend your weekends?’ Diamond-hard dark eyes glittered over her, scanning for the smallest change of expression.
Her lower lip dropped from her upper. ‘A quarter of a million, and you think I’d be living here like a rat in a cage?’
‘It would have been very foolish of you to flaunt it, but this…’ Cesare spread fastidious brown fingers as he took another almost fascinated glance around. ‘This dump is decided overkill. Your salary at Earth Concern might have been low, but it would certainly have enabled you to live more comfortably than this,’ he informed her drily.
‘Maybe I have expenses you don’t know about.’ As soon as she said it she regretted it, her profile pinching tight with tension. ‘A quarter of a million,’ she muttered in a hurried aside, very tempted to laugh like a hyena as she imagined how different the last few years would have been had she had access to even a tithe of that amount of money.
‘What did you do with it?’ Cesare enquired grimly.
‘I never had it, for goodness’ sake,’ Mina retorted wearily, suddenly totally fed up with the thankless task of reiterating her innocence to someone determined not to listen to her.
‘You deposited fifty thousand in your current account—what did you do with the rest of it?’
Fifty thousand. Alarm bells went off like Klaxons inside her head. A month after Mina had been sacked she had been stunned to receive a bank statement which informed her that she was miraculously fifty thousand pounds richer than she had thought she was. She had immediately contacted the bank to tell them that there had been a mistake and that the money they had credited to her account could not be hers. Incredibly they hadn’t been interested and had indeed assured her that there had been no mistake.
For a couple of days she had actually wondered if Cesare had deposited the money as a pay-off to salve his own conscience for the brutal way he had treated her. But that explanation had struck her as unlikely. In all, it had taken her quite a few weeks to persuade the bank that they had to take that money back out of her account. Finally they had done so and a while after that, when she had asked, a bank clerk had gone off to enquire and returned to tell her that yes, there had been a mistake and the money had since been returned to its true owner.
‘How did you know what was in my account?’ Mina probed.
‘I have my methods. Now perhaps you’ll cease this painful refusal to admit the truth,’ Cesare suggested.
Mina burned with bitterness. It was too much of a coincidence. She had been smoothly set up as a fall guy. Cesare had been able to trace some of the money right back to her. Somebody had laid a careful trail for him, but who? And how could she ever find out and prove her own innocence? Surely the bank had a record of that transfer of the fifty thousand into another account? Well, she wasn’t about to waste her breath sharing her suspicions with Cesare, who would doubtless think that in fear of investigation she had transferred the money elsewhere in a belated attempt to cover her own tracks.
‘You’ve only been with that charity for two years,’ Cesare persisted. ‘Where were you for the other two years? Travelling? Partying?’
It had been no blasted party in that labour ward, Mina thought in sudden rage; nor had the second year been any more entertaining. Ignoring family protests, she had been determined to go it alone with Susie. She had worked in a series of lousy jobs, most often brought to an end by an inability to find a reliable child-minder whom she could afford to pay.
In fact she had practically starved before she’d accepted that she could either fall back on the social services, who would then have sought child support for Susie from Cesare, or go back to Roger and Winona with her tail between her legs. Of the two options, family had won out. Mina would sooner have slept on a park bench than have Cesare know that she had given birth to his child. A man who slept with you one night and sacked you the next was hardly keen father material. Cesare had made his indifference cruelly clear. He had treated her like the dirt beneath his feet and she would never, ever forget that experience.
‘Partying,’ Cesare decided, searching her flushed and defensive face.
Mina threw back her head, provoked beyond tolerance. ‘Why not?’
‘Who with?’ Cesare grated roughly.
Mina shrugged, moving a few feet to the small window, bitterly amused by his anger. Fool that she was, she hadn’t seen this weakness in Cesare last night. He still wanted her; he still found her attractive. Why was she so shattered by that revelation? Sexual chemistry did not automatically go hand in glove with respect and liking. Hadn’t she learnt that to her own cost last night? She hated him but he could still smash her defences just by touching her, just by coming too close, awakening her with the flaring gold of his beautiful eyes. Cesare was a very sexual personality. So why shouldn’t he be vulnerable too? It was poetic justice.
‘I asked you who with?’ he repeated curtly.
‘Far be it from me to ask what business that is of yours!’ Mina spun round and her eyes clashed with the glittering gold threat in his.
‘I want to know, and I also want to know where you go at weekends,’ he spelt out between clenched teeth.
‘Do I get to ask what you’ve been doing with your weekends for the past four years?’ Mina suddenly heard herself spit back at him, and she didn’t even know where that question had come from, didn’t recall thinking it. But all of a sudden she knew she hated Cesare even more than she had thought.
‘I asked you first. How many men have you been with?’
‘How many women have you been with?’ she launched back furiously.
Cesare snatched in an audible breath and strode forward. ‘The weekends. Who is he?’
Mina reflected on the considerable amount of time she spent with Roger’s grandfather, whom she had known since she was three years old. Baxter Keating was a lovely old man, who shared his large country house with Roger and Winona and was as careful as Mina was not to intrude any more than necessary on the couple’s privacy.
‘He’s a lot older than you,’ she murmured with vicious sweetness, wanting to shock, wanting to anger.
Cesare went rigid, satisfyingly so. ‘Married?’
‘Widowed.’
‘Is he likely to marry you?’ he bit out.
‘No,’ she said with perfect truth.
‘But you go down to his home at weekends…and you live with him,’ Cesare framed in a thunderous, raw undertone that sent tiny little tremors running up her taut spinal column. A confession that she spent her weekends at orgies could not have drawn a more appalled response.
‘If you didn’t want the truth, you shouldn’t have asked,’ Mina dared, priding herself on not having told a single lie. And, since what she had pretended to confess would naturally be a total turn-off for a man as fastidious as Cesare, hopefully he would now leave her alone.
With a nerve-racking abruptness that made her flinch, he swung away from her and then disconcertingly swung back, his strong face set like stone. ‘Presumably he bought the clothes you were wearing last night?’
‘Yes.’ Roger worked for his grandfather, managing the family estate. Roger financed Winona’s wardrobe.
‘Clearly you have spent all the money.’
‘I have a small overdraft.’ Gosh, this dialogue was fun, she thought nastily, enjoying the feeling that she had Cesare on the run.
His eloquent mouth was flattened into a bloodless line but there was an arc of darker colour highlighting his savage cheekbones and the stark clarity of his gaze. ‘Without shame, you admit to me that you are——’
‘Morally weak.’
‘The activities you confess to are not one step removed from prostitution,’ Cesare condemned with the oddest tremor interfering with his usually perfect diction.
Mina lost colour but held fast. He was absolutely disgusted. Another few minutes and he would be gone, put to flight by her moral depravity.
‘Haland?’ he enunciated.
Mina reddened fiercely. ‘No!’
‘Madre di Dio…God has some mercy…’ Cesare expelled his breath and surveyed her with fiercely narrowed eyes. ‘You will not communicate in any way with this man again,’ he told her with menacing harshness. ‘Nor will you ever offend me again by referring to the liaison.’
Events had taken a sudden violently off-balancing swerve into unknown and unexpected territory. Mina blinked rapidly. ‘I——’
‘Not another word,’ Cesare cut in rawly. ‘Dio! How the hell could you tell me such truth? Could you not have lied?’ He spat something in angry Italian, slashed a furious hand through the air, making her jump back a step, and then appeared to get a grip on his rage again. ‘No, it is better that I know the truth.’
‘I think you should go now.’ Mina was keen to give him a helping hand back in the direction of the exit she had been expecting him to make.
‘Why?’ Cesare slung her a derisive look of smouldering aggression. ‘When you’ve just given me the price——’
Without understanding, she frowned. ‘What price?’
‘You’re the one who has told me that you are any man’s possession for the right price, and I’m prepared to pay it to have you in my bed,’ Cesare drawled with a positive shudder of unconcealed fury.
Sharply disconcerted by the even less anticipated response he was now making, Mina licked her dry lips. ‘I——’
‘You told me quite deliberately, you shameless…’ With a seething hiss, Cesare clenched his even white teeth and bit back whatever he had been about to call her. ‘You know how much I want you. You just stuck on a pricetag!’
Mina almost choked in an effort to swallow. Cesare had withstood that farrago of gruesome lies about her lover in the country? He might be within a death-defying inch of reaching out and choking the life out of her for her apparent promiscuity and greed but, on the brink of murder or otherwise, he was ready to embark upon financial negotiation for her sexual favours.
Mina had never been more appalled or more shattered. It was not a compliment, but Cesare wanted her that much? He had been so cool, so controlled last night. This afternoon he was neither. She had never seen him out of control before. Involuntarily she was fascinated by the play of vibrant, strong emotions across his rawly handsome features. He was fighting a very close fight between a desire to kill her and a desire to—oh!
A flush of heat prickling across her skin, every muscle tightening, Mina dredged her attention from the explicit sexuality of the all-male gaze roaming hotly over her.
‘I don’t think I’m really your type,’ she muttered weakly, beginning to wonder if she belonged in an asylum.
‘Someday, somehow, perhaps when I have sated this obscene craving for your body, I will take this out on your hide,’ Cesare swore, like someone making a blood oath over a grave. ‘I will punish you for this filthy negotiation that reduces me to the level of an animal!’
Dry-mouthed on the feeling that she had foolishly unleashed a whole lot more than she could handle in that brooding Sicilian temperament, Mina backed to the window, still refusing to look at him, not trusting herself, not trusting him, feeling with every fibre of her body the passion flaming reckless fingers of fire into the atmosphere between them. ‘Cesare…I didn’t mean to——’
‘To think I could have saved myself from this,’ he grated. ‘The first day when you walked into that interview I decided I could not possibly employ a woman whom I wanted to strip and fling onto the nearest bed!’
Helplessly her head flew up. She couldn’t believe her ears.
‘I gave you a nightmare interview…and you took it,’ Cesare condemned with lingering disbelief at such unfeminine strength of will and staying power.
‘You were trying to scare me off?’ Mina questioned in a tone of revelation.
‘I was a fool. I gave you the job.’
Mina’s mouth curved downwards. He had been lusting after her from the start but he hadn’t shown it. He had played a waiting game, doubtless entertaining himself with the prospect of her willing and grateful surrender at the end of his little game. Wham-bam, but not thank you, ma’am.
She had been as naïve as a lamb skipping into the slaughterhouse and she was exceedingly tempted to demand to know why he hadn’t taken precautions. Considering that she had dissolved into mindless joy at his first kiss and he had been the experienced partner, she was still astounded by his reckless disregard for the consequences. Only then did it occur to her, for the very first time, that where Susie was concerned she had absolutely no regrets about that night. She could not imagine life without her daughter.
‘But now, at least, I know the kind of woman I am dealing with!’ Cesare asserted with driven savagery.
Dragged back to the present, she discovered that Cesare was now so close that she could feel the heat of him. Her spine was already in contact with the window behind her. ‘You know nothing about me!’ she protested shakily.
‘You excite me—what else is important?’ he said thickly, regarding her with sizzling intensity from the vantage point of his greatly superior height.
Her breasts were stirring, swelling. A heady languor was sweeping through her limbs, a betraying twist of high-voltage sexual awareness curling low in the pit of her stomach. But she fought every treacherous sensation with all her might, wild colour burnishing her openly dismayed face. ‘You don’t even like me…you called me a thief and a confidence trickster!’ she gasped. ‘How can you still——?’
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