by Lynne Graham
‘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 imag
ined 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.’