by Lynne Graham
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 t
hudded 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.
&n
bsp; 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——’