A Savage Betrayal

by Lynne Graham

‘Try!’ he raked down at her with lethal emphasis.

  To her horror she felt the sting of tears and tore her gaze defensively from his. He had branded her a criminal, hounded her out of her job, deprived her of wellearned promotion, and she had rewarded that list of offences not with fury but with the gift of her body. Dear God, what was wrong with her? What was happening to her?

  He sprang up again. ‘Don’t pretend that you didn’t want me as much as I wanted you,’ he murmured with cruel bite. ‘And don’t get me mixed up with any of your other bed partners. Crocodile tears leave me cold. I can see right through you——’

  ‘You’re blind!’ Mina muttered strickenly, bowing her head over her raised knees.

  ‘Stronger than you are. Harder than you are,’ Cesare informed her crushingly. ‘And a whole lot nastier when I’m crossed. Remember that and we’ll get on fine.’

  She heard the door open.

  ‘Eight tonight. If you pull yourself together by then, I’ll take you out to dinner.’

  ‘You don’t say,’ Mina breathed in a deadened voice.

  ‘You look as if you could do with feeding up——’

  ‘The way you fatten a turkey up for the oven.’ She felt physically sick, fully punished already for her own wanton lack of control in his arms. He would feed her and bed her. Use her until he got bored and, heaven knew, Cesare didn’t stay with any woman for very long. He was determined to turn her into the equivalent of a sex toy he played with when he was in the mood, and she was willing to bet that he wasn’t planning dinner anywhere where he might run into his friends or the Press.

  ‘What the hell is the matter with you?’ he suddenly shot at her.

  She flinched. ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Stop looking so bloody pathetic, then!’

  She curved her trembling hands round her knees. ‘I’m tired, that’s all,’ she muttered, simply desperate for him to leave.

  He bent down and tugged with disturbing gentleness at a strand of her tumbled golden hair. ‘I didn’t plan it this way,’ he murmured, crouching down beside the bed. ‘But I’d be a liar if I said I was sorry it happened. I don’t want you to have any defences with me.’

  ‘No,’ she conceded unevenly, well aware that he had quite deliberately ripped all her defences away in one cathartic encounter, and that now he was on a high, callously unconcerned by what that same encounter might have done to her.

  ‘Get some sleep…Dio mio…how could anyone sleep in this coffin?’ he muttered with raw distaste.

  He caught her hand and pressed a key into it with a grim sigh. ‘You can stay in my town house but only for a couple of days. I’ll send a car over to pick you up in an hour.’ He straightened, strode back to the door again. ‘I get in about six,’ he murmured huskily.

  And on this occasion she could read his mind. It made her cringe. She listened to the door close, a sob stuck like a giant boulder in her aching throat. Never, ever again would she allow him to do this to her. She would be out of here for good long before that hour was up, and so what if running like a rabbit was craven?

  With the resistance she had to Cesare Falcone, only yet another complete fresh start would suffice. With him she was a tramp, wholly deserving of every insult he directed at her. It didn’t matter that she had never been with any other man. Her pride and her intelligence had all the consistency of jelly around Cesare. But what mattered most of all was what he could do to her emotions.

  She was lost in a terrifying sea of pain and drained of fight and anger. She could never recall experiencing such bitter turmoil. At the back of her mind she knew that, regardless of everything, running away wasn’t going to take the pain of self-betrayal away. That pain was going to stay with her for a long time.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  ‘WHEN can you start?’ Steve Clayton prompted cheerfully.

  ‘Monday, if you like.’ Mina chewed anxiously at her lower lip. ‘Are you sure you really want me to work here?’

  ‘Mina,’ Steve groaned, ‘maybe you’re forgetting that I offered you the same job four years ago and you were too damned proud to take it!’

  His mobile phone buzzed. Mina wandered over to the door, worriedly hoping that she had made the right decision in accepting the secretarial job she had once turned down…but secretly longed to accept. Times had changed, hadn’t they?

  Until their death in a car accident, her parents had rented a house on the Thwaite Manor estate. Steve was Baxter Keating’s other grandson and Roger’s cousin. The two boys and the Carroll twins had grown up together and dated as teenagers. The four of them had always been very close. There had never been any doubt that Roger and Winona would eventually marry and, although Mina was reluctant to recall the fact, Steve had expected that same commitment from her.

  But it hadn’t happened. Mina had outgrown her youthful crush on Steve and it had taken a great deal of courage finally to face him and tell him that truth. Roger and Winona had already been married and they had been as disappointed and hurt on Steve’s behalf as Steve had been. Mina had felt horribly guilty that she had changed and Steve had not.

  Her guilt had increased a hundredfold when Steve had asked her to marry him when she was pregnant with Susie. She had wished he hadn’t asked, had felt even worse saying no, and had felt similarly unable to accept the job he’d then offered instead. The job would have been a lifeline but she had known that Steve still cherished notions of them getting back together again. In the circumstances it would have been wrong for her to accept his generosity. Steve was one of the main reasons why she had initially tried to make a go of living in London with Susie.

  But times had mercifully changed, she reminded herself again. Steve had a steady girlfriend now. The passage of years had enabled them to return to their old friendship without undertones of what might have been complicating that relationship.

  Mina jumped as Steve abruptly shouted, ‘Susie! Get out of there!’

  Spinning round, Mina saw a huge terracotta pot wobble alarmingly. A dark little head and a pair of far from intimidated golden-brown eyes appeared over the lip of the pot. Her daughter said a very rude word, a word few mothers would be hardy enough not to cringe at, hearing it issuing from the rosebud mouth of a three-year-old.

  ‘Don’t react.’ Steve bit back a laugh as he saw the depth of Mina’s horror. ‘According to your sister, she’ll forget it again if you don’t make a fuss. But, as the culprit who said it within her hearing, Roger is never likely to use it again, even if he does drop a block on his big toe!’

  Steve took her round the garden centre, pointed out the new extension with pride and completed the tour in his incredibly untidy office. ‘Fancy some coffee?’

  ‘I would have loved some but I’m baby-sitting this afternoon.’

  ‘Rather you than me. Even on her own, Susie can be a handful. She has a will of iron and a temper like a tornado,’ Steve remarked as he watched her daughter through the window. She was splattering back and forth through a pile of sand she had been scolded twice already for playing in.

  ‘You were a bad girl,’ Mina began, taking a short cut across the fields back to Thwaite Manor.

  ‘I’m a good girl!’ Susie told her with a flash of raw temper, and ran on ahead, thin, brown-as-nut legs twinkling under grubby white shorts, black pigtails bouncing.

  Cesare’s daughter and so agonisingly like him, Mina reflected painfully. The only thing Susie had inherited from her mother was her diminutive size. At three and a half, she was still tiny but, by virtue of her temper, highly unlikely to be bullied. She was bright, stubborn, manipulative…and often badly behaved, Mina conceded grudgingly.

  Yet Roger and Winona had treated Susie exactly the same way as they treated their own brood of three. But John, Lizzy and Peter were quiet, easily handled children. Susie was different, a cuckoo in the nest with a far more volatile temperament. She had not received the firmer hand of discipline that she required. And whose fault was that? The buck stops here, Mina reflected guiltily.
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  ‘Well?’ Winona demanded impatiently as Mina walked into the manor’s large country kitchen.

  ‘I’m starting on Monday.’

  A vibrant smile lit her twin’s face, so like yet so unlike her own. They were not identical, but as children the marked similarity between them had often fooled people into assuming that they were. In adulthood, the differences had become far more prominent. That had bothered Winona. She still lightened her hair to a shade as close as she could get to Mina’s and wore it in the same style.

  ‘Thank heaven you’ve finally seen sense! The four of us should go out for a meal and celebrate.’

  ‘Five, surely—Steve’s girlfriend would probably like to be included.’ Mina tried not to sound dry.

  Winona frowned. ‘Jenny’s away on a course right now. Anyway, what’s it got to do with her? It’s not as if they’re engaged or anything…I’ll book a table at the Coach——’

  ‘No,’ Mina inserted flatly.

  ‘But why not?’ Her sister already had the phone in her hand.

  Mina sighed, wearily registering what her twin had contrived to hide until this moment. Incredible as it seemed to her, Winona still longed to see Steve and her twin reunited like Romeo and Juliet. ‘I just don’t think it would be a good idea.’

  ‘What else happened with that creep Falcone?’ Winona asked without warning.

  Flames of colour washed over Mina’s startled features. Caught unprepared, she had no time to assume the mask that concealed her inner turmoil. ‘I——’

  Her twin dropped the phone in shock. ‘You didn’t… I mean, not again?’

  Mina studied the surface of the breakfast-bar in the silence, her stomach cramping with sudden distress. She would not have told her sister but, directly faced with the question, she could not lie to her either.

  ‘I’m going to do it this time,’ Winona swore in a shaking voice. ‘I’ll take a gun out of Baxter’s cupboard and I will go to London and shoot that bastard dead!’

  ‘Winona——’

  ‘Shut up,’ her sister hissed furiously, this being the one subject capable of rousing her to temper. ‘You protect him—you’re still protecting him! Roger and I are perfectly willing to pay for you to take him to court and you won’t let us——’

  ‘I am not protecting him, I’m protecting Susie,’ Mina whispered tightly. ‘You know how much publicity such a case would attract and I wouldn’t be able to hide her. Everyone around here knows I’m a single parent. I couldn’t possibly take my daughter’s father to court!’

  ‘You slept with him—you actually slept with him again?’ Winona suddenly demanded in complete disbelief.

  Mina went white. ‘I don’t want to talk about it——’

  ‘Are you still in love with him?’ Winona muttered tautly.

  Mina was rigid. ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

  ‘You’re my sister and I don’t understand you,’ Winona complained in a tight, tremulous voice. ‘Steve adored you. He didn’t even object when you went off to college! He’s handsome, caring and successful,’ her twin enumerated, setting Mina’s teeth on edge. ‘If you have to make a fool of yourself with a man, why not do it with him? At least he would marry you!’

  A shattering silence fell.

  ‘I’d better hurry or I’ll be late!’ her twin muttered with guilty brevity, and rushed upstairs.

  Two hours later, after clearing up the lunch dishes, Mina sank down on a seat beside Baxter, who was snoozing on an old wooden lounger on the lawn, his straw hat tipped over his face.

  ‘Been getting the riot act read again?’ he enquired, making her jump because she had believed he was asleep.

  ‘Where did you get that idea?’

  ‘I could hear Winona screeching from the hall.’ The old man sighed. ‘You’ll be glad to move into Dempsey’s cottage in the autumn. You and Susie need your own corner.’

  ‘Yes.’ Her cheeks burning, she was wondering how much Baxter had overheard.

  The children were at the far end of the garden, playing in the tree-house Roger had built. It was a beautiful day, but for once the sunlight failed to lift Mina’s spirits. It had been two weeks since she had left London. She couldn’t eat and she wasn’t sleeping much better. The quiet of the countryside had failed to work its usual magic.

  ‘I’m very fond of your sister, but she’s had life easy,’ Baxter sighed. ‘She married her childhood sweetheart at nineteen and never had to earn her daily crust. Everything she ever wanted was handed to her on a plate: her husband, her home, her children. Remind her of that reality the next time she starts on you.’

  ‘Winona’s been very good to me——’

  ‘Not when she continues to ram that gormless grandson of mine down your throat! I could have told the lot of you when you were sixteen that you would never marry Steve. You didn’t fancy him!’

  A stifled sound escaped Mina. Sometimes, Baxter disturbed her. He saw so clearly, pierced right to the heart of the matter.

  ‘That was as plain as the nose on my old face. But because Steve looks like Roger Winona can’t understand your astonishing lack of good taste!’

  ‘I hurt him,’ Mina whispered unhappily.

  ‘You’d have hurt him a great deal more if you’d let yourself be pressured into marrying him…Is that a car I hear?’

  Mina turned abstracted eyes on the sweeping driveway at the same moment as a car appeared through the dense shrubbery which screened the manor’s gates. It was a Ferrari, a silver one. Mina lurched upright on legs which suddenly felt like rubber, a sick sense of shock paralysing her to the spot.

  ‘Who is it?’ Baxter grumbled, tipping off his hat and squinting.

  Cesare sprang out of the car. He didn’t even bother to close the door again. His entire attention was pinned to the little tableau of sunbathers on the front lawn. He strode across the grass, every long biting stride expressing ferocious purpose. He flipped off his sunglasses, digging them into the pocket of his jacket. Sheathed in a cream summer-weight suit of exquisite cut, black hair gleaming in the sunshine, he looked outrageously exotic.

  ‘The Mafia have arrived,’ Baxter muttered in a tone of somnolent amusement.

  Mina clashed with shimmering gold eyes across a distance of ten feet. It was like being grabbed by the throat. She was so horrified by Cesare’s descent that she couldn’t unglue her tongue from the roof of her mouth.

  ‘I’m taking you back to London with me,’ Cesare enunciated with a flash of even white teeth. ‘Don’t bother packing, just get in the car! I’ll deal with you later…’

  Baxter dealt him a highly entertained look of intense interest and actually roused himself sufficiently to sit up as Cesare strolled closer with the slow, silent intent of a predator tracking his prey.

  Mina read the dark fury suddenly locking Cesare’s facial muscles taut, and belatedly recalled the lies she had told in London. She surged into sudden motion as Cesare angled his smouldering attention on Baxter. ‘And as for you,’ Cesare intoned with vicious bite on a quite visible wave of clench-fisted frustration as he viewed the older man, and Mina imposed herself between him and his quarry, ‘if you weren’t halfway into the grave already, I’d bury you!’

  ‘Cesare!’ Mina exclaimed.

  He thrust her out of his path. ‘Mina is young enough to be your granddaughter!’

  Baxter surveyed Cesare with amused blue eyes. ‘Is he always like this?’ he enquired of Mina, who was unmistakably cringing, colour running up her throat into her cheeks like a banner. ‘Or has somebody been telling the poor chap whoppers?’

  ‘Cesare…I lied——’

  ‘About what?’ he raked at her.

  The engine of the Ferrari suddenly fired into motion. His ebony head spun.

  ‘Oh, my God!’ Mina gasped as she saw the perky red bow just visible through the window on the passenger side. Susie was in the driver’s seat. As Cesare raced across the lawn, she flew in his wake.

  Cesare reached the Ferrari first, ducking
down and emerging with a kicking, screeching Susie, who hadn’t seen him coming and who had been thoroughly enjoying herself. Even as Mina looked on in a state of mute horror, she saw her daughter bend her head and sink her teeth into the hand attempting to restrain her.

  ‘Dio! You little animal!’ Cesare grated as he released his tiny squirming burden and incredulously studied the teeth-marks on his hand.

  Susie said her rude word. She knew it was offensive and she flaunted it. She squinted up at Cesare in a temper and slung it like a sailor squaring up for a fight. Cesare stared down at his daughter with appalled distaste and strode out of reach. He met Mina’s stricken eyes across the roof of the Ferrari. ‘What a revolting child,’ he breathed, brushing at the smear of dirt on his previously immaculate jacket. ‘Filthy as well!’

  ‘What’s revolting?’ Susie’s voice warbled.

  Mina was terrified to speak because Susie wasn’t yet aware of her presence on the other side of the car. Her niece and nephews were lurking in a tight group several feet away, drawn by Susie’s shrieks. John, a sturdy six-year-old, inched forward and told Susie that she should apologise.

  ‘Susie never says sorry,’ Lizzy complained.

  ‘Sorry,’ Peter said. A quiet little boy, almost exactly the same age as Susie, he had already formed the somewhat irritating habit of apologising for his cousin.

  ‘Not sorry.’ Susie gazed up at Cesare, having tailed him round the bonnet.

  Ignoring her with supreme cool, Cesare sent Mina a fulminating glance. ‘Why are you standing there like a statue? And what did you lie about?’

  Susie tugged at his trouser leg. ‘Not sorry,’ she said again, wanting a reaction.

  ‘Go away,’ Cesare grated in exasperated aside, and pulled free.

  Susie’s bottom lip wobbled alarmingly. ‘You’re not nice.’

  ‘Nice would be wasted on you.’

  From somewhere, Mina regained sufficient self-possession to say, ‘John, take Susie back to the tree-house.’

  As her much bigger cousin began to trail her away, Susie burst into floods of tears and screamed for her mother. Mina’s fingernails dug painful crescents into her palms as she ignored that call that tugged painfully at her heart-strings.