by Lynne Graham
‘What did you lie about?’
‘How did you find me?’
‘Ways and means. I asked you what you lied about,’ Cesare bit out with lancing impatience.
As Susie’s sobs receded into the distance, Mina breathed again. All that was on her mind was getting rid of him again as fast as she possibly could. Did he know that this was her sister’s home? She didn’t even think he knew she had a sister, and it was wiser to keep him in the dark.
‘Baxter’s not my lover—actually, he’s only a guest here,’ Mina improvised on the spot. ‘I’m staying with friends.’
‘And which one of the friends is the lover?’
Mina coloured hotly and ignored the question. ‘I want you to leave, Cesare.’
‘I’m not leaving without you,’ he told her harshly.
Her head jerked in the direction of the gate as she heard another car approaching. It was Steve’s Range Rover. To say that Mina’s nerves had already withstood about all they could stand would be an understatement. She experienced a cowardly urge simply to cut and run as she watched Steve slow down and suddenly brake to a halt as he recognised the man standing beside her.
‘Please leave,’ Mina whispered in desperation as a car door slammed.
‘What the hell are you doing here, Falcone?’ Steve demanded, his tanned face flushed with angry disbelief as he strode forward.
‘Cesare is just leaving,’ Mina said loudly.
‘Introduce me,’ Cesare murmured flatly, scanning the burly blonde man with dark-as-night narrowed eyes.
‘Clayton—Steve Clayton,’ Steve supplied with aggression, moving forward to plant himself by Mina’s side. ‘And if you don’t get off this property you’re going to get those fancy togs messed up!’
‘You think so?’ A chilling smile curved Cesare’s sensual mouth.
The tension that had immediately sprung up between the two men shattered Mina. She glanced in horror from one to the other.
‘I think so,’ Steve said. ‘You look like a male model.’
‘Steve, please…’ Mina hissed, watching Cesare’s gaze blaze with what could only be described as sheer pleasure. It dawned on her that he had come here to knock seven bells out of the other man she had so stupidly and recklessly assured him existed in her life. Faced with Baxter’s frailty, he had been balked of his prey. Faced with Steve, he could be as physical as he liked.
‘I’ve been waiting for this for a bloody long time!’ Steve shot at her hotly.
‘Mina’s returning to London with me. Go and sit in the car and cover your eyes, cara. I won’t be long.’
Since she had absolutely no hope of persuading Cesare to back down, Mina turned back to Steve. ‘This has nothing to do with you.’
‘Nothing to do with me? He took you away from me four years ago!’ Steve thundered at her, and even though that wasn’t true, even though she had broken up with him eighteen months before she’d even gone to work for Cesare, she realised for the first time that that was exactly how Steve had chosen to deal with that part of the past.
‘And I’m about to do it again,’ Cesare drawled.
‘Stop it…both of you!’ Mina was appalled by the scene that was developing. ‘The children could see you… Have you gone crazy?’
Cesare tensed but, a split-second later, Steve lunged at him. Mina didn’t quite know how it happened but Cesare side-stepped the attack at speed and punched him in the stomach. As Steve grunted and doubled up, Cesare strode past him and clamped a hard hand on Mina’s arm. She was shaking all over.
‘Get in the car,’ he told her between clenched teeth. ‘Because if that guy gets up again I’m going to rip him apart with my bare hands!’
‘I can’t…I’m looking after the kids!’
‘Go for a drive, Mina. Let tempers cool,’ Baxter suggested in wry intervention from the sidelines.
Mina rebelled. Men! she thought furiously. ‘I haven’t the slightest intention of getting into a car with him, and if there’s any more fighting I’ll use the garden hose to cool tempers!’ she asserted witheringly.
Cesare simply picked her up and dumped her like a parcel into the passenger seat of the Ferrari. He had swung in beside her before she had recovered from the shock.
‘Let me out of this car right now!’
‘You created this situation—you deserve everything you get,’ he delivered harshly.
Mina fumbled frantically at the door, but it was locked. Cesare braked as the car reached the shelter of the shrubbery at the gates and turned to her, blazing golden eyes biting into her. ‘How long have you known Clayton?’ he demanded.
‘None of your business——’
Cesare reached out a lean brown hand and speared his long fingers into her tumble of golden hair, preventing her retreat. The ferocious anger he had been controlling leapt out at her, shortening the breath in her throat. ‘Don’t tell me that,’ he warned her not quite steadily. ‘I am trying very hard not to lose my head.’
The atmosphere was explosive. Her amethyst eyes were entrapped by gold threat. She lost colour and trembled and yet a twist of wholly primitive excitement ignited her senses on another level. It was two weeks since she had felt like that. It was like life after near death, sudden, piercingly sweet and joyous and, no matter how hard she fought that extraordinary feeling, it sent the blood racing madly through her veins.
‘You had no right to come here,’ she said breathlessly, struggling to think straight.
‘No?’ With his thumb he traced the trembling curve of her full lower lip and she shivered violently in reaction.
‘I’m calling your bluff. I want to see the evidence you have against me,’ Mina told him jerkily.
‘No. That’s confidential and safely stowed away,’ he spelt out.
‘Then take it to the authorities,’ Mina advised in bitter frustration. ‘I won’t be blackmailed. Do your worst——’
‘What about my best?’ As he leant forward, he let his thumb softly intrude between her lips, seeking out that damp, warm interior. ‘Don’t you know what I do best?’
Her heartbeat was thundering in her eardrums, an almost terrifying languor stealing over her, weighting her limbs. She snatched in a breath, feeling the stirring heaviness of her breasts, the sudden frantic plunge down into intense sexual awareness. Involuntarily snared by mesmeric golden eyes, she was held fast by something far stronger than she was. She wanted him to touch her so badly that it hurt, it literally hurt to be denied.
‘It doesn’t even have to be my best,’ Cesare murmured thickly, dense black lashes screening his gaze to a sliver of hard gold as he scanned her feverishly flushed face and unwittingly pleading eyes. ‘The one thing you ever gave me that was honest…why? You can’t control it. But I can——’
‘Can you?’ Mina was in another world, one where she felt far more than she thought. Her hand lifted of its own volition, shyly smoothed along his strong, cleanshaven jawline, fingertips softly brushing a high cheekbone. Her nostrils flared on the warm maleness of him. That close, it would have been sensory deprivation not to touch.
He dipped his dark head and trapped her fingers with his mouth before she could reluctantly drop them again. Her eyes squeezed shut on a wave of unbearable excitement as he sucked first one finger and then another and her breath rasped in her dry throat, liquid fire running through her quivering body, melting every bone to boiling honey. She was poised on the edge of an erotic anticipation so intense, it consumed her.
‘Cesare…’ She curved into him, aching for closer contact.
His hand tightened painfully in her hair. Her lashes flew up, crashing her into molten gold demand. ‘Dio! I want to be inside you,’ he muttered with a shuddering savagery that shook her to her very depths. ‘But afterwards I’d wonder whether you turn on like this for Clayton as well. And I expect you do. After all, he looks the type likely to offer you a wedding-ring. I’m not surprised you didn’t want me to find you.’
‘It’s not like that
…’ It was an effort to think, an enormous effort. Her whole body was aching with a need strong enough to drain her of all self-will.
‘Sex with me or security with him,’ Cesare drawled with derision.
‘Steve is not my lover——’
‘Only another string to your bow.’ Cesare vented a rough laugh, his strong features laced with innate cynicism and contempt. ‘How many more strings do you have? You lead a double life, Mina. Haland and your humble little job, which would undoubtedly have become extremely lucrative but for my intervention, and down here…Is that his house up there?’
Mina was savaged by the reminder of his image of her. How could she have forgotten for one moment how he saw her? Yet she had forgotten—she had forgotten so completely that, but for his greater control, she would have let him make love to her right here in the car. Her skin crawled with shame at her inability to withstand the desperate hunger that Cesare could evoke within her at will. ‘No.’
‘Maybe he isn’t rich enough yet for you to retire—maybe he’s simply an insurance policy on a back-burner. Who owns that house?’
‘I’m not telling you.’ She wrapped her arms round her still trembling body, suddenly feeling cold, dimly acknowledging that she was suffering from shock.
‘I can find out. You know that.’
‘Please leave me alone,’ Mina suddenly breathed. ‘Just go away and forget you ever knew me!’
‘I’ll do that after I’ve had you in my bed for a while,’ Cesare spelt out with hard emphasis.
‘I won’t let that happen again!’
‘You’re so hot for me, you won’t be able to help yourself.’
Every scrap of colour drained from her cheeks. The savage pain of humiliation engulfed her. In Cesare’s eyes she would always be a confidence trickster and a tramp. Dishonest and promiscuous and greedy for money. He despised her but he got an electric charge out of using sex to reduce her to emotional and physical rubble. ‘I’m not what you think I am,’ she whispered tightly. ‘And I don’t know why you hate me so much.’
‘Someday, if I’m feeling very cruel, I might tell you.’ His lean face was as hard as iron as he said it.
He expelled his breath in a sudden hiss and rammed the car into reverse.
‘What are you doing?’ Mina gasped in consternation.
‘You’re so desperate to get me away from here, I want to know why!’
‘No!’ Mina protested, her voice breaking up with stress.
Cesare flicked her a grim glance. ‘You brought this on yourself, cara. Your two worlds are about to collide!’
‘It’s Baxter’s house!’ Mina told him in rush. ‘Baxter Keating. Steve is his grandson——’
‘You told me Baxter was a guest. Are you a compulsive liar?’ Cesare sent her a glittering look of anger.
‘I’m not lying this time. I just don’t want another scene.’
‘Or maybe you’re scared in case Clayton finds out a little too much about you,’ Cesare suggested unpleasantly.
‘Don’t go back to the house!’
Cesare sent her an insolent smile. ‘What’s it worth to you?’
Her skin burned. ‘No…’
He skated a long forefinger very slowly down her slender thigh and looked at her with sizzling challenge. Mina went rigid, every physical sense leaping back on to red alert with a raw immediacy that horrified her. He had stopped smiling, his strong face taut, his eyes flaring. He curved his hand over her knee and reached for her again, without warning bringing his mouth smashing down on hers hard enough to hurt.
Only it didn’t hurt, it thrilled. Electrifying excitement engulfed her in a tidal wave. His tongue drove between her lips, searching her out, tasting her, emulating a far more intimate possession with an explicit sexuality that overwhelmed her. It felt as if the top of her head was flying off. Her fingers dug forcefully into his shoulders, dragging him closer because she wanted more, so much more, and the hunger he had unleashed on her was a wildly potent provocation.
Cesare tensed, momentarily holding himself back, and then her tongue flicked against his in an enticement that was entirely instinctive and, with a raw groan of need, he ravaged her reddened mouth with potent hunger. Suddenly she was no longer upright but lying back. His hand slid up one trembling thigh, wrenching the dress out of his path.
She was out of control, her breath sobbing in her throat, her heart racing. She clung to any part of him she could reach, her fingers clutching at his hair, the back of his neck, splaying against the silk-clad heat of his taut abdomen, scratching down his long spine, clothes, always clothes getting in her way, driving her mad with frustration.
Cesare suddenly stilled and dragged his mouth from hers. Then she heard the noise. Someone was banging on the window and shouting. Her heavy eyelids lifted very slowly. A fire-alarm couldn’t have dredged a faster response from her. Her body was on another plane, her mind absent without leave.
Cesare swore in guttural Italian, a dark flush accentuating the fevered glitter of his eyes as he registered their surroundings. ‘Cristo… you make me do crazy things!’ he condemned as he abruptly swung back into his seat.
As he did so, Mina clumsily began to sit up. She made him do crazy things? The eternal Eve syndrome, she reflected bitterly. Only then did she see and recognise the red car parked and evidently abandoned in a hurry to one side of the gates…
It was her sister’s car. Sheer horror turned Mina white.
While Cesare, awesomely in control at having been surprised in such a situation, inexplicably lowered the window on the driver’s side when he could simply have driven out on to the road, Mina attempted to shrink backwards and conceal herself behind him, panic taking hold of her as Winona’s shaking and outraged voice fill the car.
‘Do you think this is a lovers’ lane?’ Winona was shrieking in fury. ‘How dare you park in the entrance of my home and behave like that? It’s disgusting!’
CHAPTER FIVE
SICK with horror, her sole ambition escape without detection, Mina hissed at Cesare in a frantic whisper, ‘Drive off, for goodness’ sake!’
Dear heaven, how could she have sunk this low? In broad daylight in a car parked on a driveway where anyone could have come upon them! But she had no doubt that the police moving them on would have been infinitely preferable to Winona. Her pride in tatters, her sense of humiliation overpowering, Mina sat there like a graven image just waiting for the axe to fall. She couldn’t understand why Cesare hadn’t driven off or why he was so silent.
‘Oh, my God,’ Winona suddenly gasped, and peered into the car, fixing stricken and incredulous eyes on Mina and then switching them to Cesare in belated recognition. ‘Get out of his car!’ she screeched full blast.
‘At first glance, the resemblance is really quite startling, but you’re not identical. Sisters?’ Cesare queried in a staggeringly controlled tone, only his thickened accent betraying that he was not quite as in control as he wanted to appear to be.
‘Did you hear me, Mina?’ Winona positively shrieked. ‘Get out of his car!’
‘Twins.’
‘At least I didn’t bag the hysterical one,’ Cesare murmured flatly.
‘Who the hell are you calling hysterical?’ Winona screamed at him, banging a fist on the windscreen.
With admirable cool, Cesare shot the car into reverse again and began backing up the driveway. ‘So your sister lives here too. Interesting.’
‘She’s married to Baxter’s other grandson.’
‘Why did she go crazy when she saw me?’ Cesare probed.
‘It really would be better if you let me out here and left,’ Mina managed tremulously as Winona’s car roared up the drive and raked to a halt beside them. It was a relief to note that Steve’s Range Rover had gone. He must have left by the back lane.
‘But I wouldn’t miss this for the world. It’s like one of those mystery weekends in a country hotel.’ Cesare watched in apparent fascination as Winona hurled herself out of her c
ar and raced past the Ferrari like a maniac. ‘She’s pretty, not beautiful like you. Does she envy you?’
‘Not at all.’
As Winona vanished into the house, Mina clambered out on cotton-wool legs. ‘Please go,’ she pleaded without a lot of hope.
Cesare slid out and slammed the door again with an air of pronounced finality. He straightened his tie, smoothed back the hair her fingers had tousled. Then he stilled, his dark features tautening. ‘You’re not married to Clayton, are you?’ he suddenly demanded.
‘Of course not!’
‘Of course?’ Cesare loosed a sardonic laugh. ‘Where you’re concerned, cara, nothing would surprise me!’
Thinking about Susie, she hoped he kept that in mind. If she had been a cat she would have used up eight of her nine lives over the past hour. Now she was hanging on to her last life by the skin of her teeth.
‘May we enter the house?’ Cesare enquired gently.
‘I would much rather you left.’
‘And miss this wonderful opportunity to meet your family?’ Cesare drawled satirically.
The front door was wide open. From the breakfastroom Winona could be heard shrieking at somebody. Cesare winced. ‘Somebody needs to throw a bucket of cold water over her.’
‘She hates you. What do you expect? My family know what you’ve accused me of! They know why I’m out of work again as well!’ Mina threw at him.
‘The injured innocent act,’ Cesare murmured, unimpressed, flicking her a grim glance. ‘I assume you play the martyr for their benefit. Don’t get carried away with your role.’
‘Why don’t you just get out of here?’ she suddenly demanded a whole octave higher.
‘Not you as well,’ another voice groaned.
Mina spun round. Roger had appeared in a doorway, his working clothes making it clear that he had come in from the haymaking out on the estate. ‘What the blazes is going on? Steve damned near hit the tractor on the back lane and I come back here and find Winona trying to get a gun out of Baxter’s cupboard…She’s hysterical!’