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