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 imagined 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.’
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