A Savage Betrayal

Edwin looked pained, and frowned. ‘It’s most unfortunate. I can only hope Mr Falcone refrains from further comment in the presence of my fellow directors,’ he said with grave emphasis. ‘They would be most perturbed by his attitude. Mr Falcone is making a most generous contribution to our campaign, and naturally we don’t-want any friction between him and any member of our staff.’

Paler than ever, Mina whispered, ‘I understand.’

‘I’ll see you tomorrow.’

His offer of a lift hadn’t lasted long, not that she would have accepted it anyway. But she had noticed the determined formality he had pasted over his discomfiture. His usual rather old-fashioned friendliness had died a death in the interim since she had walked out of the room. And she wasn’t at all surprised. Cesare might as well have lifted a Tannoy and called her a cheap little tramp for the benefit of the room at large.

Edwin had been shocked, had initially sought to defend her, but a few minutes’ careful reflection had cooled him down and probably made him suspicious of her. After all, Cesare Falcone was a highly respected and very successful European businessman. Naturally, Edwin was now wondering what kind of behaviour it took to provoke such a derisive attack from a man of Cesare’s education and social standing this long after the event.

A hammerbeat of tension pounded now behind her temples. She had probably lost all chances of promotion. The position of finance manager, the successful candidate to be announced after tomorrow’s monthly directors’ meeting, would go elsewhere. Common sense told her that Edwin had to have reservations now. How likely was it that he would still recommend her when he knew that Cesare Falcone despised her?

The commissionaire at the exit offered to call her a taxi. Mina shook her head. A taxi was a luxury she couldn’t afford. She lived like a church mouse, gratefully accepted her sister’s cast-off clothing, and slept in a room no bigger than a cupboard during the week, just existing for Friday nights when she could catch the train back down to her sister’s home in Oxfordshire. The train fares cost her a fortune but Mina never missed a single weekend. They were too precious. But Sunday nights broke her heart and habit hadn’t lessened the pain of those partings from Susie. She walked down the well-lit street, fighting not to give in to despair, but it was the prospect of those Sunday-night partings stretching into infinity ahead of her which she could not face.

A car purred to the kerb several yards ahead of her. The passenger door fell open. As she hesitated, Cesare emerged from the driver’s side and stood contemplating her over the roof of his low-slung silver Ferrari. ‘Get in. I’ll give you a lift.’

‘The knight of the road,’ Mina framed shakily, wondering whether to scream or laugh, no longer sure what might qualify as an appropriate response. Nothing she had said or done had had the slightest effect on him. He was like that truck in Steven Spielberg’s first film, Duel. She had the terrifying feeling that no matter what she did he would keep on coming at her.

‘We have unfinished business.’

Mina dropped her head, shutting out those eyes of sizzling gold which seemed to reach out and utterly intimidate. ‘Leave me alone.’

‘Sending me to Coventry isn’t going to stop me,’ Cesare murmured harshly. ‘Get in the car.’

There was no hiding from the obvious. She had to find out what he meant by ‘unfinished business’ and straighten out whatever ludicrous misunderstanding lay behind his extraordinary behaviour. Stress had calmed her down, constrained the wilder reaches of her imagination. Cesare was ruthless, hot-tempered and as volatile as a slumbering volcano but he was not crazy.

She climbed in.

‘I’ll give you a choice,’ Cesare drawled, making no attempt to start the car again.

‘A choice?’ she echoed blankly.

‘You resign from your job.’

‘Resign? Are you out of your mind?’ Mina gasped in disbelief.

‘If you don’t resign, conscience demands that I drop a warning word in the relevant quarter,’ Cesare delivered in a grim undertone. ‘Finance manager—you? Sì…I know that you’re in line for promotion. And there is no way I can stand back and let you get your greedy little paws into charitable funds.’

Mina had been sitting there staring woodenly out through the windscreen, determinedly not looking at him. Now her head spun round as though he had jerked a wire. ‘Are you actually insinuating that I can’t be trusted with money?’ she spelt out in a strained whisper, her wide eyes incredulous at the suggestion.

‘I know you can’t be trusted.’ Cesare slanted her a look of stony derision. ‘Nor am I impressed by this infantile act of innocence. You committed a criminal offence four years ago and the law may not have been fast enough to pick up on the trail…but I was,’ he drawled in a seething undertone, shooting her a smouldering glance of menace. ‘I still have the evidence that could send you to prison——’

‘Prison?’ The single word exploded from between her dry lips, shrill and strangled, as she stared back at him in disbelief.

‘Insider dealing. The courts frown heavily on the offence. You could still be tried for it.’

Every scrap of colour had drained from her cheeks. Mina tried and failed to swallow. Insider dealing. He was accusing her of having used confidential information to trade for her own benefit on the Stock Exchange. The practice was illegal.

‘You’re crazy…I would never have done anything like that,’ Mina protested in a voice that was weak from sheer shock that he could believe her capable of such an act.

‘You’d have done it more than once if I’d given you the chance,’ Cesare asserted with icy bite, his profile golden and granite-hard in the street-light slanting through the windscreen. ‘But I didn’t. I sacked you and you took your ill-gotten gains and disappeared off the face of this planet!’

‘That’s not true. There weren’t any ill-gotten gains because I didn’t do it!’ she exclaimed shrilly, her heart pounding madly with fright against her ribcage.

Cesare’s ice-cold stare told her just how unimpressed he was by her protests.

‘I thought you sacked me because—because I slept with you!’ She had to force out the statement and she couldn’t bring herself to look at him.

‘Dio mio! The jury will surely break down and cry when they hear that defence,’ Cesare said with flat derision. ‘It is on record that you were sacked for gross misconduct.’

‘I know, but I——’

‘Popular report suggests that some prisons harbour big butch women. At seven stone and built like a doll, maybe you should consider getting into training.’

Mina was in such turmoil that she shrank back against the passenger door in horror. ‘I’m not going to prison…I haven’t done anything!’

‘Well, you’re certainly not about to do anything in the charity world.’ Cesare shot the assurance at her with cold threat. ‘With your talent for accounting, you could work any number of scams. I want you out of there as of now——’

‘But I haven’t done anything…I’m not dishonest!’ Mina slung back at him in helpless repetition and growing apprehension.

‘If you push me I’ll tell Haland, and I can back my allegations up with cold, hard evidence,’ Cesare returned with slashing cool. ‘And a man like Haland, with all those fine, upstanding principles, might just feel that when he’s informed of an illegal act it is his duty to report it to the authorities——’

‘And if you were so convinced I was guilty, why didn’t you call them in?’ Mina demanded wildly, fighting to find some angle on which she could base a defence.

‘It would have been like reporting a murder without the corpse. You’d vanished like a thief in the night.’ Cesare lounged back with indolent relaxation and surveyed her intently, eyes slivers of molten gold beneath the luxuriant fringe of his ebony lashes. ‘And I did entertain myself briefly with a vision of you becoming a prison mascot, but ultimately it didn’t satisfy me. I think the punishment should fit the crime——’

‘I haven’t committed any crime…why won’t you listen to me?’ she gasped.

‘You used pillow-talk for profit——’

‘Pillow-talk?’

‘You ripped off that information like a professional. You made a fool of me. I could have been dragged down in the dirt with you. Guilty by association. I have no doubt you intended to say that you traded on my behalf if you were caught,’ Cesare told her very softly, every accented syllable dropping into the throbbing silence. ‘Pull the dumb dizzy blonde act and insist you had no idea that what you were doing was against the law.’

‘You’re out of your m-mind!’ Mina was white, barely able to vocalise.

‘Say you were seduced, used,’ Cesare continued with harshened emphasis, pinning her to the spot with smouldering dark golden eyes that burned. ‘If you were a man I’d have killed you…but you’re a woman and I intend to use you exactly as you used me…’

CHAPTER TWO

‘I BEG your pardon?’ Mina was still reeling with shock, her brain thrown into total chaos by the shattering accusation that Cesare Falcone had dropped on her four years after the event.

There was too much for her to take in all at once. But, devastated though she was, there had been a terrifying ring of reality to his derision when she had tried to protest her belief that she had been fired for the sin of once sharing his bed. No matter how insane his allegations, she suddenly had no doubt that he truly believed that she had committed a crime. It explained his attitude towards her. Both in the present and in the past. His hatred and his aggression now made sense out of what had earlier seemed like insanity.

Her mind was working in slow motion, one tiny step at a time. Cesare thought she had been guilty of insider dealing. Worse, he believed she had used information which he had given her in trust. Worse still, he was convinced that if she had been apprehended by the authorities she would have lied and said she had been acting on his behalf and not her own.

‘I shall use you as you once set out to use me,’ Cesare asserted.

She cleared her throat with difficulty. ‘And how are you planning to do that?’

‘How do you think?’ Cesare dealt her a look of grim amusement. ‘I don’t think you’ll ever tangle with a Sicilian again.’

Mina drew in a deep, shaky breath. ‘I intend to take legal advice about the allegations you have made against me.’

‘Cast-iron allegations with proof.’

‘You couldn’t possibly have proof of something I didn’t do!’

‘If you’ve got any of that money left, I intend to take it off you. By the time I am finished with you——’

‘You’re not even going to start with me!’ Mina told him, suddenly frantic to get out of the Ferrari but wanting to do so with dignity.

A hard smile slashed Cesare’s expressive mouth. ‘Don’t tell me I can’t do what I’ve already begun. Did you really think that I would let you get away with it? You should have known I would be on your trail. It made my day when I saw your photo——’

‘My photo?’

‘On the front of Earth Concern’s newsletter. That was a careless move, but then you were unlucky. My staff deal with the charity flyers. Rarely have I had such literature thrust at me at dinner parties,’ Cesare said very drily. ‘But there you were, looking all prim and proper, standing beside Haland at some fund-raiser.’

Mina had forgotten that she had featured in that same newsletter which Jean had mentioned as having ignited Cesare’s interest in the charity. She had assumed that their meeting tonight had been a ghastly coincidence and that he had not realised that she worked for Earth Concern until he’d seen her. The news that he had had that prior knowledge shook her.

‘A lying, conniving little confidence trickster like you working in a position of trust for a charitable concern,’ Cesare outlined softly. ‘A concern no doubt full of well-intentioned people, motivated more by environmental awareness than good business sense and strict control of their funds. And along comes Mina like a fox into a coop of little fluffy chicks waiting to be plucked. Haland’s blood would freeze in his veins if he knew what you were capable of!’

‘How dare you call me a confidence trickster?’ Mina objected strickenly, her breath rasping in her throat. ‘There has been some hideous misunderstanding——’

‘And it would appear to be on your side.’ Cesare treated her to a look from hooded golden eyes that was curiously chilling. ‘I’ve tracked you down and I know exactly what you are. Don’t preach to the converted. Watching you simper up at Haland and blush took me way back. And you’re so cute, you’re so little,’ he stressed, studying her slight figure with blistering derision, his mouth twisting and then compressing into a bloodless line. ‘You make men feel protective. You stitched me up, too. I don’t blame the old goat for falling for the fragile feminine act hook, line and sinker. Dio mio, didn’t I fall for it too?’

The atmosphere was explosive. Suppressed rage quivered through every syllable in that final statement. Anger so fierce that she could taste it vibrated in him. Her mouth was dry, ‘Cesare, I——’

He reached out a powerful hand, closed it round one slender wrist and yanked her bodily forward. ‘Shut up,’ he intoned with vicious bite. ‘I won’t ever fall for it again, cara. I know how clever you are, but your greed betrays you as surely as a streak of fundamental stupidity. You’re a treacherous bitch, but life as you know it is about to change. Betraying me was a big mistake.’

Trembling, trapped by his immensely greater strength, she gaped at him. ‘I didn’t betray you!’

‘You betrayed me in every way there was. As an employee and as a lover!’ Cesare raked at her. ‘One unforgettable night when my every fantasy was fulfilled. A virgin, but a whore in the making!’

Mina lifted her free hand and hit him a crack across one hard cheekbone that numbed her fingers. And then she froze, appalled by the violence that had roared up inside her from a place she didn’t know. She had never struck another human being before.

‘Relax…you were the best I ever had.’

Mina went white, her lower lip wobbling. Cesare hadn’t even flinched from that ringing slap. Disorientatingly, he smiled, and that smile chilled her to her bones. It was like the smile on the face of a tiger after drawing first blood. He knew she had lost control and he was triumphant, even amused. With a soft laugh, he released her wrist.

Her breath sobbed in her throat as she made a frantic attempt to get out of the car, but the door wouldn’t open.

‘It’s locked,’ Cesare said gently, and fired the engine.

‘Where are you taking me?’

‘Back to your pathetically poor bed-sit. Presumably chosen to yank at Haland’s heart-strings. He must be very naïve,’ Cesare delivered. ‘Ain’t no way what you’ve got on your back fits the poverty-stricken image you’re striving to put out for his benefit.’

‘The suit is borrowed,’ Mina said jerkily, and she didn’t even know why she was bothering to make that trivial explanation. Her nerves felt like elastic cruelly stretched and ready to snap.

‘Sure it is,’ Cesare mocked. ‘Fits like a glove, too. You just happen to have a best friend as short as you are?’

Mina pressed an unsteady hand against her throbbing temples. ‘How do you know where I live?’

‘I know.’

‘Please let me out of this car.’

‘So that you can scarper? One false move in that direction, cara, and you’ll live to regret it for the rest of your life.’

‘Stop threatening me!’

‘Beginning to feel those claustrophobic prison walls closing in around you, cara?’ he chided.

‘Since there is not the remotest chance that I could be in danger of going to prison for something I haven’t done,’ Mina stressed in the sudden fury that finally broke through layer after layer of shock, ‘I’m not too bothered!’

‘Liar…you’re shaking in your child-sized shoes. But it ought to be a relief to escape the shackles of the cleanliving, do-gooding role you’ve been playing for Haland’s delectation. Not that you appeared to enjoy having your image dented this evening,’ Cesare reminded her without remorse.

‘What you said was unforgivable!’

‘I told the whole truth and nothing but the truth. I was tempted to tell him a whole lot more but I would have looked tacky then,’ he conceded wryly.

‘I am not resigning from my job.’

‘Then I bring the roof down on you. I withhold my donation to Earth Concern’s excellent work in the field of environmental awareness——’

‘You wouldn’t!’ Mina exclaimed in horror.

‘And I explain that I cannot place such a large sum of money in the control of a charity employing a woman I know to be untrustworthy and dishonest.’

Mina bent her head, utterly shattered by the speed of that unflinching assurance.

‘I should think you would be as welcome at the office as a blizzard in July after that.’

‘I could sue you for defamation of character!’ Mina threw at him wildly.

‘And the evidence I would produce would throw the case out of court on the first day and leave you facing other, even less palatable options. I’d nail you to the wall—why risk marking that beautiful skin?’

He could not have evidence of something she hadn’t done! But evidently someone in Falcone Industries, someone at board level had been insider dealing. Cesare had found evidence and mistakenly traced it back to her. Was that some horrible accident or was it possible that the real guilty party had deliberately laid a false trail which implicated her? Was she being paranoid? Her flesh chilled at the idea that four years ago somebody she worked with might well have set her up as a target to protect his own back.

In the thundering silence Cesare pulled the Ferrari into the kerb and killed the engine. ‘Where do you go at weekends?’ he murmured lazily.

Mina went rigid, her golden head spinning round, stricken amethyst eyes wide before she hurriedly veiled them.

Cesare lounged back in his seat, his vibrantly handsome features hard as marble in the shadows. ‘Every weekend…every vacation,’ he spelt out, toying with her by revealing how much he already knew about her movements. ‘Do you have a husband tucked away somewhere—a partner in crime?’

‘Don’t be r-ridiculous!’

‘A lover, then,’ Cesare decided with complete impassivity. ‘He’s out. I won’t be giving you weekends off——’

‘What on earth are you talking about?’

Or the freedom to sneak into other beds. Though I doubt that you’ll have the energy. You’ll be fully occupied keeping me happy, and I’m not that easy to live with round the clock,’ Cesare mused, quite untouched by the stunned look on her face. ‘I’m low on patience, high on demand——’

‘I’m not going to be living with you,’ Mina mumbled in a choked voice.

‘I don’t care what you call it, but you are most certainly going to be the leading feature in my bed every night.’ Cesare rested his ebony head back with indolent grace and appraised her with eyes that glittered diamond-hard, his relaxation emphasising his innate confidence that he had the whip-hand.

‘You’re off your trolley!’ Mina snatched in a jagged breath, outrage taking over. ‘I’d throw myself off a cliff before I’d let you touch me again!’

‘I don’t think so…’

‘I know so!’ Mina launched back.

‘You got something else to trade for my silence?’ Cesare enquired smoothly as he slanted a sardonic smile at her.

As the ramifications of that question sank in, Mina’s shattered gaze clung to his cool gold one. ‘You’re trying to blackmail me,’ she whispered in horror.

‘Has to be the knock-on effect of the low company I’m keeping.’ Cesare cast her an intent look, unconcerned by her accusation. ‘And it’s not one quarter as sordid as what you did to me. You traded sex for information and profit. You sold me out for the requisite thirty pieces of silver. What does that make you? You used me——’

‘I wouldn’t use anyone like that!’

‘Pay-back time, cara. Don’t bother working out your notice for Haland. That’s over and he’ll never know what a narrow escape he had, thanks to my intervention. I’ll pick you up tomorrow night at eight. OK,’ he positively purred, and it wasn’t a question. ‘You can go and get your beauty sleep now.’

Mina swallowed hard and began to slide out of the car, but Cesare moved too and reached for her before she could register what he intended. He tugged her back across the seat as if she were a doll. ‘Come here…’

‘Get your hands off me!’ she exploded.

‘I want something on account first.’

Anchoring long fingers into her silky hair, Cesare held her fast, sweeping her upturned face with heavily lidded golden eyes.

‘Let…go…of…me,’ Mina told him breathlessly.

‘Take up the weight training—you’re likely to be in dire need of it.’ His accented drawl had thickened and fractured, spilling out warning flares into an atmosphere already vibrating with fierce tension.

‘No…’ she mumbled, clashing unavoidably with the scorching charge of his heated gaze.

‘Never say no to me,’ Cesare intoned huskily. ‘When you slam a door in my face, I kick it down.’

She had forgotten—oh, dear God, how could she have forgotten?—how he could make her feel. It was terrifying… It was as though a physical force-field enclosed her, locking out every brain-wave. Her own heartbeat pounded in her eardrums. Excitement, raw and dangerous, leapt through every single skin-cell. Her breasts were already stirring beneath the thin barrier of her bra, her nipples pinching into sudden painful tightness.

‘Stop it…’ she framed unevenly, yet she was trapped in unmoving stasis.

‘But I’m not doing anything…yet.’ He lowered his gleaming dark head slowly. Her breath hung suspended and then he pressed his mouth hotly to the tiny pulse flickering wildly above her collarbone. Every bone in her body melted in a burst of feverish heat. Her head fell back, her throat extending. She trembled violently, an upswell of sensation suddenly released with devastating force. Her hands flew up of their own volition, one finding his shoulder, the other spearing into his hair, and just touching him again felt so good that she ached.

Raising his head, he ravaged her soft mouth with a sudden devouring hunger that took her by storm. He prised her lips apart with the tip of his tongue and then plundered the tender interior with carnal expertise. Her fingernails dug into his shoulder, a passion wilder than anything she had ever known consuming her as she answered that sensual demand, returning his kisses with all the fire of her own response.

Without warning, Cesare tore himself free. Hard hands clamping round her slender forearms, 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——’