by Lynne Graham
The silence weighed heavily between them.
‘I had you on a pedestal. I thought you were perfect. You were clever and gutsy and sexy, everything I ever wanted in a woman and I was crazy about you.’ Cesare swung back round to face her, strained dark eyes bleak in his set features. ‘But I’d always been pretty much of a cynic about love and marriage. My mother married my father for his money. He worked himself into an early grave maintaining her in the style to which she was determined to become accustomed and from time to time she had other men as well. When Sandro gave me that file, I thought that underneath I had to be as stupid and blind in love as my father once was!’
Her eyes prickled. ‘Cesare, I don’t——’
‘So the first thing I did to prove I was no wimp was sack you out of hand,’ Cesare continued with bitter derision. ‘I wanted to cancel the rest of my trip and fly back but I wouldn’t let myself do that. I was scared I needed to see you for the wrong reasons, so I made myself wait, and then when I did try to see you you had vanished!’
‘Which must have made me look even guiltier,’ Mina conceded before telling him that she had been on the brink of moving into a flat at the time and had not had the money to stay on in London.
‘I felt guilty for hating Sandro for producing that file, especially when I felt I ought to be congratulating him for doing something constructive for once! But then I’ve always felt guilty about Sandro,’ Cesare admitted with a grim twist of his expressive mouth. ‘Only a year apart, we should be almost as close as twins, but we don’t have a thing in common and never have had.’
‘That happens in lots of families,’ Mina murmured ruefully.
‘He was a sickly baby and my mother’s pet. I was very protective of him when we were children. But when he grew up no matter what he did he made a mess of it and that made me feel even worse because I knew he was always comparing himself to me. He hates me, he always has. He tries to hide it but he can’t,’ Cesare volunteered wryly. ‘And if I’m honest, I’m not much keener on him and he was a constant embarrassment in Falcone Industries.’
‘I gather he isn’t a director any more.’
‘I threw him out six months after I sacked you. Two of the secretaries came to me and lodged a complaint of sexual harassment against him.’ Cesare’s eyes hardened at the recollection. ‘He had been behaving in the most disgusting manner towards them. His language and his conduct was utterly indefensible. He openly admitted it to me and actually laughed about it. He flatly refused to apologise and reform his behaviour. I set him up in his own company to get rid of him.’
‘Must have been a relief all round’ Mina decided that now was not the time to horrify Cesare with the news that she too had once been the cringing target of Sandro’s foul-mouthed and unwelcome attentions.
‘It was. The whole atmosphere on the top floor changed. But, let’s face it, people in glass houses should not throw stones,’ he muttered tautly, and looked at her, a dark tide of colour drenching his hard cheekbones. ‘When I finally found you again I too behaved in an indefensible manner. I was so scared that you would somehow end up making a fool of me again, I went off the rails and——’
‘I know that,’ Mina interrupted. ‘But nothing you did puts you on a par with your creepy brother.’
‘But I behaved like a maniac let loose! I wanted you back. I didn’t much care how I did it either,’ he conceded with self-loathing.
The silence stretched tautly.
Cesare searched her with dulled golden eyes. ‘How do I say sorry for messing up your whole life?’
‘Sandro messed it up. I can understand that you were presented with some very powerful evidence against me,’ Mina told him soothingly.
‘Absolutely everything I have ever done with you has gone wrong. What the hell did you feel like when I suddenly sacked you after that night we shared?’ he demanded unsteadily.
‘Pretty much the way you felt when Sandro gave you that file. Shattered.’
‘And when you found out you were pregnant?’ he prompted tautly.
‘Multiply shattered by ten.’
‘How the heck can you joke about it?’
‘Because it’s a long time ago and I know you tried to find me, even though you thought I had betrayed you.’
‘Since I now know you were not partying,’ he phrased, his mouth compressed with strain, ‘and I wouldn’t ask while we were in Sicily because I was scared you would tell me what I would have thought were more lies, it’s time you told me how you did manage.’
She did, quietly and unemotionally. Cesare still looked devastated by guilt and she wished he hadn’t bothered raising that particular subject. He was carrying enough of a burden in that field.
When she’d finished he cleared his throat awkwardly. ‘That scar…’ he began. ‘Was that from having Susie?’
‘Yes.’
‘Tell me about it.’
‘Why?’
‘I ought to have been there. You might have died,’ he muttered unevenly.
‘Rubbish. It’s a very common procedure,’ Mina informed him bracingly. ‘I didn’t even have to be knocked out.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I was conscious when she was born. They just put up a sheet…’
Cesare looked at her in unconcealed horror. ‘Conscious?’ he echoed, turning an alarmingly pasty colour, moistening his lips and swaying. ‘Dio…that’s medieval…’
Then, under her astonished scrutiny, Cesare collapsed down in a large heap on the Persian rug. He had passed out.
Mina loosened his tie and unbuttoned his jacket, torn between laughter and tears. Something told her that he would not have been a great deal of use at Susie’s delivery. He swam back to the land of the living, blinking rapidly, sheepish as hell.
‘I didn’t feel a single twinge,’ Mina assured him.
He was anything but convinced. ‘To do that to you when you were still awake,’ he mumbled with a sick shudder.
‘I think you’re dead on your feet. You should be in bed.’
He sat up. ‘I’m fine.’
‘You don’t look it.’ Mina took charge, feeling immensely superior, which was a bit mean but excusable. The sight of Cesare turning white to the gills and folding up would be an image she would never forget.
‘I told you, I’m fine, and we still have a lot to talk about,’ he argued as she pushed him towards the stairs.
‘Tomorrow.’
‘I can’t wait that long. Where did you put Susie?’
He tiptoed into the dark bedroom and gazed down at his daughter. ‘Did she miss me?’
‘Loads,’ Mina whispered from the doorway
‘She ties my heart up in knots,’ he muttered jerkily.
‘She won’t if you wake her up. She’s very crabby when she’s disturbed.’
He pulled the door shut again with exaggerated care and then hovered as though he was lost in his own house. ‘I’ve made a mess of our marriage…’
‘You tried hard to.’ Mina didn’t prevaricate. ‘You hit your lowest point with Freddy Fish——’
‘Freddy who?’
‘I set you up with that fish to see how far you were prepared to go on your being nice campaign!’
A rawly appreciative smile momentarily wiped the tension from his vibrantly handsome features. ‘You mean…?’
‘I think the day Freddy was caught he should have been eaten or thrown back in the water. How dare you believe I had such bad taste? Your other low point was Franca the man-eating teenybopper…’
Cesare visibly winced. ‘I was getting desperate…’
‘But I never knew how desperate until you opened that newspaper and saw that Felix Severn had been arrested. That, in my opinion, was when you really went off the rails.’ Mina strolled into the bedroom she had selected for herself, a grin etched on her beautiful face. ‘Well, are you coming in or aren’t you?’ she asked mockingly when he paused on the threshold, being Cesare no doubt reading significance into
her choice of a separate bedroom.
He came in, his eyes fiercely pinned to hers, a faint frown-line etched between his brows as he waited tensely to see what she was about to say next.
‘Yes, you were like a man possessed with a mission last night,’ Mina continued cheerfully. ‘I got a vision of being holed up behind barricades in the castello…the forces of law and order trying to starve us out!’
‘Maybe I was a little over the top but naturally I was concerned,’ he protested.
‘Concerned?’ Mina repeated shakily, struggling to hold back her amusement at this staggering piece of macho understatement. ‘Cesare, by the time we landed in London you were a man on the very edge of lawlessness, ready to perjure yourself for my benefit!’
‘Dio mio…I didn’t want you to go to prison!’
‘But your determination to keep me out of the hands of the Fraud Squad really reached its crowning climax when you decided that you would be the sacrifice instead,’ Mina completed, and had to swallow back a sudden thickness in her throat, her momentary amusement banished. ‘Cesare, that was so sweet——’
‘Sweet?’ Dark colour delineated his blunt cheekbones, his lustrous dark eyes flaring gold at a label he found grossly inappropriate.
‘I was touched to the heart. I also realised——’
‘That only a man in love would make such an idiot of himself!’ Cesare slotted in harshly, defensively. ‘Well, why shouldn’t you laugh?’
‘I’m not laughing,’ Mina whispered, distressed that he had taken her words the wrong way. She had hurt his feelings, pierced his pride and the wound was that much more tender for a male who found it hard to express those same feelings.
‘I’ve always loved you,’ he muttered almost defiantly. ‘And thinking you were dishonest, grasping and that my only hold on you was sexual didn’t make any difference. I was willing to settle for what I could get…’
Her nose tickled with the onset of tears. She remembered him voicing that same statement on their wedding night, and only now appreciated the significance of that admission.
‘But it made me feel insecure…and when I feel like that I throw my weight around——’
‘And smoulder with jealousy.’
Cesare tensed under the charge and finally nodded, brilliant dark eyes clinging almost pleadingly to hers.
‘There was no need for that,’ Mina whispered shakily. ‘I never stopped loving you either.’
He looked dazed, as though that had been the very last thing he had expected to hear. ‘But——’
‘But what?’ Mina demanded, her tumultuous emotions sweeping her with sudden violent impatience.
‘Clayton…I thought——’
‘I told you I loved you weeks ago and you flung it back in my face!’
‘I thought you didn’t mean it,’ he confessed.
‘You want it written in blood and framed?’
‘How can you love me after everything I’ve done?’ he breathed raggedly. ‘I thought Clayton——’
‘Will you please shut up about Steve?’ Mina interrupted in despair. ‘I never loved Steve. I didn’t even fancy him. That was why we broke up.’
Cesare moved closer. ‘He’s a very handsome man…if you go for the local yokel type in wellies,’ he could not resist extending, and she tried not to smile. ‘You didn’t fancy him? I thought that I had come between the two of you. That’s why I asked you to marry me, why I came back the same day for your answer because I couldn’t stand the suspense! Then you said yes, but only for Susie,’ he recalled, his English losing its clarity with stress.
‘Isn’t that the same excuse you employed to propose?’
‘I thought I was only getting you because I was rich.’
‘Nope…you got me because I loved you.’
He closed his arms round her so tightly and so suddenly that she feared for her ribcage. ‘I love you too,’ he said with fierce unsteadiness and an audible overload of relief. ‘I couldn’t bear to lose you again.’
‘I’m not going anywhere.’ Mina framed his hard cheekbones with her hands and stared up at him with possessive eyes, a wild, glorious happiness flooding through her in waves.
‘You picked a bedroom three doors away…’
‘Next to Susie in case she wakes up in the night…she doesn’t know this house. I’ll have to leave the door ajar and the light on out on the landing.’
‘What does she do when she wakes up?’
‘Climbs into bed with me. Welcome to the joys of parenthood.’ Mina’s voice shook at his look of consternation. ‘You have a lot to learn. Susie generally wakes up at dawn. She bounces onto my bed and talks nonstop. If you look like you’re not listening, she gets on top of you and tickles you.’
‘We need a nanny,’ Cesare decided.
‘My, but you’re changing your tune…’
Cesare looked down at her with hungry golden eyes that grabbed at her heart. He kissed her with soulshattering tenderness and her knees gave way. He trembled against her and held her close for long, timeless minutes in silence. ‘Te amo…te amo,’ he whispered then with raw emotion and kissed her again, sending all her senses flying off on a sensual voyage of rediscovery.
A long while later, Mina shifted languorously in his arms and grinned. ‘I think Freddy needs a mate——’
‘A what?’
‘We could call her Florence, set them side by side for company…in a dark corner somewhere,’ Mina proffered.
‘They might breed…’ Abruptly, Cesare surged upright and stared down at her in horror.
‘What’s wrong?’
‘I didn’t take any precautions this afternoon.’
‘So?’ Mina was unconcerned.
‘Dio…what happens if you’re——?’
‘You stay in the waiting-room,’ she told him gently. ‘You’d be safer there.’
‘I will be with you,’ he informed her loftily.
And he was, a little shaky on his feet but his nerves of steel carrying him through. Mina was very relieved when their son arrived quickly and naturally. Cesare was even more relieved. And Freddy Fish? Freddy got an entire family to keep him company in his not so dark corner…
eISBN 978-14592-7648-2
A SAVAGE BETRAYAL
First North American Publication 1996.
Copyright © 1995 by Lynne Graham.
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