> ‘When I couldn’t find you, I called myself a fool for imagining that you would have taken such a risk. I assumed you had guarded yourself against pregnancy before you got into my bed,’ he revealed, his delivery suddenly icy cold, the anger tamped down and rigorously controlled. ‘It never crossed my mind that you might choose not to inform me of your condition. But then, why should you have done? You didn’t need my money to support her. Your wonderfully understanding family took responsibility and left you free——’
‘That isn’t how it was!’ Mina protested with a sob in her voice.
‘Per amor di Dio…’ he ground out thickly. ‘You have given me such a shock, I feel as if the ground is rocking under my feet!’
Mina was in tears. She felt like a target and he was the one throwing the knives, his aim deadly in its cruel accuracy. Too much had happened in too short a time space; too many agonising emotions had been unleashed and right now she was in the eye of the storm, powerless to control them. But when she looked at him, registered by the lines of savage strain etched into his clenched features that he was suffering an equally powerful emotional conflict, that somehow hurt even more than what she was feeling.
And finally she saw into herself, would have done anything to shield herself from that private viewing but what she saw could not be buried again. An anguished understanding of her own pain had flooded her. She still loved him. That was the only reason why Cesare could still hurt her to this extent. It was the worst time imaginable to make that discovery. The acknowledgement that she still loved him devastated her.
She collapsed down on the bench again, weak as water, and lowered her aching head. He hated her and she wanted to put her arms around him! She wanted to tell him she was sorry even if she didn’t know quite what she should be sorry for as yet. How the heck could she defend herself feeling like that?
‘I need time to think this over,’ Cesare admitted flatly and then he threw her entirely by simply walking away.
She stared after him with despairing eyes and slowly closed them as the throaty purr of the Ferrari faded away into the distance. He was devastated too and she had never seen him in that state before. But then finding out you were a father four years after a one-night stand wasn’t something that was covered by any book on social niceties. Worst of all, it was not a situation which Cesare was able to control, and if there was one field in which Cesare excelled it was controlling everything and everybody within his radius.
He despised Susie’s mother and he hadn’t been much more impressed by his first meeting with his daughter. But Cesare was very family-orientated. He wasn’t the kind of man who was capable of forgetting that he had a child because it didn’t suit him to have that child. He took his responsibilities seriously. Hadn’t she seen him in action with his obnoxious brother, Sandro?
He looked after Sandro, had given him a fancy title in Falcone Industries to keep him happy and stuck him in a very large office where, even with the very limited powers at his disposal, Sandro still managed to get himself into one mess after another…messes which Cesare cleared up and covered up. Why? Sandro was family. Sandro had had endless excuses made for him.
Why was she thinking about Sandro? But she knew why. Her last memory of Cesare’s brother was scorched into her bones. The morning after that night she had spent in Cesare’s arms she had wakened alone and wandered out of the bedroom half dressed, and had discovered to her mortification that the voice she could hear speaking on the phone belonged not to Cesare, but to his brother…
Sandro had asked her out the very first day she started work at Falcone Industries. She had turned him down, had had no plans to date anyone she worked with. In any case, Sandro was creepy and she hadn’t been in her job a week before she’d realised that the majority of the secretarial staff felt the same way as she did about the boss’s kid brother.
In Falcone Industries, Mina had entered an exclusively male executive clique and she had been shaken by their hostility. Even the other PAs would have cut off their hands sooner than help her out when she was trying to find her feet. She had walked into a plum job which some of them had applied for and the word had been that Cesare had employed her simply because she was easy on the eye. The next rumour had been that she was sleeping with the boss.
Cesare had not stepped in to help her. He had sat back and let her get on with it, sink or swim. But he had stopped the filthy jokes and the foul language in the boardroom, probably because she suspected that there had never been such offensive talk until her arrival. They had tried to treat her like an errand girl and for a while she had been foolishly obliging, hoping to make friends and show that she was not too big for her boots.
‘You only make coffee for me,’ Cesare had told her one day. ‘You only run messages for me. Learn to say no to everyone but me.’
How long had it taken for her to fall in love with him? His sophistication and his looks had initially intimidated her and he hadn’t been easy to work for. The first time he had shouted at her she had locked herself in the loo and fought back childish tears. The next time she had shouted back…and after a stunned pause he had stunned her by laughing. He had fascinated her right from the beginning. He was brilliant in business, intensely competitive but not a workaholic. If he worked hard, he also played hard and she had been staggered by the speed with which women came and went in his highly visible social life.
By the end of the first month, Mina had known she had three problems. One was that Sandro Falcone was refusing to take no for an answer and becoming increasingly unpleasant. The second was that she was passionately attracted to Cesare. The third was career-orientated. Cesare flew round Europe on a regular basis but he didn’t once take her with him; he took her subordinate instead, leaving Mina in London.
‘Did I say I would take you abroad with me?’ he had responded when she had finally picked up the courage to query that omission.
‘Well, no, but——’
‘Maybe this job isn’t working out for you?’ He had dismayed her by looking as if that idea appealed to him.
The second month he had become more shorttempered. In fact the more overtime she’d worked, the harsher he’d become. They had been spending a great deal of time alone together. By then, Mina had known that she was head over heels in love. The third month, the evidence of all the other women in his life had vanished. She would look up and find brooding golden eyes fixed on her and the air would hum but she had blamed herself for that awareness and feared that he suspected her feelings for him.
And then, that final night, they had been in the penthouse apartment at the top of the Falcone building. Everyone else had left but she had been finishing off transcribing her notes. He had offered her a glass of champagne and then, quite out of the blue, those golden eyes had suddenly shimmered down at her. ‘I surrender,’ he had muttered rawly, and he had grabbed her and kissed her breathless.
The glass had dropped out of her hand. He had kept on kissing her. She didn’t even remember how they had got to the bedroom. Cesare had given a very good impression of being as out of control as she was yet she did recall that he had taken immense care not to hurt her the first time they made love.
‘I never mix business and pleasure,’ he had said afterwards. ‘But this is different.’
And as far as meaningful conversation had gone that had been that. By the time she had got her mouth open, he had been making love to her again. As for pillow-talk concerning a deal he had recently closed, she had fallen asleep in the middle of it, waking up late into the morning when she should have been at her desk, appalled that Cesare had not roused her before he’d left. She had also been the victim of her own doubts and insecurities, painfully conscious that she could not recall Cesare saying a single word which might have allayed her fears that she had made an ass of herself.
Sandro had spun round and surveyed her with startled disbelief when she’d come running out of the bedroom, not even sure what time it was and hoping to catch Cesare before he
departed for Hong Kong.
‘So Cesare hit paydirt,’ Sandro had finally sneered after a long silence. ‘You’re a joke, Mina. And let me tell you something else: you backed the wrong horse. My brother doesn’t believe in office nooky. He thinks it’s bad for the old team spirit. The day before you started work here everybody was warned off you!’
‘I don’t believe you,’ she had mumbled.
‘And now he has had what nobody else was allowed to have he’ll dump you so fast and hard your head will spin! Cesare always goes by the book.’