‘Stray into another bed unless I chained you by force and circumstance to mine?’ Cesare drawled, scanning her pink cheeks with derision. ‘I’ve seen you in action, cara. I’ve watched you with Edwin Haland and with Clayton. It was educational. You may be little but you’re lethal! If I were an Arab, I’d lock you up in a harem and throw away the key.’
‘I have never slept with another man.’ Mina lifted her head high. ‘You don’t deserve that I should tell you that——’
Glittering golden eyes cut her off mid-speech. ‘No…I deserve the truth. Clayton was your lover.’
‘Steve has never been my lover!’ Mina argued, her voice rising sharply.
‘I turn my back on you for forty-eight hours,’ Cesare murmured in a tone that made the blood in her veins chill, ‘and what happens? I find you with Clayton, letting him touch you…’
Mina recalled the scene which Cesare had interrupted that day at the garden centre and stared back at him, shattered by how much he could conceal from her. At the time he hadn’t batted a single magnificent eyelash, hadn’t made the smallest reference to the incident and she had assumed that he had accepted that what he had seen had been entirely innocent, if indeed he even cared enough to consider the matter!
He had been so aloof that day, so utterly set on discussing only Susie…and yet all the time behind that cool front of detachment had lurked this dark, brooding rage…Mina shivered, violently disconcerted by the discovery that Cesare had contrived to hide those feelings from her.
‘But then you were childhood sweethearts and familiarity breeds…more familiarity. Obviously you’ve been playing games with him for years but he still worships the ground you walk on,’ Cesare continued with a look of raw contempt. ‘Such unquestioning adoration must be hard to live without…but live without it, and him, you shall.’
‘Who told you that Steve and I were childhood sweethearts?’ Mina prompted shakily.
‘Your twin…you will scarcely accuse her of lying?’
‘I’m not denying that Steve and I dated in our teens but there’s been nothing between us for years——’
‘He’s in love with you,’ Cesare interposed drily.
‘He is not in love with me! He was…right? But he isn’t any more!’ Mina argued tautly and with steadily growing anger and frustration. ‘As for Winona, she always wanted me to marry Steve so that we could all be one big happy family, and Winona is very persistent, but don’t you think that if I had ever wanted Steve I would have married him when he asked me?’
‘He hadn’t enough to offer. He’s never likely to be rich. But he feeds your ego, believes you innocent of every charge, and devotion of that magnitude is rare. I suppose he thinks I got you drunk and wickedly seduced you the night Susie was conceived…you would have settled for him if I hadn’t come back.’
Mina threw her napkin aside and stood up, trembling with anger. ‘I wish to heaven I had!’ she slung unsteadily. ‘Steve may never be rich but he knows me far better than you ever will!’
‘You will sit down and you will finish your meal,’ Cesare told her with flat menace.
‘I’m not sharing this table with you!’ Mina hissed. ‘Not only are you suspicious of my every motive and action, you’re unhinged, and if you think for one moment that I intend to——’
‘Sit down!’ Cesare said again.
She heard the sound o
f the door opening and settled back, frustrated by her own reluctance to make a scene in front of the staff. As the first course was removed and the second delivered, she quivered with a combustible mix of anger, bitterness and a sharp, painful sense of self-loathing that she had been foolish enough to imagine that Cesare might have been willing to set the past behind them even briefly.
‘I entered this marriage in good faith,’ she murmured tautly when they were alone again.
‘For Susie’s benefit,’ Cesare reminded her in a predatory purr. ‘And the country life is so good for young children. Fresh air, space to play, not to mention the security that will be provided by the full-time attention of her mother.’
‘No matter where we lived Susie would have been assured of that attention.’ Mina wouldn’t look at him. Pale as paper, she picked up her knife and fork. Although her appetite had vanished, she was determined not to betray the fact. ‘But it’s obvious to me that no matter what I do you won’t trust me.’
‘Trust has to be earned and if you don’t try to earn it you’ll still be sitting here this time next year as trapped as a ship inside a bottle,’ Cesare informed her with a deeply sardonic smile as she gazed back at him wide-eyed. ‘When you have freely admitted to me that you were guilty of insider trading and satisfied me as to what you did with the money——’
‘I didn’t do it!’ Mina practically screeched at him.
Cesare didn’t so much as stop to draw breath. ‘And gone at least nine months without the potent effect of another man panting like a rabid dog at your dainty little heels…then you might get one escorted trip to London and some of my money to spend——’
‘Keep your lousy money!’ Mina spat in outrage.
Cesare slung her a glittering smile of hard amusement. ‘I intend to. I’m going to be the stingiest bastard of your most terrifying nightmares. I’m not issuing you with any credit cards. I’m not giving you any jewellery you could sell. That ring on your finger may look like platinum but it’s silver…’
With a shaking hand and in a gust of tempestuous fury, Mina wrenched the ring off and flung it down the table at him. It bounced and fell on the floor, unnoticed by either of them. ‘Keep that too, you cheapskate!’ she launched at him, plunged into deep mortification by the assurance.
‘In short I don’t believe you’ll be leaving this valley under your own steam for quite some time,’ Cesare murmured with unhidden satisfaction. ‘You can devote all your many talents to being my wife and I can rejoice in the sure knowledge that when I leave you you will be exactly where I left you when I return. Believe it or not that is a sensation of security which some men actually take for granted!’