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‘You’re my sister and I don’t understand you,’ Winona complained in a tight, tremulous voice. ‘Steve adored you. He didn’t even object when you went off to college! He’s handsome, caring and successful,’ her twin enumerated, setting Mina’s teeth on edge. ‘If you have to make a fool of yourself with a man, why not do it with him? At least he would marry you!’
A shattering silence fell.
‘I’d better hurry or I’ll be late!’ her twin muttered with guilty brevity, and rushed upstairs.
Two hours later, after clearing up the lunch dishes, Mina sank down on a seat beside Baxter, who was snoozing on an old wooden lounger on the lawn, his straw hat tipped over his face.
‘Been getting the riot act read again?’ he enquired, making her jump because she had believed he was asleep.
‘Where did you get that idea?’
‘I could hear Winona screeching from the hall.’ The old man sighed. ‘You’ll be glad to move into Dempsey’s cottage in the autumn. You and Susie need your own corner.’
‘Yes.’ Her cheeks burning, she was wondering how much Baxter had overheard.
The children were at the far end of the garden, playing in the tree-house Roger had built. It was a beautiful day, but for once the sunlight failed to lift Mina’s spirits. It had been two weeks since she had left London. She couldn’t eat and she wasn’t sleeping much better. The quiet of the countryside had failed to work its usual magic.
‘I’m very fond of your sister, but she’s had life easy,’ Baxter sighed. ‘She married her childhood sweetheart at nineteen and never had to earn her daily crust. Everything she ever wanted was handed to her on a plate: her husband, her home, her children. Remind her of that reality the next time she starts on you.’
‘Winona’s been very good to me——’
‘Not when she continues to ram that gormless grandson of mine down your throat! I could have told the lot of you when you were sixteen that you would never marry Steve. You didn’t fancy him!’
A stifled sound escaped Mina. Sometimes, Baxter disturbed her. He saw so clearly, pierced right to the heart of the matter.
‘That was as plain as the nose on my old face. But because Steve looks like Roger Winona can’t understand your astonishing lack of good taste!’
‘I hurt him,’ Mina whispered unhappily.
‘You’d have hurt him a great deal more if you’d let yourself be pressured into marrying him…Is that a car I hear?’
Mina turned abstracted eyes on the sweeping driveway at the same moment as a car appeared through the dense shrubbery which screened the manor’s gates. It was a Ferrari, a silver one. Mina lurched upright on legs which suddenly felt like rubber, a sick sense of shock paralysing her to the spot.
‘Who is it?’ Baxter grumbled, tipping off his hat and squinting.
Cesare sprang out of the car. He didn’t even bother to close the door again. His entire attention was pinned to the little tableau of sunbathers on the front lawn. He strode across the grass, every long biting stride expressing ferocious purpose. He flipped off his sunglasses, digging them into the pocket of his jacket. Sheathed in a cream summer-weight suit of exquisite cut, black hair gleaming in the sunshine, he looked outrageously exotic.
‘The Mafia have arrived,’ Baxter muttered in a tone of somnolent amusement.
Mina clashed with shimmering gold eyes across a distance of ten feet. It was like being grabbed by the throat. She was so horrified by Cesare’s descent that she couldn’t unglue her tongue from the roof of her mouth.
‘I’m taking you back to London with me,’ Cesare enunciated with a flash of even white teeth. ‘Don’t bother packing, just get in the car! I’ll deal with you later…’
Baxter dealt him a highly entertained look of intense interest and actually roused himself sufficiently to sit up as Cesare strolled closer with the slow, silent intent of a predator tracking his prey.
Mina read the dark fury suddenly locking Cesare’s facial muscles taut, and belatedly recalled the lies she had told in London. She surged into sudden motion as Cesare angled his smouldering attention on Baxter. ‘And as for you,’ Cesare intoned with vicious bite on a quite visible wave of clench-fisted frustration as he viewed the older man, and Mina imposed herself between him and his quarry, ‘if you weren’t halfway into the grave already, I’d bury you!’
‘Cesare!’ Mina exclaimed.
He thrust her out of his path. ‘Mina is young enough to be your granddaughter!’
Baxter surveyed Cesare with amused blue eyes. ‘Is he always like this?’ he enquired of Mina, who was unmistakably cringing, colour running up her throat into her cheeks like a banner. ‘Or has somebody been telling the poor chap whoppers?’
‘Cesare…I lied——’
‘About what?’ he raked at her.
The engine of the Ferrari suddenly fired into motion. His ebony head spun.
