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‘Oh, my God!’ Mina gasped as she saw the perky red bow just visible through the window on the passenger side. Susie was in the driver’s seat. As Cesare raced across the lawn, she flew in his wake.
Cesare reached the Ferrari first, ducking
down and emerging with a kicking, screeching Susie, who hadn’t seen him coming and who had been thoroughly enjoying herself. Even as Mina looked on in a state of mute horror, she saw her daughter bend her head and sink her teeth into the hand attempting to restrain her.
‘Dio! You little animal!’ Cesare grated as he released his tiny squirming burden and incredulously studied the teeth-marks on his hand.
Susie said her rude word. She knew it was offensive and she flaunted it. She squinted up at Cesare in a temper and slung it like a sailor squaring up for a fight. Cesare stared down at his daughter with appalled distaste and strode out of reach. He met Mina’s stricken eyes across the roof of the Ferrari. ‘What a revolting child,’ he breathed, brushing at the smear of dirt on his previously immaculate jacket. ‘Filthy as well!’
‘What’s revolting?’ Susie’s voice warbled.
Mina was terrified to speak because Susie wasn’t yet aware of her presence on the other side of the car. Her niece and nephews were lurking in a tight group several feet away, drawn by Susie’s shrieks. John, a sturdy six-year-old, inched forward and told Susie that she should apologise.
‘Susie never says sorry,’ Lizzy complained.
‘Sorry,’ Peter said. A quiet little boy, almost exactly the same age as Susie, he had already formed the somewhat irritating habit of apologising for his cousin.
‘Not sorry.’ Susie gazed up at Cesare, having tailed him round the bonnet.
Ignoring her with supreme cool, Cesare sent Mina a fulminating glance. ‘Why are you standing there like a statue? And what did you lie about?’
Susie tugged at his trouser leg. ‘Not sorry,’ she said again, wanting a reaction.
‘Go away,’ Cesare grated in exasperated aside, and pulled free.
Susie’s bottom lip wobbled alarmingly. ‘You’re not nice.’
‘Nice would be wasted on you.’
From somewhere, Mina regained sufficient self-possession to say, ‘John, take Susie back to the tree-house.’
As her much bigger cousin began to trail her away, Susie burst into floods of tears and screamed for her mother. Mina’s fingernails dug painful crescents into her palms as she ignored that call that tugged painfully at her heart-strings.
‘What did you lie about?’
‘How did you find me?’
‘Ways and means. I asked you what you lied about,’ Cesare bit out with lancing impatience.
As Susie’s sobs receded into the distance, Mina breathed again. All that was on her mind was getting rid of him again as fast as she possibly could. Did he know that this was her sister’s home? She didn’t even think he knew she had a sister, and it was wiser to keep him in the dark.
‘Baxter’s not my lover—actually, he’s only a guest here,’ Mina improvised on the spot. ‘I’m staying with friends.’
‘And which one of the friends is the lover?’
Mina coloured hotly and ignored the question. ‘I want you to leave, Cesare.’
‘I’m not leaving without you,’ he told her harshly.
Her head jerked in the direction of the gate as she heard another car approaching. It was Steve’s Range Rover. To say that Mina’s nerves had already withstood about all they could stand would be an understatement. She experienced a cowardly urge simply to cut and run as she watched Steve slow down and suddenly brake to a halt as he recognised the man standing beside her.
‘Please leave,’ Mina whispered in desperation as a car door slammed.
‘What the hell are you doing here, Falcone?’ Steve demanded, his tanned face flushed with angry disbelief as he strode forward.
‘Cesare is just leaving,’ Mina said loudly.
‘Introduce me,’ Cesare murmured flatly, scanning the burly blonde man with dark-as-night narrowed eyes.
