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There were four children,’ Cesare began without any expression at all.
Three blonde, one black-haired…and ‘revolting’. Hysteria clogged up Mina’s throat. She was waiting for the awful truth to dawn on him. In the space of five ghastly minutes, Susie had contrived to expose her every flaw. Her temper, her tenacity, her aggression.
‘The one who bit and swore?’ Cesare prompted not quite levelly.
The silence stretched and smouldered with the strength of his incredulity.
‘Are you telling me that that dirty little creature is my child?’ he suddenly slammed at her with raw ferocity. A hard hand closed over her shoulder without warning and literally hauled her upright. ‘I asked you a question!’ he roared down at her, giving her a little shake that made her hair fly round her distressed face.
‘But you don’t really want the answer, do you?’ she burst out.
Abruptly he thrust her back from him and strode away a couple of paces before restively swinging back to her. He was very pale, his hard bone-structure harshly prominent beneath his dark skin. ‘She didn’t look old enough.’
‘She’ll be four in December. She’s small, that’s all.’
Cesare’s narrowed dark gaze held hers with sudden chilling menace. ‘She looked neglected…’
Mina was violently off-balanced by the charge. ‘N-neglected?’
‘Madre di Dio…if you are telling me the truth and that child is mine…’ Cesare’s expressive mouth compressed into a savage bloodless line ‘…who the hell has been looking after her while you’ve been in London?’
‘My sister——’
‘That shrieking harpy?’ Cesare blistered back at her.
Mina turned white at this unfamiliar description of her sister. ‘Winona loves Susie!’
‘But she hates me!’ Cesare shot at her with black fury. He raised a brown hand and slashed it through the air. ‘If that little girl is mine——’
‘Will you stop saying that?’ Mina interrupted painfully. ‘If she’s yours! Nobody brought you here to pin Susie on you! You brought yourself here and refused to leave. If Winona hadn’t lost her head, you still wouldn’t be any the wiser——’
‘And why is that? Why, if you were pregnant, didn’t you contact me?’ Cesare demanded in a driving undertone. ‘Why do I only find out by accident?’
Mina lifted her chin, fighting to control the wobble in her voice. ‘I should think that’s obvious. I didn’t want you to know. I didn’t want your financial help. In fact I didn’t want anything more to do with you. I didn’t ever want to see you again. I owed you nothing after the way you treated me!’
‘But what about what you owed the child?’ Cesare intoned with scorching emphasis. He watched her strained face tighten and uttered a harsh laugh. ‘No, you didn’t think about her. I don’t think you think about her very often——’
‘How dare you say that?’
‘She’s dirty, foul-mouthed, improperly supervised and desperate for attention. That doesn’t say much for you as a mother, does it?’
‘You only saw her for a few minutes. You don’t know her,’ Mina whispered, stricken, appalled by his censure. ‘She’s a tomboy but she has a bath every night. She only says that one bad word…’
‘Forgive me if I’m not too impressed.’ Cesare looked at her with bitter condemnation. ‘So Susie is the trouble I would be digging up which I wouldn’t want to handle? Why did you have her? Was she your insurance policy against prosecution? You were ready to use her to protect yourself, weren’t you? After all, she hasn’t clipped your wings much. You dumped her down here and simply got on with your life!’
White-faced, Mina’s distraught gaze clung to his fiercely clenched features in growing horror. ‘It wasn’t like that. I left her here because I couldn’t afford anywhere decent to live and I knew she was well looked after and safe here with my family——’
‘Where is she?’ Cesare glanced around expressively, an ebony brow rising. ‘You don’t even know, do you? She could be out on that road under a car!’
‘She’s too scared to walk over the cattle grid!’ Mina lifted a trembling hand to her throbbing brow, wondering what she had done to deserve this nightmare. Whatever response she had expected from Cesare it had not been an immediate catalogue of scathing attacks on her parenting skills.
‘She runs wild…my child, my daughter whom you tell me I had no right to know about! Who the hell do you think you are, to make a decision like that?’ Cesare shot at her with unhidden savagery.
Pale as paper and trembling, Mina whispered, ‘You treated me like——’
‘You deserved!’ Cesare cut in before she could complete the sentence. ‘But I did attempt to see you again after that night because I was concerned that my irresponsibility might have had repercussions.’
Shaken by the reminder, Mina looked away from him.
