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Paolo entered with the dessert course. Mina wanted to snatch it out of his reverent hands and throw it over Cesare. It took immense restraint to control the urge. The atmosphere shimmered around her as she fought to conceal her spitting fury until the older man departed again.
‘All I have to do,’ she spelt out tremulously, ‘is phone my sister——’
‘Your sister cringes behind pot plants every time I walk into a room. Dio mio…I feel terrified!’
‘Winona won’t let Susie go to anyone but me and no way is Susie coming out here!’ Mina swore wildly, desperate to find a weapon to fight back with.
‘She’ll hand Susie over to her father…your brother-in-law will see to that,’ Cesare told her.
It had been a foolish threat. Mina bent her head. She did not want to involve her family. She had her pride. Nor did she want to risk upsetting Susie. Her daughter was already very attached to Cesare. Like any young child she had responded to genuine interest and attention and the further knowledge that like her cousins she now had a man she could call Daddy had been all that was required to entrench Cesare firmly in his daughter’s affections.
‘For better or for worse,’ Cesare reminded her softly. ‘Although perhaps the line about for richer and for poorer has more relevance to your present air of anguish.’
‘What I am feeling right now is not anguish, it’s rage and a deep, overwhelming desire to push you off the edge of the nearest cliff!’ Mina launched back at him wrathfully as she plunged upright, bracing both hands on the edge of the polished table. ‘You have just made the biggest miscalculation of your life, Cesare Falcone!’
‘You thought I would be fool enough to marry you and leave you free in the heart of London to do whatever you liked? You think I’m stupid or something, cara?’ A winged ebony brow elevated in sardonic enquiry.
Her teeth clenched together. ‘You never once mentioned Steve or that wretched money in recent weeks!’
‘Of course not,’ Cesare purred, cradling his champagne. ‘I don’t mind admitting now that restraining myself was a constant challenge but it got you to the altar, didn’t it? Now I have exactly what I want. I have my daughter—a legal right to my daughter. But equally importantly I also have you——’
‘You do not have me!’ Mina snapped like a cat ready to spring, infuriated by his assurance.
Cesare let his golden eyes travel over her and linger on the swell of her heaving breasts. ‘I have you,’ he repeated. ‘Right where I always wanted you. Totally and absolutely dependent——’
‘How dare you?’ Mina was so enraged by that smouldering explicit look, she could hardly get the words out.
‘Maybe not barefoot, pregnant and in the kitchen yet,’ Cesare told her lazily, his sensual mouth slanting with raw amusement. ‘But give me time.’
Mina lifted a trembling hand and shook it at him. ‘If you try to lay one finger on me, I’ll make you sorry you were ever born!’
‘Our first argument and the ink is scarcely dry on our marriage licence.’ Cesare laughed softly and surveyed her from beneath dense black lashes. ‘A prudent man would hasten to repair the damage on his wedding night…but I’ve never been prudent. In fact the challenge lends a certain sizzle to my anticipation. I’m willing to bet you a thousand pounds that you share a bed with me tonight.’
‘Make it a million for all I care…you’ll still lose!’ Mina flung at him, and walked out of the room, passing by a rather startled Paolo carrying a tray of coffee.
Mina had never been so screamingly angry in her entire life. Another five minutes in Cesare’s company and she would have started throwing china. What had originally attracted her to Cesare Falcone now loomed as his most serious flaw! He was unpredictable. As she mounted the stairs, she found several more glaring faults to dwell on.
He was secretive. He had the tenacity of a Rottweiler, the obstinacy of a mule. He could not even imagine that he could possibly be wrong about anything. He was downright sneaky. He plotted and planned as if the blood of the Borgias ran in his rotten veins! And yet he still couldn’t see the lousy wood for the trees!
Mina was noisily engaged in hauling the drawers out of a very large chest when her maid entered uncertainly, her knock having gone unanswered. Her dark eyes wide with curiosity, Giulia stared. ‘You would like the help, signora?’
‘No, thank you.’ Scarlet at the interruption and breathless, Mina straightened and hitched her gown which had slid down while she was making a futile effort to shift the chest with the drawers still intact. ‘I don’t need any help,’ she lied.
Giulia backed out again with reluctance. Mina hefted out the last drawer and put her shoulder to the chest again, furious that there hadn’t been a key in the lock on the door. The massive piece of furniture groaned and shifted a few inches. With a strength born of raging determination, Mina kept on pushing, and when she finally got it across the door she flopped damply to the carpet until it occurred to her that it wouldn’t be much of a barrier without the drawers to weight it down again. She was gasping for oxygen by the time she had replaced the drawers and hauled the large sofa below one window over as well.
That achieved, she flopped back on the bed, totally wiped out by all that physical effort. She released the zip on her gown, shimmied it down over her hips and, after another minute or two,
peeled off the stockings and the flimsy satin suspender belt. She had never worn either before, she reflected with a kind of mortified fury. Had Cesare gone shopping on her behalf or his? Cesare would like that sort of stuff, she decided bitterly. She ripped off the cobweb-fine panties in rebellion. From now on she would put nothing on her back that she hadn’t brought to Sicily and she seriously hoped it did embarrass him!
As she lay there letting the air cool her overheated skin, the anger began to give way to the pain. Cesare had not budged one inch from his conviction that she was a confidence trickster…only he did seem surprisingly keen to hear her admit her wrongdoing out loud all of a sudden. Was it possible that he was having doubts about her guilt?
She suppressed that unlikely hope. Tonight she had dined with a man on a victory roll of sheer, primitive triumph. Control was all-important to Cesare and he now felt one hundred per cent in control of events between them. True, he had had to lure her out to a foreign country and plan to keep her in penury and isolation like some medieval tyrant set on hanging on to an unwilling bride, but there was method in his madness.
A gold-digger would have sweated blood and gone barking mad at his threats but Mina had struggled for so long simply to feed and clothe herself and Susie, she was untouched by them. What would she need money for? She had no bills to pay, and since Cesare had never had to worry about bills he could not possibly realise what a relief it was to be released from that burden.
As for what he had said about Steve…Mina groaned. Steve had avoided her like the plague from the instant he’d learnt that she was getting married to Cesare. In a weak moment, Mina had awkwardly asked her twin how Steve had taken the news.
‘How do you think?’ Winona had muttered with an air of helpless condemnation. ‘He was shattered. He thought you hated Cesare.’
