The single word exploded from between her dry lips, shrill and strangled, as she stared back at him in disbelief.
‘Insider dealing. The courts frown heavily on the offence. You could still be tried for it.’
Every scrap of colour had drained from her cheeks. Mina tried and failed to swallow. Insider dealing. He was accusing her of having used confidential information to trade for her own benefit on the Stock Exchange. The practice was illegal.
‘You’re crazy…I would never have done anything like that,’ Mina protested in a voice that was weak from sheer shock that he could believe her capable of such an act.
‘You’d have done it more than once if I’d given you the chance,’ Cesare asserted with icy bite, his profile golden and granite-hard in the street-light slanting through the windscreen. ‘But I didn’t. I sacked you and you took your ill-gotten gains and disappeared off the face of this planet!’
‘That’s not true. There weren’t any ill-gotten gains because I didn’t do it!’ she exclaimed shrilly, her heart pounding madly with fright against her ribcage.
Cesare’s ice-cold stare told her just how unimpressed he was by her protests.
‘I thought you sacked me because—because I slept with you!’ She had to force out the statement and she couldn’t bring herself to look at him.
‘Dio mio! The jury will surely break down and cry when they hear that defence,’ Cesare said with flat derision. ‘It is on record that you were sacked for gross misconduct.’
‘I know, but I——’
‘Popular report suggests that some prisons harbour big butch women. At seven stone and built like a doll, maybe you should consider getting into training.’
Mina was in such turmoil that she shrank back against the passenger door in horror. ‘I’m not going to prison…I haven’t done anything!’
‘Well, you’re certainly not about to do anything in the charity world.’ Cesare shot the assurance at her with cold threat. ‘With your talent for accounting, you could work any number of scams. I want you out of there as of now——’
‘But I haven’t done anything…I’m not dishonest!’ Mina slung back at him in helpless repetition and growing apprehension.
‘If you push me I’ll tell Haland, and I can back my allegations up with cold, hard evidence,’ Cesare returned with slashing cool. ‘And a man like Haland, with all those fine, upstanding principles, might just feel that when he’s informed of an illegal act it is his duty to report it to the authorities——’
‘And if you were so convinced I was guilty, why didn’t you call them in?’ Mina demanded wildly, fighting to find some angle on which she could base a defence.
‘It would have been like reporting a murder without the corpse. You’d vanished like a thief in the night.’ Cesare lounged back with indolent relaxation and surveyed her intently, eyes slivers of molten gold beneath the luxuriant fringe of his ebony lashes. ‘And I did entertain myself briefly with a vision of you becoming a prison mascot, but ultimately it didn’t satisfy me. I think the punishment should fit the crime——’
‘I haven’t committed any crime…why won’t you listen to me?’ she gasped.
‘You used pillow-talk for profit——’
‘Pillow-talk?’
‘You ripped off that information like a professional. You made a fool of me. I could have been dragged down in the dirt with you. Guilty by association. I have no doubt you intended to say that you traded on my behalf if you were caught,’ Cesare told her very softly, every accented syllable dropping into the throbbing silence. ‘Pull the dumb dizzy blonde act and insist you had no idea that what you were doing was against the law.’
‘You’re out of your m-mind!’ Mina was white, barely able to vocalise.
‘Say you were seduced, used,’ Cesare continued with harshened emphasis, pinning her to the spot with smouldering dark golden eyes that burned. ‘If you were a man I’d have killed you…but you’re a woman and I intend to use you exactly as you used me…’
CHAPTER TWO
‘I BEG your pardon?’ Mina was still reeling with shock, her brain thrown into total chaos by the shattering accusation that Cesare Falcone had dropped on her four years after the event.
There was too much for her to take in all at once. But, devastated though she was, there had been a terrifying ring of reality to his derision when she had tried to protest her belief that she had been fired for the sin of once sharing his bed. No matter how insane his allegations, she suddenly had no doubt that he truly believed that she had committed a crime. It explained his attitude towards her. Both in the present and in the past. His hatred and his aggression now made sense out of what had earlier seemed like insanity.
Her mind was working in slow motion, one tiny step at a time. Cesare thought she had been guilty of insider dealing. Worse, he believed she had used information which he had given her in trust. Worse still, he was convinced that if she had been apprehended by the authorities she would have lied and said she had been acting on his behalf and not her own.
‘I shall use you as you once set out to use me,’ Cesare asserted.
She cleared her throat with difficulty. ‘And how are you planning to do that?’
‘How do you think?’ Cesare dealt her a look of grim amusement. ‘I don’t think you’ll ever tangle with a Sicilian again.’
Mina drew in a deep, shaky breath. ‘I intend to take legal advice about the allegations you have made against me.’
‘Cast-iron allegations with proof.’
‘You couldn’t possibly have proof of something I didn’t do!’
‘If you’ve got any of that money left, I intend to take it off you. By the time I am finished with you——’
‘You’re not even going to start with me!’ Mina told him, suddenly frantic to get out of the Ferrari but wanting to do so with dignity.
A hard smile slashed Cesare’s expressive mouth. ‘Don’t tell me I can’t do what I’ve already begun. Did you really think that I would let you get away with it? You should have known I would be on your trail. It made my day when I saw your photo——’
‘My photo?’
‘On the front of Earth Concern’s newsletter. That was a careless move, but then you were unlucky. My staff deal with the charity flyers. Rarely have I had such literature thrust at me at dinner parties,’ Cesare said very drily. ‘But there you were, looking all prim and proper, standing beside Haland at some fund-raiser.’
Mina had forgotten that she had featured in that same newsletter which Jean had mentioned as having ignited Cesare’s interest in the charity. She had assumed that their meeting tonight had been a ghastly coincidence and that he had not realised that she worked for Earth Concern until he’d seen her. The news that he had had that prior knowledge shook
