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She uttered a tremulous little laugh. ‘Of you?’
Was she? she wondered, with her breathing quickening, wishing now that she had listened to her instincts. But he had been merely a fellow guest at her sister’s pre-wedding bash and, after that, Vikki’s brother-in-law.
That description of him mocked her with its banality. In no way did such an ordinary word fit the man whose persona seemed to energise the very air around her and whose nearness sent coils of excitement spiralling through her blood.
So why didn’t she just take a chance? she asked herself. Have some fun for once, instead of always being the ‘sensible’ one, as her parents used to call her? The one who was level-headed, cautious and careful—both in her behaviour and in her everyday living—always working hard and keeping house, first for Vikki’s sake and then, after Vikki had stormed out, simply to keep a roof over her own head. She didn’t imagine that it could possibly hurt her to take some time out and simply let herself go for a few short hours. And if she and Emiliano had started off on the wrong foot just because of what he had said initially about Vikki and Angelo being happy...Well, she decided, talking herself round, it was no more than she had been wondering herself, was it?
So she allowed Emiliano to lead her outside and remembered now how much they had talked and laughed, sitting there under the stars on the low wall of the softly litterrace, wrapped up in their own world, with the music from the ballroom drifting towards them, although she remembered very little afterwards of what had been said.
It had all been a prelude to what they had both known was going to happen, and even before Emiliano’s lips came down over hers it was already too late.
Now, in bitter retrospect, she saw that night only as a prelude to shame and humiliation, but out there, on that terrace, all she had been able to focus on was the excitement of Emiliano’s hands shaping her body and the sensations that were governing her, making her shudder with need from the warmth of his mouth moving over her bare shoulders and the way his deep voice trembled from his own desire.
She didn’t want to think about that exquisite night—because it had been exquisite. As was the following morning, she recalled reluctantly—waking up in his bed in that hotel with little enough time to get ready for the wedding, and yet answering his hungry demand with a rising hunger of her own as he’d pulled her back against the hard excitement of his scorching arousal.
She could scarcely remember how many times he had taken her since she had yielded to that first blazing kiss on the terrace, but she’d taken him into her that morning with a body already fashioned by his will, her luscious breasts surrendering to his hands and his burning mouth, her legs fanning open without any further persuasion to accommodate the driving force of his body.
Even while she had stood in a demure cream dress and fascinator at her sister’s wedding she had been on fire for him, with her breasts swelling against the lace of her bra every time she thought of him. She remembered wondering with a sort of guilty excitement if everyone could tell just how she was feeling, and if her cheeks looked as flushed as she felt they did from the excited anticipation of what lay ahead, because Emiliano had made no secret that morning of wanting to keep her in his bed.
She hadn’t had much chance to speak to him during the register office ceremony or during the lavish reception, when they had been seated at opposite ends of the table back at the hotel. Then, afterwards, when everyone had been mingling, he had been monopolised by so many people who wanted to talk to him that she had kept her distance, appreciating how important his role as head of Cannavaro Shipping was, and how sought after his attention was by many of the guests. Also, with Angelo being part of such an influential family, the press had been very much in evidence all that day. Remembering how much Emiliano valued his privacy, Lauren had guessed that if he was keeping his liaison with her low-key, then it was only to protect them both from speculating reporters.
The day had been drawing in and they had barely spoken at all, but the glances he’d sent her way when he’d looked up occasionally over the head of whoever had been monopolising his company at that moment assured Lauren that he wanted to be with her as much as she wanted to be with him.
She was in love. Or halfway towards it!
Like a fool, she had almost convinced herself of it while she had been waiting for her sister—whom she’d presumed had gone upstairs to change before she and Angelo left for their honeymoon—to come back down.
With Emiliano engaged in conversation with a couple of younger men who had been hungrily absorbing every word he had been saying, Lauren had wandered off to steal a few moments to herself in the peace of the luxuriously deserted lounge, out of range of the noise of the ballroom.
Only it hadn’t been deserted.
Still in her wedding dress, Vikki Westwood had been studying her reflection in the huge mirror above the sculpted fireplace. The mirror faced the doorway and, as soon as Lauren entered the room, she’d noticed the surprisingly anxious expression on her sister’s face.
Emiliano’s words of the previous evening had come sharply back to Lauren’s mind and, with them, the worries she had been harbouring about her sister.
‘Vikki...What is it? You are happy, aren’t you?’
Her sister swung round, obviously startled to see her there.
‘Of course I am,’ she said, and her face was instantly lit by a radiant smile. ‘It’s just junior starting to kick. Why would you imagine otherwise?’
‘It’s just that it’s all so sudden,’ Lauren recalled saying. ‘This wedding. The baby. I mean...are you absolutely sure?’
‘Believe me. I know what I’m doing,’ Vikki stressed.
‘It’s just that you’ve never been too keen on the prospect of motherhood...’ Lauren remembered how often her sister had positively rebelled against it.
‘Not just for motherhood’s sake, no, I haven’t. But I can learn to be maternal. And what better way than with a handsome and exceedingly rich husband beside me?’ She giggled and the voluminous hair bounced against her flushed porcelain features like golden candyfloss.
‘I just think I would have been happier if you’d waited a little while longer before starting a family. Got to know each other a bit better. Enjoyed a year or two of just being there for each other.’
‘For heaven’s sake, Lauren! That’s so old-fashioned! But then you always were. And naïve, if you don’t take umbrage from my saying so.’
‘Naïve?’ It hurt Lauren to think that she and her sister weren’t able to see eye to eye, even on that day of all days.
‘You don’t think that all this...’ an expansive gesture of her arm indicated the lavish wedding celebrations ‘...would have happened if I hadn’t forced Angelo’s hand and engineered this pregnancy, do you?’ She laughed out loud at Lauren’s silent disbelief. ‘Don’t look so shocked, sister dear. After all, you can hardly claim to be any different, can you? I saw the way you were cosying up to that big, big brother of his last night, and the way the two of you disappeared after you went out onto the terrace. Did you manage to talk him into bed?’
‘Vikki!’
‘No, don’t tell me. I can see you did. I’ll bet he’s a real super stud between the sheets!’
Lauren could still remember the embarrassed indignation she’d felt at Vikki’s remark, which made her cheeks burn with flaming colour.
‘Wow! That good, eh?’ Vikki enthused. ‘A bit hotter than that lascivious old banker I thought you were trying to land yourself with last night,’ she went on when Lauren was still trying to come to terms with how devious her sister seemed to have become, ‘until, of course, you saw the opportunity to set your cap at some serious money. I’m proud of you, sis. I really am. I didn’t think you’d have the courage to play for such high stakes as Emiliano Cannavaro, but your street cred’s really gone up in my estimation. Play your cards right and you could have it all there. Wealth. Position and—from the look of you—some stupendous sex as well.’
‘Vikki!’ Lauren found her voice at last, but she wasn’t prepared to discuss what had happened between her and Angelo’s brother. ‘We’re not discussing me. It’s you I’m concerned for. What did you mean about engineering your pregnancy? Surely you didn’t...’
‘Leave off the Pill and get pregnant on purpose? How else did you imagine I was going to get that confirmed playboy bachelor to propose? Five months ago, when we got back together after that last break-up, I made up my mind that things were going to be different. Such a rich, handsome package seldom comes a girl’s way more than once in a lifetime, and I was determined not to let it slip through my fingers again. But don’t you see...’ her tone was emphatic, excited, animated ‘...if you’ve hit it off with his dynamo of a brother, it’s all working out as we planned.’
Lauren frowned, so appalled and perplexed by what Vikki was saying that she was dumbfounded, lost for words.
‘OK, so you haven’t hooked Emiliano yet, and if he’s anything like his brother he’ll probably run a mile if he thinks you’re trying to. But play your cards right, sexy sister, with that demure smile and that stand-offish attitude that always has them straining at the bit, and that big hunky beast won’t know what hit him. He might think he’s in control, but he’ll just be putty in your hands.’
The cliché jarred, especially when it was her, Lauren, who had been like putty in Emiliano’s hands. But the things her sister kept coming out with had become more and more outrageous.
‘Vikki, I can’t believe—’ she started to say, only to have her reprimand curtailed by Vikki’s swift interjection.
‘That I still have the list?’
‘The list?’ Lauren’s confusion was so complete that those two words escaped her on what sounded like an almost hysterical little laugh. But she didn’t want her sister to think that what she was saying was funny. It wasn’t funny at all.
‘Our list of possible candidates. Most suitable husband material. These two Italian playboys were always at the number one spot.’
Voices outside and then the appearance of another guest looking for the rest rooms silenced whatever Lauren had been about to say. But, as soon as the woman retreated, Lauren launched into a tirade that left her sister in no doubt at all about how she felt.
‘If you think I condone your behaviour, Vikki, then all I can say is you’re very much mistaken, so please don’t try and include me in your unscrupulous actions. Quite frankly, I’m appalled! How you could be irresponsible enough to let yourself get pregnant when you don’t even want a baby is bad enough. But that you could do it to trap Angelo into marrying you is not only devious but downright immoral and, quite honestly, it’s beyond anything I would have believed you capable of stooping to.’
She went on to remind her sister that their dream of marrying Italian millionaires was something they’d entertained as young adolescents and which she’d thought they had both relinquished—because she certainly had—as soon as they’d grown up!
Her sister warned her that she was part of the very influential Cannavaro family now and begged her not to tell anyone, least of all Emiliano. ‘He could be lethal if he thought anyone was double-crossing him—or any member of his family,’ Vikki told her in a rising panic before going on to add, ‘And I do love Angelo. I really do!’
Lauren couldn’t remember what she had said to her sister after that. Only that she’d watched unhappily as Vikki and her new husband had climbed into the taxi on the first leg of their Turkish honeymoon, with Angelo fielding bawdy comments from a number of his bachelor friends and Vikki smiling brightly through a shower of confetti, looking every bit the perfect couple on their perfect day.
Lauren hadn’t imagined she could feel any worse than she did at that moment, in not only having quarrelled with her sister on her wedding day, but having to carry the disturbing knowledge of Vikki’s deception as well. But when she’d gone back into the hotel and virtually collided with Emiliano, striding through Reception with his briefcase and his features as grim as a rock face, she’d felt her spirits plummet to new depths as she uttered the first words that sprang to her lips.
‘You’re leaving?’ It had been pretty obvious that he was.
‘What did you expect, mia cara?’ His tone clothed the rock face with sheer ice. ‘That I would stick around and be made a fool of as my brother has? Is that what you were hoping? Exactly how many times did you imagine you could sob out my name before I would crack and you could mark up one big beautiful tick against your list?’
Stunned by his coldness and by exactly what he had said, Lauren was only able to stand there and utter breathlessly, ‘You heard?’
‘Si, cara. I heard,’ he rasped.
‘How?’ It was all she could say, hurting not just from that scene with her sister, but from Emiliano’s harsh and very inaccurate conclusion.
‘I don’t really think I need to tell you,’ he said grimly. ‘I came to find you to ask if you would have dinner with me tonight, and all I can say now is that I am very glad I did. If I hadn’t, who knows what sort of sucker you might still have been taking me for, but, thanks to the conversation I overheard between you and your opportunistic sibling, I was able to see quite clearly what game you were playing.’
‘It wasn’t a game.’ Dear heaven! she despaired. How could he even think so?
‘Emiliano!’ Desperate to make him understand, she called after him as he made to depart. ‘How could you believe I could be party to anything that Vikki said?’
‘Very easily.’ He’d stopped, but his tone was inexorable. ‘If I remember correctly, you sounded no less than positively amused.’
She tried to protest—tried to pinpoint what might have given him reason to think she was amused by anything that had transpired during that scene with her sister, but she couldn’t think straight, let alone remember.
‘If you recall, I didn’t exactly fall over myself to get you to notice me—talk to me,’ she reminded him lamely. ‘And I certainly didn’t give you the come-on once you did.’
‘Not until you knew who I was. But wasn’t the stand-off all part of your clever technique? And it worked, did it not? Even your own sister commented on your doing so well? After all, there is nothing more challenging to a man than to be rebuffed by a beautiful woman in whom that man is more than mildly interested. Nice try, mia bella. But I have no intention of being a pushover on some little fortune-hunter’s list.’
It was no good trying to convince him that that list had been the product of a bit of fun on a wet Sunday afternoon, drawn up by two overly romantic adolescents when she was sixteen and Vikki fourteen, because he wasn’t in any mood to listen. Vikki had done enough with her outrageous revelation to destroy his opinion of both of them.
‘It’s been...nice,’ he told her with sickly emphasis. ‘I am usually not partial to weddings. But thanks for the diversion. You made the whole tiresome charade quite...’ his gaze tugged over her breasts and a mirthless smile touched the hard line of his mouth ‘...unforgettable.’
Then he went, leaving Lauren feeling as ashamed and degraded as he had intended.
Ten months later, Vikki’s marriage had ended and she had left her Hertfordshire home with Daniele to stay with a friend. The following month she had crashed her car during a blazing row with Angelo, when she’d been driving him back to his own car after a lunch meeting to discuss their divorce.
Only a matter of weeks later, after that upsetting visit from Angelo, Lauren had moved with Danny from her cramped little bedsit, back to the farmhouse, and, until today, had never seen or heard from Emiliano Cannavaro again.
CHAPTER THREE
COMING OUT OF Heathrow Airport, Emiliano congratulated himself on having had a successful week.
A dispute between the management and electrical engineers that had threatened to delay the launch date of Cannavaro Lines’ newest cruise liner had been resolved. Shares over the company as a whole were showing record levels. And only that afternoon he had finalised negotiations for the takeover of a European passenger ferry line, which had been on the table for some time now. All in all, he thought, as he stepped out into the dreary greyness of an English autumn afternoon, he felt justified in flying off to his private retreat and taking the break he had been promising himself for a long time—and with only one hurdle to jump. He intended to take his nephew with him.
It was pouring with rain as he set off on the long journey northwards, his car’s powerful tyres cruising through the spray as they covered the miles in the fast lane of the busy motorway.
He knew he should have telephoned Lauren to let her know that he was coming, but he hadn’t, and for a very good reason. When he had spoken to her from his Rome office earlier in the week to advise her of his wishes, they had been met with fierce opposition. There had, however, never been any problem he couldn’t overcome, or any challenge he couldn’t meet, but the most difficult, he’d learned from an early age, were often best dealt with head-on.
No one answered when he knocked on the door of the farmhouse several hours later and, going around the back, he found the rear door slightly ajar.
A toddler’s tricycle was abandoned in the little lobby to the kitchen, he noticed as he allowed himself to go through, calling her name.
Again, he was struck by the poor conditions she was living in, which were a far cry from the chic modern flat he’d imagined the woman he’d met at his brother’s wedding called home. He still couldn’t quite equate the glamorous creature who had set out to seduce him two years ago with the tousle-haired, natural-faced, but nonetheless desirable female he had confronted when he had driven up here over a week ago, because there was no doubt that he still found her desirable. More so, if that was possible...
His heart kicked over as he heard footsteps on the flagstones in the hall beyond the kitchen. A woman about the same age as Emiliano, with dark hair tied severely back in a ponytail, strode in, balancing a toddler on her hip.
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