‘I do not want to hurt you, Lauren,’ Emiliano said softly. ‘But you will give me no choice if you refuse.’

‘So you’re giving me no choice instead?’ Bitterness tinged her voice as she struggled with his ultimatum.

Another movement of an eyebrow said it all.

As she’d already pointed out, he was rich and powerful. He could tear her heart out if he wanted to. And he probably wanted to! she thought acridly. Instead he was offering her ecstasy. Physical ecstasy in return for not taking Danny away from her. Unbelievable physical ecstasy. And a suitcaseful of self-degradation when it was all over.

‘All right. I’ll accompany my nephew,’ she told him with her voice cracking. ‘To look after him and make sure that where he goes and what he does is in his best interests. But if you think that you and I will be picking up from where we left off two years ago, then you’ve got another think coming! I won’t be your plaything, Emiliano. Not now or at any time in the future.’

ELIZABETH POWER wanted to be a writer from a very early age, but it wasn’t until she was nearly thirty that she took to writing seriously. Writing is now her life. Travelling ranks very highly among her pleasures, and so many places she has visited have been recreated in her books. Living in England’s West Country, Elizabeth likes nothing better than taking walks with her husband along the coast or in the adjoining woods, and enjoying all the wonders that nature has to offer. You can visit her at www.elizabethpower.net

Recent titles by the same author:

VISCONTI’S FORGOTTEN HEIR

A GREEK ESCAPE

A DELICIOUS DECEPTION

BACK IN THE LION’S DEN

Did you know these are also available as eBooks? Visit www.millsandboon.co.uk

A Clash with

Cannavaro

Elizabeth Power

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To Alan—remembering our lovely days in the Caribbean.

Contents

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

EPILOGUE

EXTRACT

CHAPTER ONE

LAUREN RECOGNISED THE man as soon as he stepped out of the car, a shining silver monster of a thing that looked incongruous against the rustic outbuildings of the Cumbrian farmhouse and the verdant slopes of the fells above its wet slate roofline.

It was the man striding across the yard with his hair blowing like an untamed mane in the wind that her gaze was fixed on, however, as she finished securing the stable door for the night.

Tall, lean, in his early thirties, his expensive tailoring could do nothing to conceal a physique honed to prime strength and unquestionable fitness, or those shoulders which were wide enough to eclipse the moon. But he was a man she had never expected—or hoped—ever to see again, and she watched his approach now with a leap of something electric lighting her wary green gaze.

‘Hello, Lauren.’

If she was lost for words, then it was only because she was shocked to see him there on her Lakeland property. A property on which her late parents had blown all their savings to chase a dream of self-sufficiency—a dream that had never quite lived up to its promise and which was a world away from the glamorous capitals of Europe and the far-flung playgrounds of the mega-rich that the man before her inhabited.

‘Emiliano!’ She could have kicked herself for sounding so breathless and for wishing that she was wearing something other than her vest top and dungarees, or even that she had had a chance to comb her hair. After being out in the damp air, checking on the horses she stabled for the few paying customers who helped subsidise her meagre income from the local garden centre, she knew the flaming waves were falling untidily about her shoulders in a blaze of ungoverned fire. ‘What are you doing here?’

A definite wobble weakened the challenge in her voice. But then it wasn’t every day that she found herself facing Emiliano Cannavaro, Italian shipping magnate and steel-hard billionaire. The man who had taken the already international freight and ferry line his grandfather had founded and turned it into a global giant, spearheaded by a fleet of luxury cruise liners. A man who had used his Continental charm and his chocolate-rich voice to lure her into his bed, only to discard her in the most degrading and humiliating way after the marriage of her sister, Vikki, to his younger brother, Angelo, two years ago.

‘We have to talk,’ he said.

She had forgotten how tall he was, and how, without the benefit of high heels, she only just reached his shoulder. What she hadn’t forgotten was how it made her stomach flip just to look up into his olive-skinned features—features that had been redeemed from being too handsome by that slight bump in his nose, and by the glaring virility in that clean-shaven, yet heavily shadowed angular jaw.

She cupped a hand over her eyes to shield them from the low evening sun. ‘What about?’ Her tone was accusatory as she did her best to ignore the effect his sudden appearance was having on her.

‘About Daniele.’

Eyes fringed by lashes only a shade darker than her hair regarded him suspiciously. ‘Danny?’ Her voice cracked as she felt the burn of his hard masculine scrutiny over the flushed, perfect heart shape of her face.

With unsettling thoroughness he was taking in her rebellious green eyes, small chin and slightly turned-up nose with its cluster of freckles that her mother used to say was a sprinkling of stardust, before his gaze dropped with unconcealed insolence to her mouth. It was a full mouth, usually marked by a natural curve, but at this moment was definitely hinting at mutiny as his eyes came to rest disconcertingly on hers again.

His assessment made her feel weak, but it seemed to have no effect on him whatsoever as he gestured towards the ancient farmhouse and said, ‘Shall we go inside?’

Inside? Together? Alone? With him!

Her heart-rate doubled its pace. ‘Not until you tell me what this is all about.’

‘All right. If you want it straight. I would like to see him.’

‘Why? When you haven’t come near him or even rang to enquire after his welfare in over a year?’

If she wasn’t mistaken, Lauren heard him catch a breath. So he was feeling guilty. Good! she thought, cutting him no slack.

‘If I have neither telephoned nor been to see him,’ he responded with the firming of a mouth too sensual for any woman of child-bearing years to possibly ignore, ‘it is because you allowed none of us to know where he was.’

Lauren stared at him incredulously. ‘Is that what your brother told you?’ she exhaled, flabbergasted. ‘Or is that something you dreamed up yourself? Anyway, I didn’t think he mattered to you. Or to any of you Cannavaros,’ she expanded bitterly, recalling how his brother had as good as disowned his six-month-old son only weeks after Vikki’s death nearly a year ago. Still walking with the aid of a stick because of the injuries he had sustained in the car crash that had claimed her younger sister, Angelo Cannavaro had informed Lauren in plain, insensitive words that she could keep the baby her sister had used to trap him into marriage because he was cutting loose. That was the last time she had seen him. Or any member of the Cannavaro family! Though it had hurt her immensely for Danny’s sake, she couldn’t say that she hadn’t been relieved. And now here was Emiliano Cannavaro turning up and accusing her of being the one at fault! ‘You’ve got a nerve!’ she breathed.

He raked his hair back from his forehead with a long, lean hand. Hands which, in one weekend, had learned the pathways of her body and the whereabouts of every erogenous zone she possessed. His face was harder than she remembered, although even back then it had been a face stamped with authority, with a high forehead and cheekbones clearly defined. Add the midnight mystery of spectacularly dark eyes, thickly arched black brows—one of which was lifting now as though in dispute of what she had accused him of—and long ebony lashes that most teenage girls would probably have killed for, and she could see why she had been rendered helpless from the moment she had laid eyes on him.

‘As I suggested, could we go inside?’

His tone brooked no argument and so without a word she led him across the yard and in through the back door of the rugged little farmhouse, uncomfortably aware that he was probably enjoying a studied view of her back and the curve of her bottom and remembering...

‘So say what you’ve got to say.’ A strong sexual awareness made her tone excessively curt as she rounded on him in the large but shabby kitchen. But the memory of how this man had bedded her and then treated her as if she wasn’t even fit to tread the same ground as he did never failed to shame and humiliate her—even without suddenly coming face to face with him and having to relive it all over again!

‘As you wish.’ He didn’t seem at all perturbed by her unfriendly manner. ‘I shan’t...What is the term you use? Beat about the bush?’ Nevertheless, he seemed to hesitate for a second before continuing. ‘You are probably aware that Angelo died just over a month ago.’

She nodded. She had been shocked to read about it in one of the national newspapers. Accidental death, the verdict had been. Caused by a lethal mix of strong painkillers he’d been taking for his continuing back injury and an excessive amount of alcohol in his blood.

Lauren was sorry, but all she could say right then was, ‘So what does that have to do with me?’

‘Everything,’ he answered succinctly. ‘Because, from now on, this monopolising of Daniele is going to cease.’

‘I haven’t been monopolising him!’ she shot back. ‘At least, not intentionally. But if I have, it’s only because your brother took no interest in him whatsoever, which is one of the reasons Vikki left him.’ Among others, she thought with a mental grimace, before adding, ‘And neither have you.’

‘Something I fully intend to rectify,’ he promised. ‘But as I have already told you...’ he was beginning to sound impatient ‘...I did not have the first idea where Daniele was. As you probably...remember...’ his hesitation was marked, calculated, Lauren was sure, to remind her of an intimacy she didn’t even want to think about ‘...I live in Rome. But on those occasions when I visited this country, Angelo assured me that Daniele was being adequately cared for. It was only a short time before he died, when I put pressure on him to tell me where he was, that he said he had left Daniele with you and that he didn’t have a clue as to where you had taken him. Why would he have told me that if it was not true?’

‘Because he didn’t want you to know what the truth really was!’ Lauren returned hotly.

‘And exactly what is the truth, Lauren?’ Emiliano invited, in clearly sceptical tones.

‘That he abandoned Daniele because he couldn’t face the responsibility of being a father! He knew exactly where I was and how to find me. He could have come any time to see Daniele and I wouldn’t have stopped him,’ she fumed, hurting for her little nephew. ‘But he didn’t because he didn’t want to give up his gambling and his womanising and everything else about the self-indulgent high life that both of you enjoy so much!’

It was a cry from the heart at the injustice of what both her and her sister had had to pay for getting mixed up with the Cannavaro brothers. Heaven knew, Vikki hadn’t been any saint! But she hadn’t deserved the drunken abuse and infidelity that had forced her into leaving Angelo after less than ten months of marriage. Any more than she, Lauren, had deserved his brother’s scorn and bitter contempt...

‘Nevertheless,’ Emiliano said coldly, seemingly oblivious to her indictment of self-indulgence or to the pain that seemed to be turning her inside out, ‘Daniele is his son, and therefore my nephew.’

‘And you naturally want to see him.’ She had to concede that much. As the toddler’s natural aunt and uncle they were equal claimants for the little boy’s affections. Even so, she took some gratification out of being able to say, ‘Well, I’m afraid that it’s not going to be possible tonight because he’s already asleep.’

She sensed the tension in him and for the first time noticed the dark smudges beneath his eyes, caused, no doubt, by the recent loss of his brother. But then he gave the slightest tilt of his head, causing his hair to fall forward again in the way she remembered it doing. Somehow it seemed to emphasise the satanic darkness of his shadowed jaw.

‘I understand,’ he said, surprisingly compliant all of a sudden. ‘But I do not think you do, Lauren. You had, however, better know from the start what my intentions are and to be fully aware that I will be demanding much more than that.’

A queasy feeling took root in the pit of Lauren’s stomach. ‘Wh-what do you mean?’ she asked cagily.

‘The boy is a Cannavaro. Therefore it is only right that he should be with his family.’

‘He is with his family!’ she proclaimed, her face flushed with indignation to think he could even suggest anything else.

He was glancing around her kitchen, which she knew had seen better days with its chipped Belfast sink and genuinely distressed oak table and matching Welsh dresser that stood against the far wall, and he looked at her now with something remarkably like censure shaping the hard line of his mouth.

‘You think it fitting for a child of his background to be brought up in a place like this?’

His deprecating opinion of the home she had once shared with two loving parents and her sister cut Lauren to the quick, but she was determined not to let him see.

‘So it isn’t the mansion that you obviously think he should be living in,’ she bit back, fearful of what he intended to do about Daniele. ‘But, with respect...’ this last word was overlaid with sarcasm ‘...he’ll learn more above love and basic human values in this shabby old house than he’ll ever get to know in the sterile palaces your sort of people call home!’

Whether she had hit a nerve in his invincible armour, or whether it was just her audacity in speaking to him as she had that put that flush across his cheekbones and made his jaw tense as though he was clenching his teeth, Lauren wasn’t sure. But she was struck by the vivid recollection of seeing him look like that before. It was the second before he had driven into her hot and eager body and had finally succumbed to the release of his, until then, frighteningly controlled passion, taking her with him on a mind-blowing excursion to a fool’s heaven!

‘And what would you—or your sister—have learned about basic values?’ he challenged softly, as Lauren battled with spiralling and unwelcome sensations from remembering how it felt lying naked beneath this man’s warm and penetrating strength.

‘Nothing, according to you,’ she replied, with only the slightest quiver in her voice. Because, of course, he hadn’t listened to any explanation when he had labelled her and Vikki the worst kind of women, so there was no way she was going to try and convince him otherwise now, especially when he was adding child abduction to her sins as well!

‘And what do you imagine is my type of home?’

Strangely, she had never been able to place him anywhere, other than in the swish resorts where the rich and famous vacationed, or in some stark, state-of-the-art high-rise office at the heart of his maritime empire.

‘I don’t intend wasting any unnecessary thought over it,’ she retorted, wishing she wasn’t letting him reduce her to the level of sniping.

‘Not even to wonder where this nephew—whom you claim to be instilling with your own questionable values—is likely to be living?’

Lauren forced herself to bite her tongue. She was past caring over the last two years what Emiliano Cannavaro thought about her. Memories might shame, but they couldn’t hurt her. She had learned to shrug her shoulders, grit her teeth and carry on. But Emiliano Cannavaro wasn’t a memory any more. He was here—now as large as life, and he had it in his power to hurt her and would if she let him, by taking away the one thing she held most dear.

‘I don’t need to wonder, Emiliano,’ she said determinedly. ‘I know exactly where he’ll be living. And that’s with me. It was my sister’s wish that I should take care of Danny if anything ever happened to her before he became of age.’

‘Which she had no right to express or to request of you while the child’s father was still alive.’

‘She had every right!’ Lauren shot back, affronted by his dictatorial attitude. ‘Although she wouldn’t have needed to if Angelo hadn’t been as bad a father as he was a husband!’

‘You mean the husband she saw only as the key to a life of luxury? And one she had no intention of giving up?’

I’m going to screw him for every penny I can get!

Lauren didn’t want to remember Vikki’s venomous remark on that tragic day, eleven months ago, when her sister had gone off to see Angelo, leaving the six-month-old Danny in Lauren’s care. But it came back startlingly now with the things Vikki had told her on her wedding day, things that Lauren wished—if only for her own sake—that she had never heard.

‘Oh, don’t misunderstand me.’ The deep Latin voice penetrated her thoughts, bringing her back to the present. ‘I am not defending Angelo’s actions.’

Lauren slanted a censuring look at him. ‘Aren’t you?’

‘My brother’s faults were glaringly obvious, but that didn’t stop him from being totally and utterly taken in.’

Which you never would be, she thought, skimming a reluctant glance down over his magnificent physique, and shuddering as she recalled the way he had reacted when he thought he had been.

Those dark assessing eyes of his seemed to be stripping her naked with their unsettling intensity.

‘No,’ he said, in a way that was lethal in its very softness, startling her into wondering if he had the power to read her thoughts

‘No what?’ she challenged, trying not to think about that day that had been the most humiliating of her life.

He didn’t answer.

He didn’t need to, Lauren thought, with colour tingeing her cheeks.

‘I did not come here to resurrect anything that might have transpired between us,’ he remarked coldly. ‘Though, heaven knows, if there had been a prize for driving a man crazy you would have won it hands down, would you not, mia cara?’ His tone made a mockery of the endearment. ‘You did not exactly hold back in your efforts to please me that night I took you to my bed.’

How she could feel a throbbing deep inside just from thinking about that night, Lauren didn’t know, and shaming colour stained her cheeks almost puce.

Somehow, though, she managed to say cuttingly, ‘Save it, Emiliano.’

He laughed, savouring her discomfiture and embarrassment like he’d savoured the nectar of her willing body.

‘Of course. There are far more pressing matters in hand.’

Like taking Daniele away from her?

‘If you think I’ll be handing my sister’s baby over to you just like that, you’ve got another thing coming!’

He smiled, the type of smile that had had the power to draw her to him that fateful weekend two years ago in a way she had never been drawn to any man before or since.

‘Of course, I would not be expecting you to hand him over—as you say—“just like that”. Naturally there would be a period of adjustment while the child became acquainted with me as his new guardian. And naturally you will be suitably rewarded for the time he has been in your care.’

Dumbfounded, Lauren couldn’t believe what he was saying.

‘Suitably rewarded?’ She flung the words back at him as if they were poison darts. ‘And what is the price you’d consider suitable for trading a child?’

A dark eyebrow shot up as he regarded her with something approaching disdain.

‘I am not buying him from you, Lauren, if that is what you’re imagining. I will simply be reimbursing you for the inconvenience and loss of earnings you will most certainly have suffered during the time you have been caring for him. But if it means that much to you, I will allow you to name your price. Within reason. I am sure that between us we can arrive at a figure that will suit us both.’

‘Oh, are you?’ Disbelievingly, Lauren stared up into the strikingly masculine face, trying not to baulk at the determination she could see stamped on every purposeful feature. ‘You think you and your kind can buy anything you want, don’t you? Well, sorry to disappoint you, Emiliano, but I’ve no intention of giving up my nephew any time soon. So you can take your fancy car and your over-stuffed wallet and go back to whatever cold, damp stone you happened to crawl out from under, because Daniele isn’t going back with you under any circumstances! Not now. Not ever!’

His mouth twitched at one corner as he contemplated what she was saying. ‘And there I was thinking that we could be civil about this,’ he remarked. ‘Do I understand you to be saying you would prefer a legal battle?’

And one he would surely win?

Tremulously, yet refusing to be fazed, she answered, ‘If that’s what it comes to.’

He clicked his tongue. ‘You are very foolish, Signorina Westwood.’ The formality only seemed to widen the glaring distance between them. ‘It seems I underestimated you in imagining we could come to a reasonable settlement without resorting to the needless involvement of expensive lawyers. Or does the idea of a court case whet your appetite for a taste of even greater pickings?’

‘You’re despicable!’ Lauren breathed.

‘Not nearly as despicable as you would find me if you drag me through a court of law.’

She looked at him askance. ‘Is that a threat?’

‘No, just some good advice.’

‘Well, you can stick your advice where the sun doesn’t shine!’

He laughed very softly. ‘Such spirit!

He was moving towards her and she backed away, sending a shocked glance over her shoulder when she came up against the solid bulk of the dresser.

Hardly daring to breathe, she stood stock-still, her eyes guarded and challenging as Emiliano’s hands came to rest on the dresser on either side of her, effectively trapping her there.

‘You know...that was the first thing that attracted me to you. Other than...’ One strap of her dungarees had slipped off her shoulder, dragging the bib down with it, and from the slide of his gaze over the vest it had exposed she knew he could see the outline of her naked breast. Breasts which were too full, she had always thought, in comparison with her small waist and far less curvy hips. Now, in response to his heated gaze, she felt the nipple swelling beneath the soft revealing cotton. ‘The way you tried to cut me dead in response to everything I said was a real turn-on. And it was not just me who was affected by it, was it, cara?’

He meant her, Lauren thought with shame, remembering how he had even gone as far as suggesting that she actually enjoyed arguing with him.

‘And that was even before you knew who I was.’

The softness of his voice and his nearness was making her head start to swim. She hated him! And yet it was taking all her willpower not to thrust out her breasts in invitation to those hands that had pleasured her like no other man ever had.

But she didn’t. And thankfully he didn’t attempt to touch her.

Instead, straightening up, with his face taking on grim lines, he said, ‘May I also advise that if you take me to court and you lose, then you will get nothing from me. Is that clear? Not a cent.’

‘That’s good,’ she returned, pulling up her strap, relieved at least to be able to breathe again. ‘Because I don’t deal in cents. Only common decency! Unlike you Cannavaros. But then you don’t ever think about anything else except making money!’

‘Which is marginally more commendable, I think, than being one of life’s takers,’ he remarked with an unperturbed, humourless curl to his devastating mouth. ‘Nevertheless, where agenda-armed little vamps are concerned I find that it is always best to be one step ahead.’

‘So you insult me with the promise of some disgusting pay-off!’

He sent another cursory glance around him at the obvious decay of her clean yet humble environment. ‘You look as though you could use it.’

‘Not half as much as I could use you getting off my property!’

‘Of course.’ Though he had stepped away from her now, the fresh masculine scent of him still lingered in her nostrils. ‘But I will be back. You can depend on that. And when I do return, I will see my nephew. Is that understood?’

He looked so commanding that for a moment Lauren could only nod. ‘I wouldn’t dream of trying to stop you,’ she riposted as soon as she found her voice.

‘In that case...I will see myself out,’ he said, obviously satisfied that he had achieved what he had set out to do, which was to scare her silly with his threat to take Daniele away from her.

Well, if he wanted a fight, she would give him one! she thought, calling on all the powers of survival she had had to engage as a teenager after losing both her parents. After all, since Vikki had died, Daniele was all she had, and Emiliano Cannavaro could swing before she would give up her little nephew to him or anybody else!

But the fear had taken hold and she couldn’t shake it off. And that wasn’t the only thing unsettling her as she listened to his powerful car growling away.

It was that raging sexual attraction that had flared into life the minute she had seen him again, coming across the yard. But, even worse, her body’s betraying response to it when he had had her trapped—without even touching her—against the dresser. An attraction, she thought hopelessly, which had been born in her the instant she had laid eyes on him across that crowded ballroom, and reluctantly she let her thoughts drag her back to those two days in that exclusive London hotel two years ago.

CHAPTER TWO

WHEN HER SISTER had invited her to her pre-nuptial party on the eve of her marriage to one of Italy’s most eligible bachelors, Lauren hadn’t envisaged spending what felt like hours smiling politely at a twice-divorced ageing Romeo of a banker until her face ached.

She’d been renting a bedsit in London at the time, having leased the farmhouse for some extra income with a view to going back to college and doing some serious studying. But she had felt as out of place in the city, she remembered, as she had in the emerald-green strapless gown she had been wearing at that party which, with no long-standing boyfriend to accompany her, she had chosen to attend alone. That still hadn’t stopped her from feeling immensely relieved when another guest had finally claimed the Romeo’s company.

Her sudden isolation, however, had left her exposed to the gaze of a man she hadn’t known then was Emiliano Cannavaro, although she had sensed him watching her for most of the time that she had been suffering the older man’s unwelcome attention.

With a clear field between them after the banker had moved away, Lauren had been unable to avoid meeting the cool intensity of his midnight-dark eyes.

He must have been around thirty then and was, from his tanned skin and thick black hair that flopped forward at the temples, like a number of the guests, unmistakably Italian. Yet, in this man she hadn’t known, Lauren had sensed an air of cool detachment and authority that had set him apart from the rest. Perhaps it had been that autocratic nose and the way that intensely dark shadow around his jaw had added something to its angular strength that had given her the notion that he wasn’t a man to be messed with. Or perhaps it had been that restless quality about him and the rather bored suggestion that he would rather have been somewhere else. But what he had had was presence. And it had been nothing less than spell-binding! Add that impression of straining muscle beneath the constraints of his dark tailored evening suit and Lauren had realised why every woman who had passed within ten yards of him seemed to fall over herself with the need to be noticed by him. And he hadn’t taken his eyes off her once!

Unused to being studied with such blatant interest, Lauren had looked quickly away to where the reed-slim blonde with the baby doll face and her far too handsome groom-to-be had been standing by the buffet tables with their arms interlinked in front of them, sipping from tall flutes of champagne.

‘Is that envy I see in your eyes? Or are you wondering, as I suspect you are, whether they are as happy as their animated laughter suggests?’

The heavily accented voice at her shoulder made every nerve sharpen in Lauren’s body, causing her fingers to tighten around the stem of her own glass. But it was the way its rich tones washed over her like a warm wave that had her catching her breath as though she had been submerged beneath the power of its sensuality.

‘Why shouldn’t they be happy?’ The effect of his nearness produced her unusually curt rejoinder. Nevertheless, her eyes challenged his, even though she knew her cheeks were probably as red as her swept-up hair that the woman in the store where she had bought her gown a few days ago had said would complement the emerald creation superbly.

‘Why, indeed?’ Up close, he looked even more stupendous than he had from a distance. His features were strong with clearly defined cheekbones, and his mouth, she recognised at once, had a hard-edged sensuality that could probably drive most nubile women mindless just from the promise of its unquestionable passion. His winged collar looked stark white against the hard bronze of his skin and he smelled good too, of some subtle masculine cologne that Lauren wanted to inhale—and keep on inhaling—until her suddenly starved senses were full of him. ‘She must have something very special to have brought Angelo Cannavaro to heel.’

Unaware that he was the brother of her sister’s fiancé, it was the fact that he was obviously acquainted with the groom’s playboy reputation that prompted Lauren to ask, ‘Are you a friend of the family?’

That passionate mouth of his twitched slightly before he said, ‘I would not exactly...call myself that.’

A business associate then, she speculated silently, and wondered, as she still did, at the reason for that definite hesitation in the way he said it.

A burst of laughter brought her attention to the couple, who were twirling to imaginary music with their arms still linked, champagne flutes still held high.

‘She strikes me as a young woman who knows what she wants and exactly how to get it.’

The man’s gaze was resting on the obvious mound of Vikki’s middle beneath the smoky blue satin of an outrageously low-cut, backless dress, split almost from hip to hem. But the critical note in his voice made Lauren bristle and look up at his devastating profile with narrowing eyes. ‘What are you implying, exactly?’

His thick hair gleamed darkly as he turned back to her again. ‘No implication, I assure you. But she must obviously be aware that there are worse fates than linking up with one of Italy’s oldest and most...significant families.’

Lauren’s hackles continued to rise. ‘And there are some who might say she could do better than marry into a family which has put too much emphasis on making money at the expense of investing the right kind of values in its offspring.’

Her piqued rejoinder brought a speculative curve to his mouth. ‘With you being one of them, I suppose?’

She hadn’t intended to make such a pointed remark about the groom’s family. It had slipped out before she could contain it, but his comments had irked, especially as she had been so worried about Vikki.

Ever since they had lost their parents within days of each other to that tropical disease six years ago, Lauren had found herself at eighteen playing mother and father to her often difficult and rebellious sixteen-year-old sister. Vikki had reacted to her parents’ death by lashing out at the world, and her anger and resentment at their loss had resulted in a spiralling lifestyle of alcohol-fuelled all-night parties, illegal drugs and far too many one-night stands.

Painfully, Lauren recalled how Vikki had refused to listen to her concerns about her ruining her life and eventually, when Vikki was still only seventeen, their differing opinions and clash in personalities meant they could no longer remain under the same roof and Lauren had seen very little of her sister over the next few years.

When Vikki had telephoned only three weeks prior to that party to say that she was not only pregnant, but getting married, Lauren had been as surprised as she’d been happy for her sister. She’d also had to secretly admit to feeling more than a little relieved.

It wasn’t until the sisters had met for a tearful reunion lunch that Lauren had learned of Vikki’s choice of husband, and her gratitude that her wayward sibling was finally settling down had dissipated on a surge of anxiety.

Angelo Cannavaro’s decadent lifestyle was legendary, with his penchant for glamorous women exceeded only by his wealthier, yet considerably more discreet older brother, who, by some miracle, had managed to keep himself and his personal life out of the papers! Which was why Lauren hadn’t instantly realised who he was on that first meeting. It hadn’t surprised her, though, to learn that Vikki’s year-long involvement with the twenty-five-year-old Italian playboy, whom she’d met while working as a croupier in a London nightclub, had already been a tempestuous on-off affair, with Angelo sounding rather too partial to his freedom, in Lauren’s mind, to make suitable husband material. Vikki had said he had changed since their last break-up only five months previously, but it had done very little to allay Lauren’s worries for her sister’s future.

‘It isn’t for me to cast aspersions on either the bridegroom or the calculating little blonde who’s so lucky to have him marrying her.’ She was unable to keep the sarcasm out of her voice as she clutched the glass she hadn’t remembered draining so tightly it was in danger of shattering. ‘And neither should you.’

Her reprimand, instead of shaming, seemed merely to amuse him.

With a smile touching his sensuous mouth, he allowed his gaze to stray with disturbing intensity over the fine symmetry of her face, down her rather flushed throat to her full breasts, which were pushed up enticingly—too enticingly, she remembered now with a sensually inspired little shiver—above the shimmering emerald of her bodice.

‘And who are you,’ he enquired in that remarkably sexy voice of his, ‘that you jump so readily to the defence of the blushing bride-to-be?’

She found him so disconcertingly male that it was an effort to meet those equally disturbing eyes with any confidence, but she managed it. Just.

‘I’m Lauren Westwood. Her sister.’ She gleaned a wealth of satisfaction from saying that.

‘Ah!’

‘Yes,’ she added smugly before he could say another thing. ‘Another of the money-grubbing Westwoods, as you’ve obviously labelled my sister. From one of the most insignificant families in Cumbria.’

If she had expected to embarrass him then she should have guessed, Lauren thought now, that men like him weren’t easily—if ever—caught out. A mere dip of his head in almost amused acknowledgement confirmed it.

‘A gross error on my part, I think,’ he said, which was as near to an apology as Lauren knew she was likely to get. ‘In which case, you will at least allow me to get you another drink.’

‘No, I don’t...’ she started to say as he relieved her of her glass. But the accidental touch of his fingers against hers robbed the words from her mouth as a bolt of something electric ignited powerful impulses in her blood.

His smile was far too aware.

Though not inexperienced, having had a couple of undemanding relationships in the past, she was still unaware of the dangerous responses she was provoking in such a sophisticated man as Emiliano Cannavaro. She took advantage of the remarkably sudden appearance of a waiter at his side to try and stabilise her senses as he deposited her empty glass on the silver tray.

‘Insignificant is definitely not a word I would apply to you, signorina.’ He was looking at her—not in the leering way a lot of men looked at her because of her far too voluptuous figure, but with the subtlety of a man who was well acquainted with the female anatomy and knew just how to turn it to his advantage.

And how! Lauren remembered now, resenting the way he had made—and could still make—everything that was feminine in her respond readily to the pull of his flagrant masculinity.

‘Nor I you.’ A raw sexual tension made her tongue cleave to the roof of her mouth. ‘But then you know that already.’ She meant it as a barb, reluctant to acknowledge how those eyes that seemed to be penetrating the emerald silk made her breasts grow heavy. But her voice sounded husky from imagining what it would be like to feel those long tanned hands pulling down her zip, and that sensual mouth moving over the screamingly sensitive flesh covering her spine before...

She brought her thoughts up sharply as her nipples swelled inside their strapless cups.

‘What are you doing, Lauren Westwood?’ Through a rush of shaming heat she caught the sensuality in his lowered tones. ‘Trying to ensnare me with those heavy, come-hither eyes as your sister has ensnared poor unsuspecting Angelo?’

She felt herself blushing, certain that he was fully au fait with her body’s shaming responses.

‘As you’ve already pointed out,’ she returned, mortified, yet trying to maintain some degree of equanimity, ‘Angelo Cannavaro’s far from poor. And if you think pledging one’s troth is a form of penal servitude then you have a very cynical view of love and marriage!’

‘Touché,’ he said softly, ‘but I wasn’t talking about a mutual exchange of vows. There are more ways of being ensnared than by just slipping a ring on one’s finger. And it has nothing to do with love...’ he seemed to place an almost derisive emphasis on the word ‘...or even liking.’

Lauren’s body pulsed with the need to retaliate in some way. Because she didn’t like him! She thought it now with as much vehemence as she’d tried convincing herself on that night. Why, then, she remembered wondering, did her breasts ache to feel his touch? And why did the thought of pushing him to the limit and provoking what she guessed would be a frighteningly controlled yet lethal anger have her playing all sorts of outrageous scenarios in her mind? Like tumbling down onto a bed beneath him and quelling their mutual antagonism in the most heated and primeval way?

‘I can assure you that nothing is further from my mind so, rest assured, you’re perfectly safe.’ She flashed him a falsely bright smile, yet knew from the almost indiscernible lifting of an eyebrow that he had picked up on the breathless note in her voice.

‘I don’t know whether to be gratified or disappointed to hear it.’ His smile was cool and mockingly sensual. ‘The question is, Signorina Westwood...are you?’

His meaning was so subtly explicit that Lauren was shocked to feel a deep answering throb in her lower body.

‘I don’t know what you’re...’ Talking about, she started to say, but her sentence was cut in midstream as Vikki Westwood, all gleaming teeth and voluminous blonde hair, suddenly exploded onto the scene.

‘Oh, great! I see you two have already met. Are you going to let on, Emiliano, as to what you think of my sister? Isn’t she gorgeous?’

‘She is.’ Vikki’s words seemed to give those dark eyes licence to tug with leisurely insolence over Lauren’s shamefully aroused body. ‘But I’m afraid we haven’t yet been properly introduced.’

‘Emiliano, this is Lauren, my older and very available sister. Lauren, this is Emiliano Cannavaro. The Emiliano Cannavaro,’ she emphasised with relish. ‘Angelo’s older brother and the head of the Cannavaro dynasty—not to mention the company—since their father died last year.’

Lauren recalled her dismay at finding out that the man she’d been as good as insulting was the one man her sister had previously warned her to be nice to. She was already cringing from the way the younger girl had pointed out her unattached status to him, without being made aware of exactly at whom she had been directing her uncharacteristically barbed remarks.

‘He flew in from Rome to join us tonight and for the wedding tomorrow, even though he’s so busy and it was such short notice and he only touched down less than two hours ago. Wasn’t that good of him?’ Vikki added unnecessarily, although her rushed and effervescent sentence went some way to explaining why Lauren hadn’t noticed him earlier in the evening. ‘But don’t be fooled by all that Italian charisma and irresistible charm because, from what I hear, he doesn’t suffer fools easily. He might look like the perfect gentleman and like a gift from the gods to all womankind but, from what Angelo tells me, he’ll break you if he can. Snap you in half.’ She clicked her tongue and made a meaningful gesture with her hands. ‘Like a twig. So mind how you tread, lovely sister.’ Lauren detected a thread of nervous anxiety in her sister’s warning and in her shrill little laugh. ‘Oh, well. Better circulate. See ya!’ And with that she spun away in a cloud of expensive perfume.

Mortified, Lauren watched her sibling grab another female guest’s arm, saw several air kisses being exchanged.

‘I hope you don’t think that my sister’s outspoken remarks have any bearing on my character,’ Lauren remarked, still recoiling from the way Vikki had referred to her as ‘available’.

‘Meaning?’ Emiliano sent her a slanted look.

‘Why didn’t you tell me who you were?’

‘You didn’t ask,’ he rebuked her softly, unfazed by the censuring note in her voice. ‘Why? Would it have made any difference to our conversation if you had?’

She considered his question for a moment. Yes, it would, she thought. I would have run like the wind before it took the turn that it did!

‘I thought not,’ Emiliano expressed with that mocking twist to his lips, misunderstanding her hesitation in answering.

‘Is it true what she said?’ She looked up into eyes that were much too dark to be anything but sinful. ‘That you break people?’ She recalled wondering why his own brother would say a thing like that.

Something pulled at the corners of his arresting mouth. ‘Is that what you would like to believe?’

He was much too worldly—way out of her league—and Lauren prayed he hadn’t noticed the way her throat worked nervously before she replied, ‘No, but I think you could.’

She didn’t know why she had said that, but all he did was throw back his proud dark head and laugh.

‘I am afraid that your sister, as you are probably well aware, is rather a drama queen. Isn’t that what you English call it?’ And when she nodded, he told her, ‘I do what is necessary. But I am always fair.’

Strangely, she believed him. From what Vikki had already told her about him, he could run rings around his brother for playing hard and fast. As brothers, they weren’t that close, but Vikki had sounded overawed when she’d spoken of the respect Emiliano’s leadership had generated among his colleagues as well as his employees, and Lauren had only been able to guess from the success of the company that it had the right man at its helm. After all, Cannavaro Cruise & Freight Lines were up there with the kings of the seas.

Changing course, she asked, ‘Why aren’t you best man?’ She’d already chatted earlier to the person who was taking on that role and he’d been an old college friend of the groom’s.

Emiliano’s mouth tugged down at one side. ‘It’s a long story. Why aren’t you maid of honour?’

‘It’s an even longer one.’

Something almost feral flickered in those sinful eyes. ‘I’ve got all night.’

She should have listened to the warnings leaping through her, Lauren thought bitterly in hindsight, because all her instincts of self-preservation had been urging her to shake off the sensual spell that Emiliano had woven around her ever since he had come over to speak to her, but she hadn’t seemed able to move, nor had she wanted to. But neither had she felt inclined to tell him about the past strained relationship with her sister, or what had brought it about, and so she’d evaded the issue altogether by saying, ‘I didn’t come here tonight to bare my soul to a perfect stranger.’

Perfect being the operative word, her brain had whispered provocatively.

‘My brother is marrying your sister,’ he reminded her. As if he needed to! ‘That surely relates us in some obscure way.’

She caught sight of herself in a mirrored pillar and noticed how her hair seemed to blaze like luminous fire. Or like the ultimate scarlet woman’s, she thought with a kind of feverish excitement as she glanced quickly away.

‘Even relations have secrets from each other,’ she parried with a smile, trying to avoid thinking too much about the estrangement between her and Vikki. But, in doing so, her words came out with unintended provocation and she saw the heavy masculine eyelids droop as his gaze sliced over her body.

‘In that case, we will not dwell on it a moment longer. So what would you like to tell me?’

‘That you speak very good English.’

He looked amused again. ‘So do you.’

‘I should think so!’ she told him, amazed. ‘I’m English!’

Laughter lit his spectacular eyes as he said, ‘Believe me, mia cara, the two do not necessarily go hand in hand.’

Lauren laughed with him, feeling more relaxed than she had since she had first arrived in the hotel late that afternoon with her weekend case containing her gown and her outfit for Vikki’s big day.

‘Tell me, beautiful Lauren...’ The way he addressed her sent peculiar little shivers along her spine. ‘Is it because your sister warned you what a tyrant I can be—and therefore to treat me amiably—that I now feel the ice melting around my feet?’

‘No. I never listen to or act upon anyone else’s opinion of someone without first weighing up their character for myself,’ she told him candidly. ‘And if you’re mistaking truthfulness for frigidity then you’re in danger, Emiliano Cannavaro—’ she experienced a surprising thrill in saying his name ‘—of finding yourself in very deep water.’

‘And you, Lauren, are a very smart lady and especially refreshing. But I think perhaps that you actually enjoy crossing swords with me.’

It wasn’t far from what Lauren had been thinking earlier when she had imagined them locked in sexual combat in some not so imaginary bed. A throb of tension made itself felt again, deep down inside of her, which was wholly sensual and totally out of character for her to feel with a man she had only just met.

‘You blush, mia bella.’

‘It’s hot in here,’ she prevaricated, which brought another smile to his lips because it wasn’t hot at all. In fact the hotel’s air conditioning system ensured the temperature remained comfortably cool.

‘There is, of course, a remedy for that.’

‘Which is?’ she asked cagily.

His eyes indicated the floor to ceiling doors that stood open onto the terrace.

‘You expect me to wander out into the moonlight with a man I don’t know and might not even care to, and whose reputation I’m sure precedes him, if some of the speculation I’ve read about you is to be believed?’

‘It isn’t,’ he responded succinctly. ‘And you are wrong.’

‘There is no moon,’ she amended, because she had been speaking only figuratively.

‘So no silent witness to judge such decadent behaviour.’ He laughed then, his teeth showing strong and white against his tan. ‘Unless, of course, you are afraid...’

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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