A Clash with Cannavaro. Elizabeth Power
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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