A Clash With Cannavaro (11 page)

He laughed out loud at that.

‘The lining broke!’ She stood there with her hands flung out, looking mildly exasperated. ‘What’s funny about that?’

‘Nothing.’ He was shaking his head, but was unable to keep a straight face.

Across the kitchen, she heard a cupboard door bang closed, unsuccessful in its deliberate attempt to disguise another uncontrolled squeak from Constance.

‘You are very fascinating, Lauren Westwood.’ Unfolding his arms, Emiliano came away from the worktop. ‘As well as funny, caring and...’ he closed the distance between them to touch a finger to her freckle-dusted nose before adding, and for her ears only ‘...delightfully sexy.’

With her pulse racing, she tossed him an upward glance that said he wasn’t getting off that lightly. ‘But wacky with it.’

‘I didn’t say that. Besides, what is this “wacky”?’ His dark eyes were alive with teasing. He smelled good too, like the sea and the sand and the freshness of cut lemons with that first burst of zest.

Acting like someone who has been hit over the head!
A fool, she defined mentally.
The type of fool who had fallen in love with a man who was far too dangerous for her to handle.

‘They aren’t exactly my idea of a pet. I just got them for Danny,’ she justified, ‘so we had to give them names. And as I’d been watching a programme about the universe the previous night...’ Naming those shimmering little bodies after stars had seemed appropriate. That was what she had been trying to say. She didn’t tell him that, in doing so, it had felt like a way of commemorating her mother, in case he suspected her of following in Sophie Westwood’s maternal footsteps with fortune-telling inclinations when nothing could have been further from the truth.

He was consulting his watch, though, and now he moved lithely across to the high chair.

‘
Ciao, piccolo
,’ he said, ruffling the toddler’s soft hair, an affectionate gesture that tugged sharply at Lauren’s heartstrings. ‘You be a good
bambino
, eh?’

As Daniele looked up at his uncle and grinned, she could see Emiliano in him, from that increasing dark hair to what promised one day to be a definite proud tilt to his head, even though the little boy had inherited his mother’s blue eyes and was, as yet, displaying more Westwood features than Cannavaro.

‘You’re going out?’ The regretful note escaped Lauren before she could control it, although she should have realised immediately that he was. He didn’t dress like that just to lounge around the pool all day!

‘Disappointment, Lauren?’ From over the baby’s chair, the mouth that had plundered her shamelessly last night was firming in cool satisfaction. ‘Things
are
looking up.’

With a word of thanks to his housekeeper, a jerk of his chin towards the door indicated to Lauren that he wanted to speak to her alone.

Checking that Daniele was still preoccupied with his underwater world and not about to wail at being left, she accompanied Emiliano into the wide, airy hall.

Its cedar doors stood open onto its marble-pillared façade and the sunlight was flooding in across the exquisitely tiled floor, spilling over some exotic plants that stood in large pots near the doors and promising another eternally glorious day.

‘I would have taken you with me,’ he stated, ‘but it is not feasible or possible. First I will be having breakfast with some officials from the council, and then I am addressing a Fair Trade and Tourism conference. Very interesting, but only for the invited, I am afraid.’

Of course. His speech, Lauren remembered.

‘I will, however, be returning before dinner and tonight,
mia cara
, there is something we must talk about.’

The breeze through the open doors was ruffling his hair and stirring the clattering spindles of an ornamental palm tree growing near the house.

‘Is it about Danny?’ Lauren returned hastily. ‘Because if it is—’

‘No. Not Danny,’ he replied. Then, changing his mind, he said, ‘Well,
sì
. It is. Of course it is, in a—’

His mouth came down over hers before she could cut in over whatever it was he had been going to say.

So this was it, she thought numbly. Reckoning time. He had had his fun with her and now it was time to get down to the real issue. Custody of Daniele. The only reason why she was there.

Emiliano
...she tried to say, but his mouth was turning tender, insistent yet enslaving, and his hands were holding her head, his fingers thrust into the tumbling fire of her hair. But what could she say, she thought hopelessly, that he wouldn’t try and argue against? Or try and make a claim to take Danny away from her? He had her where he wanted her, didn’t he? And he knew how powerless she was to resist him—or anything about him—when he did this to her.

So where did that leave her? she thought, with her arms around his neck and her body shaping itself to the hard domination of his even though her mind rejected it. Where? Submitting, that was where. Giving in to him and whatever he demanded of her—whether she wanted to or not!

He broke the kiss only when she was like a malleable doll in his arms. His to do whatever he wanted with...

She couldn’t even look at him as he said with marked determination and surprising formality, ‘I think, Signorina Westwood, that we need a resolution here.’

He sounded impatient and slightly breathless, Lauren noted, trembling still from his drugging kiss as he reached around her for his jacket and the briefcase she hadn’t even noticed standing on the padded cushion of a cane chair. Then, as he was turning to walk away, ‘I think we should get married,’ he said.

* * *

Emiliano didn’t return for dinner that evening as promised.

After declining Constance’s offer to put Daniele to bed and doing it herself, Lauren curled up in the
salon
on one of the long corner sofas and browsed through a magazine on Caribbean culture, which she’d found lying on one of the glass-topped coffee tables beside her. Two hours later, when Emiliano still hadn’t come home, she took herself off for a contemplative walk along the beach.

Did he have such little regard for her feelings that he could treat what had amounted to a proposal of sorts as nothing worth getting excited about and just walk away? she wondered, kicking up sand in the gathering dusk with her pumps.

If he had meant it.

A cloud of despondency settled over her at the possibility that he hadn’t. That it might have been just an aside. A throwaway remark.

It hadn’t helped her spirits when the conference he had been attending had been featured on the news earlier that evening and had shown Emiliano speaking on the subject of tourism, as well as fair trade. Another clip had shown him standing outside the building afterwards with one of the officials who had invited him to speak. Not a seasoned masculine official, as Lauren would have expected, but a model-slim Caribbean beauty who was scarcely much older than Emiliano, and who, she had noted reluctantly, from the way the woman had kept looking at him, could have put the ‘i’ in ‘interest’ where her celebrated Italian speaker was concerned.

The dinghy that had been beached for some days at the end of the cove had gone now, on the yacht that was anchored a little way offshore, all set for its journey to Barbados the following day. Above it, a solitary star was twinkling in the darkening sky.

Standing there, looking up at it, on the far curve of the cove, Lauren’s only consolation was in knowing that men like Emiliano Cannavaro didn’t make idle comments, nor say things they didn’t actually mean.

‘Well... Can you tell me what that one is called?’

Above the soothing wash of the waves over the night-shrouded beach, his voice drifted towards her, low and softly mocking.

Lauren swung round, trying to stay calm even though her blood was coursing through her like a competition dinghy in full sail.

‘I haven’t a clue,’ she said huskily. ‘It’s probably a planet.’

‘Which one?’

‘I don’t know.’ With every cell yearning beneath her waist-fastened shirt and shorts, she shrugged and suggested, ‘Venus?’

‘The Roman Goddess of Beauty.’ But he was looking at her, not the star, and Lauren’s heart seemed to do a double somersault. ‘Did you know,’ he said, ‘that all the features of that planet are named after women?’

Her laugh was tremulous, tense. ‘No, I didn’t.’ She held her breath as he advanced. He was still wearing the clothes he had worn that morning, although his shoes were discarded and his unbuttoned shirt was hanging loose over his hip-hugging trousers. ‘So you do know something about the universe!’

She saw the wry smile he pulled as he moved closer out of the shadows. ‘Far more, I think, than I will ever know about women.’

She laughed again, the strands that had escaped from her loosely tied hair caressing her face with the warm wind.

‘We’re that complex to you? And I thought you were the world’s expert on the opposite sex.’

‘That,’ he stated meaningfully, ‘is a totally erroneous conclusion arrived at by over-zealous members of the press. Well?’

‘Well, what?’ she parried breathlessly, knowing what he was going to ask, and wondering how he could stand there sounding so matter-of-fact when her heart was beating so ridiculously fast she thought it was going to burst.

‘Do you agree we should get married?’

Just like that.

‘I haven’t given any thought to it,’ she prevaricated, even though she had been thinking of nothing else all day. ‘I hadn’t realised you were serious.’

‘You think I would joke about a thing like that?’

It was exactly what she had been thinking only a few moments ago, but tremulously she responded with, ‘I don’t know. I would have thought that you’d have at least telephoned if you’d been expecting an answer from me.’

‘I am not in the habit,
cara
, of making life-changing decisions over the telephone.’

Life-changing decisions?

The mind-blowing realisation that he was deadly serious stunned Lauren into silent incredulity.

‘You want to be with me, do you not?’ he prompted before she had gathered her wits to say anything.

How could he doubt it?

‘What do you think?’ she asked him tremulously.

‘I am not sure. That is why I want to hear it from your own lips,’ he insisted.

‘Of course I do,’ she whispered, with half a glance towards the white-crested waves that were drawing dark sweeping patterns over the sand. ‘But there’s more to getting married than simply wanting to be with someone.’

He laughed softly. ‘Is there?’ And when she turned back to him with her frown questioning the seriousness of his question, ‘Of course,’ he agreed. ‘There is mutual respect and trust and even admiration. And, on top of all that, compatibility. And there are many ways—and one in particular...’ his tone had become as sultry and seductive as the tropical paradise they were standing in ‘...that show we are compatible,
carissima
.’

‘Even though we’re from different worlds?’

She heard his breath catch momentarily before he said, ‘I am asking you to share mine with me, Lauren.’

So why was she hesitating? she wondered, and knew the answer without even having to think about it. She wanted him to tell her that he felt the same way she did. She desperately wanted him to tell her that he loved her.

‘Why?’ she stalled. ‘Because you can’t think of a simpler way to keep Danny with you?’

The silence was broken only by the intrusion of the sighing wind in some nearby palms.

‘You are right,’ he said, in a way that didn’t actually convey whether he was jesting or not. ‘I cannot think of a better or simpler way.’ Reaching out, he traced a finger lightly down the curve of her cheek. ‘I am not the...what is the phrase?... sentimental type,
mia cara
. But will you believe me when I say that...you mean a great deal to me?’

A great deal.

Her heart leaped in her breast.

Not love.

But, as he had just said, such sentimental words weren’t really in Emiliano’s vocabulary.

‘You mean...’ more hopeful, she leaned into his hand with a little shiver of pleasure as it burned a sensual trail along her neck ‘...you’ve finally decided I’m not a gold-digger?’

He gave a low chuckle from deep in his throat. ‘Would you be procrastinating over giving me your answer if you were?’

‘Well...’ She pretended to consider this. ‘I might,’ she teased, massaging her lower lip with a forefinger. She knew a sharp thrill as his lashes drooped, following the provocative little gesture.

‘To what purpose?’ he enquired.

‘To make you believe my intentions were honourable? That I really wasn’t after your money?’

‘Of course.’ There was a kind of self-censure in the way he spoke those two words. But then hadn’t he himself suggested that her stand-off was all part of a clever feminine technique before?

‘I was only joking!’ she breathed, suddenly wishing she hadn’t reminded him when she sensed the slight shift in his mood. ‘I’m sorry. Bad joke.’

‘In that case, are you going to give me your answer?’

‘What do you think?’ she murmured.

His hands were on her shoulders. ‘Let me hear you say it.’ He sounded in agony.

‘Yes! Oh, yes!’ she said, flinging her arms around his neck. The next instant she was being caught against him and his mouth was desperately seeking hers.

She was his—now and for ever—and she let him know it in the only way she knew how, by giving herself up to his amazing lovemaking right there on the beach. As nature intended. With no holds barred. And only the sea and sand and a universe of wakening stars to witness their passion.

CHAPTER EIGHT

T
HE
WHITE
GAUZE
of Lauren’s dress was moving gently around her calves and the wind was stirring the white petals of the periwinkles she had entwined in her hair, which she had caught up at the sides, leaving the rest cascading over her shoulders.

Standing barefoot on the pink sand, under an archway decked with flowers, she couldn’t help marvelling at how she and Emiliano had managed to come so far in the space of a few short weeks.

Three, to be precise.

That was how long it had been since that morning he had floored her by suggesting that they get married. And ever since that staggering moment, here on this beach, when she’d realised that he had meant it, it was as if someone had hit the
fast forward
button on Lauren’s life.

Although they had both agreed on a small private wedding, with only a few discreet members of Emiliano’s staff in attendance, there had still been a marriage licence to apply for and flowers and photographs to think about, food and drink for the buffet, as well as a honeymoon to arrange. Then there had been the things to take care of at home.

Because she and Emiliano were keeping the wedding secret from the wider world—and therefore the Press—until such time as they were ready to announce it, she had simply told her boss, when she had handed in her notice at the garden centre, that she had decided to extend her stay in the Caribbean. Likewise, Fiona, when Lauren had telephoned her, although she had been dying to reveal her happy news, especially when the woman was being good enough to come in and check on the house and pick up any post on a regular basis. Not to mention feeding the fish!

But now the big day had arrived and everything had fallen neatly into place, even the choosing of her dress, which she had decided to keep as simple as possible. That was why she had settled on a fine floaty affair that she had purchased on the island and which, with its Grecian neckline, finely layered skirt and zigzagging hemline, made her look more like an ethereal nymph from some Impressionist painter’s romantic imagination, she’d thought fancifully when she’d put it on earlier, than a very eligible billionaire’s bride.

Now she looked up at the tall man standing beside her, with his heart-stopping looks and a loosely tailored Italian white shirt and light trousers enhancing his superb body, and her green eyes expressed only one sentiment.

I love you.

He still hadn’t said those words to her. But wasn’t it evident enough, she decided, from the sparkling solitaire diamond he had placed on her finger a week ago? From the vows he was about to take? From the way he could never get enough of her—either in bed or out of it?

As the man officiating started to speak, Lauren tried to savour every second of these precious moments so that she could tell Daniele and her own children about it in years to come. Yet she felt so deliriously happy that she could only stand there as if in a dream, feeling as though it was all happening to someone else—some fairy tale bride.

Two bouquets had arrived for her that morning—white lilies from the staff and two dozen red roses from Emiliano. Consequently, she had interwoven a few of them into the wedding bouquet, which she had made up herself. The result was a beautiful blend of colourful island flowers interspersed with the roses and the lilies.

‘I think you should add more of a different colour,’ Constance had advised solemnly when she’d come into Lauren’s room in her lovely new turquoise suit and hat and seen Lauren putting the finishing touches to the bouquet that morning. ‘I don’t hold much with superstition myself, but there are some folks who say too much red and white together signifies bad luck.’

‘Oh, Constance! Don’t be a killjoy!’ Lauren had laughed, having lived far too long with her mother’s superstitions ever to take anyone else’s too seriously. After all, what bad luck could possibly lie in marrying the man she loved?

As they pledged their troth to each other in front of the little group who were witnessing the sealing of their bond, Lauren smiled adoringly up at Emiliano and met such an intensity of emotion mirrored in his dark eyes that her heart seemed to overflow with her love for him.

Their lingering kiss was met by cheers from everyone gathered there on the sand. When Emiliano broke the kiss at last, his eyes still held Lauren’s for a long time.

Now he turned to take their nephew from a happily beaming Constance, who had been holding the little boy throughout the ceremony. Her good wishes couldn’t have been warmer or more deeply meant, Lauren thought fondly, with a heartfelt smile at Emiliano’s housekeeper, with whom she had grown to share the same kind of rapport as Emiliano.

‘What do you think of your
mamma
and
papà
now,
piccolo
?’ he asked the toddler, who was dressed in a smart little white shirt and red shorts for the occasion. He ruffled the little boy’s silky hair. ‘Will you not be secure and happy for the rest of your life?’

The rest of your life.

That said it all, Lauren realised, with her heart soaring now like a bird high on the currents.

‘Now, everyone enjoy the food!’ Emiliano advised with a jerk of his head towards the buffet and the barbecue that was already filling the air with mouth-watering aromas. His staff laughed with him as he added, ‘I know that is the only reason you came!’

A steel band struck up then, hired for the occasion for their professionalism and diplomacy, adding the final touch to what was a truly tropical event.

Their wedding couldn’t have been more perfect, Lauren thought, as the day wore on. Glasses chinked. Laughter and conversation filled the air, becoming more animated as the champagne flowed. A camera clicked as the only photographer who had been invited to attend captured memorable moments for eternity. The music rang out. And all against a backdrop of pink sand and waving palms, and a sun that was sinking lower above the oblivious sea.

‘Happy?’ Emiliano asked, looking down at her where she stood, clamped to his side, as the sky started to turn red and the sun threw a fiery mantle over the waves. It was where she had been for most of the afternoon, so that whenever he had left her—however briefly—she’d felt as though she was missing part of herself.

‘Now, why on earth are you asking that, Mr Cannavaro?’ she laughed, and earned herself an extra tight squeeze before his mouth descended deliciously over hers.

Their cases were packed, since they were flying off the following morning to spend a couple of days in New York. Something, Emiliano had observed, laughingly, that she sorely needed to do. ‘To stock up on a new wardrobe,’ he’d commented when he saw the modest amount of budget-conscious clothing she had packed in the new suitcase he had insisted on buying for her to replace the battered old case she had arrived with, and which she had had since starting her brief spell at university. They were only taking a short honeymoon as they were keen to get back for Daniele. Tonight, however, their wedding night, they were going to spend right there.

Daniele was already in bed, taken up by a lovingly crooning Constance over an hour ago.

Now, as they walked up the terrace steps with their arms around each other, Lauren knew that their special day could only get better.

They were laughing as they stepped through into the cool luxury of the house. Unaware of anything but Emiliano and that strong arm still wrapped around her, Lauren looked up on hearing him catch his breath.

A slim and chic dark-haired woman had just emerged from the
salon
. In a pale blue designer shift dress and matching stiletto-heeled sandals that complemented the sapphires in her ears and which also adorned her wrist and throat, Claudette looked not dissimilar from the model who had graced the covers of France’s glossiest fashion magazines more than twenty-five years ago.

‘
Buona sera
, Emiliano.’ Her years living in Italy had made her as much a native of that country as he was. In fact Lauren recalled Emiliano saying that his father’s widow still lived there, with her new husband.

‘Claudette.’ A note of wary surprise laced her stepson’s voice. ‘I gather you heard it from the paparazzo before I was able to tell you myself.’ It took him only a moment to recover himself before he remembered his manners and introduced Lauren to his stepmother.

‘Yes, we’ve met,’ Claudette said dismissively, with even less warmth than she had shown Lauren at her younger stepson’s wedding two years ago. ‘Emiliano, can we talk?’

‘Of course.’ A frown was pleating his brows even as he sliced Lauren a look that from any other man she would have said expressed regret. From Emiliano it seemed to signify mild impatience.

Realising she wasn’t wanted, she smiled and said, ‘Of course. You go ahead. I’ve got a hundred and one things I need to do before we go off on our...trip tomorrow.’ For some reason she couldn’t explain, she avoided saying ‘honeymoon’ in front of Claudette.

* * *

Watching his new bride walking away, Emiliano dragged his gaze reluctantly back to his stepmother.

‘Why didn’t you telephone first?’ It surprised him that she’d want to be here, when he’d imagined that she wouldn’t care one way or the other, and yet he felt slightly irritated as he followed her back into the
salon
.

‘And have you put me off with the lame excuse that you were keeping it entirely private?’ She gave a tight little laugh.

‘How did you find out?’

‘Not all the trustees of your father’s estate are as uncommunicative as you are, Emiliano. Or, I should say, one of the junior assistants to the trustees, otherwise he might not have let the information slip out. Anyway, the man probably thought I knew. What I hadn’t realised was that it was going to happen so fast.’ Her clear blue eyes viewed him interestedly as she sat down on one of the sofas. ‘She isn’t...’

Emiliano drew in a sharp breath. ‘Whether she is or not is hardly anyone’s business but ours.’

‘You’re right.’ A shrug of a slim shoulder constituted a dismissive apology. ‘Anyway, I just happened to be in Florida because Pierre’s in Bermuda golfing, and I was going to fly down here to see you anyway. You know—to try and patch things up. Even before I knew about your wedding arrangements. Your brother’s funeral didn’t seem like an appropriate time to say all I needed to say. I was only hoping that I could get here before the actual ceremony.’

‘I am sorry you missed it.’

He wasn’t sure he meant that. Apart from Angelo’s funeral, when he and Claudette had exchanged only mutual condolences, Emiliano hadn’t spoken to her since he had flown over to see her in Milan over four months ago. They had argued, as they always had, when, worried about his brother, he had accused her of condoning Angelo’s over-indulgence in everything from booze to gambling to women. He had also accused her of not being interested enough in her grandson even to try and find out from Angelo where he was. He regretted it now, but he had been angry with her indifference to the whole situation. He had been made even angrier when she had pointed out that Daniele was only her
step
-grandson and therefore not her responsibility, but Angelo’s.

‘Is that all you care about?’ he remembered saying savagely. ‘Whose responsibility he is?’

Claudette had turned defensive and said, ‘Don’t have a go at me. It’s your brother you need to be talking to.’

He gave himself a censuring mental shake. He didn’t want to think about any of that now.

‘I’m sorry I have to bring you unexpectedly bad news,’ the woman expressed, looking up at him now with something remarkably like sincerity in her coldly beautiful face. ‘Especially on the day that is supposed to be the happiest of your life. Or is that only for a woman?’ Another humourless laugh from her this time made her sound tense and strained.

‘Claudette, what is it?’ Emiliano felt his patience waning. Claudette had always affected him like this, he thought regretfully, wishing he could have enjoyed the same harmonious rapport with her that his brother had. ‘Is there some problem back home? With your finances? Are you having difficulty in securing your allowance from my father’s estate?’

She looked at him long and hard. So long and hard it was almost unnerving, he thought, with a self-effacing grimace, because whatever problem he had ever had to face in his life—or would be likely to face—there never had been—or would be—one that he couldn’t solve.

‘Emiliano...’ Claudette’s tone was tentative, almost nervous ‘...I think you had better sit down.’

* * *

When Lauren opened the door of the master suite, for a moment she couldn’t believe her eyes.

Constance and some of the staff had been busy putting their own personal touches to the celebrations. The huge bed had been turned back with a hand-embroidered silk throw over a white satin coverlet, with matching pillowcases over the plump pillows, to which they had added a host of cushions in luxuriously padded and embroidered white satin. The brass spindles of the bedstead had been decorated too, intertwined somehow with the pink and yellow and red trumpets of freshly picked hibiscus flowers.

A hand-sculpted vase of some exotic white blooms she couldn’t even name stood on the low chest beneath one of the windows, their heady scent intoxicating on the air.

Nature, too, had lent a hand with a slice of new moon peeping above the ferny foliage of a jacaranda tree just beyond the window. The lizards and tree frogs had already begun their evening chorus, their shrill whistling an accompaniment for the steel band that was still beating out its reggae rhythm for the few revellers who had stayed to linger on the beach.

Their cases stood in the dressing room adjacent to the en suite bathroom, waiting to be put into the car the following day.

Slipping off her dress and putting it carefully away in one of the floor to ceiling wardrobes, Lauren took a shower. Afterwards, creaming her body with a luxurious lotion from one of the frosted glass dispensers that had discreetly appeared in Emiliano’s bathroom since she had moved into his room, she began to wonder where he was.