A Clash with Cannavaro

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.