A Clash With Cannavaro (5 page)

* * *

He was leaning back against the sink with a mug of coffee in his hand, looking every bit at home in her lowly kitchen as he’d looked in the shameless luxury of that five-star hotel.

With his jacket discarded and his hair as wild and rumpled as his mud-stained shirt, he looked so untamed and spectacular that Lauren’s heart-rate pumped up a level.

‘Don’t stand on ceremony. Help yourself to a biscuit.’ The transparent jar in which she kept them beside the kettle had been pulled forward and its lid was on the counter, evidence that he had clearly helped himself already.

‘You will have to excuse my manners,’ he said, by way of an apology. ‘I am afraid I haven’t eaten for a few hours.’

She glanced at the jar, which was missing the last two of Danny’s chocolate bourbons, leaving only the handful of plainer ones that she preferred. She wouldn’t have minded, but she couldn’t afford to replace them until she could cash her wages the day after tomorrow.

And
you
accused
me
of trying to take from you.

She didn’t say it but the green eyes clashing with midnight-black expressed that exact sentiment as she crossed to one of the wall cupboards and took out a large round tin.

‘I’m sorry it’s only plain Madeira,’ she said cynically as she was cutting a large chunk of the home-made cake on the kitchen table, ‘but I didn’t know you were coming. If I had, I would have definitely put something in it.’

‘Then perhaps it is lucky for me that you didn’t,’ he drawled with the barest trace of a smile, leaving her in no doubt as to his meaning.

‘Contrary to what you think about me, I don’t go round trying to poison Italian billionaires,’ she informed him bluntly. ‘Not until I’ve married them and got them to change their last will and testament in my favour.’

He laughed, yet that harsh edge to the sound was unmistakable. ‘Is that what you had in mind when you seduced me,
cara
?’ His dark eyes were hooded, but there was softness now in that false endearment that made Lauren’s legs feel as spongy as the cake she had just been slicing.

‘Of course not!’ Hot colour crept up her throat above the deep ‘V’ of her robe as she suddenly realised what she had as good as admitted to. And then, in an attempt to brush over it, she went on, with an involuntary glance over those superbly masculine shoulders, ‘You would have been far too young and healthy for me to convince the world you died of natural causes.’

He laughed again, the sound more natural this time. ‘Is that why you prefer older men like that smitten banker I saw you making eyes at at that party?’

‘I wasn’t making eyes at him! If you must know, he was boring me senseless!’ She dumped the plate with the chunk of cake down on the counter in front of him. ‘If you want anything else then the local pub does a cheap steak dinner on Fridays. I would cook you one myself but, as you’ve probably already discovered, I’m all out of savouries at the moment!’ Ridiculously, she felt near to tears as she demanded, ‘So what is it you want, besides food?’

‘You know what I want,’ he said.

He meant Danny. As if she could forget!

Meeting the disturbing clarity of his eyes, however, as he sank those strong white teeth into her cake, she wondered whether he was referring to something else altogether. Or was that just her mind working overtime because of the way he was making her feel?

He’d been wearing a tie earlier but must have slipped it into his pocket, because now the top buttons of his shirt were unfastened, exposing the corded strength of his throat.

Dry-mouthed, Lauren felt a little frisson run through her as her gaze came to rest on the dark shadow of hair spanning his chest through the fine material of his shirt.

She reached for the mug she hadn’t realised he had filled while she had been cutting him some cake and the normality of the situation suddenly seemed laughable in the circumstances.

‘What are you smiling about?’

Of course. He didn’t miss a thing.

‘Maybe it’s because I’m being waited on in my own kitchen by a man who not only thinks I’m a gold-digger of the highest order, but a child abductor as well. That’s got to be pretty amusing, don’t you think?’

‘So convince me you aren’t.’

‘I don’t need to convince anyone of anything,’ she assured him, watching him demolish his piece of Madeira cake in two bites.

He dipped his head in an oddly courtly gesture before putting his empty plate back on the worktop. Was he giving her the benefit of the doubt?

Sipping her coffee, she watched him rake one side of his hair back in that way that was such an integral part of him and which was already so familiar to her. It was then that she noticed the blood staining his shirt cuff, and the angry red marks above his hand on the underside of his right wrist.

‘You cut yourself.’ He must have done so out there when he had been trying to free Brutus earlier. Yet he hadn’t given any indication of it. Not a murmur...

‘It is nothing,’ he dismissed, reaching round and picking up his own mug.

‘Nothing?’
Even from where she was standing, Lauren could see how inflamed and sore it looked. ‘You’d better bathe that. Put some antiseptic on it or something. You can’t just leave it.’

‘Why not?’ Draining his mug of its contents, he returned it to the kitchen counter.

‘You could get tetanus or some other infection, especially where animals have been involved,’ she told him, although he looked so fit and hard that she couldn’t imagine any self-respecting bacteria attacking
him
. ‘I really must advise you to get it cleaned up,’ she pressed when she could see he had no intention of bothering.

‘Why don’t you do it for me?’ he suggested in a way she hadn’t heard him speak to her since that morning when she’d woken up, deliciously tender from his lovemaking and hungry for more, in his monstrous bed in that hotel room.

Her first instinct, though, was to tell him to go to hell. After all, he had treated her abominably when he’d misjudged her so completely after that wild night and morning when nothing but their need for each other had seemed to matter. That night and morning that had been the most amazing—and then the most humiliating—of her life!

She wasn’t prepared to stoop to his level, however, deciding he wouldn’t have cut himself so viciously if it hadn’t been for her. And he
had
helped her with the dog.

Discarding her mug and grabbing some cotton wool from the first aid box she took out of the cupboard under the dresser, she went over to the sink and moistened it under the warm tap. Then, with her heart thumping ridiculously, she waited for him to unfasten a button and turn back his cuff before applying the cotton wool gingerly to his wound.

She heard his breath catch and felt him stiffen on that initial contact with his wrist.

‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you,’ she expressed, as she would have done with anyone.

‘Didn’t you?’ he responded dryly.

After that he stood without complaint as Lauren attended to his wound, catching his hand in her palm and carefully bathing away the grime from the painfully torn flesh.

With no words breaking the silence and only the clock on the dresser ticking away the minutes, Lauren was painfully aware of Emiliano’s regular breathing and the way he inhaled more deeply occasionally, as though he were breathing in the scented freshness of her hair.

And he wasn’t the only one whose nostrils were working overtime! she thought as the familiar fragrance of his cologne made her head swim from the memories it evoked. The slight salty taste of his skin as her tongue had traced a provocative pattern over his contoured, hair-sprinkled chest. The way he had laughingly caught the hair at the nape of her neck to hold her there, governing her kisses along the exquisite symmetry of his strong, hard, masculine body.

Unable to stand there performing such a personal task for him while her mind was running riot with erotic images, she knew she had to say something. Huskily, she told him, ‘I didn’t plan what happened in London, you know. Even though you want to think I did.’

‘Oh, I didn’t want to, Lauren.’ That deep chest expanded and fell again. ‘It is, however, in the past and as such, it is best forgotten.’

‘No, it isn’t.’ She’d be darned, she thought, if she let him—or anyone, for that matter—carry on thinking such a terrible thing about her. ‘It might be something you can leave. But no one accuses me of something so nasty and gets away with it. I don’t know what you think you heard when you were eavesdropping outside that room—and I know some of the things Vikki said left a lot to be desired. But whatever it was you heard or didn’t hear
me
say really isn’t my problem. And, whatever you think of me, I can tell you this much, Emiliano Cannavaro. I wouldn’t touch your money or your lifestyle with a bargepole! If you really think I’m holding on to Danny just for what monetary reward I can get out of it, then I’ll tell you now that if you keep up that line of accusation it’ll be me taking
you
to court for defamation of character!’

‘Why don’t you try using the scrubbing brush?’ he suggested, with a wry glance down at his wrist, shaming her into realising just how fiercely she was rubbing at his skin.

‘Perhaps I should have,’ she responded, when she knew she should really have been apologising.

Instead, taking control of herself, she turned his dark wrist to inspect the wound and satisfy herself that it was completely clean. ‘You really should put a plaster on that,’ she advised, suddenly self-conscious of his proximity. And let out a gasp as he caught her wrist now, drawing her just a little too close for comfort.

‘And you,
mia bella
, really should have put on more clothes.’

Lauren’s mind screamed in rejection of the wild sensations that were suddenly leaping through her. ‘Let me go!’

He laughed very softly. ‘Not until we can come to some agreement about Daniele.’

Lauren tensed, trying to stifle the feelings that were coursing through her from his dangerous nearness, from the heady musk of him mingling with that subtle spice and from the thrilling latent strength lurking beneath the sophisticated, civilised exterior.

‘You had my answer over the phone a few days ago. Now let me go!’

‘When your pulse is throbbing beneath my fingers like an Apache drumbeat? And your eyes,
cara mia
... Those lovely eyes that spoke volumes to mine that night they clashed across that ballroom are betraying you with their sultriness and telling me that biologically we were meant to be lovers, no matter how much we would both like to deny it and wish that it could be different.’

She could have moved, Lauren thought. She could have pulled back from him and he would have let her. But his eyes and his voice were working on her senses like some hypnotic drug, so that she felt paralysed with wanting as his long fingers tugged gently at the belt of her robe.

The silky fabric gave and fell away, leaving her parted robe revealing minuscule purple briefs and the full inner curves of her heavy breasts above her tiny waist.

‘You should have known better than to test my resistance,
cara
.’ His voice was like a caressing purr coming from deep in his chest. ‘Or your own.’

She hadn’t wanted it to happen. But, as his arm slipped around her waist and his mouth came down over hers, she was pressing her nakedness against his fully clothed body with every last drop of her raging need.

She hated the man! Why then was she letting him do this to her? she tried reasoning wildly.

The rasp of his jaw against hers was an exciting demand, like the burning heat of him through the fine silk shirt and the hard excitement of his strong and hardening body.

All she knew was that she wanted this! Wanted
him!
Here and now! No matter how much more shame and degradation would follow after.

When he pushed back her robe and his hand palmed the hard tip of one begging breast she could do nothing but arch into his mind-blowing caress.

‘You are so beautiful,’ he said thickly, with his teeth softly grazing her ear, then moving down the soft line of her jaw to her responsive neck and the sensitised juncture of her shoulder. But when he tilted her back against his arm and took the crest of her other breast into his mouth, Lauren gave a shuddering gasp of pure pleasure.

‘I hate you.’ It was an agonised little sound, but it was so important that he should know that.

He stopped suckling, turning his head against the upper swell of her breast. ‘And that makes this perfectly acceptable?’

Did it?

No, it doesn’t!
her mind shrieked at her.
It’s self-gratifying! Totally insane! And immoral!

Her voice, croaky and shaking, didn’t sound like hers at all, as somehow she managed to say, ‘Nothing I do with you could ever be acceptable.’

‘And it is that that makes it so exciting, is it not,
mia bella
? The fact that we both want this against our better judgement.’

‘I—don’t—want—you.’ She could scarcely get the statement past her lips as each word came out punctuated with the effort it took.

Remarkably, Emiliano stood up and drew back.

‘No,’ he agreed, but the husky sound was tinged with mockery.

From his drawn-down lashes Lauren knew he was noting the rosy swollen aureoles of her breasts, and quickly she pulled her robe together, belting it tightly. His face, though, was flushed, she noticed, and she didn’t even need to look at him to know how hard he was. She had felt his arousal when he had ground his hips against hers and the thought of how she was responsible for that produced an almost excruciating ache between her thighs.

‘OK, so I’m human. But don’t feel so smug. You’re rich and you’re powerful and you aren’t too bad-looking either. Isn’t that an irresistible combination for any woman? As you said in London, being ensnared by someone doesn’t mean you have to like them. And a woman can take as much as a man without it being expected to mean anything beyond the purely physical these days.’