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