backless dress, split almost from hip to hem. But the critical note in his voice made Lauren bristle and look up at his devastating profile with narrowing eyes. ‘What are you implying, exactly?’
His thick hair gleamed darkly as he turned back to her again. ‘No implication, I assure you. But she must obviously be aware that there are worse fates than linking up with one of Italy’s oldest and most...significant families.’
Lauren’s hackles continued to rise. ‘And there are some who might say she could do better than marry into a family which has put too much emphasis on making money at the expense of investing the right kind of values in its offspring.’
Her piqued rejoinder brought a speculative curve to his mouth. ‘With you being one of them, I suppose?’
She hadn’t intended to make such a pointed remark about the groom’s family. It had slipped out before she could contain it, but his comments had irked, especially as she had been so worried about Vikki.
Ever since they had lost their parents within days of each other to that tropical disease six years ago, Lauren had found herself at eighteen playing mother and father to her often difficult and rebellious sixteen-year-old sister. Vikki had reacted to her parents’ death by lashing out at the world, and her anger and resentment at their loss had resulted in a spiralling lifestyle of alcohol-fuelled all-night parties, illegal drugs and far too many one-night stands.
Painfully, Lauren recalled how Vikki had refused to listen to her concerns about her ruining her life and eventually, when Vikki was still only seventeen, their differing opinions and clash in personalities meant they could no longer remain under the same roof and Lauren had seen very little of her sister over the next few years.
When Vikki had telephoned only three weeks prior to that party to say that she was not only pregnant, but getting married, Lauren had been as surprised as she’d been happy for her sister. She’d also had to secretly admit to feeling more than a little relieved.
It wasn’t until the sisters had met for a tearful reunion lunch that Lauren had learned of Vikki’s choice of husband, and her gratitude that her wayward sibling was finally settling down had dissipated on a surge of anxiety.
Angelo Cannavaro’s decadent lifestyle was legendary, with his penchant for glamorous women exceeded only by his wealthier, yet considerably more discreet older brother, who, by some miracle, had managed to keep himself and his personal life out of the papers! Which was why Lauren hadn’t instantly realised who he was on that first meeting. It hadn’t surprised her, though, to learn that Vikki’s year-long involvement with the twenty-five-year-old Italian playboy, whom she’d met while working as a croupier in a London nightclub, had already been a tempestuous on-off affair, with Angelo sounding rather too partial to his freedom, in Lauren’s mind, to make suitable husband material. Vikki had said he had changed since their last break-up only five months previously, but it had done very little to allay Lauren’s worries for her sister’s future.
‘It isn’t for me to cast aspersions on either the bridegroom or the calculating little blonde who’s so lucky to have him marrying her.’ She was unable to keep the sarcasm out of her voice as she clutched the glass she hadn’t remembered draining so tightly it was in danger of shattering. ‘And neither should you.’
Her reprimand, instead of shaming, seemed merely to amuse him.
With a smile touching his sensuous mouth, he allowed his gaze to stray with disturbing intensity over the fine symmetry of her face, down her rather flushed throat to her full breasts, which were pushed up enticingly—too enticingly, she remembered now with a sensually inspired little shiver—above the shimmering emerald of her bodice.
‘And who are you,’ he enquired in that remarkably sexy voice of his, ‘that you jump so readily to the defence of the blushing bride-to-be?’
She found him so disconcertingly male that it was an effort to meet those equally disturbing eyes with any confidence, but she managed it. Just.
‘I’m Lauren Westwood. Her sister.’ She gleaned a wealth of satisfaction from saying that.
‘Ah!’
‘Yes,’ she added smugly before he could say another thing. ‘Another of the money-grubbing Westwoods, as you’ve obviously labelled my sister. From one of the most insignificant families in Cumbria.’
If she had expected to embarrass him then she should have guessed, Lauren thought now, that men like him weren’t easily—if ever—caught out. A mere dip of his head in almost amused acknowledgement confirmed it.
‘A gross error on my part, I think,’ he said, which was as near to an apology as Lauren knew she was likely to get. ‘In which case, you will at least allow me to get you another drink.’
‘No, I don’t...’ she started to say as he relieved her of her glass. But the accidental touch of his fingers against hers robbed the words from her mouth as a bolt of something electric ignited powerful impulses in her blood.
His smile was far too aware.
Though not inexperienced, having had a couple of undemanding relationships in the past, she was still unaware of the dangerous responses she was provoking in such a sophisticated man as Emiliano Cannavaro. She took advantage of the remarkably sudden appearance of a waiter at his side to try and stabilise her senses as he deposited her empty glass on the silver tray.
‘Insignificant is definitely not a word I would apply to you, signorina.’ He was looking at her—not in the leering way a lot of men looked at her because of her far too voluptuous figure, but with the subtlety of a man who was well acquainted with the female anatomy and knew just how to turn it to his advantage.
And how! Lauren remembered now, resenting the way he had made—and could still make—everything that was feminine in her respond readily to the pull of his flagrant masculinity.
‘Nor I you.’ A raw sexual tension made her tongue cleave to the roof of her mouth. ‘But then you know that already.’ She meant it as a barb, reluctant to acknowledge how those eyes that seemed to be penetrating the emerald silk made her breasts grow heavy. But her voice sounded husky from imagining what it would be like to feel those long tanned hands pulling down her zip, and that sensual mouth moving over the screamingly sensitive flesh covering her spine before...
She brought her thoughts up sharply as her nipples swelled inside their strapless cups.
‘What are you doing, Lauren Westwood?’ Through a rush of shaming heat she caught the sensuality in his lowered tones. ‘Trying to ensnare me with those heavy, come-hither eyes as your sister has ensnared poor unsuspecting Angelo?’
She felt herself blushing, certain that he was fully au fait with her body’s shaming responses.
‘As you’ve already pointed out,’ she returned, mortified, yet trying to maintain some degree of equanimity, ‘Angelo Cannavaro’s far from poor. And if you think pledging one’s troth is a form of penal servitude then you have a very cynical view of love and marriage!’
‘Touché,’ he said softly, ‘but I wasn’t talking about a mutual exchange of vows. There are more ways of being ensnared than by just slipping a ring on one’s finger. And it has nothing to do with love...’ he seemed to place an almost derisive emphasis on the word ‘...or even liking.’
Lauren’s body pulsed with the need to retaliate in some way. Because she didn’t like him! She thought it now with as much vehemence as she’d tried convincing herself on that night. Why, then, she remembered wondering, did her breasts ache to feel his touch? And why did the thought of pushing him to the limit and provoking what she guessed would be a frighteningly controlled yet lethal anger have her playing all sorts of outrageous scenarios in her mind? Like tumbling down onto a bed beneath him and quelling their mutual antagonism in the most heated and primeval way?
‘I can assure you that nothing is further from my mind so, rest assured, you’re perfectly safe.’ She flashed him a falsely bright smile, yet knew from the almost indiscernible lifting of an eyebrow