A Clash With Cannavaro Read Online Free Page A

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 in significant 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