Free A Clash With Cannavaro by Elizabeth Power

slender body. ‘To punish me?’
    ‘If it is,’ he murmured, ‘then it is I who is being punished.’
    She frowned before her gaze fell—involuntarily he felt—to the khaki fabric that was pulling across his lap.
    ‘Good,’ she exhaled, understanding, and yet he detected a slight tremor in her voice again and that tension that made her nostrils dilate as she stood, unaware of how provocative she looked, with her slender hands splayed against the gentle curve of her hips and her lovely breasts straining against the bikini.
    Or perhaps she was, he thought.
    If they had been on their own he would have pulled her down across his lap right there and then and enjoyed her shriek of surprise, and almost certainly excitement too, he decided, at anticipating what he would never have dreamed of actually carrying out. But had he been the old-fashioned type of chauvinist, he fantasised—which he certainly wasn’t and never had been—at least it would have got her into his arms...
    Knowing he shouldn’t be entertaining such inappropriate thoughts, especially in Daniele’s company, he set the little boy gently down on his feet again.
    A subtle lifting of his hand brought his Afro-Caribbean housekeeper, who had just finished discussing something with one of the groundsmen and was about to go into the house, over to their little gathering.
    ‘Constance, would you kindly take this little man here away for his well-deserved nap?’ He looked indulgently down at the child, palming his soft baby cheek. ‘ Grazie ,’ he said, the word sliding off his tongue like molten honey.
    * * *
    The appreciative smile he gave the woman as she swung the toddler up into her generously proportioned arms could have melted her where she stood, Lauren reluctantly decided, if Constance Dowden—as she had been introduced to Lauren the day before—hadn’t been a generation above him.
    ‘I haven’t seen nearly enough of him,’ Emiliano said, sounding regretful as the boy and the woman disappeared into the air-conditioned comfort of his tropical home.
    A white, exclusively designed house, with intricately wrought balconies and bougainvillaea-draped walls, it stood in its own grounds against the lush green vegetation that clothed the hillsides right down to its private palm-fringed beach that was only accessible from the house and the sea. The understated elegance and simplicity of its interior had surprised Lauren when they had arrived here yesterday, coming by private jet from Heathrow to one of the larger islands and then by private launch to this less populated island paradise. She’d imagined Emiliano favouring the more glitzy, celebrity-decked resorts that his brother had.
    ‘No, you haven’t,’ she agreed, bristling from the way Danny had been effectively whisked away from her as she sank down on the deep floral cushion of the cane chair opposite Emiliano and picked up the tall glass of iced tea from the table beside it that someone had poured for her earlier.
    * * *
    Emiliano directed a hard and questioning glance at her. Was that disapproval in her voice? he wondered. Or was that just his conscience telling him that he should have pressed his brother harder to have informed him of Danny’s whereabouts, instead of allowing himself to be brushed off with lame answers?
    ‘I know I sent him gifts, but that was not enough.’
    ‘You did?’ Lauren’s words were strung with surprise as she sipped her tea. ‘We didn’t receive any gifts.’ From the way her forehead pleated he could tell they had never reached his nephew. ‘What sort of gifts?’
    ‘Oh...’ He shook his head, lips pursing as he plundered his memory banks. ‘I don’t know...Some sort of baby tractor for him to ride on. A bear...’
    She was looking at him as though she couldn’t imagine him doing anything so trivial as picking out gifts for a baby.
    ‘I gave them to Angelo. He said he would give them to him.’
    ‘He didn’t.’
    Emiliano’s dark brows came