outside and remembered now how much they had talked and laughed, sitting there under the stars on the low wall of the softly litterrace, wrapped up in their own world, with the music from the ballroom drifting towards them, although she remembered very little afterwards of what had been said.
It had all been a prelude to what they had both known was going to happen, and even before Emiliano’s lips came down over hers it was already too late.
Now, in bitter retrospect, she saw that night only as a prelude to shame and humiliation, but out there, on that terrace, all she had been able to focus on was the excitement of Emiliano’s hands shaping her body and the sensations that were governing her, making her shudder with need from the warmth of his mouth moving over her bare shoulders and the way his deep voice trembled from his own desire.
She didn’t want to think about that exquisite night—because it had been exquisite. As was the following morning, she recalled reluctantly—waking up in his bed in that hotel with little enough time to get ready for the wedding, and yet answering his hungry demand with a rising hunger of her own as he’d pulled her back against the hard excitement of his scorching arousal.
She could scarcely remember how many times he had taken her since she had yielded to that first blazing kiss on the terrace, but she’d taken him into her that morning with a body already fashioned by his will, her luscious breasts surrendering to his hands and his burning mouth, her legs fanning open without any further persuasion to accommodate the driving force of his body.
Even while she had stood in a demure cream dress and fascinator at her sister’s wedding she had been on fire for him, with her breasts swelling against the lace of her bra every time she thought of him. She remembered wondering with a sort of guilty excitement if everyone could tell just how she was feeling, and if her cheeks looked as flushed as she felt they did from the excited anticipation of what lay ahead, because Emiliano had made no secret that morning of wanting to keep her in his bed.
She hadn’t had much chance to speak to him during the register office ceremony or during the lavish reception, when they had been seated at opposite ends of the table back at the hotel. Then, afterwards, when everyone had been mingling, he had been monopolised by so many people who wanted to talk to him that she had kept her distance, appreciating how important his role as head of Cannavaro Shipping was, and how sought after his attention was by many of the guests. Also, with Angelo being part of such an influential family, the press had been very much in evidence all that day. Remembering how much Emiliano valued his privacy, Lauren had guessed that if he was keeping his liaison with her low-key, then it was only to protect them both from speculating reporters.
The day had been drawing in and they had barely spoken at all, but the glances he’d sent her way when he’d looked up occasionally over the head of whoever had been monopolising his company at that moment assured Lauren that he wanted to be with her as much as she wanted to be with him.
She was in love. Or halfway towards it!
Like a fool, she had almost convinced herself of it while she had been waiting for her sister—whom she’d presumed had gone upstairs to change before she and Angelo left for their honeymoon—to come back down.
With Emiliano engaged in conversation with a couple of younger men who had been hungrily absorbing every word he had been saying, Lauren had wandered off to steal a few moments to herself in the peace of the luxuriously deserted lounge, out of range of the noise of the ballroom.
Only it hadn’t been deserted.
Still in her wedding dress, Vikki Westwood had been studying her reflection in the huge mirror above the sculpted fireplace. The mirror faced the doorway and, as soon as Lauren entered the room, she’d noticed the surprisingly anxious expression on her sister’s face.
Emiliano’s words of the previous evening had come sharply back to Lauren’s mind and, with them, the worries she had been harbouring about her sister.
‘Vikki...What is it? You are happy, aren’t you?’
Her sister swung round, obviously startled to see her there.
‘Of course I am,’ she said, and her face was instantly lit by a radiant smile. ‘It’s just junior starting to kick. Why would you imagine otherwise?’
‘It’s just that it’s all so sudden,’ Lauren recalled saying. ‘This wedding. The baby. I mean...are you absolutely sure?’
‘Believe me. I know what I’m doing,’ Vikki stressed.
‘It’s just that you’ve never been too keen on the prospect of motherhood...’ Lauren remembered how often her sister had positively rebelled against it.
‘Not just for motherhood’s sake, no, I haven’t. But I can learn to be maternal. And what better way than with a handsome and exceedingly rich husband beside me?’ She giggled and the voluminous hair bounced against her flushed porcelain features like golden candyfloss.
‘I just think I would have been happier if you’d waited a little while longer before starting a family. Got to know each other a bit better. Enjoyed a year or two of just being there for each other.’
‘For heaven’s sake, Lauren! That’s so old-fashioned! But then you always were. And naïve, if you don’t take umbrage from my saying so.’
‘Naïve?’ It hurt Lauren to think that she and her sister weren’t able to see eye to eye, even on that day of all days.
‘You don’t think that all this...’ an expansive gesture of her arm indicated the lavish wedding celebrations ‘...would have happened if I hadn’t forced Angelo’s hand and engineered this pregnancy, do you?’ She laughed out loud at Lauren’s silent disbelief. ‘Don’t look so shocked, sister dear. After all, you can hardly claim to be any different, can you? I saw the way you were cosying up to that big, big brother of his last night, and the way the two of you disappeared after you went out onto the terrace. Did you manage to talk him into bed?’
‘Vikki!’
‘No, don’t tell me. I can see you did. I’ll bet he’s a real super stud between the sheets!’
Lauren could still remember the embarrassed indignation she’d felt at Vikki’s remark, which made her cheeks burn with flaming colour.
‘Wow! That good, eh?’ Vikki enthused. ‘A bit hotter than that lascivious old banker I thought you were trying to land yourself with last night,’ she went on when Lauren was still trying to come to terms with how devious her sister seemed to have become, ‘until, of course, you saw the opportunity to set your cap at some serious money. I’m proud of you, sis. I really am. I didn’t think you’d have the courage to play for such high stakes as Emiliano Cannavaro, but your street cred’s really gone up in my estimation. Play your cards right and you could have it all there. Wealth. Position and—from the look of you—some stupendous sex as well.’
‘Vikki!’ Lauren found her voice at last, but she wasn’t prepared to discuss what had happened between her and Angelo’s brother. ‘We’re not discussing me. It’s you I’m concerned for. What did you mean about engineering your pregnancy? Surely you didn’t...’
‘Leave off the Pill and get pregnant on purpose? How else did you imagine I was going to get that confirmed playboy bachelor to propose? Five months ago, when we got back together after that last break-up, I made up my mind that things were going to be different. Such a rich, handsome package seldom comes a girl’s way more than once in a lifetime,
