A Clash with Cannavaro by Elizabeth Power

Author:Elizabeth Power
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2014-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SIX

‘WHERE ARE WE going?’ Lauren asked as they came back along the jetty and onto the wharf, not separately now, but with Emiliano’s arm locking her to his side. ‘The car’s in that direction.’ She was pointing back towards the bar.

‘So is home. And about an hour’s drive away.’ There was exciting purpose to his face, illuminated by the lights along the quayside. ‘But I don’t think I—that either of us—can wait that long.’

Lauren looked at him questioningly, her excitement rising with her heightening anticipation.

From this distance the music and laughter from the bar had all but diminished, the only immediate sounds now the slap-slop of Lauren’s flip-flops on the concrete over Emiliano’s soft-soled, almost silent tread, and the creak of cooling timber and chink of metal from the moored boats with the water lapping against their hulls.

‘Where are we going?’ she asked again, more huskily this time, after he brought her along another jetty and was handing her down into an inflatable black dinghy, the same one, she was sure, she had seen being brought to shore earlier in the evening.

‘To bed,’ he answered uninformatively after he had stepped in beside her and started the engine, but there was laughter in his voice as he added, ‘Where else?’

* * *

The yacht they were racing towards was the one she had seen come in when they had been sitting at that restaurant table, and Lauren’s mouth dropped open as Emiliano brought the dinghy alongside the steps at its impressive stern.

‘This is yours!’ she exclaimed, with her jaw dropping open. A sleek white vessel of eye-popping proportions, she remembered thinking how it would need the skill of a fully trained crew to handle it.

He didn’t answer. He was addressing two male members of his crew who, wearing black T-shirts and built like rugby forwards, had appeared on the platform above them. Emiliano was conversing with them in his own language and, apart from a curt nod from each of the men that acknowledged Lauren’s presence as Emiliano helped her aboard, they went about dealing with the vacated dinghy.

‘Can I get you anything?’ he offered as he guided her through a pair of glass doors into the boat’s luxurious interior.

Only a minute to recover from what I should have expected! she thought, struck by an immediate impression of soft leather and polished maple and carpets that seemed to swallow her underfoot. Yet she hadn’t even dreamed that this yacht could be his when she’d seen it arrive.

When she shook her head, he said, ‘In that case...’ He was gesturing towards the stairs leading to what was clearly the sleeping quarters and Lauren’s pulse-rate soared.

‘I feel like a pirate’s bounty!’ Ahead of him, she laughed nervously over her shoulder with her stomach doing funny things because it was easy to imagine his dark Latin face scarred by plunder and pillage, his bare contoured chest gleaming as he plucked an unsuspecting maiden from some unfortunate vessel he had just claimed as his own.

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