A Clash With Cannavaro by Elizabeth Power Read Free Book Online Page A

she consulted her watch behind the little boy’s back ‘...long before this.’
    It was on the tip of his tongue to tell her that he was the child’s uncle and therefore she could leave Daniele with him. He knew she would probably cave in if he pressed hard enough. But the little boy didn’t know him and he didn’t want to cause him any unnecessary distress. Apart from which, he needed to talk to Lauren alone.
    ‘Why don’t I simply go and look for her?’ he suggested, sensing that wherever this brusque but frank-speaking woman was taking his nephew, she was more than keen to go.
    A few moments later, armed with directions, he was back in the comparative luxury of his car, with his headlamps cutting through the deepening murk.
    * * *
    ‘It’s all right, boy. I’ll get you out of this,’ Lauren said soothingly to the Border Collie that was lying at her feet, although deep down she was beginning to despair.
    The sheepdog, ever friendly, had followed her from the farm but, distracted by a movement in the field running alongside the lane, he had dived through a hole in the barbed wire fence and managed to get himself tangled up in the lethal wire.
    She only hoped that the driver of the car that had suddenly screeched to a halt in the lane behind them might have seen them and recognised the plight they were in. She sent an urgent glance over her shoulder as she heard the car door slam.
    ‘Emiliano!’
    He was the last person she had expected to see angling himself carefully through the broken fence in his dark business suit, and her immediate relief that someone was coming to help was replaced by a swift, unwelcome tension.
    ‘Your babysitter was getting worried about you.’ He straightened as he came through, his hair already misted by the relentless drizzle, and, glancing up at the heavy mist that was coming down over the fells, he said, surprising her, ‘So was I.’
    She couldn’t meet his eyes, dropping hers to his polished slip-on shoes which were more suited to a boardroom than a boggy field.
    ‘Fiona’s my stable manager,’ she corrected him. ‘She looks after the horses for people who have them in livery with us.’ As well as being a good friend and stepping in to help with Daniele whenever Lauren needed her. ‘I just lease out the stalls.’
    ‘I see.’
    The dog wagged his tail, despite his predicament, as Emiliano squatted down in front of him, without a care for his beautifully pressed suit trousers. The scent of his cologne drifted towards her, playing havoc with senses already in turmoil.
    ‘It’s all right, boy,’ he placated, patting the animal’s head, echoing Lauren’s words of a few minutes ago. Reluctantly, though, she sensed that now everything would be all right as he began to help her carefully unwind the wire from around the dog’s middle.
    ‘How long has he been like this?’
    Beneath her thick damp sweater, Lauren shrugged. ‘About half an hour. He followed me, as he always does, but he saw a rabbit in this field and came through that gap—’ she jerked her chin towards the gaping hole behind the tangle of vicious wire ‘—and there was no way I could leave him like this.’
    ‘So who is Stephen?’ He didn’t look up as he asked it. ‘I was informed that you’d gone to see him at the Manor.’
    She felt the urge to challenge why he wanted to know. After all, it wasn’t as if they had ever been an item, was it? she thought bitterly. But she didn’t, answering instead, ‘Stephen works in the dairy where I get my milk and eggs.’ And was fifty-three with a wife and four children, she thought, but wasn’t sure why she kept those facts to herself. ‘And the Manor is what everyone around here calls the Home Farm. Why?’ she queried, and was unable to stop herself tagging on, ‘Did you think I was fancying my chances with the local gentry? Because I couldn’t get you?’ Then she wished she hadn’t added that last bit because it sounded too much as if she was