First of all she had to go and buy the ingredients for her present for Rodolfo’s seventy-fifth. She could only hope that she wasn’t getting it wrong in the gift department. After that she had a rather more pressing need to attend to: finding work for herself. She had just about enough money in her purse to make Rodolfo’s cake but she had nothing more and no savings to fall back on.
The sleek granite-topped kitchen had a fridge packed with food and a very large selection of chocolate cereals that made her smile. Gaetano had remembered her preference. She ate while she studied the prompt sheets he had mentioned. It was like a CV written for a job: qualifications listed, sports pursuits outlined, not a single reference to any memorable moments. He just had no idea of the sort of things that a woman in love would want to know about him, Poppy reflected ruefully. When was his birthday? What was his favourite colour?
She texted him to ask.
Gaetano suppressed a groan when his phone buzzed yet again and lifted it to see what the latest irrelevant question was.
Who was the first woman you fell in love with?
He had never been in love and he was proud of it.
What do you value most in a woman?
Independence, he texted back.
As Poppy walked round the supermarket with her shopping list she raised her brows. If he liked independent women why did he always date clingy airheads? So, she asked that too and they began to argue by text until she was laughing. Gaetano had an image of himself that did not always match reality. She could have told him that he dated clingy airheads because they did as they were told, accepted his workaholic schedule and made few demands.
Noticing a ‘help wanted’ sign in the window of a café she called in, enjoyed an interview on the spot and was hired to work a shift that very evening. Relieved to have solved the problem of being broke, she returned to the town house by the separate entrance at the side and proceeded to mess up Gaetano’s basically unused kitchen with her baking session. She settled the cake into the cake carrier she had bought for the purpose and set the birthday card on top of it before going to get changed.
She wore a tartan skirt with black lace stockings and high heels. Gaetano wolf-whistled the instant he saw her. ‘Wow...’ he breathed with quiet masculine appreciation. ‘Your legs are to die for...’
‘Really?’ Poppy grinned and then frowned doubtfully. ‘Is this phase one of the Italian seduction routine?’
‘You’re very suspicious.’
‘I don’t trust you,’ Poppy told him truthfully. ‘I think being sneaky would come naturally to you.’
‘I’ve never had to be sneaky with women,’ Gaetano told her truthfully.
* * *
The drawing room was crowded with guests when they arrived. The instant Poppy saw the fancy cocktail-type frocks and delicate jewellery that the other women sported and the stares that her informal outfit attracted, she paled in dismay. She stuck out like a sore thumb and hated the feeling, squirming discomfiture taking her by storm and reminding her of her days at school when no matter how hard she’d tried she had always failed to fit in. Remembering that Gaetano had urged her to be herself was not a consolation because her unconventional appearance had to be an embarrassment to him. How could it be anything else?
Gaetano’s grandfather made a major production out of welcoming them and announcing their engagement. Poppy’s guilt over their deception sent colour flying into her cheeks but she saw only satisfaction in Gaetano’s brilliant smile and from it she deduced that everything was going the way he had planned.
But Poppy was wrong in that assumption. She served Rodolfo with the strawberry layer cake with mascarpone-cheese icing that was his favourite and which she had learned to bake at his wife’s side. His eyes went all watery and he gave her an almost boyish grin as he took up the cake knife she passed him and cut himself a large helping.
‘So, when’s the big day?’ he asked Poppy within Gaetano’s hearing.
Gaetano tensed. ‘We haven’t set a date as yet...’
‘You don’t want to risk a treasure like Poppy getting away,’ his grandfather warned him softly, shrewd eyes resting on his grandson’s lean, darkly handsome face. ‘I don’t believe in long engagements.’
‘We don’t want to rush in either,’ Poppy remarked carefully, instinct sending her to Gaetano’s rescue.
‘Next month would be a good time for me before I head off to Italy for the summer,’ Rodolfo pointed out calmly.
‘We’ll talk it over,’ Gaetano fielded smoothly.
‘And when you get back from your honeymoon,’ the old man delivered cheerfully, ‘it will be as CEO.’
Gaetano nodded, thoroughly disconcerted and fighting not to betray the fact that he knew that his promotion was now a marriage step away from him. He studied Poppy from below his black lashes. Against all the odds, Rodolfo adored her. Trust Poppy to bake his grandmother’s signature cake. She couldn’t have done anything more likely to please and impress. She had ticked his grandfather’s every box. Not only was she beautiful, kind and thoughtful, she could actually cook. Gaetano experienced a hideous ‘hoist with his own petard’ sensation and wondered how the hell he was going to climb back out of the hole he had dug.
‘WHY ARE YOU in such a hurry?’ Gaetano frowned as Poppy sped away from him towards the bedroom. His grandfather had outmanoeuvred him and he needed to have a serious conversation with his fake fiancée.
‘I have to get changed and get out in the next...er...ten minutes!’ she exclaimed in dismay, hastening her step after checking her watch.
Gaetano took his time about strolling down to the bedroom where Poppy was engaged in pulling on a pair of jeans, lithe long legs topped by a pair of bright red knickers on display. Her face flushing, she half turned away, wriggling her shapely hips to ease up the jeans. The enthusiastic stirring at his groin was uniquely unwelcome to Gaetano at that moment. ‘Where do you have to be in ten minutes?’ he asked quietly.
‘Work. I picked up a waitressing shift at the café round the corner. I’ll be back by midnight,’ she told him chirpily.
In the doorway, Gaetano went rigid, convinced that he could not have heard her correctly. ‘You applied for a job as a waitress...’ his dark deep drawl climbed tellingly in volume and emphasis as he spoke that word ‘...while you’re pretending to be engaged to me?’
‘Why not? Bartending is better paid but the café was closer and the hours are casual and flexible and that would probably suit you better.’
Brilliant dark eyes landed on her with the chilling effect of an ice bath. ‘You working as a waitress doesn’t suit me in any way.’
‘I don’t see why you should object,’ Poppy reasoned, thrusting her feet into her comfy ankle boots. ‘I mean, you’re still working and what am I supposed to do with myself while you’re busy all day? It’s not even as if pretending to be your fiancée is a full-time job.’
‘As far as I’m concerned, it is full-time and you will go to the café now and tell them that you’re sorry but you won’t be working there tonight,’ Gaetano told her with raking impatience. ‘Diavelos! Do I have to spell every little thing out to you? I’m a billionaire banker. You can’t work in a café or a bar for peanuts while you’re purportedly engaged to me!’
An angry flush had lit up Poppy’s cheeks. ‘Then what am I supposed to do for money?’
‘If you need money, I’ll give it to you,’ Gaetano declared, pulling out his wallet, relieved that the problem could be so easily fixed. But seriously, where was her brain?