‘I’ll think it over.’ Her heart-shaped face expressionless, Poppy studied the polished floor. She wanted to discover sex with Gaetano but she wasn’t about to confess that to him. That was private, strictly private. Her body burned inside her clothing at the thought of that intimacy. Meaningless, sexual intimacy, she reminded herself doggedly. And it disturbed her that even though she knew it would mean nothing to him she still wanted him...
POPPY SANK INTO the guest-room bed and rolled over to hug a pillow. She was incredibly tired but so wired she was convinced that she would not sleep a wink.
She was going to marry Gaetano Leonetti. Gorgeous, filthy rich, super-successful Gaetano. Who sent her body into spasms of craving with a single kiss. If she was honest with herself, she really hadn’t needed a night to think it over. He would help her protect her mother and he would support her getting back onto a career path. Really, marrying Gaetano would be win-win whichever way she looked at it, wouldn’t it be?
As long as she didn’t get too carried away and start acting as if it were a real marriage. As long as she didn’t fall for Gaetano. Well, she wasn’t about to do that, was she? He was almost thirty years old and had never been in love. The closest he had come to love was with a woman who had married his friend. And he had acted as best man at their wedding, which didn’t suggest to her that it had been very close to love at all. Gaetano might be planning to marry her but he wasn’t going to love her and he wasn’t going to keep her either. It would be a temporary marriage and it would make Rodolfo happy...at least for a while, she thought guiltily, because faking it for the older man’s benefit still troubled her conscience. He was such a kind, genuine sort of man and so unlike Gaetano, who kept the equivalent of a coffin lid slammed down hard on his emotions.
While Poppy was ruminating over her bridegroom’s lack of emotional intelligence, Gaetano was subjecting himself to yet another cold shower. She had to marry him. There was no alternative. Just at that moment in the grip of a raging inferno of frustrated lust he felt as though he would spontaneously combust if he didn’t get Poppy spread across his bed as the perfect wedding gift. The definitive wedding gift, with those ballerina legs in lace stockings, those pert little breasts in satin cups, that voluptuous pink mouth pouting as she looked up at him with those witchy green spellbinding eyes. He groaned out loud. He couldn’t credit that he had barely touched her when he wanted so much more.
But if they married, a few weeks down the matrimonial road he’d be back to normal, he told himself bracingly. The challenge would be gone. The lust would die once he could have her whenever he wanted her. He would soon be himself again, cooler, calmer, back in control, fully focussed on the bank. How was it possible that just the fantasy of sinking into Poppy’s wet, willing body excited him more than he had ever been excited? What was it about her?
Maybe it was the weird clothes, maybe he had a secret Goth fetish. Maybe it was her argumentative nature, because he had always thrilled to a challenge. Maybe it was her cheeky texts that made him laugh. The fact she could still blush? That was strange. Every time he mentioned sex she went red, as if he had said something outrageous. She couldn’t possibly be that innocent, although he was willing to allow that she might well have considerably less experience between the sheets than he had acquired.
Gaetano shook Poppy awake at the ungodly hour of six in the morning, obstinately and cruelly ignoring her heartfelt moans to insist that she join him for breakfast. After a quick shower and the application of a little make-up, Poppy teamed a black dress enlivened with a red rose print with high heels and sauntered down to the dining room. Gaetano was already ensconced with black coffee, a horrendously unhealthy fry-up and the Financial Times.
She was gloriously conscious of his attention as she helped herself to cereal and took a seat at the other end of the table, her ruby cluster ring catching the light. Gaetano put down the newspaper and regarded her levelly, dark golden eyes steady as a rock and full of an impatience he didn’t need to voice.
‘Yes, I’ll marry you,’ Poppy told him straight off.
‘Does that mean I get to share my bed with you tonight?’ was Gaetano’s first telling question.
‘You are incredibly goal-orientated about entirely the wrong things!’ Poppy censured immediately. ‘You can wait until we’re married.’
‘Nobody waits until they’re married these days!’
‘I haven’t had sex before. I want it to feel special,’ she told him stubbornly.
His expressive dark eyes flared with incredulity. ‘I refuse to credit that. I saw you with Toby Styles...’
‘I hate you!’ Poppy launched at him in a sudden tempest of furious embarrassment, her pale skin flushed to her hairline. ‘Of all the moments I don’t want to be reminded of, you have to bring that one up and throw it at me!’
‘Well, it was one of those unforgettable moments that did seem fairly self-explanatory. I saw you sidling out of the shrubbery covered in blushes and grass stains,’ Gaetano commented with grudging amusement. ‘So, why lie about it? This is purely about sex, bella mia, and I’m all for full bedroom equality. Whether or not you’re a virgin or a secret slut matters not a damn to me.’
Poppy compressed her lips. ‘If you must know—although it’s none of your blasted business—I did plan to have sex that day with Toby but I changed my mind because it wasn’t what I really wanted.’ No, what she had really, really wanted that day, she acknowledged belatedly, was to wander off into the shrubbery and be ravished by Gaetano, who had dominated her every juvenile fantasy. Sadly, however, Gaetano hadn’t been an option.
‘Poor Toby...’ Gaetano frowned.
‘He was very decent about it,’ Poppy muttered in mortification. ‘He’s married to one of my friends now.’
‘But there must have been someone since then?’
‘No.’
Gaetano continued to stare at her as if she were a circus freak. ‘But you’re so full of passion...’
Only with you. The words remained unspoken.
Gaetano lifted his coffee with a slightly dazed expression in his shrewd gaze. ‘I’ll be the first...really?’
Poppy shrugged a shoulder. ‘But if you think it’s likely to be a turn-off I can always go and look for a one-night stand.’
‘Don’t even think about it,’ Gaetano growled.
‘That was a joke.’
‘It’s not a turn-off, simply a surprise,’ Gaetano admitted flatly. ‘OK, I’ll wait until we’re married if it’s so significant to you. But I think you’re making an unnecessary production out of it.’
Her body was all he wanted from her, Poppy interpreted painfully. At least if she was his legal wife, it would feel less demeaning, wouldn’t it?
‘I’ll organise a gynae appointment for you,’ Gaetano continued briskly. ‘Reliable birth control is important. We don’t want any slip-ups in that department when we’re not planning to stay together.’
‘Obviously not,’ she agreed, sipping with determination at her hot-chocolate drink while thinking for the very first time in her life about having a baby. She had always liked children, always assumed that she would become a mother one day, but she reckoned that day lay a long way ahead in her future.
‘And whatever you do,’ Gaetano warned with chilling precision, ‘don’t go falling for me.’
‘And