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As they mingled she noticed Rodolfo chatting to Serena Bellingham. The blonde was wreathed in charming smiles. Poppy scolded herself for thinking bitchy thoughts. And why? Just because Serena had once shared a bed with Gaetano? Just because Serena had the looks, the social background and the education that would have made her the perfect wife for Gaetano? Or because Gaetano had once freely chosen to have a relationship with Serena when he had merely ended up with Poppy by accident and retained her for convenience?
Deliberately catching her eye, Serena strolled over to Poppy’s side. ‘I can see that you’re curious about me,’ she drawled in her cut-glass accent. ‘I’m Gaetano’s only serious ex, so it’s natural...’
‘Possibly,’ Poppy conceded, determined to be very cautious with her words and ashamed of the explosive mixture of inexcusable envy and resentment she was struggling to suppress.
‘We were too young when we first met,’ Serena declared. ‘That’s why we broke up. Gaetano wasn’t ready to commit and I was, so I rushed off and married someone else instead.’
‘Everyone matures at a different rate,’ Poppy remarked non-committally.
‘Maturity is immaterial,’ Serena responded with stinging confidence. ‘You and Gaetano won’t last five minutes. You don’t have anything to offer him.’
Disconcerted by that sudden attack coming at her out of nowhere, Poppy froze. ‘That’s a matter of opinion.’
‘But you’ll do very well for a short-lived first marriage. Gaetano is the last man alive I would expect to stay married to a Goth bride. You don’t fit in and you never will...’
As that bitingly cold forecast hit her Poppy was silenced by Gaetano’s arm closing round her spine. She encountered a suspicious sidewise glance and her temper flared inside her. Evidently, Gaetano was so far removed from the reality of Serena’s barracuda nature that it was Poppy he didn’t trust to behave around Serena. Entrapped there in Gaetano’s controlling hold, Poppy silently seethed and brooded over what Serena had said.
Sadly, the blonde’s assurance that Poppy would never fit in as Gaetano’s wife had cut deep—particularly because Poppy had quite deliberately made conventional choices when it came to what to wear for her wedding day. Why had she done that? she suddenly asked herself angrily. And there it was—the answer she didn’t want. She had done it for Gaetano’s benefit in an effort to please him and make him proud of her, make him appreciate that the housekeeper’s daughter could get it right for a big occasion. Serena’s automatic dismissal of all that Poppy had to offer had seriously hurt and humiliated her.
Fortunately from that point on their wedding day seemed to speed up and race past. Poppy’s throat was sore and she put that down to the amount of talking she had to do. She ate little during the meal even though she was trying to regain the weight she had lost in recent months while she had worked two jobs. Unfortunately her appetite had vanished.
She changed into white cropped trousers and a cool blue chiffon top for their flight to Italy. The luxurious interior of the Leonetti private jet stunned her into silence. She studied the glittering ruby cluster nestling next to the wedding band on her finger and Serena’s wounding forecast of her marriage seemed to reverberate in her ears. You don’t fit in and you never will.
And why should that matter when they didn’t plan to stay married? Poppy asked herself wearily, unsettled by the nagging insecurities tugging at her. Why should she care what Serena thought? Or what Serena truly wanted from Gaetano? She reckoned that Serena was already planning to be Gaetano’s second, rather more permanent wife. So what?
It wasn’t as though she had any feelings for Gaetano beyond tolerance, Poppy reminded herself. Lust was physical, not cerebral.
CHAPTER SEVEN (#u64add7af-088c-5c29-8c3d-b5c50158759f)
‘STOP... STOP THE CAR!’ Poppy yelled as the Range Rover wound down the twisting Tuscan country road.
Startled, Gaetano jumped on the brake. He frowned in astonishment as Poppy leapt out of the car at speed and assumed that she felt sick. But to his surprise and that of the security men climbing out of the car behind, Poppy ran back down the road and crouched down.
Bloodstains and dust had smeared her white cropped jeans by the time she stood up again cradling something hairy and still in her arms as tenderly as if it were a baby. ‘It’s a dog...it must’ve been hit by a passing car.’
‘Give it to my security. They’ll deal with this,’ Gaetano advised.
‘No, we will,’ Poppy told him. ‘Where’s the closest veterinary surgery?’
The dog, a terrier mix with a pepper and salt coat and a greying snout, licked weakly at her fingers and whined in pain. Fifteen minutes later they were in the waiting room at the local surgery while Gaetano spoke with the vet in Italian.
‘The situation is this...’ Gaetano informed Poppy. ‘The animal is not microchipped, has no collar and has not been reported missing. Arno can operate and I can obviously afford to cover the cost of the treatment but it may be more practical simply to put the animal to sleep.’
‘Practical?’ Poppy erupted.
‘Rather than put the dog through the trauma of surgery and a prolonged recuperation when the local pound is already full, as is the animal rescue sanctuary. If there is no prospect of the dog going to another home—’
‘I’ll keep him,’ Poppy cut in curtly.
Gaetano groaned. ‘Don’t be a bleeding heart for the sake of it.’
‘I’m not. I want Muffin.’
His gorgeous dark eyes widened in surprise, black lashes sky-high. ‘Muffin?’
‘Ragamuffin... Muffin,’ she explained curtly.
‘But I can buy you a beautiful pedigreed puppy if you want one,’ Gaetano murmured with unconcealed incredulity. ‘Muffin is no oil painting and he’s old.’
‘So? He needs me much more than a beautiful puppy ever would,’ Poppy pointed out defiantly. ‘Think of him as a wedding gift.’
Having made arrangements for Muffin’s care, they drove off again.
‘You’ve become so cold-hearted,’ Poppy whispered ruefully, studying his lean dark classic profile. ‘What happened to you?’
‘I grew up. Don’t be a drama queen,’ Gaetano urged. ‘When you care too much you get hurt. I learned that from a young age.’
‘But you’re shutting yourself off from so many good things in life,’ she argued.
‘Am I? Rodolfo enjoyed a long and happy marriage but he was so wretched after my grandmother passed that he too wanted to die.’
‘That was grief. Think of all the happy years he enjoyed with his wife,’ Poppy urged. ‘Everything has a downside, Gaetano. Love brings its own reward.’
Gaetano voiced a single rude word of disagreement in Italian. ‘It didn’t reward my mother when the husband she once adored ran round snorting cocaine with hookers. It didn’t reward me as her son when her super-rich second husband persuaded her to forget that she had left a child behind in England. But you’ll be glad to know that my mother’s second husband loved her,’ Gaetano continued with raw derision. ‘As she explained when she tried to foolishly mend fences with me a few years ago, Connor loved her so much that he was jealous of her first marriage and the child born from it.’
Poppy had paled. ‘That’s a twisted kind of love.’
‘And there’s a lot of that twisted stuff out there,’ Gaetano completed in a chilling tone of finality. ‘That’s why I never wanted anything to do with that kind of emotion.’
Poppy knew when to keep quiet. Of course, his outlook was coloured by his background, she reflected ruefully. Her parents had been happily married but his had not been. And his mother’s decision to turn her back on her son to please her second husband had done even more damage. Poppy had been surprised that Gaetano’s mother had not been invited to the wedding but Rodolfo had simply shrugged, saying only that his former daughter-in-law rarely returned to England.
Gaetano turned off the winding road onto a lane that threaded through silvery olive groves. Woods lay beyond the groves, occasionally parting to show views of rolling green hills and vineyards and an ancient walled hilltop village. Gaetano indicated another track to the left. ‘That leads down to the guest house where Rodolfo spends his summers.’
‘We’ll have to be careful to stay in role with your grandfather staying so close,’ Poppy remarked.
‘La Fattoria, the main house, is over a mile away. He won’t see us unless we visit. He is very keen not to intrude in any way on what he regards as our honeymoon,’ Gaetano said drily.
‘So this property has belonged to your family for a long time,’ she assumed.
‘Rodolfo bought it before I was born, fondly picturing it as the perfect spot for wholesome family holidays with at least half a dozen children running round.’ Gaetano sounded regretful on the older man’s behalf rather than scornful. ‘Sadly I was an only child and my parents only ever came here with parties of friends. The house was signed over to me about five years ago and I had it fully renovated.’
A magnificent building composed of creamy stone appeared round the next corner. It was larger than Poppy had expected but she was learning to think big or bigger when it came to Leonetti properties, for, while the family might only consist of Rodolfo and his one grandson, the older man did not seem to think in terms of small or convenient. Glorious urns of flowers adorned the terrace and a rotund little woman in an apron, closely followed by a tall lanky man, appeared at the front door.
‘Dolores and Sean look after La Fattoria.’ Gaetano introduced the friendly middle-aged Irish couple and their cases were swept away.
Poppy accepted a glass of wine and sat down on the rear terrace to enjoy the stupendous view and catch her breath in the sweltering heat. She was feeling incredibly tired and had tactfully declined Dolores’s invitation to do an immediate tour of the house. Worse still, she was getting a headache and she had an annoying tickle in her sore throat that had made her cough several times and was giving her voice a rough edge. It was just her luck, she thought ruefully. She was on her honeymoon in Tuscany in the most gorgeous setting, with an even more gorgeous man, and she was developing a galloping bad cold.
* * *
The master bedroom was a huge airy space with a tiled floor and a bed as big as a football pitch. The bathroom was fitted out like a glossy magazine spread and she revelled in the wet room with the complex jet system. Everything bore Gaetano’s contemporary stamp and the extreme shower facilities were not a surprise. She had been feeling very warm and the cold water gushing over her before she managed to work out how to operate the complicated controls cooled her off wonderfully. Clad in a light cotton sundress, she wandered back downstairs.
Black hair curling and still damp from the shower, Gaetano joined her on the terrace to slot another glass of wine into her hand. ‘From our own award-winning winery,’ he told her wryly. ‘Rodolfo takes a personal interest in the vineyard.’
Poppy surveyed him from below her lashes. He was so beautiful, she found it a challenge to look anywhere else. His spectacular black-lashed eyes were reflective as he leant gracefully up against a stone pillar support to survey the panoramic landscape, his lithe, lean, powerful body indolently relaxed. A faint shadow of black stubble roughened his strong jaw line, accentuating the wide sensual curve of his mouth. A tiny nerve snaked tight somewhere in her pelvis as she thought of how long it had been since he kissed her and whether a kiss could possibly be as unbelievably good as she remembered it being. Likely not, she told herself, for she had always been a dreamer. How else could she have imagined even as a teenager that Gaetano Leonetti would ever be seriously interested in her?
And yet, here she was, a little voice whispered seductively, Gaetano’s wedding ring on her finger, and mortifyingly that awareness went to her head like the strongest alcohol. But their marriage still wasn’t real; it was still a fantasy, the same little voice added. She had been a fake fiancée and a fake bride and now she was a fake wife. In fact just about the only thing that wouldn’t be fake between them was their wedding night.
The very blood in her veins seemed to be coursing slowly, heavily. She finished her wine and set down the glass, insanely aware of the tightening prominence of her nipples. She lifted the tiny handwritten menu displayed on the table, glancing with a sinking heart through the several courses that were to be served.
‘You know, I’m not remotely hungry and I don’t think I could eat anything,’ Poppy confided truthfully. ‘I hope that’s not going to offend Dolores...’
Gaetano glanced at her, eyes flaming golden as a lion’s in the sunset lighting up the sky in an awesome display of crimson and peach. Mouth suddenly dry, she stopped breathing, frowning as he strode back into the house and disappeared from view. A few minutes later she heard a noisy little car start up somewhere and drive away. Gaetano reappeared to close a hand over hers and tug her gently back indoors.
‘Do we have to eat in some stuffy dining room?’ She sighed.
‘No, we don’t have to do anything we don’t want to do,’ Gaetano told her, bending down to lift her up into his arms. ‘I’ve sent Sean and Dolores home. We’re on our own until tomorrow and I am much hungrier for you than for food.’
‘You can’t possibly carry me up those stairs!’ Poppy exclaimed.
‘Right at this moment I could carry you up ten flights of stairs, bellezza mia,’ Gaetano admitted, darting his mouth across her collarbone so that her head fell back to expose her slender white throat and her bright hair cascaded over his arm. ‘Congratulations on being the only woman smart enough to make me wait...’
‘Wait for what? Oh...’ Poppy registered with a wealth of meaning in her tone while distinctly revelling in being carried as though she were a little dainty thing, which, in her own opinion, she was not.
Gaetano settled her down on the bed. Helpfully she kicked off her shoes and wished she had taken a painkiller for her sore throat and head. But she couldn’t possibly take the gloss off the evening by admitting that she was feeling under par, could she? And she would have to admit it to get medication because she had packed nothing of that nature, indeed had only brought her contraceptive pills with her. She wasn’t about to make a fuss about a stupid cold, was she?
He ran down the zip on her dress but only after kissing a path across her bare shoulders and lingering at the nape of her neck where her skin proved to be incredibly sensitive and she quivered, her insides turning to liquid heat beneath his attention.
‘I have died and gone to heaven...’ Gaetano intoned thickly as the dress dropped unnoticed to the carpet, exposing his bride in her ice-blue satin corset top and matching knickers.
‘This is your wedding present,’ Poppy announced, stretching back against the smooth white bedding with a confidence that she had never known she could possess.
Of course it would be different once he started removing stuff and nudity got involved, she conceded ruefully. For now, however, having guessed that Gaetano would be the type of male who found sexy lingerie that enhanced a woman’s figure appealing, Poppy felt like a million dollars. Why? Simply because somehow Gaetano always contrived to look at her as if she had the most amazing female body ever and that had done wonders for her self-image.
‘No, you are my wedding present,’ Gaetano told her with conviction. ‘I’ve been counting down the hours until we were together.’
Her luminous green eyes widened in surprise and she bit back the tactless retort that anyone would consider that a romantic comment. After all, Gaetano was fully focused on sex and neither romance nor commitment would play any part in their marriage. And wasn’t that all she was focused on as well? As Gaetano came down on the bed beside her, his shirt hanging loose and unbuttoned to display a sleek, bronzed, muscular six-pack, Poppy was entranced by the view. He was stunning and, for now, he was hers. Why look beyond that? Why try to complicate things?
Loosening the corset one hook at a time, Gaetano ran a long finger down over the delicate spine he had exposed and then put his mouth there, tracing the line below her smooth ivory skin. ‘You are so beautiful, gioia mia.’
Poppy hid a blissed-out smile behind her tumbling hair and closed her eyes as he eased off the light corset and lifted his hands to cup her breasts. Her back arched, her straining nipples pushing against his fingers until he tugged on the tender buds and an audible gasp escaped her.
Gaetano lifted her and turned her round to face him. ‘I want to be your first,’ he breathed in a roughened undertone. ‘It will be my privilege.’
‘Careful, Gaetano...you’re sounding nice.’ Now outrageously aware of her naked breasts, Poppy crossed her arms to hide them.
‘I may be many things, but nice isn’t one of them,’ Gaetano growled, pulling her down on the bed beside him and covering her pouting mouth hungrily with his own. Unbridled pleasure snaked through her as his tongue merged with hers. An electrifying push of hunger gripped her as his hands shifted to toy with her breasts. He pushed her back against the pillows and lowered his mouth to her pouting nipples.
‘Palest pink like pearls,’ Gaetano mused, stroking a tender tip with appreciation as he gazed down at her.’ I wondered what colour they would be...’
Her green eyes widened. ‘Seriously?’ she prompted.
‘And they’re perfect like the rest of you,’ he groaned, lowering his head to lick a distended crest. ‘You were so worth waiting for at the church.’
Poppy wasn’t quite as pleased as she would have assumed she would be by having that much appreciation directed at her physical attributes. Gaetano was interfering with her fantasy, that fantasy that she had not even acknowledged was playing at the back of her mind, the fantasy in which Gaetano loved her and appreciated her for all sorts of other reasons that went beyond lust.
‘And so were you,’ Poppy told Gaetano, deciding to turn the tables as she sat up to dislodge him and pushed him back against the pillows. He studied her with questioning dark golden eyes semi-veiled by black curling lashes. She spread her fingers across his hard pectoral muscles, stroking down over his sleek ribcage to his flat abdomen.
‘Don’t stop now,’ he husked.
Her fingers were clumsy on his belt buckle and the button on the waistband of his trousers, her knuckles nudging against the little furrow of dark hair that disappeared below his clothing. She reached for the zip. Her lack of expertise was obvious to Gaetano and the oddest sensation of tenderness infiltrated him as he noted the tense self-consciousness etched in her flushed face.
‘Why do I get the feeling this is a first for you?’
‘Everyone is a learner at some stage...’ she framed jerkily.
Gaetano yanked down his zip for himself and then tossed her back flat on the bed again while he divested himself of his trousers and his boxers. ‘If you touched me now, it would all be over far too fast,’ he told her thickly. ‘That’s why I’m going to do most of the touching and you will lie back and let me do the work.’
‘If you think of it as work, I don’t think you should bother.’
‘Nothing would stop me now. I can hardly wait to be inside you.’ Gaetano leant over her, his urgent erection pushing against her hip. ‘Having you in my bed has been my fantasy for weeks.’
‘Fantasy never lives up to reality,’ Poppy said nervously. ‘I don’t want to be a fantasy.’
‘Sorry, it’s my fantasy,’ Gaetano traded, stroking a wondering hand down over the slender curve of her hip to the hot, damp secret at the heart of her.
Her hips jerked and her eyes shut as he traced between her thighs. Her breath snarled in her throat. She was so sensitised that she shuddered when he circled her clitoris with his fingertip. Her whole body was climbing of its own volition into a tight, tense spiral of growing need. Even the brush of a finger against her tight entrance was almost too much to bear. Her hips pushed against the mattress, her heart thumping like thunder inside her chest as he shimmied down the bed, fingertips delicately caressing her inner thighs as he pushed her legs back, opening her.
‘No, you can’t do that!’ she gasped in consternation.
‘Stai zitto...’ he told her softly. ‘You don’t get to tell me what to do in bed.’
The flick of his tongue across torturously tender nerve endings deprived her of voice and then of thought. Her head shifted back and forth on the pillows, the thrum of hunger building up through her body to a siren’s scream of need. She gasped, she cried his name, she moaned, she lost control so completely and utterly that when the explosive release of orgasm claimed her it took her by storm. And the world stopped turning for long minutes, her body still quaking with wondrous aftershocks while Gaetano looked down at her with satisfaction.
As Gaetano tilted her back she felt the smooth steel push of him against her still-throbbing core. The tight knot low in her pelvis made its presence felt again, the hollow ache of hunger stirring afresh. He slid against her, easing into her by degrees, straining her delicate sheath.
‘You’re so tight,’ he groaned, pulling back again and then angling his hips for another, more forceful entrance.
The sharp stinging pain made Poppy flinch for a millisecond and then her body was pushing on past that fleeting discomfort to linger on the satisfying stretch and fullness of his invasion. A little moan broke low in her throat and she moved her hips to luxuriate in the throbbing hardness of his bold masculinity.
Gaetano swore in Italian. ‘You feel like heaven,’ he growled in her ear. ‘Am I hurting you now?’
‘Oh, no,’ she told him truthfully.
And then he moved again, withdrawing and spearing deep enough to wring a cry of startled enjoyment from her. From that moment on her eagerness climbed in tune with Gaetano’s every measured thrust. Her heart raced, her legs clamping round his lean hips as she lifted to him, matching his driving rhythm while the electrifying excitement continued to build. And when she reached that peak for the second time she plunged over it in a fevered delirium of intense quivering release and lay adrift in pleasure.
‘That was amazing,’ Gaetano muttered thickly, rolling over onto his back while curving an arm round her trembling body. ‘You were amazing, bella mia.’
Poppy felt totally exhausted and she was content to lie there in the circle of his arms and marvel at the sublime sense of peace she was experiencing. Belatedly, she acknowledged that her throat and head had now become seriously sore. She hoped that Gaetano wouldn’t catch her cold and felt guilty for not warning him.
