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‘Is he staying at the manor?’
‘I’m assuming so,’ Poppy said. ‘Where else would he stay? It’s not as if we have any five-star hotels in the village.’
Chloe gave her a wry look. ‘Not yet.’
Poppy set her mouth and snatched up her keys. ‘If Mr Caffarelli thinks he’s going to build one of his playboy mansions here, then it will be over my dead body.’
* * *
Rafe was in the formal sitting room inspecting some water damage near one of the windows when he saw Poppy Silverton come stomping up the long gravel driveway towards the manor. Her cloud of curly hair—now free of her cute little mobcap—was bouncing as she went, her hands were going like two metronome arms by her sides and in one hand she was carrying a white envelope.
He smiled.
So predictable.
He waited until she had knocked a couple of times before he opened the door. ‘How delightful,’ he drawled as he looked down at her flushed heart-shaped face and sparkling brown eyes. ‘My very first visitor. Aren’t I supposed to carry you over the threshold or something?’
She gave him a withering look. ‘This is your change.’ She shoved the envelope towards his chest.
Rafe ignored the envelope. ‘You Brits really have a problem with tipping, don’t you?’
Her pretty little mouth flattened. ‘I’m not accepting anything from you.’ She pushed the envelope towards him again. ‘Here. Take it.’
He folded his arms across his chest and gave her a taunting smile. ‘No.’
Her eyes pulsed and flashed with loathing. He wondered for a moment whether she was going to slap him. He found himself hoping she would, for it would mean he would have to stop her. The thought of putting his arms around her trim little body to restrain her was surprisingly and rather deliciously tempting.
She blew out a breath and, standing up on tiptoe, stashed the envelope into the breast pocket of his shirt. He felt the high voltage of her touch through the fine cotton layer of his shirt. She must have felt it too, for she tried to snatch her hand back as if his body had scorched her.
But she wasn’t quick enough for him.
Rafe captured her hand, wrapping his fingers around her wrist where he could feel her pulse leaping. Her lithe but luscious little body was so close he felt the jut of one of her hipbones against his thigh. Desire roared through his veins like the backdraft from a deadly fire. He was erect within seconds; aching and throbbing with a lust so powerful it took every ounce of self-control he possessed to stop from pushing her up against the nearest wall to see how far he could go.
She sent him an icy glare and tugged against his hold, hissing at him like a cornered wild cat. ‘Get your hands off me.’
Rafe kept her tethered to him with his fingers while he moved the pad of his thumb over the underside of her wrist in a stroking motion. ‘You touched me first.’
Her eyes narrowed even further and she tugged again. ‘Only because you wouldn’t take your stupid money off me.’
He released her hand and watched as she rubbed at it furiously, as if trying to remove the sensation of his touch. ‘It was a gift. That’s what a tip is—a gesture of appreciation for outstanding service.’
She stopped rubbing at her wrist to glare at him again. ‘You’re making fun of me.’
‘Why would I do that?’ He gave her a guileless half-smile. ‘It was a great cup of coffee.’
‘You won’t win this, you know.’ She drilled him with her glittering gaze. ‘I know you probably think I’m just an unworldly, unsophisticated country girl, but you have no idea how determined I can be.’
Rafe felt his skin prickle all over with delight at the challenge she was laying before him. It was like a shot of a powerful drug. It galvanised him. And as for unsophisticated and unworldly... Well, he would never admit it to his two younger brothers, but he was getting a little bored with the worldly women he associated with. Just lately he had started to feel a little restless. The casual affairs were satisfying on a physical level, but recently he’d walked away from each of them with an empty feeling that had lodged in a place deep inside him.
But, even more unsettling, a niggling little question had started keeping him awake until the early hours of the morning: is this all there is?
Maybe it was time to broaden his horizons. It would certainly be entertaining to bring Miss Poppy Silverton to heel. She was like a wild filly who hadn’t met the right trainer. What would it take to have her eating out of his hand? His body gave another shudder of delight.
He could hardly wait.
‘I think I should probably warn you at this point, Miss Silverton, that I’m no pushover. I play by the rules, but they’re my rules.’
Her chin came up at that. ‘I detest men like you. You think you’re above everyone else with your flash cars and luxury villas in every country and yet another vacuous model or starlet hanging off your arm, simpering over every word that comes out of your silver-spooned mouth. But I bet there are times when you lie awake at night wondering if anyone loves you just for who you are as a person or whether it’s just for your money.’
He curled his lip mockingly. ‘You really have a thing about well-heeled men, don’t you? Why is success such a big turn-off for you?’
She gave him a scoffing look. ‘Success? Don’t make me laugh. You inherited all your wealth. It’s not your success, it’s your family’s. You’re just riding on the wave of it, just like your party-boy, time-wasting brothers.’
Rafe thought of all the hard work he and his brothers had had to do to keep their family’s wealth secure. Some unwise business dealings his grandfather had made a few years ago had jeopardised everything. Rafe had marshalled his brothers and as a team they had rebuilt their late father’s empire. It had taken eighteen-hour days, working seven days a week for close to two and a half years to bring things back around, but they had done it. Thankfully, none of Vittorio’s foolhardiness had ever been leaked to the press, but hardly a day went by without Rafe remembering how terrifyingly close they had been to losing everything. He, perhaps a little more than Raoul and Remy, felt the ongoing burden of responsibility, to the extent that he had earned the reputation in the corporate world of a being a rather ruthless, single-minded workaholic.
‘You are very keen to express an opinion on matters of which you know nothing,’ he said. ‘Have you met either of my brothers?’
‘No, and I don’t want to. I’m sure they’re just as detestable and loathsome as you.’
‘Actually, they’re vastly nicer than me.’
‘Oh really?’ She raised her brows in a cynical arc.
Rafe leaned indolently against the sandstone pillar, his arms folded loosely across his chest, one of his legs crossed over the other at the ankle. ‘For instance, they would never leave a young lady standing out here on the steps without inviting her in for a drink.’
Her eyes narrowed in warning. ‘Well, if you’re thinking of asking me in, then don’t bother wasting your breath.’
‘I wasn’t.’
Her expression faltered for a nanosecond but then she quickly recovered her pertness. ‘I’m quite sure I’d be a novel change from the women you usually invite in for drinks.’
He swept his gaze over her lazily. ‘Indeed you would. I’ve never had a redhead before.’
Her cheeks coloured and her mouth tightened. ‘It’s not red. It’s auburn.’
‘It’s very beautiful.’
Her gaze flashed with venom. ‘If you think flattery is going to work with me, then think again. I’m not going to sell my house to you no matter how many insincere compliments you conjure up.’
‘Why are you so attached to the place?’ Rafe asked. ‘You could buy a much bigger place in a better location with the money I offered you.’
She gave him a hard little look. ‘I don’t expect someone like you to understand; you’ve probably lived in luxury homes all your life. The dower house is the first place I’ve ever been able to call home. I know it’s not flash, and that it needs a bit of work here and there, but if I sold it would be like selling part of myself.’
‘No one is asking you to sell yourself.’
Her brows arched up again. ‘Are they not?’
Rafe held her gaze for several beats. ‘My plans for the manor will go ahead with or without your cooperation. I understand the sentiments you expressed, but they have no place in what is at the end of the day a business decision. You would be committing financial suicide to reject the kind of offer I’ve made.’
Her posture was stiff and defensive, her eyes slitted in hatred. ‘You know nothing of my financial affairs. You don’t know me.’
‘Then I will enjoy getting to know you.’ He gave her a smouldering look. ‘In every sense of the word.’
She swung away with her colour high and stomped back down the steps. Rafe watched her disappear into the distance with a smile on his face. One way or the other he was going to win this.
He would stake money on it.
* * *
Poppy was still fuming when she got back to her house. Her three little dogs—Chutney, Pickles and Relish—looked up at her with worried eyes as she stormed through the gate. ‘Sorry, guys,’ she said bending down to give them all a scratch behind the ears. ‘I’m just so cross I can hardly stand it. What an arrogant man! Who does he think he is? As if I’d fall for someone like him. As if I’d even think about sleeping with him.’
Well, maybe it was OK to think about it a teeny weeny bit. There was no harm in that, was there? It wasn’t as if she was going to act on it. She wasn’t that type of girl. Which kind of explained why her ex-boyfriend was now shacked up with another woman.
Poppy knew it was ridiculously old-fashioned of her to have wanted to wait a while before she consummated her relationship with Oliver. It wasn’t that she was a prude... Well, maybe a bit, given she’d been raised by her grandmother, who hadn’t had sex in decades.
The trouble was she was a soppy romantic at heart. She wanted her first time to be special. She wanted it to be special for the man who shared it with her. She’d thought Oliver Kentridge was going to be that special man who would open up the world of sensuality to her, but he had betrayed her even before they’d been dating a couple of months.
Poppy couldn’t say her heart had been broken, but it had definitely been heavily bruised. Men were such selfish creatures, or at least that was how it had seemed in her life so far. Her well-heeled but wild playboy father had deserted her mother as soon as she had told him she was pregnant. And then, to rub more salt in the wound, within weeks of Poppy’s birth he had married a wealthy socialite who stood to inherit a fortune to prop up his own. Her mother had been devastated by being cast aside so heartlessly and, in a moment of impulsivity, no doubt fuelled by her hurt, had turned up at his high-society wedding with her ‘child of scandal’, as Poppy had been called. The press attention had only made her mother’s suffering worse and horribly, excruciatingly public. Poppy had frighteningly clear memories from during her early years of running down back-alleys holding tightly to her mother’s hand, trying to avoid the paparazzi. During that time her mother had been too proud to go to her own mother for help and support for fear of hearing the dreaded ‘I told you so’.
Poppy still remembered that terrifying day when the grandmother she had never met came to collect her from the hospital where her mother had drawn her last breath after taking an overdose. Her gran had seemed a little formidable at first, but over time Poppy realised it was her way of coping with the grief of losing her only child, and her regret at not having stepped in sooner to help her daughter cope with the heartbreak and shame of being cast aside by a rich man who had only used her.
Her gran had done her best to give Poppy a happy childhood. Growing up on the Dalrymple Estate had been a mostly happy but rather lonely existence. Lord Dalrymple rarely entertained and there were no children living close by. But it had gradually become home to her, and she had loved spending time with her gran in the kitchen at the manor.
The decision to study hospitality had been born out of Poppy’s desire to own and run her own tearoom in the village one day, so she could be close to her gran and all that was familiar. When she moved to London to do her training she felt like she was the odd one out in her peer group. She didn’t have much of a taste for alcohol and she had no interest in casual flings or partying all night in nightclubs. She’d studied hard and managed to land a great job in a hip new restaurant in Soho, but it had all turned sour when her boss had made it clear he wanted her in his bedroom as well as his kitchen.
Her gran’s severe bout of bronchitis during the winter two years ago had given Poppy the perfect excuse to move back home and follow her dream. Setting up the tearoom had been a way of bringing in a modest income whilst being able to keep an eye on her gran, and not for a day had she regretted doing it.
Poppy blew out a breath as she made her way inside the house. Maybe she did have a bias against successful men, as Raffaele Caffarelli had suggested. But why shouldn’t she resent him for thinking he could buy whatever or whoever he took a fancy to? He might be incredibly good-looking, with bucket loads of charm, but she was not going to be his next conquest.
She would stake money on it. Well, she would if she had any, of course.
* * *
Rafe strode into his London office on Monday morning. ‘Did you get that information for me?’
Margaret handed him a folder. ‘There’s not much, but what I’ve got is in there. So, how was your weekend?’
‘Average.’ He started flicking through the papers as he walked through to his office. ‘Hold my calls, will you?’
‘What if Miss Silverton calls?’
Rafe thought about it for a beat. ‘Make her wait.’
Margaret’s brows lifted. ‘Will do.’
He closed his office door and took the folder over to his desk. There wasn’t much he didn’t already know. Poppy Silverton had grown up with her grandmother in the dower house on the Dalrymple Estate and had been educated locally before moving to London in her late teens. She had trained as a chef and had worked in a restaurant in Soho he’d been to a couple of times. She’d been running the tearoom in the village for the last couple of years. Her grandmother, Beatrice, had died a few months ago, exactly six months after Lord Dalrymple, and the house he had left to Beatrice had subsequently passed to Poppy.
Rafe leaned back in his chair. There was nothing about her private life, about who she was dating or had dated. He couldn’t help a rueful smile. If a similar search had been done on him or one of his brothers, reams and reams of stuff would have come spilling out.
He’d driven away from the manor late on Saturday night but he hadn’t stopped thinking about her. It wasn’t just her house that was playing on his mind. He’d never met a more intriguing woman. She was so spirited and defiant. She must realise she hadn’t a hope of winning against him, but she stood up to him all the same. That was enormously attractive. He was so used to women tripping over themselves to please him.
But Poppy’s comment about him not knowing who genuinely cared for him had resonated a little too well with him. Apart from his brothers, who really gave a toss about him? His grandfather certainly didn’t. His members of staff were respectful and mostly loyal, but then he paid them generously to be so.
He frowned at where his thoughts were heading. He wasn’t interested in love and commitment. Losing his parents had taught him to keep a very tight lid on his emotions. Loving someone hurt like hell if you lost them. He never lost anything or anyone now. He did the hiring and the firing in all of his relationships.
They lasted as long as he wanted and no longer.
Rafe leaned forward to press the intercom on his desk. ‘Margaret? Find out who owns the building Miss Silverton operates her tearoom out of. Make them an offer they can’t refuse. Get them to sign a confidentiality agreement.’
‘Right away.’
‘Oh, and one other thing... Cancel all of my appointments for the next couple of weeks. I’m heading out of town.’
‘A holiday?’
Rafe smiled to himself. ‘You could call it that.’
CHAPTER THREE
POPPY WAS WAITING on one of her regulars when Raffaele Caffarelli came in the following Monday. She tried to ignore the little skip of her pulse and focused her attention on Mr Compton who came in at the same time every day and had done so ever since his wife of sixty-six years had died. ‘There you are, Mr Compton,’ she said as she handed the elderly gentleman a generous slice of his favourite orange-and-coconut cake.
‘Thank you, my dear,’ Mr Compton said. ‘Where’s your offsider today?’
‘She’s visiting her mother,’ Poppy said, conscious of Raffaele’s black-as-night gaze on her. ‘Can I get you a fresh pot of tea? More cream for your cake? Another slice to take home for your supper?’
‘No, love, you’d better serve your other customer.’ Mr Compton gave her a wink. ‘Things are finally looking up, eh?’
Poppy gave him a forced smile as she mentally rolled her eyes. ‘I wish.’ She went to where Raffaele was standing. ‘A table for one?’
His dark eyes glinted. ‘Thank you.’
She led him to a table near the window. ‘A double-shot espresso, no sugar?’
His mouth twitched at the corners. ‘You have a good memory.’
Poppy tried not to look at his mouth. It was so distracting. So too were his hands. She could still feel the imprint of those long, tanned fingers around her wrist. She felt shivery every time she recalled them against her white skin. His touch had been unforgettable. Her body still hummed with the memory of it.
He was dressed casually in blue denim jeans and an open-necked white shirt with the sleeves rolled up past his strong, tanned wrists. He had twelve to eighteen hours of stubble on his jaw. He smelt divine—a hint of wood and citrus and healthy, potent, virile male. He oozed with sex appeal. She felt the invisible current of it pass over her skin. It made her heart pick up its pace as if he had reached out and touched her.
Poppy put her chin up to a pert level. ‘I don’t suppose I can tempt you with a slice of cake?’
His eyes smouldered as they held hers. ‘I’m very tempted.’
She pursed her lips and spoke in an undertone in case Mr Compton overheard, which was highly unlikely, given he was as deaf as the proverbial post, but still. ‘Cake, Mr Caffarelli. I’m offering you cake.’
‘Just the coffee.’ He waited a beat. ‘For now.’
Poppy swung away to the kitchen, furious with him, but even more furious with herself for being so affected by him. She’d been expecting him to come back. She had tried not to watch out for him but every morning she had looked towards the manor to see if his flashy sports car was parked out front. She had tried her best to ignore the little dip of disappointment in the pit of her belly when it had failed to appear. She knew he wasn’t going to give up on trying to acquire the dower house any time soon.
