Never Say No to a Caffarelli

by MELANIE MILBURNE

  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.

  She had read up on him in some gossip magazines Chloe had given her. He had a reputation for being ruthless in business. ‘Single-minded, stealthy and steely in terms of determination’, one reporter had said.

  Poppy suspected he was equally ruthless in his sensual conquests. His latest mistress was a bikini model with a figure to die for. Poppy couldn’t imagine a slice of cake or a chocolate-chip cookie ever passing through those filler-enhanced lips.

  She carried the coffee out to him. ‘Will there be anything else?’

  ‘What time do you close?’

  ‘Five or thereabouts,’ she said. ‘I try to be flexible in case I get late-comers. No one likes being rushed over their cup of tea.’ She gave his cup a pointed look before adding, ‘Or coffee.’

  His coal-black gaze glinted again. ‘I have some business I’d like to discuss with you.’

  Poppy stiffened. ‘I’m not selling my house.’

  ‘It’s nothing to do with the dower house.’

  She looked at him guardedly. ‘So...what is it about?’

  ‘I’m spending a couple of weeks at the manor to get a feel for the place before I start drawing up plans for the development,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to employ a housekeeper at this stage. Are you interested in providing dinner each day? I’ll pay you handsomely, of course.’

  Poppy chewed at her lower lip for a moment. She could do with the money, but cooking him dinner each night? What else would he expect from her—her body dished up as a dessert? ‘What’s wrong with eating at the village pub? They do a pretty good bar snack. There was no way she was going to recommend he try Oliver’s restaurant.

  He gave her a droll look. ‘I don’t eat bar snacks.’

  She gave her eyes a little roll. ‘Of course you don’t.’

  ‘Blame my mother. She was French. You know what the French are like with their food.’

  Mr Compton shuffled over on his walking frame.
‘Do it, Poppy. It’ll be a nice little earner for you to tide you over this rough patch.’

  Poppy wished she hadn’t let slip to Mr Compton a couple of weeks ago how tight things were. She didn’t want Raffaele Caffarelli gaining any sort of advantage over her. He was ruthless and calculating. How far would he go to get what he wanted? ‘Can I think about it and get back to you?’ she said.

  Rafe handed her a business card. ‘Call me tonight.’

  She put the card in her apron pocket and turned to speak to her only other customer. ‘I’ll just get that slice of cake for you to take home, Mr Compton.’

  * * *

  Rafe held out his hand to the elderly gentleman once Poppy had disappeared into the kitchen. ‘Rafe Caffarelli,’ he said.

  ‘Howard Compton.’ The old man shook his hand. ‘So, you’re the new owner of Dalrymple Manor.’

  ‘Yes. I’ve had my eye on it for a while. It’s a great piece of real estate.’

  ‘It is at that,’ Mr Compton said. ‘What do you plan to do with it?’

  ‘I’m turning it into a luxury hotel and spa.’

  ‘Don’t go telling Poppy that.’ Mr Compton gave him a twinkling smile. ‘She wanted a family to buy the place. It’s a long time since one lived there, mind you.’

  ‘Were you acquainted with Lord Dalrymple?’

  ‘His wife and mine were best friends since childhood,’ Mr Compton said. ‘It was a terrible day when Clara died. Henry became reclusive after that. If it weren’t for Poppy’s grandmother Beatrice he would have curled up and died. We thought it was a nice gesture of his to leave the dower house to her and Poppy. A lot of the locals thought he would leave the whole estate to them, but there would’ve been too much of an outcry from the extended family if he’d done that. As it was probate took over a year to come through. So messy when there isn’t a direct heir.’

  Rafe thought about his own situation. He had no direct heirs other than his brothers. Who would inherit his vast fortune? He hadn’t really thought about it until now... Why was he working so hard if he had no one to leave it to?