Leonetti's Housekeeper Bride

by Lynne Graham

  When she returned to the flat her mother had locked herself in her bedroom. Poppy suppressed a sigh and dug out her work kit and rubber gloves to cross the courtyard and enter the hall. She turned out different rooms of the big house every week, dusting and vacuuming and scrubbing. It was deeply ironic that she had been so set against working for the Leonettis when she was a teenager but had ended up doing it anyway even if it was unofficial. Evenings she served drinks in the local pub. There wasn’t time in her life for agonising when there was always a job needing to be done.

  Disturbingly however she couldn’t get Gaetano Leonetti out of her mind. He was the one and only boy she had ever hated but also the only one she had ever loved. What did that say about her? Self-evidently, that at the age of sixteen she had been really stupid to imagine for one moment that she could ever have any kind of a personal relationship with the posh, privileged scion of the Leonetti family. The wounding demeaning words that Gaetano had shot at her then were still burned into her bones like the scars of an old breakage.

  ‘I don’t mess around with staff,’ he had said, emphasising the fact that they were not equals and that he would always inhabit a different stratum of society.

  ‘Stop coming on to me, Poppy. You’re acting like a slapper.’ Oh, how she had cringed at that reading of her behaviour when in truth she had merely been too young and inexperienced to know how to be subtle about spelling out the fact that should he be interested, she was available.

  ‘You’re a short, curvy redhead. You could never be my type.’

  It was seven years since that humiliating exchange had taken place and apart from one final demeaning encounter she had not seen Gaetano since, having always gone out of her way to avoid him whenever he was expected at the hall. So, he didn’t know that she had slimmed down and shot up inches in height, wouldn’t much care either, she reckoned with wry amusement. After all, Gaetano went for very beautiful and sophisticated ladies in designer clothes. Although the one who had thrown that shockingly wild party had not been much of a lady in the original sense of the word.

  Having put in her hours at the hall in the ongoing challenge to ensure that it was always well prepared for a visit that could come at very short notice, Poppy went back home to get changed for her bar work. Jasmine was out for the count on her bed, an empty bottle of cheap wine lying beside her. Studying her slumped figure, Poppy suppressed a sigh, recalling the busy, lively and caring woman her mother had once been. Alcohol had stolen all that from her. Jasmine needed specialised help and rehabilitation but there wasn’t even counselling available locally and Poppy had no hope of ever acquiring sufficient cash to pay for private treatment for the older woman.

  Poppy put on the Goth clothes that she had first donned like a mask to hide behind when she was a bullied teenager. She had been picked on in school for being a little overweight and red-haired. Heck, she had even been bullied for being ‘posh’ although her family lived in the hall’s servant accommodation. Since then, although she no longer dyed her hair or painted her nails black, she had come to enjoy a touch of individuality in her wardrobe and had maintained the basic style. She had lost a lot of weight since she started working two jobs and she was convinced that her Goth-style clothes did a good job of disguising her skinniness. For work she had teamed a dark red net flirty skirt with a fitted black jersey rock print top. The outfit hugged her small full breasts, enhanced her waist and accentuated the length of her legs.

  At the end of her shift in the busy bar that was paired with a popular restaurant, Poppy pulled on her coat and waited outside for Damien to show up on his motorbike.

  ‘Gaetano Leonetti arrived in a helicopter this evening,’ her brother delivered curtly. ‘He demanded to see Mum but she was out of it and I had to pretend she was sick. He handed over these envelopes for her and I opened them once he’d gone. Mum’s being sacked and we have a month’s notice to move out of the flat.’

  An anguished moan of dismay at those twin blows parted Poppy’s lips.

  ‘I guess he did see that newspaper.’ Damien grimaced. ‘He certainly hasn’t wasted any time booting us out.’

  ‘Can we blame him for that?’ Poppy asked even though her heart was sinking to the soles of her shoes. Where would they go? How would they live? They had no rainy-day account for emergencies. Her mother drank her salary and Damien was on benefits.

  But Poppy was a fighter, always had been, always would be. She took after her father more than her mother. She was good at picking herself up when things went wrong. Her mother, however, had never fully recovered from the stillbirth she had suffered the year before Poppy’s father had died. Those two terrible calamities coming so close together had knocked her mother’s feet from under her and she had never really got up again. Poppy swallowed hard as she climbed onto the bike and gripped her brother’s waist. She could still remember her mother’s absolute joy at that unexpected late pregnancy, which in the end had become a source of so much grief and loss.

  As the bike rolled past the hall Poppy saw the light showing through the front window of the library and tensed. Gaetano was staying over for the night?

  ‘Yeah, he’s still here,’ Damien confirmed as he put his bike away. ‘So what?’

  ‘I’m going to speak to him—’

  ‘What’s the point?’ her brother asked in a tone of defeat. ‘Why should he care?’

  But Gaetano did have a heart, Poppy thought in desperation. At least he had had a heart at the age of thirteen when his father had run over his dog and killed it. She had seen the tears in Gaetano’s eyes and she had been crying too. Dino had been as much her dog as his because Dino had hung around with her when Gaetano was away at school, not that he had probably ever realised that. Dino had never been replaced and when she had asked why not in the innocent way of a child, Gaetano had simply said flatly, ‘Dogs die.’

  And she had been too young to really understand that outlook, that raising of the barriers against the threat of being hurt again. She had seen no tears in his remarkable eyes at his father’s funeral but he had been almost as devastated as his grandfather when his grandmother passed away. But then the older couple had been more his parents than his real parents had. Within a year of becoming a widow, his mother had remarried and moved to Florida without her son.

  Poppy breathed in deep as she marched round the side of the big house with Damien chasing in her wake.

  ‘It’s almost midnight!’ he hissed. ‘You can’t go calling on him now!’

  ‘If I wait until tomorrow I’ll lose my nerve,’ she said truthfully.

  Damien hung back in the shadows, watching as she rang the doorbell and waited, her hands dug in the pockets of her faux-leather flying jacket. A voice sounded somewhere close by and she flinched in surprise, turning her head as a man in a suit talking into a mobile phone walked towards her in the moonlight.

  ‘I’m security, Miss Arnold,’ he said quietly. ‘I was telling Mr Leonetti who was at the door.’

  Poppy suppressed a rude word. She had forgotten the tight security with which the Leonetti family surrounded themselves. Of course, calling in on Gaetano late at night wouldn’t go unquestioned.

  ‘I want to see your boss,’ she declared.

  The security man was talking Italian into the phone and she couldn’t follow a word of what he was saying. When the man frowned, she knew he was about to deliver a negative and she moved off the step and snapped, ‘I have to see Gaetano! It’s really important.’

  Somewhere someone made a decision and a moment later there was the sound of heavy bolts being drawn back to open the massive front door. Another security man nodded acknowledgement and stood back for her entrance into the marble-floored hall with its perfect proportions and priceless paintings. A trickle of perspiration ran down between her taut shoulder blades and she straightened her spine in defiance of it although she was already shrinking at the challenge of what she would have to tell Gaetano. At this juncture, coming clean was her sole option.<
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  *

  Poppy Arnold? Gaetano’s brain had conjured up several time-faded images. Poppy as a little girl paddling at the lake edge in spite of his warnings; Poppy sobbing over Dino with all the drama of her class and no thought of restraint; Poppy looking at him as if he might imminently walk on water when she was about fifteen, a scrutiny that had become considerably less innocent and entertaining a year later. And finally, Poppy, a taunting sensual smile tilting her lips as she sidled out of the shrubbery closely followed by a young estate worker, both of them engaged in righting their rumpled, grass-stained clothing.

  Bearing in mind the number of years the Arnold family had worked for his own, he felt that it was only fair that he at least saw Poppy and listened to what she had to say in her mother’s defence. He hadn’t, however, thought about Poppy in years. Did she still live with her family? He was surprised, having always assumed Poppy would flee country life and the type of employment she had soundly trounced as being next door to indentured servitude in the modern world. Touching a respectful forelock had held no appeal whatsoever for outspoken, rebellious Poppy, he acknowledged wryly. How much had she changed? Was she working for him now somewhere on the pay roll? His ebony brows drew together in a frown at his ignorance as he lounged back against the edge of the library desk and awaited her appearance.

  The tap-tap of high heels sounded in the corridor and the door opened to reveal legs that could have rivalled a Vegas showgirl’s toned and perfect pins. Disconcerted by that startlingly unexpected and carnal thought, Gaetano ripped his attention from those incredibly long shapely legs and whipped it up to her face, only to receive another jolt. Time had transformed Poppy Arnold into a tall, dazzling redhead. He was staring but he couldn’t help it while his shrewd brain was engaged in ticking off familiarities and changes. The bright green eyes were unaltered but the rounded face had fined down to an exquisite heart shape to frame slanting cheekbones, a dainty little nose and a mouth lush and pink enough to star in any male fantasy. The pulse at Gaetano’s groin throbbed and he straightened, flicking his jacket closed to conceal his physical reaction while thinking that Poppy might well get the last laugh after all because the ugly duckling he had once rejected had become a swan.

  ‘Mr Leonetti,’ she said as politely as though they had never met before.

  ‘Gaetano, please,’ he countered wryly, seeing no reason to stand on ceremony with her. ‘We have known each other since childhood.’

  ‘I don’t think I ever knew you,’ Poppy said frankly, studying him with bemused concentration.

  She had expected to notice unappetising changes in Gaetano. After all, he was almost thirty years old now and lived a deskbound, self-indulgent and, by all accounts, decadent life. By this stage he should have been showing some physical fallout from that lifestyle. But there was no hint of portliness in his very tall, powerfully built frame and certainly no jowls to mar the perfection of his strong, stubbled jaw line. And his dense blue-black curly hair was as plentiful as ever.

  An electrifying silence enclosed them and Poppy stepped restively off one foot onto the other, her slender figure tense as a drawn bow string while she studied him. Taller and broader than he had been, he was even more gorgeous than he had been seven years earlier when she had fallen for him like a ton of bricks. Silly, silly girl that she had been, she conceded ruefully, but there was no denying that even then she had had good taste because Gaetano was stunning in the way so very few men were. A tiny flicker in her pelvis made her press her thighs together, warmth flushing over her skin. His dark eyes, set below black straight brows, were locked to her with an intensity that made her inwardly squirm. He had eyes with incredibly long thick lashes, she was recalling dizzily, so dark and noticeable in their volume that she had once suspected him of wearing guy liner like some of the boys she had known back then.

  ‘Do you still live here with your mother and brother?’ Gaetano enquired.

  ‘Yes,’ Poppy admitted, fighting to banish the fog that had briefly closed round her brain. ‘You’re probably wondering why I’ve come to see you at this hour. I’m a bartender at the Flying Horseman down the road and I’ve only just finished my shift.’

  Gaetano was pleasantly surprised that she had contrived to speak two entire sentences without spluttering the profanities which had laced her speech seven years earlier. Of course, right now she was probably watching her every word with him, he reasoned. A bartender? He supposed it explained the outfit, which looked as though it would be more at home in a nightclub.

  ‘I saw the newspaper article,’ she added. ‘Obviously you want to sack my mother for talking about the party and selling those photos. I’m not denying that you have good reason to do that.’

  ‘Where did the photos come from?’ Gaetano asked curiously. ‘Who took them?’

  Poppy winced. ‘One of the guests invited my brother to join the party when she saw him outside directing cars. He did what I imagine most young men would do when they see half-naked women—he took pictures on his phone. I’m not excusing him but he didn’t sell those photos… It was my mother who took his phone and did that—’

  ‘I assume I’ll see your mother in person tomorrow before I leave. But I’ll ask you now. My family has always treated your mother well. Why did she do it?’

  Poppy breathed in deep and lifted her chin, bracing herself for what she had to say. ‘My mother’s an alcoholic, Gaetano. They offered her money and that was all it took. All she was thinking about was probably how she would buy her next bottle of booze. I’m afraid she can’t see beyond that right now.’

  Taken aback, Gaetano frowned. He had not been prepared for that revelation. It did not make a difference to his attitude though. Disloyalty was not a trait he could overlook in an employee. ‘Your mother must be a functioning alcoholic, then,’ he assumed. ‘Because the house appears to be in good order.’

  ‘No, she’s not functioning.’ Poppy sighed, her soft mouth tightening. ‘I’ve been covering up for her for more than a year. I’ve been looking after this place.’

  His lean, darkly handsome features tightened. ‘In other words there has been a concentrated campaign to deceive me as to what was going on here,’ he condemned with a sudden harshness that dismayed her. ‘At any time you could have approached me and asked for my understanding and even my help—yet you chose not to do so. I have no tolerance for deception, Poppy. This meeting is at an end.’

  A hundred different thoughts flashing through her mind, Poppy stared at him, her heart beating very fast with nerves and consternation. ‘But—’

  ‘No extenuating circumstances allowed or invited,’ Gaetano cut in with derision. ‘I have heard all I need to hear from you and there is nothing more to say. Leave.’

  CHAPTER TWO

  POPPY TOOK A sudden step forward. ‘Don’t speak to me like that!’ she warned Gaetano angrily.

  ‘I can speak to you whatever way I like. I’m in my own home and it seems that you are one of my employees.’

  ‘No, I’m not!’ Poppy contradicted with unashamed satisfaction. ‘I donated my services free for my mother’s sake!’

  ‘Let’s not make it sound as if you dug ditches,’ Gaetano fired back impatiently. ‘As I’m so rarely here there can’t be that much work concerned in keeping the house presentable.’

  ‘I think you’d be surprised by how much work is involved in a place this size!’ Poppy snapped back firely.

  Anger made her green eyes shine blue-green like a peacock feather, Gaetano noted. ‘I’m really not interested,’ he said drily. ‘And if you donated your services free that was downright stupid, not praiseworthy.’

  Poppy almost stamped an enraged foot. ‘I’m not stupid. How dare you say that? I could hardly charge you for the work my mother was already being paid to do, could I?’

  Gaetano shrugged a broad shoulder, watching her tongue flick out to moisten her red-lipsticked mouth, imagining her doing other much dirtier things with it and then tensing with exquisit
e discomfort as arousal coursed feverishly through his lower body. She was sexy, smoulderingly so, he acknowledged grimly. ‘I’m sure you’re versatile enough to have found some way round that problem.’

  ‘But not dishonest enough to do so,’ Poppy proclaimed with pride. ‘Mum was being paid for the job and it was done, so on that score you have no grounds for complaint.’

  ‘I don’t?’ An ebony brow lifted in challenge. ‘An alcoholic has been left in charge of the household accounts?’

  ‘Oh, no, that’s not been happening,’ Poppy hastened to reassure him. ‘Mum no longer has access to the household cash. I made sure of that early on.’

  ‘Then how have the bills been paid?’

  Poppy compressed her lips as she registered that he truly did not have a clue how his own household had worked for years. ‘I paid them. I’ve been taking care of the accounts here since Dad died.’

  ‘But you’re not authorised!’ Gaetano slammed back at her distrustfully.

  ‘Neither was my father but he took care of them for a long time.’

  Gaetano’s frown grew even darker. ‘Your father had access as well? What the hell?’

  ‘Oh, for goodness’ sake, are you always this rigid?’ Poppy groaned in disbelief. ‘Mum never had a head for figures. Dad always did the accounts for her. Your grandmother knew. Whenever your grandmother had a query about the accounts she had to wait until Mum had asked Dad for the answer. It wasn’t a secret back then.’

  ‘And how am I supposed to trust you with substantial sums of money when your brother was recently in prison for theft?’ Gaetano demanded sharply. ‘My accountants will check the accounts and, believe me, if there are any discrepancies I will be bringing in the police.’