by Lynne Graham
‘That’s not what I said.’
‘That’s exactly what you said!’ Poppy slammed a case down on the bed and wrenched it open. ‘Well, this particular nightmare of yours is taking herself off. There’s got to be better options than you waiting for me.’
Standing very still, Gaetano lost colour and watched her intently. ‘There probably is. But I want very badly for you to stay.’
‘No, you don’t, not really,’ Poppy reasoned thinly. ‘You think our baby would be the icing on the cake for Rodolfo but you don’t want to be married and you don’t want to be a father.’
‘I do want to be married to you.’ Gaetano flung back his shoulders and studied her with strained dark eyes. ‘And I know that I can learn how to be a good father. I meant that the situation of being unprepared for a child was a nightmare. I’m not good with surprises but I can roll fast with the punches that come my way. And believe me, watching you pack to leave me is a hell of a punch.’
The firm resolution in that response surprised her. She paused to roughly fold up a dress before thrusting it into the case, sending an unimpressed glance at his lean, darkly handsome face. She wasn’t listening to him, she told herself urgently. She had made her decision. It was better for her to leave him with her head held high than to consider giving him another chance…wasn’t it?
‘Is it? Are you really capable of changing your outlook to that extent? Accepting being married without feeling that you’re somehow doing me a favour and settling for second best?’ she queried with scorn. ‘Accepting our child as the gift that a child is?’
‘I know that I was difficult when I married you.’ Gaetano compressed his lips on that startling admission. ‘I’m not easy-going but I am adaptable and I do learn from my mistakes. Dio mio, bella mia…my attitude to you has changed most of all.’
‘How?’ Poppy prompted, needing him to face up to the major decision he was trying to make for both of them. She didn’t want Gaetano deciding that they should stay married and then changing his mind again because he felt trapped by the restrictions. She had to know and understand exactly what he was thinking and feeling and expecting. How else could she make a decision?
His wide sensual mouth twisted. ‘I don’t want to discuss that.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because sometimes silence is golden and honesty can be the wrong way to go,’ he framed grudgingly. ‘And knowing my luck, I’ll say the wrong thing again.’
‘But you should be able to tell me anything. We shouldn’t have secrets between us. How has your attitude to me changed?’ Poppy persisted, curiosity and obstinacy combining to push her on.
Gaetano glanced heavenward for a brief moment and then drew in a ragged breath. ‘I asked you to pretend to be engaged to me because I thought you would be a huge embarrassment as a fiancée.’
Shock gripped Poppy in a debilitating wave only to be swiftly followed by a huge rush of hurt. ‘In what way?’
‘I was the posh bloke who made unjustified assumptions about you,’ Gaetano admitted, his deep voice raw-edged with regret. ‘I assumed you’d still be using a lot of bad language. I expected you to be totally lost and unable to cope in my world. In fact I believed that your eccentric fashion sense and everything about you would horrify Rodolfo and put him off the idea of me getting married, so that when the engagement broke down he would be relieved rather than disappointed…’
Gaetano had finished speaking but his every word still struck through the fog of Poppy’s shell-shocked state like lightning on a dark stormy night. She felt physically sick.
Gaetano had watched the blood drain from below her skin and fierce tension now stamped his lean dark features. ‘So that’s the kind of guy I really am, the kind of guy you get to stay married to and the father of your future child. I know it’s not pretty but you have earned the right to know the truth about me. Most of the time I’m an absolute bastard,’ he stated bleakly. ‘I tried to use you in the most callous way possible and it didn’t once occur to me to wonder how that experience would ultimately affect you…or Rodolfo.’
Poppy wrapped her arms round her slim body as if she were trying to hold the dam of pain inside her back from breaking its banks. She couldn’t bear to look at him any longer. He had seen from the outset how unworthy she was to be even his fiancée and he had planned to use her worst traits and the handicap of her poor background as an excuse to dump her again without antagonising his grandfather. In short he had handpicked her as the fake fiancée most likely to mortify him.
Poppy cringed inside herself. His prior assumptions appalled her, for she had not appreciated how prejudiced he had still been about her. Shattered by his admission, she felt humiliated beyond bearing. He had seen her flaws right at the beginning and had pinned his hopes on her shaming him. How could he then adapt to the idea of staying married to her for years and years? Raising a child with her? Taking her out in public?
‘The moment I picked you to fail was the moment that I sank to my all-time personal low,’ Gaetano confessed in a roughened undertone. ‘I got it horribly wrong. You showed me how wrong my expectations were. You proved yourself to be so much more than I was prepared for you to be and I became ashamed of my original plan.’
‘But you didn’t need to tell me this once we went as far as getting married,’ she whispered brokenly, backing in the direction of the door, desperate to lick her wounds in private.
‘You’ve always been honest with me. I’m trying to give you the same respect.’
‘Only a couple of months ago you had no respect for me!’ Poppy condemned with embittered accuracy.
‘That changed fast,’ Gaetano fielded, moving a step closer, wanting to hold her so badly and resisting the urge with a frustration that coiled his big hands into fists. ‘I learned to respect you. I learned a lot of other stuff from you as well.’
Feeling as though he were twisting a knife in her heart, Poppy voiced a loud sound of disagreement and snapped, ‘You didn’t learn anything…you never do. You’re dumb as a rock about everything that really matters from giving Muffin a second chance at life to raising our child!’ she accused. ‘How could I ever trust you again?’
Poppy stalked out of the door and he fought his need to follow her. He didn’t want her racing down the stairs and falling in an effort to evade him. ‘Muffin trusts me,’ he murmured flatly to the empty room. Muffin? Muffin who couldn’t even tell him and Rodolfo apart? Admittedly, Muffin wasn’t the sharpest tool in the box.
Gaetano groaned out loud. Maybe he should have kept on pretending to be a better man than he was but Poppy would only have found him out in the end. Poppy had a way of cutting through the nonsense to find the heart of an issue and see what really mattered. Just as Gaetano had finally seen what really mattered. Unfortunately that single instant of inner vision and comprehension had arrived with him pretty late in the day. He wasn’t dumb as a rock about emotional stuff. He simply wasn’t very practised at it. It wasn’t something he’d ever bothered with until Poppy came along.
Poppy pelted out into the cool night. She needed air and space and silence to pull herself back together. The garden was softly lit, low-sited lights shining on exotic leaves and casting shadows in mysterious corners. Her face was wet with tears and she wiped her cheeks with angry hands. Damn him, damn him, damn him! What he had confessed had wounded her deeply. She loved Gaetano and he had always been her dream male. Handsome, brilliant, rich and glitzy, he had met every requirement for an adolescent fantasy. Now for the first time she was seeing herself through his eyes and it was so humiliating she wanted to sink into the earth and stay hidden there for ever.
He had only remembered the highly unsuitable bold girl with the potty mouth, and eccentric clothes, who could be depended on to embarrass him. And being Gaetano, who was never ever straightforward when he could be devious, manipulative and complicated instead, he had hoped to utilise her very obvious faults to frighten Rodolfo out of demanding that his grandson marry. And iron
ically, Rodolfo himself had set Poppy up for that fall by advising Gaetano to marry ‘an ordinary girl’. And just how many ordinary girls did a jet-setter like Gaetano know?
None. Until Poppy had stumbled in that night at Woodfield Hall, to demand his attention and his non-existent compassion.
An embarrassment to him? No conventional dress sense, a dysfunctional family, no idea how to behave in rich, exclusive circles. Well, nothing had changed and she would never reach the high bar of social acceptability. Poppy shuddered, sick to her stomach with a galling sense of defeat and failure. She had never cared about such things but evidently Gaetano did. Even worse, Gaetano was currently offering to stay married to his unsuitable bride because she was pregnant.
She sat down on one of the cold stone seats sited round the table and her face burned hot in spite of the cool evening air when she remembered what had happened on that table only the day before. Gaetano was like an addiction, toxic, dangerous. He had gone from infuriating her to charming her to making her fall very deeply in love with him. And yet she had still never guessed how he really saw her. The gardener’s daughter with the unfortunate family. It hurt—oh, my goodness, it hurt. But he had been right to tell her because she had needed to know the truth and accept it before she could stop weaving silly dreams about their future. So, how did she stay married to a male who had handpicked her to be an embarrassment?
The answer came swiftly. In such circumstances she could not stay married to Gaetano. Regardless of her pregnancy, she needed to leave him and go ahead with a divorce.
‘Poppy…’
Poppy stiffened. He must have walked across the grass because she would have heard his approach had he used the gravel paths. She breathed in deep, stiffening her facial muscles before she lifted her head.
‘Should I have kept it a secret?’ he asked her in a raw undertone.
He knew she was upset. His dark eyes were lingering on her, probably picking up on the dampness round her eyes even though she had quickly stopped crying. He noticed too much, knew too much about women. ‘No,’ she said heavily. ‘It was better to tell me. I don’t like you for it and it’ll be hard to live with what I now know but you can’t build a relationship on lies and pretences.’
Gaetano stilled in the shadow of the trees, his white shirt gleaming, his spectacular bone structure accentuated by the dim light. ‘Don’t leave me,’ he framed unevenly. ‘Even the idea of being without you scares me. I wouldn’t like my life without you in it.’
Poppy couldn’t imagine Gaetano being scared and she imagined his life would be a lot more normal and straightforward without her in it. Their child deserved better than to grow up with unhappily married and ill-matched parents. A divorce would be preferable to that. She would give Gaetano as much access as he wanted to their child but she didn’t have to live with him or hang round his neck like an albatross to be a good parent. They could both commit to their child while living separately.
‘I can’t stay married to you,’ she told him quietly. ‘What would be the point?’
‘I’m not good with emotions. I’m good at being angry, at being passionate, at being ambitious but I’m no good at the softer stuff. I lost that ability when I was a kid,’ Gaetano admitted grittily. ‘I loved my parents but they were incapable of loving me back and I saw that. I also saw that in comparison to them I felt too much. I learned to hide what I feel and eventually it became such a habit I didn’t have to police myself any more. Emotion hurts. Rejection hurts, so I made sure I was safe by not feeling anything.’
Involuntarily, Poppy was touched that he was talking about his parents in an effort to bridge the chasm that had opened up between them. He never ever talked about his childhood but she would never forget his determined non-reaction when his dog had died, his stark refusal to betray any emotion. ‘That makes sense,’ she conceded.
‘The only woman I ever loved after my mother left was my grandmother.’
‘I thought at some stage you and Serena…’
‘No. I walked away from her because I felt nothing and I knew there should be more.’
Poppy bowed her head, wondering why he was trying to stop her from walking away from him.
‘I’m not quite as dumb as a rock,’ Gaetano asserted heavily. ‘But I was all screwed up about you long before we even got to the wedding. Unfortunately marrying you only made me ten times more screwed up.’
‘Screwed up?’ Poppy queried, shifting uncomfortably on her hard stone seat.
‘I got really involved with the wedding.’
‘Yes, that was a surprise.’
‘I wanted it to be special for you. I became very possessive of you. I assumed it was because we hadn’t had sex.’
‘Obviously,’ Poppy chimed in because he seemed to expect it.
‘In fact I was really only thinking in terms of sex.’
Poppy sent him a rather sad smile. ‘I know that…it’s basically your only means of communication in a relationship.’
‘You’re the only woman I’ve ever had a relationship with.’
Poppy stared at him, green eyes luminous in the light. ‘How can you say that with your reputation?’
‘All those weeks after your illness when I didn’t touch you but we were together all the time…that was like my version of dating,’ Gaetano told her darkly. ‘The affairs I had with women before you went no further than dinner followed by sex or the theatre followed by sex or—’
‘OK… I’ve got the picture,’ she cut in hurriedly, her gaze clinging to the dark beauty of his bronzed features with growing fascination. ‘So…your version of dating?’
‘I wanted to get to know you—’
‘No, you were on a massive guilt trip because I fell ill. That’s why you didn’t sleep with me again and why you spent so much time entertaining me.’
‘I’m not a masochist. I spent so much time with you because I was enjoying myself,’ Gaetano contradicted. ‘And I didn’t touch you again because I didn’t want to be selfish. I thought you would be happier if I made no further demands.’
Poppy sent him a withering appraisal. ‘You got it wrong.’
‘Poppy…let’s face it,’ Gaetano muttered heavily. ‘I got everything wrong with you.’
Her tender heart reacted with a first shard of genuine sympathy. ‘No, the sex was ten out of ten and your version of dating was amazingly engaging. You made me happy, Gaetano. You definitely win points for that.’
‘I bought you something today and it wasn’t until I bought it and realised what it symbolised that I finally understood myself,’ he framed harshly, pulling a tiny box from his pocket.
Poppy studied the fancy logo of a world-famous jeweller with surprised eyes and opened the box. It was a ring, a continuous circlet of diamonds that flashed like fire in the artificial light. She blinked down at it in confusion.
‘It’s an eternity ring,’ Gaetano pointed out very quietly.
A laugh that wasn’t a laugh at all was wrenched from Poppy. ‘Kind of an odd choice when before you came home and I made my announcement you were set on eventually getting a divorce,’ she pointed out.
‘But it expresses how I feel.’ Gaetano cleared his throat in obvious discomfiture. ‘When you talk about leaving me, it tears me apart. Because somewhere along the line, somehow, I fell in love with you, Poppy. I know it’s love because I’ve never felt like this before and the idea of losing you terrifies me.’
‘Love…’ Poppy whispered shakily.
‘Never thought it could happen to me,’ Gaetano confided in a rush. ‘I didn’t want it to happen either. I didn’t want to get attached to anyone and then you came along and you were so perfect I couldn’t resist you.’
‘P-perfect?’ she stammered in a daze.
Gaetano dropped down on his knees in the dew-wet grass and reached for her hand. He tugged off the engagement ring and threaded on the eternity ring so that it rested beside her wedding ring. ‘You’re perfect for me. You get who I am, even wi
th my faults. The money doesn’t get in the way for you, doesn’t impress you. You keep me grounded. You make me unbelievably happy. You make me question my actions and really think about what I’m doing,’ he bit out. ‘With you, I’m something more, something better, and I need that. I need you in my life.’
Her lashes fluttered. She could hear him but she couldn’t quite believe him, there on his knees at her feet, his hand trembling slightly in hers because he was scared, he was scared she wouldn’t listen, wouldn’t accept that he really loved her. And that fear touched her down deep inside, wrapping round her crazy fears about Serena and the terrible insecurities that had sent her running out of the house and sealing them for ever. Suddenly none of that existed because Gaetano loved her, Gaetano needed her…
‘I love you so much. I couldn’t stand to lose you and my first thought when you told me you were pregnant was, “She’ll stay now,” and it was a massive relief to think that even though you didn’t love me you would stay so that we could bring up our child together.’
‘I do love you,’ Poppy murmured intently, leaning forward to kiss him.
‘You’re not just saying it because I said it first?’ Gaetano checked.
‘I really, really love you.’
‘Even though I don’t have a single loveable trait?’ he quoted back at her quick as a flash.
‘You grew on me like mould,’ Poppy told him deadpan.
Gaetano burst out laughing and sprang upright, pulling her up into the circle of his arms. ‘Like mould?’ he queried.
Poppy looked up into his beautiful eyes and her heart did a happy dance inside her. ‘I like cheese,’ she proclaimed defensively.
‘Do you like your ring?’
‘Very much,’ she told him instantly, smiling up at him with a true sense of joyful possessiveness. ‘But I like what it symbolises most of all. You didn’t want to let me go, you wanted to keep me.’
