by Lynne Graham
Convinced that Poppy would be down in the basement swimming pool supervising the Brewett children, Santino strolled into the nursery on the top floor. The grand Edwardian cot was unoccupied but the lurid plastic and mesh contraption set beside it contained his quarry. Breathing in deep, Santino advanced as quietly as he could to steal a glance over the padded rim. The first thing he saw was a downy fluff of black curls and then a pair of soft blue unblinking eyes focused on him. His first startled thought was that, for a baby, Florenza was remarkably pretty.
But it was hard to say which of them was the most surprised. Santino, who had paid only the most fleeting attention to friends’ babies, fully believed that infants only operated on two modes: screeching or sleeping. He had expected Florenza to be asleep. Aghast, he watched Florenza’s big eyes flash like an intruder-tracking device, her tiny nose screwing up as her little rosebud mouth began to open.
Santino backed off fast. But even though he was bracing himself, the threatened screech never came. Instead, Florenza turned her little head to peer at him through the mesh. When he dared to inch forward again, Florenza’s tiny face tensed in warning. It dawned on him that lifting the baby to gauge her weight was not a viable option. She was a really sharp, on-the-ball baby, ready to shriek like a fire alarm at the first sign of a stranger getting too close, and he didn’t want to frighten her.
Wrapped in a bath towel and barefoot, Poppy glanced into the nursery just to check on Florenza before she went to get dressed and could not credit what she was seeing. Her lips parted on a demand to know what Santino thought he was doing, but the manner in which her tiny daughter was holding him at bay was actually very funny. However, she only found it funny for about the space of ten seconds. For as she studied Santino’s bold, masculine profile and switched her strained gaze to Florenza’s matching dark eyes a wealth of powerful emotion overwhelmed Poppy without warning. Father and daughter didn’t even know each other and never would in the normal way. Curiosity might have brought Santino to the nursery, but that did not mean he had suffered a sudden sea change in conscience.
As an odd choky little gasp sounded behind him, Santino swung round and caught only the merest glimpse of Poppy’s convulsed face as she spun away and raced into the bedroom across the corridor, slamming the door in her wake.
Sobs catching in her throat, she sank down at the foot of the bed and buried her head in her arms. She hated him, she really hated him! She was thinking of every bad experience she had had in the months since that night they had shared, not least having been the only woman in the maternity ward without a single visitor. In addition, her parents’ initially shocked and censorious reaction to the revelation of a grandchild born out of wedlock had increased Poppy’s distress. Although relations had since been smoothed over and gifts had been sent, Poppy remained painfully aware that once again she had disappointed her family.
When the door opened and Santino strode in, Poppy was astonished for she had not expected him to risk forcing a confrontation in his own home. But there he stood, six feet three inches of lean, powerful masculinity, apparently so impervious to remorse that he could face her with his arrogant head high, his stubborn jaw at an angle and without any shade of discomfiture. For a timeless few seconds, she drank her fill of looking at him. He was still absolutely gorgeous, she noted resentfully, and she was ashamed to feel the quickened beat of her own heart, the licking tension of excitement and the taunting curl of heat slivering through her. In despair at her own weakness, she veiled her gaze.
‘I only have one question…’ Santino breathed in the taut silence. ‘Is Florenza mine?’
‘Are you out of your mind?’ Poppy gasped.
What was he trying to do? Portray her as some loose woman, who might not know the paternity of her own child? How much lower could a guy sink than to insinuate that?
Taut as a high-voltage wire, Santino was endeavouring to make sense of the incomprehensible while resisting what had become a predictable instinct when Poppy was upset: a need to haul her into his arms that was so strong only fierce will power kept him at the other side of the room. He was also working very hard at not allowing his attention to roam one inch below her collar bone, where an expanse of smooth, creamy cleavage took over before vanishing beneath the tightly wrapped towel.
‘You know very well that Florenza’s yours,’ Poppy splintered back at him, her bright tousled head coming up, her blue eyes angry. ‘So don’t you dare ask me a question like that!’
Knocked back by that accusing confirmation that Florenza was his child, momentarily blind to even the allurement of Poppy’s exquisite shape in a towel, Santino could not immediately come up with a response. He was a father. He had a daughter. His mother was a grandparent. He was an unmarried father with a baby sleeping in a plastic playpen. His baby’s mother hated him so much she hadn’t even been able to persuade herself to accept his support, financially or in any other way…
Poppy collided with his stunning dark-as-midnight gaze and tensed at the sight of the pain and regret that he couldn’t hide. ‘You don’t even know what to say to me, do you?’
‘No…’ Santino acknowledged hoarsely, lean hands coiling into fists and uncoiling only slowly again.
‘I’ve turned up like a bad penny in the wrong place.’ Poppy said what she assumed he was thinking. ‘Is Jenna downstairs?’
‘Jenna?’ Santino echoed with a frown. ‘Jenna who?’
Poppy flew upright and threw the first thing that came to her hand. A shoe thumped Santino in the chest. The second shoe caught him quite a painful clip on the ear. Poppy blazed back at him in a passion that shook him even more, ‘Jenna…who? Jenna Delsen, your fiancée, whom you described as just an old friend when it suited you! You lying louse, Santino Aragone!’
Santino cast aside the second shoe, brilliant eyes narrowed in astonishment. ‘I’m not engaged to Jenna. She is an old friend and I was a guest at her wedding last summer.’
In wordless incredulity, Poppy stared back at him, but a hollow, sick sensation was already spreading through her trembling body. He had been a guest at Jenna’s wedding? Such a statement had a serious ring of truth.
Lean, strong face taut, Santino moved expressive hands in a gesture of bewilderment. ‘Where on earth did you get the idea that I had got engaged to Jenna?’
Poppy snatched in a stark, quivering breath. ‘It was in a newspaper…a picture of you and Jenna. It said you were engaged…er…but I never looked at it that closely.’
Santino stilled then, black brows drawing together. ‘An old friend did phone me to congratulate me on my supposed engagement last year,’ he recalled with an obvious effort, his frown deepening. ‘The newspaper he mentioned had used an old picture of Jenna and I together and he’d misread the couple of lines below about her engagement party. Her fiancé, David, was named but he hadn’t picked up on it.’
Silence fell like a smothering blanket of snow.
Poppy was appalled at the explanation that Santino had just proffered. Tilly had only glanced at the item because she had recognised Santino and Tilly only ever skimmed through newspapers. When her great niece had failed to display any interest in the seeming fact that her former employer had got engaged, Tilly would, in all probability, not have bothered to look back at it again. And Poppy had been far too cut up, far too much of a coward, to pick up that newspaper and read exactly what it had said for herself.
‘Tell me,’ Santino asked very drily, ‘exactly when did you see that newspaper and decide that I was an outright liar?’
Her breath snarled up in her throat. It had been too much to hope that he would not immediately put together what she had believed him capable of doing. Squirming with guilty unease and embarrassment and a whole host of other, much more confused emotions, Poppy admitted shakily, ‘Before you came to Wales…’
A harsh laugh that was no laugh at all was dredged from Santino, bitter comprehension stamped in his brooding features as he turned sizzling dark golden eyes
back on her in proud and angry challenge. ‘Per meraviglia…you had some opinion of me! You decided I’d been cheating on another woman with you. No wonder you were so surprised to see me in Wales, but you didn’t have the decency to face me with your convictions, did you?’
Poppy gulped. ‘I—’
‘I didn’t have a clue what I was walking into that day,’ Santino framed in a low-pitched raw undertone, treating her to another searing appraisal that shamed her even more. ‘But all the time that I was trying to make sense of your bewildering behaviour, you were thinking I was a two-timing liar with no principles and no conscience!’
‘Santino…I’m sorry!’ Poppy gasped.
His lean powerful face stayed hard and unimpressed. ‘You tell our daughter you’re sorry. Don’t waste your breath on me!’
‘No…you tell her you’re sorry,’ Poppy dared hoarsely. ‘You’re the one who decided you didn’t want anything to do with her.’
‘I didn’t even know she existed!’ Santino’s temper finally broke free of all restraint. ‘How the blazes could I have had anything to do with a child I wasn’t aware had even been born?’
‘But I wrote to you telling you I was pregnant,’ Poppy protested.
‘I didn’t get a letter and why would you write anyway? Why trust an important and private communication of that nature to the vagaries of the post? Why not just phone?’ Santino demanded, immediately dubious of her claim that there had ever been a letter.
Poppy closed her eyes and swallowed hard in an effort to pull herself together. It was obvious that her letter must have gone astray. Only then did she recall once reading that thousands of letters went missing in the mail every year. But why that one desperately important letter? Why her letter? She could have wept.
‘Look, I have thirty-odd people waiting dinner for me downstairs,’ Santino admitted curtly. ‘I don’t have time to handle this right now.’
‘There was a letter,’ Poppy repeated unsteadily.
Before he shut the door, Santino dealt her a derisive look. ‘So what if there was?’ he derided, turning the tables on her afresh. ‘What kind of a woman lets her child’s whole future rest on one miserable letter?’
CHAPTER EIGHT
STRIVING to look as though she had not passed a sleepless night waiting for the phone by her bed to ring or even the sound of a masculine footstep, Poppy knocked on her employer’s bedroom door and entered. ‘Tris said you wanted to see me.’
Still lying in bed, clad in an elaborate satin bed jacket, Daphne treated her to a rather glum appraisal. ‘Yes. It’s a shame about that uniform, though. I bet you it won’t fit the next nanny.’
Poppy stilled. ‘I’m sorry…er…what next nanny?’
With a sigh, Daphne settled rueful eyes on Poppy. ‘Santino had a little chat with me last night. Didn’t he mention it?’
Her colour rising, Poppy stiffened. ‘No.’
‘You just can’t work for us any more, luv. Once Santino told me that little Flo is his, I saw where he was coming from all right,’ Daphne continued with a speaking grimace. ‘Naturally he doesn’t want you running about fetching and carrying for my kids!’
‘Doesn’t he, indeed?’ Her face burning fierily at Santino’s most unexpected lack of discretion, Poppy was scarcely able to credit her own hearing.
‘It wouldn’t suit us either.’ Daphne gave her an apologetic look. ‘The point is, Harold and Santino do business together. You’re the mother of Santino’s kid and you working for us, well, it just wouldn’t look or feel right now.’
It was obvious that the older woman had already made up her mind on that score.
‘You don’t even want me to work my notice?’
‘No. Santino’s arranged for an agency nanny for what’s left of the weekend. He’s a decent bloke, Poppy…’ Daphne told her bluntly. ‘I don’t see why you should be angry with him for wanting to do what’s right by you and take care of you and that little baby.’
A minute later, Poppy stalked down the corridor and then down flight after flight of stairs until she was literally giddy with speed and fury. She arrived in a breathless whirl in the main hall. Santino appeared in a doorway. He ran his lethally eloquent dark eyes from the crown of the frilly hat perched at a lopsided angle in her thick, rebellious hair to the starched apron that topped the shadow-striped dress beneath.
‘Good morning, Mary Poppins,’ he murmured lazily. ‘Remind me to buy you more black stockings, but you can ditch the rest of the outfit.’
‘Yes, I can, can’t I?’ Poppy hissed. ‘Especially when you’ve just had me thrown out of my job!’
Striding forward, Santino closed a hand over hers and pressed her into the room he had emerged from. ‘We don’t need an audience for this dialogue, cara.’
‘I’m surprised you care! You had no trouble last night baring my deepest secrets to Daphne Brewett!’ Poppy condemned.
‘Why should Florenza be a secret? I’m proud to be her father and I have no intention of concealing our relationship,’ Santino stated with an amount of conviction that shook her. ‘And please don’t tell me that you’re breaking your heart at the prospect of taking off that ludicrous uniform!’
Poppy refused to back down. ‘It was a good job, well paid and with considerate employers—’
‘Yet the rumour is that the Brewetts still can’t keep domestic staff. Do you know why?’ Santino enquired sardonically. ‘Daphne. She’s wonderfully kind and friendly most of the time. But she can’t control her temper and she becomes much more abusive than the average employee is willing to tolerate these days. Haven’t you crossed her yet? It doesn’t take much to annoy her.’
Poppy paled, reluctant to recall the older woman’s worryingly sharp reproof the previous afternoon when she had been five minutes late getting the children downstairs with all their luggage.
‘But then you’ve only been working for them for a few weeks and she’ll still be wary, but I do assure you that if you had stayed much longer, you would have felt the rough edge of Daphne’s tongue. She’s famous for it.’
‘Well, I still don’t think that that gave you the right to interfere,’ Poppy retorted curtly. ‘I can look after myself.’
‘But unfortunately, you’re not the only person involved here. I want what’s best for all three of us.’ Santino surveyed her with level dark golden eyes, willing her to listen to him. ‘I don’t see the point in a further exchange of recriminations. Life’s too short. I also want to share in Florenza’s life. For that reason, I’m willing to ask you to marry me…’
Shock held Poppy still, but the way he had framed that statement also lacerated her pride. He was ‘willing’ to ask her to marry him? Big deal! Her first marriage proposal and he shot it at her when she was seething with angry turmoil at the manner in which he had attempted to take control of her life. Now it seemed that he had taken away her security so that he could offer her another kind of security. That of being a wife. His wife. Her lips trembled and she sealed them.
‘Possibly I messed up the delivery of that,’ Santino conceded as the tense silence stretched to breaking-point. ‘I do want to marry you.’
Poppy spun away to gaze out the window at the rolling parkland and mature trees that gave the priory such a beautiful setting. Of course, he didn’t want to marry her! In Daphne’s parlance, Santino was offering to do ‘the right thing’ by her. He had got her pregnant and he saw marriage as the most responsible means of making amends. He was really lucky that she wasn’t the sort of female who would snatch at his offer just because he was rich, successful and gorgeous. Or even because she still loved him, she conceded painfully.
Poppy flipped round to meet Santino’s intense dark scrutiny, her face tight with strain. ‘Our relationship has only been an ongoing catastrophe,’ she framed unevenly.
His jawline clenched. ‘That’s not how I would describe it—’
‘When you called on me at Tilly’s, you said pretty much the same thing,’ Poppy reminded him. �
��I ended up on that sofa because you had had too much to drink and you regretted it. That’s no basis for a marriage and, anyway, I don’t want to be married to some guy who thinks it’s his duty to put a ring on my finger!’
‘Duty doesn’t come into this.’ Santino groaned in sudden exasperation. ‘We made love because I couldn’t keep my distance from you, because I couldn’t help myself, cara—’
‘Yes, but—’
‘Just looking at you burns me up. Always did…still does,’ Santino intoned, striding forward to close his lean hands round hers. ‘That’s not a catastrophe, that’s fierce attraction. If you hadn’t worked for me, we would have got together a lot sooner.’
‘I can’t believe that…’ But even so, it was an assurance that Poppy longed to believe.
Santino reached up and whisked the frilly hat from her hair and tossed it aside.
‘What are you doing?’ she whispered.
The sudden slashing smile that she had feared she might never see again flashed out, lightening his lean, dark features and yanking at every fibre of her resistance. He undid the apron, removed it with careful hands and put it aside, too. Then he unbuttoned the high collar of her dress.
‘You want me to prove how much you excite me?’ Santino enquired with husky mesmeric intensity, molten golden eyes scanning her with anticipation. ‘Ready and willing, cara mia.’
A little quiver of sensual response rippled through Poppy’s taut frame. ‘Don’t…’
‘Don’t what?’ Santino asked, flicking back the collar to press his lips to the base of her slender throat, sending such a shock wave of instantaneous response leaping through her that she let her head tip back heavily on her neck, her untouched mouth tingling, literally aching for the hungry heat of his. ‘Don’t do this…?’
He discovered a pulse point just below her ear and lingered there. She trembled, heard herself moan and she grabbed his jacket for support, feeling herself drowning in the melting pleasure she had worked so hard to forget. Then, he framed the feverish flush on her cheekbones with spread fingers and kissed her just once, hard and fast, demanding and urgent, leaving her wanting so much more.