by Lynne Graham
‘Now do you believe I really want you?’ Santino breathed raggedly.
Poppy stumbled back from him, lips still throbbing and body still thrumming from that little demonstration against which she had discovered she was without defence. He could turn her into a shameless hussy with incredible ease, but he didn’t love her. ‘It wouldn’t work…us, I mean.’
‘Why not?’
‘Don’t you know how to take no for an answer?’ Poppy muttered shakily from the door.
‘I took it the last time. It gained me a daughter of three months old whom I have still to meet.’ As Santino made that raw retaliation Poppy’s discomfited gaze slewed from his and she left the room and was relieved when he didn’t follow her, for he had given her a lot to think about.
Getting changed into jeans and a sweater, Poppy put Florenza in her buggy and went out for a walk. She was starting to see that all she had ever done with Santino was think the worst of his motivations and run away as fast as her legs could carry her. Twelve months ago, she had still had a lot of growing up left to do. So many misunderstandings might have been avoided had she not performed a vanishing act after the staff party. She had reacted like an embarrassed little girl, afraid to face reality after the fantasy of the night. Scared of getting hurt, she had ended up just as hurt anyway. She had assumed that everything that had happened between them had somehow been her fault and had denied them both the chance to explore their feelings.
Poppy sat down on a fallen log below the trees. In the same way she had just accepted that Santino was engaged to Jenna Delsen and had hidden behind her pride rather than confront him. But what she could forgive herself for least was the conviction that Santino was a liar and a cheat when he had never been anything but honest and straight with her.
How much could she still blame Santino for effectively getting her the sack? She understood all too well his angry impatience and his need to take control when she herself seemed to have made such a hash of things. He had made it clear that if she conceived his child, he would stand by her. What good had it been for her to talk about a letter that he had never received? Had he got the chance, he would have been a part of Florenza’s life from the start. And that was why he was asking her to marry him. Her wretched pride had made her too quick to refuse that option. After all, she loved Santino, could not imagine ever loving anyone else…
Fifty feet away, Santino came to a halt to study Poppy on her log and Florenza snuggled up in her buggy. Poppy did not look happy. The marriage proposal had not been a winner. But then he had not promoted his own cause by depriving her of her employment, had he? However, an ever-recurring image of Poppy sailing away in a Brewett limo the following day never to return had driven him to a desperate act. He had known exactly what he’d been doing, he acknowledged grimly. He had cut the ground from beneath her feet in a manoeuvre calculated to make her more vulnerable to his arguments.
Glancing up and seeing him, Poppy froze. Dressed in tan chinos and a beige padded jacket that accentuated his black hair and olive skin, Santino looked stunning. Her mouth ran dry. Should she admit that she’d been a bit too hasty in turning him down?
‘Won’t your guests miss you?’ she asked as he dropped down into an athletic crouch to look at Florenza.
‘Country house guests entertain themselves and most of them are still in bed. As long as I show up for dinner, nobody’s offended,’ Santino told her, resting appreciative eyes on his baby daughter. ‘She’s something special, isn’t she?’
In a sudden decision, Poppy reached into the buggy and lifted Florenza free of the covers. Santino vaulted upright, looking ever so slightly unnerved. ‘I’ve never held a baby before. It might upset her.’
‘She’s a very easy-going baby. Just support her head so that she feels secure.’
Santino cradled Florenza in careful arms. He looked down into his daughter’s big, trusting blue eyes and then he smiled, a proud, tender, almost shy smile that made Poppy’s eyes glisten. ‘She’s not crying. Do you think she sort of knows who I am?’
‘Maybe…’ Her throat was thick.
‘And maybe not, but she can learn.’ Santino studied Poppy with sudden, unexpected seriousness. ‘Let’s hope that Florenza never does to me what I did to my own mother. I’m in your debt for what you said the night of the party about me having taken my father’s side when my parents divorced.’
Poppy blinked. ‘How in my debt?’
‘I went over to Italy to see Mama and found out what a pious little jerk I’d been,’ Santino admitted with a rueful grimace. ‘I blamed her for the divorce and she didn’t want to ruin my relationship with my father by telling me that throughout their marriage he’d had a whole string of casual affairs. I just wish he’d been man enough to admit that to me, instead of going for the sympathy vote to ensure that I chose to live with him when they broke up.’
Knowing how close he had been to his father, Maximo, Poppy muttered, ‘I’m sorry…’
‘No. Don’t be.’ Santino smiled. ‘Thanks to what you said, my mother and I are getting to know each other again.’
Poppy was delighted at that news. ‘That’s brilliant!’
‘I would never be unfaithful to you,’ Santino informed her in steady continuation, and then his wide sensual mouth curved in self-mocking acknowledgement. ‘I’m even working on my narrow-minded response to pink graphs…’
Poppy froze at that teasing conclusion. ‘That was you…that emailed me the day of the party?’
‘Who did you think it was?’ Santino glanced at her in surprise before hunkering down to settle their sleeping daughter back into her buggy with gentle hands.
It meant so much to Poppy to know that that teasing exchange had been with him. Her heart just overflowed, and when Santino sprang back up again he was a little taken aback but in no mood to complain when Poppy flung her arms round him and hugged him. ‘I think I might just want to marry you, after all,’ she confided. ‘Is the offer still open?’
‘Very much,’ Santino breathed not quite levelly, unable to drag his gaze from her happy, smiling face and absolutely terrified that she might change her mind. ‘How do you feel about getting married next week in Italy?’
Her lashes fluttered up on shaken blue eyes. ‘That…soon?’
‘I’m really not a fan of long engagements,’ Santino swore with honest fervour.
‘Neither am I,’ Poppy agreed with equal conviction, her heart singing, for there was something very reassuring about a guy who just couldn’t wait to get her to the altar.
CHAPTER NINE
WALKING back towards the priory, Santino said with smooth satisfaction, ‘I’ll feel a lot more comfortable when you sit down to dinner with my guests this evening.’
At that prospect, Poppy’s eyes widened in dismay. ‘But I can’t do that. I came here as the Brewetts’ nanny and what are people going to think if I suddenly—?’
‘That you’re my future wife with more right than most to grace the dining table.’ Impervious, it seemed, to the finer points of the situation, Santino exuded galling masculine amusement.
‘Well, it can’t be done. I didn’t bring any dressy clothes. I’ve got nothing but jeans!’ Poppy exclaimed.
‘If that’s the only problem…we’ll go out and get you something to wear right now, cara mia.’
Nothing pleased Santino so much as solving problems with decisive activity. The village a few miles away rejoiced in a very up-market boutique. It took him only twenty minutes to run Poppy there, stride in, select a short, strappy, soft blue dress off the rail, which struck him as absolutely Poppy, and herd her into the changing room, paying not the slightest attention to her breathless and shaken protests.
Inside the cubicle, Poppy stared at her reflection dreamily in the mirror and wondered how Santino had managed to pick the right size and a shade of blue that looked marvellous with her hair. Then she looked at the price tag and almost had a heart attack.
‘Poppy…?’ Santino prompted f
rom the shop floor.
Poppy emerged. Santino had Florenza draped over one shoulder and looked for all the world like a male who had been dandling babies from childhood. Impervious to the sales woman oozing appreciation over him, he studied Poppy with shimmering dark golden eyes that made her cheeks fire with colour and her heart pound like a manic road drill.
‘We’ll take the dress,’ Santino pronounced without hesitation. ‘What about shoes?’
Before Poppy could part her lips Santino was requesting her opinion on the display, and within minutes she was trying a pair on. When she reappeared in her jeans, two women were clustered round Santino admiring Florenza and his deft touch with her. By the sound of the dialogue she could hear, he was showing off like mad. Both shoes and dress were removed from her grasp and paid for with Santino’s credit card without her having any opportunity to speak to him in private.
‘Do you have any idea how much that little lot cost?’ Poppy whispered in total shock as they settled back into the limo.
Santino gave her an enquiring glance. ‘No.’
Poppy told him.
Santino looked surprised. ‘A real steal…’
‘It’s a fortune!’ Poppy gasped.
‘Allow me to let you into a secret,’ Santino teased in the best of good humour. ‘I’m not a poor man.’
Back at the priory, it was a further shock to discover that her possessions and Florenza’s had been moved from the nursery wing to a magnificent guest suite on the first floor. ‘Are you sure I’m supposed to be here?’ she asked the butler, Jenkins.
‘Of course,’ he wheezed.
Poppy urged him to sit down. He looked shifty and muttered, ‘You won’t mention this to Mr Santino, will you?’
‘Well, I…’ Poppy felt the old man really ought not to be working in such a condition.
And then Jenkins explained. He lived alone and he had been in retirement for five years, but he’d missed the priory and his old profession terribly. At his own request, Santino had allowed the old man to come back to the priory and relive what he termed the good old days on occasional weekends and he very much enjoyed that break. Touched by that explanation and by Santino’s understanding, Poppy said no more.
Dinner was not at all the ordeal she had imagined it might be. But then she had always enjoyed meeting new people, and from the instant she entered the drawing room and Santino’s dark and appreciative gaze fell on her she also felt confident that she looked her best. Late evening, Santino came upstairs with her and went into the dressing room off her bedroom to look in on his sleeping baby daughter. His lean, dark face softened, his sensual mouth curving. ‘It’s extraordinary how much I feel for her already,’ he confided.
A discomfiting little pang assailed Poppy and she rammed it down fast. How could she possibly be envious of the hold Florenza already had on her father’s heart? After all, he was marrying her for their daughter’s sake. Keen not to dwell on that painful truth, she said awkwardly, ‘You know, I really can’t see how we can possibly get married this coming week. It takes ages to organise even the smallest wedding.’
‘The arrangements are already well in hand, cara,’ Santino delivered with a slashing grin that made her mouth run dry. ‘Early Monday morning we fly over to Venice where a selection of wedding dresses will await your choice. There is nothing that you need do or worry about. I just want you to relax and enjoy yourself.’
‘It sounds like total bliss,’ Poppy admitted, thinking of the weighty responsibilities and decisions that had burdened her throughout the previous year when she had had nobody to rely on but herself.
‘I have a question I meant to ask you earlier,’ Santino declared then. ‘Exactly when last year did you write to me to tell me that you had conceived our child?’
Her brow furrowing in puzzlement, Poppy told him. His eyes flared gold and then veiled.
‘What?’ she prodded, unable to see the relevance of that information so long after the event.
Santino shrugged, lean, strong face uninformative. ‘It’s not important.’
Ultra-sensitive on that issue, Poppy was taut, and in receipt of that casual dismissal she flushed. She was convinced that he had to believe that there had never been a letter in the first place and that she was merely trying to ease her conscience and fend off his annoyance by lying and pretending that there had been. And how could she prove otherwise?
‘I’m tired,’ she muttered, turning away.
Lost in his own suspicions of what might have happened to that letter and determined to check out that angle as soon as he could, Santino frowned. He could not imagine what he had said to provoke the distinct chill in the air, but caution prevented him probing deeper. Once they were married, caution could take a hike, but he was determined not to risk a misstep in advance of the wedding. Saying goodnight, much as if he had only been seeing an elderly grandparent up to bed, he departed.
Disconcerted, Poppy surveyed the space where he had been and her dismayed and hurt eyes stung with hot tears. The very passionate male, who had sworn she was an irresistible temptation earlier in the day, had not even kissed her. Had that plea just been a judicious piece of flattery aimed at persuading her to marry him so that he could gain total access to Florenza? Or was he just annoyed at the idea that she might be fibbing about that wretched letter? And if that was the problem, how was she ever to convince him that she had written to him?
Made restive by her anxious thoughts, Poppy got little sleep and, after feeding Florenza first thing the following morning, fell back into bed and slept late. Finally awakening again, she went downstairs to find Santino surrounded by his guests. A convivial lunch followed and then the visitors began to make their departures. Only then appreciating that she still had to pack up her possessions at the Brewetts’ home, Poppy slipped away to speak to her former employer and decided that it would be simplest for her to return home with them and see to the matter for herself.
‘I’m catching a lift with the Brewetts to go and collect my stuff,’ Poppy informed Santino at the last minute.
‘I can drive you over there,’ Santino offered in surprise.
‘No, I thought it would be easier if I left Florenza here with you,’ Poppy confided with a challenging sparkle in her gaze, although she rather suspected the female domestic staff would soon help him out with the task.
Santino was merely delighted that he would retain a hostage as it were to Poppy returning again and proud that she felt that he could be trusted. In fact, his keen mind returning to a concern that had been nagging at him all morning since he had called his secretary at her home and spoken to her, he knew exactly what he intended to do during Poppy’s absence.
Three hours later, in a triumphal mode, Santino hauled his office drinks cabinet out from the wall and swept up the still-sealed and dusty envelope that lay on the carpet. He resisted the temptation to tear Poppy’s lost letter open then and there. He would surprise her with it. They would open it together. Maybe that way, he would feel less bitter at the high cost of Craig Belston’s mean and petty act of malice.
‘If it hadn’t been for you being there, I’d have hammered that little jerk,’ Santino informed Florenza, where she sat strapped in her baby carrier watching him with bright, uncritical eyes. ‘Then maybe not,’ he acknowledged for himself in reflective continuance. ‘He was so scared he was… I suppose I have to watch my language around you. But then you don’t know any Italian curse words, do you?’
Florenza was asleep by the time he got her slotted back into the limo. Santino was really pleased with himself. He was naturally good father material, he was convinced of it. She hadn’t cried once, not even when it had taken four attempts to change her and his chauffeur, a long-time parent, had mercifully intervened with a little man-to-man advice on the most effective method. They had tea at the Ritz where she was very much admired. She glugged down her bottle of milk like a trooper and concluded with a very small ladylike burp that he didn’t think anyone but him hear
d.
‘We’re a real team,’ Santino told Florenza on the drive home, and around then it occurred to him to wonder how Poppy planned to get herself back to the priory. With a muttered curse, he rang the Brewetts only to discover that she had already gone.
Right up until Poppy had left the Brewetts’ with her cases in a taxi, she had expected Santino to call and say that he would come and pick her up. Instead she’d had to catch the train. But when she saw him waiting on the station platform to greet her at the other end of her journey, a bright, forgiving smile formed on her lips.
‘I ought to grovel, amore,’ Santino groaned in apology, looking so gorgeous that there was little that she would not have forgiven. ‘It didn’t even cross my mind that you don’t have your own transport.’
‘I expect you were too taken up with Florenza.’
‘We did have quite a busy afternoon,’ Santino admitted with masculine understatement. ‘And when we get back to the priory, I have a surprise for you.’
The very last thing, Poppy expected was to have her own letter set before her like a prize. She was gobsmacked. ‘Where on earth did that come from?’
‘I phoned my secretary this morning. She actually remembered your letter arriving the day before she went off on holiday last year because she noticed your name on the back of the envelope. That week, I was in Italy mending fences with my mother.’ Santino’s strong jawline hardened. ‘And Belston was working his last day at Aragone Systems—’
‘Craig?’ Poppy was still transfixed by the sight of that dusty, unopened letter, and her fingers were twitching to snatch it up and bury it deep somewhere Santino could never find it. At one level, she was at a total loss as to what Craig Belston could have to do with the miraculous recovery of a letter that had gone missing almost a year earlier, but on another level she was already recalling with shrinking, squeamish regret the horribly emotional outpourings of her own heart within that letter. It was wonderful how what could seem right and appropriate in the heat of the moment could then threaten utter humiliation eleven months on…