In a Storm of Scandal

by Kim Lawrence

  What are you doing, Poppy? He’s a married man who broke your heart! And if that made her bad it made him a total sleaze.

  Poppy folded her arms across her chest. ‘I’m sure your wife will be pleased you’re alive.’

  Message received, she thought, watching his expression blank. He did not look guilty, he looked … She shivered. The eyes that met hers had a flat, almost dead look.

  Was his marriage in trouble …?

  Not my business.

  Admittedly once the possibility would have given her some feeling of shameful satisfaction. Happily she was no longer so bitter and twisted. She hadn’t got noble suddenly, but she had wised up enough to know that one criteria of having a life was letting go of the bad stuff that happened.

  Luca constituted bad stuff.

  Bad but beautiful, she thought, studying his profile, but she was totally over him. The fact she felt the need to constantly remind herself of this was in itself a cause of concern.

  ‘And you?’ Back now turned to her, he draped his jacket with what seemed like elaborate care over the back of a wooden rocking chair before taking the hem of his drenched cashmere sweater and peeling it over his head.

  ‘I am assuming you had a less eventful journey …?’ He lifted an arm, pressing his hand to the back of his head as he rotated his neck and flexed his shoulders, causing the muscles of his powerful shoulders and upper arms to bunch and ripple in a manner that Poppy found very distracting.

  Distracting might well be the understatement of the century!

  ‘I had …’ Poppy swallowed and struggled to focus on the question … What was the question?

  Gianluca’s torso was lean and tautly muscled; the drift of dark hair across his chest covered smooth bronze flesh that was tinged with blue and the surface studded with a rash of goose bumps. There was a livid-looking graze along his ribs and a discoloured area that looked like the beginning of a bruise.

  The evidence of what had to be painful injuries made her sensitive stomach muscles spasm … Uncomfortably aware that empathy wasn’t the only cause of the growing tension in her belly, Poppy closed her eyes for a moment to shut out all that disturbing rampant maleness, and cleared her throat.

  ‘Much less eventful,’ she explained to a point somewhere over Gianluca’s left shoulder and continued to studiedly ignore the fact that despite the cold she was suddenly very hot in places that she ought not to be hot. ‘I hired someone to ferry me out. Unfortunately he wouldn’t hang around to wait for me for any money. What are you doing?’ she added, her voice sharpening in alarm.

  ‘Taking off my pants. It used, as I recall, to be your ambition.’

  Poppy laughed, trying to match his flippancy. ‘I’m touched you remember. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that most men don’t put up a fight.’

  Before she could begin to question the flash of coruscating anger that lit up his dark eyes there was a deafening crack followed by a loud roar and a succession of bangs that made Poppy cover her ears with her hands and close her eyes.

  Utterly convinced that the roof was falling in, she thought, God, the men in suits at the council were right!

  Fatalistically prepared for what was to come, she held her breath and waited to feel the weight of the building come crashing down on her head. Instead she felt the pressure of two heavy hands on her hunched shoulders.

  ‘You can breathe now.’

  Poppy’s eyes blinked open. Luca had moved in to stand directly in front of her. He was inches away, very solid and reassuring. ‘What happened?’

  ‘Not totally sure,’ Luca admitted. ‘But it was dramatic.’ His dark head tipped in acknowledgement of the drama as he took hold of both her wrists and firmly removed her hands from her ears.

  She glanced up nervously at the heavily beamed ceiling. There were no gaping holes. It actually looked reassuringly sturdy. ‘I thought the roof was coming off,’ she disclosed huskily.

  ‘And you thought the best defence was to go into see-no-evil-hear-no-evil mode. Your survival instincts definitely need some work, cara!’

  The killer combination of his throaty sexy voice and the casual endearment caused a black hole to open up without warning where her stomach had been.

  ‘We can’t all be ice cool in the face of danger.’ She must have looked like a total fool but on the plus side she was not lying crushed under a pile of rubble. ‘I didn’t think,’ she admitted huskily. ‘I just sort of … reacted.’

  Her heart thudding louder than it had been when she had thought she was about to be buried under several tons of rubble, Poppy’s eyes flickered nervously towards the cool brown fingers circling her wrists. She ran the tip of her tongue across her dry lips; she was trying hard not to react now.

  Reacting to her instincts at this moment would have involved snatching her hands from his grasp, an action he might well read too much into … or maybe not.

  Luckily Gianluca remained oblivious to the uncomfortable things the light contact was doing to her. He wasn’t even looking at her any longer, he was checking out the room, but he was still holding her wrists.

  She gave a gentle tug but instead of responding to the reminder in the way he was meant to Gianluca tightened his grip and his thumbs began to move in circular sweeps over the blue-veined inner aspect of her wrists. Presumably meant to be soothing, the effect of the light pressure was however anything but.

  Oh, help!

  If she had found the contact disturbing this fresh assault on her senses was almost painful in its intensity. Previously her discomfort had taken the form of vague unease, a prickle under her skin and an empty feeling in her stomach. Now the tingle was a throb and the empty feeling a clenched fist of awareness.

  This had to be some post-being-scared-half-to-death-on-top-of-a-very-bad-day scenario. The alternative was not good news.

  Gianluca’s attention shifted from the broken glass on the floor to the woman beside him. ‘You’re shaking.’

  His concern took the form of a stern frown as his critical scrutiny moved across the soft contours of the heart shaped face turned up to him. Her skin was as pale as milk, making the purplish smudges under her eyes appear even darker. Her dark lashes lowered but not before he had taken note of the glow in those arresting eyes. It had a feverish quality.

  ‘Are you running a temperature?’ He had intended to lay his hand on her forehead to test his theory when something bright caught his eye.

  ‘No, don’t move,’ he rebuked sharply as she shied away from his hand. ‘There’s a …’ He pushed aside a section of shiny soft hair from her forehead—actually very soft—to grasp the slim sharp piece of glass that had enmeshed itself in her hair.

  Poppy stopped breathing as his brown fingertips touched her skin, slivers of hot heat slid through her body.

  ‘There, got it.’ He held up the shard for her to see.

  The thought of that wicked splinter piercing the skin of her face or neck made the muscles deep in his belly tighten.

  ‘Thank you,’ she murmured breathlessly.

  ‘Come closer to the fire. You’re still shaking.’

  She was standing extremely close to a bare-chested virile man with the sort of delicious hard body that lustful fantasies were made of, shaking!

  It was a relief to realise she was not drooling! Sexual attraction was not, she knew because she’d read the relevant articles, something a person could rationalise. Or, as she knew only too well, something a person could conjure up. She had tried and failed on more than one occasion.

  ‘Of course I am. It’s called shock.’ This time when she tugged her wrists he let go; her reaction to freedom was worryingly ambivalent.

  ‘Something just went bang.’ Arms crossed over her chest, she rubbed her upper arms briskly and gave a rueful laugh adding, ‘Loudly.’

  At that point it went bang again.

  Poppy closed her eyes again but this time instinct did not lead her to cover her ears but step forward with a gasp into the hard male b
ody positioned conveniently close.

  Gianluca’s arms folded around her as his big body curved protectively over her. A hand in the small of her back, he dragged her in closer. Head buried against his bare chest, she burrowed into him, her hands flat against his muscle-ridged belly. She could hear the thud of his heart as he cradled her and feel the coolness of his skin even through the layers of clothing she wore.

  The noise stopped, but his arms did not fall away. When she looked back on the incident later Poppy had no idea how long they had stood there.

  She did remember feeling strangely bereft when he released her.

  Robbed of the intimate contact, her body continued to tingle as he stared at her, a frown between his dark slanting brows. She couldn’t read his expression, but it woke the butterflies in her belly all over again.

  All the survival manuals said sharing body warmth was a very effective way of raising body temperature. Gianluca would have felt happier if the instincts that were telling him to grab for that soft warmth came under the heading of survival.

  He knew different. He had never stopped wanting Poppy Ramsay and Aurelia had known it … Oh, not the name but she had known that there was someone—I can’t compete with a memory, Luca.

  The citrusy perfume of Poppy’s shampoo lingering in his nostrils, the words returned to haunt him as Gianluca turned abruptly towards the window where half the panes had shattered during the second blast of noise.

  Poppy watched as he walked barefoot through the shards of broken glass on the floor. Not only did he possess catlike grace, but catlike instincts as he picked his way unerringly through the debris.

  Gianluca assessed the damage. It appeared superficial inside at least. Luckily only one window was damaged; the wind whistled through the panes of broken glass; rain water was already pooling on the floor.

  Poppy pressed a hand to her lips as he poked his head through the broken window, his skin coming perilously close to the wicked jagged fragments still adhering to the frame.

  Bracing his hands on the stone window sill, he raised himself an inch or so higher and, narrowing his eyes against the driving rain, scanned the area for clues.

  He did not have to look far for an explanation. On the ground not far from the window lay the remnants of a section of cast-iron guttering complete with rusted fixings. One large piece had travelled farther and as another flash lit up the landscape he had a glimpse of the considerable damage done to a Victorian glasshouse that, according to the tales he had been told, in its day had supplied the household with fruit and contained a renowned collection of rare orchids.

  No wonder it had sounded like Armageddon.

  Gianluca pulled his head back inside, grunting softly as he lowered himself back into the room, blinking away the water that streamed into his eyes.

  ‘It’s just some guttering and a few slates. The greenhouse took a hit and part of the wall around the garden—’

  Poppy shook her head, interrupting the list of damage. ‘No, that went the winter before last.’ The sheep now grazed what had once been a kitchen garden; that was where the walker who had broken his ankle had been injured. ‘It’s a bad storm. This sort of damage could have happened anywhere—it doesn’t mean that the place is unsafe.’

  He raised an eloquent brow but stayed silent.

  ‘All right,’ she sighed. ‘You’re right and the men in suits are right—the place is falling down, but, Luca, Gran loves it.’ She clenched her fists as she added fiercely, ‘We can’t let her lose it.’

  There was a perceptible pause. ‘We won’t.’

  The colour rushed to her face, scoring the smooth curves of her classical cheekbones. ‘I didn’t mean we.’ There was no we any more. ‘I don’t expect you to … I have it covered—’ A wildly optimistic claim that sounded lame even to her own ears.

  ‘I know what you meant, Poppy.’

  Good, she thought, that makes one of us.

  ‘And I share your concern for your grandmother and this place.’ He cast an affectionate glance around the room with its dust, peeling paintwork and eclectic mix of shabby furnishings. ‘I want to help, that’s why I’m here, but I suggest for the present we address ourselves to the more immediate challenge of keeping the rain outside?’

  ‘Sounds like a plan.’

  Poppy was surprised to find she actually felt some relief to realise that she wouldn’t have to tackle Gran’s legal nightmare single-handed. It might not be comfortable being around Luca, but it would be selfish as well as stupid if she let their history stand in the way of keeping Gran in her ancestral pile.

  The odds were that Luca would pass on the problem to someone with a legal degree and loads of experience anyhow, but if he decided to take a more hands-on approach, well … You’ll just have to suck it up, Poppy, she told herself sternly.

  How hard could it be?

  ‘I’ll need to cover the broken panes …’ He glanced around the room, frowning, not immediately seeing anything appropriate for the job.

  Poppy, infected by the urgency in his manner, dropped to her knees. It was good to be able to focus on something practical.

  ‘How about this?’ she asked, pulling out the old crate set in a corner beside the inglenook. She began to remove the kindling and old newspapers her gran kept in it before turning it around for Gianluca’s approval.

  He gave a grunt of grudging assent. ‘That might do,’ he admitted. ‘Very resourceful, cara.’

  She ignored the inappropriate endearment and slid the crate across the floor. ‘I was a Girl Guide.’

  ‘I was not a Boy Scout.’

  No surprise there, she thought, watching as Luca stopped it with his foot and then, bracing one side against his knee, applied pressure. The loosely tacked seams stretched and gave with a splintering sound. Luca had never been the joining sort—it was people who were drawn to him.

  He loosened a side and pulled it free before holding it out towards the window and sizing it up, one eye closed.

  ‘Not bad,’ he conceded.

  While he wedged it in one of the gaps, peeling off a few strips of thin wood to force it into the available space, Poppy addressed the partially dismembered crate, freeing another panel.

  His dark brows lifted when she handed it to him.

  ‘It’s called teamwork,’ she told him, squatting back on her heels to watch him casually climb onto a table and coax it into the appropriate place with his fist.

  ‘It should hold,’ he decided, surveying his work.

  Conscious of a tight feeling in her chest, Poppy watched him jump off the table and pad across the icy room towards her bare-footed and bare-chested, his body bearing visible evidence of his dramatic unorthodox journey. With a shadow on his jaw and his dark hair wet and slicked back, he brought an image of swashbuckling pirate to her mind.

  His feet stopped inches away from her. She supposed the downside of having a husband who looked like Luca was knowing that, wedding band or not, women were going to be throwing themselves at his feet wherever he went. Well, she was one woman that Aurelia did not have to worry about Poppy thought as she got to her feet with more haste than grace.

  She tilted her head back and found that Luca was staring at her.

  ‘Stop looking at me like that!’ She was too unnerved by the intensity of his scrutiny to censor her demand.

  His massive shoulders lifted fractionally. ‘You still look so young,’ he marvelled. ‘Seven years and you look …’ He shook his head, adding, ‘It is remarkable.’

  ‘It’s actually a nuisance,’ she retorted. ‘You have no idea how often I get asked for proof of age and people don’t take you seriously professionally when you look like a teenager.’

  His lips twisted into a smile. ‘When you are as old as me you will take it as a compliment.’

  ‘You’re only five years older than me, Luca.’

  He always had been hung up about her age.

  When she had been going through the classic dumpee phase of ‘What i
s wrong with me? What have I done?’ Poppy had wondered if maybe the ingénue innocent stuff had been a factor, the novelty had worn off and he had just found it boring. These days her self-esteem, even after the recent humiliating Rupert incident, was a lot more robust.

  ‘Chronologically maybe, but in experience, cara, I’m a hundred years older than you.’ His sloe-dark eyes slid to her mouth as he wondered about her rites of passage into womanhood and the men who had been part of it. If things had been different it could have been him, him initiating Poppy in the art of lovemaking.

  A wave of familiar self-disgust washed over him. If he had spent more time and energy trying to make his marriage work and less thinking about the lost opportunity, Aurelia might not have felt so isolated and alone.

  She might be alive.

  He had ruined two lives, but Poppy at least had escaped his toxic influence. She had moved on from the infatuation.

  She had her own life yet … he couldn’t stop thinking about how she had felt in his arms moments earlier … as if she belonged there, a perfect fit.

  Too much truth, Luca, said the voice in his head as he closed his eyes, suddenly tired of his thoughts, tired of the situation—just tired.

  ‘Luca.’

  He opened his eyes. ‘Come on, let’s get this thing done.’ The muscles along his strong jaw quivered and tightened as he snatched up a piece of light splintered wood and turned back to the window.

  Feeling her eyes on his back as he applied himself to the task.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  IT TOOK him another five minutes to complete the running repairs. When there was not enough wood to cover the last broken pane he resorted to stretching the jacket he had been wearing earlier across the gap.

  As she handed it up to him when requested the name on the hand-sewn designer label had made Poppy break her silence. ‘Are you sure?’

  Gianluca misinterpreted her comment. ‘It’s not perfect but it’s better than nothing.’

  ‘It’ll be ruined.’

  He gave a very Latin shrug and looked perplexed by the comment. ‘So? It is a jacket. If it makes you feel any better it already is ruined—I have been swimming in it.’