by Kim Lawrence
‘Should you be here?’
Gianluca scanned her face, hungrily eating up the details, not registering the frigid note of hurt in her voice. ‘I had to be here. I needed …’ She heard him mutter something that sounded like ‘to hell with this’ before he grabbed her.
‘Now that,’ he said, releasing her after delivering a deep, passionate, mind-numbing kiss, ‘I probably shouldn’t have done in public.’
Slightly mollified, she nodded. ‘Probably not.’
‘I’ve arranged tomorrow night for a car to pick you up—’
‘No!’
He looked startled and so was she—until she opened her mouth Poppy hadn’t known she was going to say it. Now she had she knew it was the right thing.
‘You don’t know what I’m going to say.’
She tipped her head in acknowledgement. ‘But I do know it will be some furtive creep-around-through-the-back-door arrangement …’ His expression said it all. ‘Well, I’m not happy with that. It makes me feel … uncomfortable.’
He looked down at her in frustration. ‘I’m doing this for you.’
She dismissed his words with a wave of her hand. ‘I’m going back to London in the morning.’
‘You can’t!’ The protest was dragged from somewhere deep inside him.
‘Why not, Luca?’ she asked him quietly. All she wanted was him to ask her to stay, not assume she would; that was all it would take.
There was a short silence. ‘Because we are going to work out a strategy to save the castle—we agreed, Poppy.’
She shook her head and gave a small bitter laugh. ‘You don’t need me to do that.
‘Your name can open doors that would never open for me. You look at red tape and it dissolves and we both know that you’ll do whatever you have to—throw money at it, make a deal, bribe someone … whatever—and don’t think I’m not grateful because you’ll save Gran’s home, but, please,’ she begged throatily, ‘don’t insult me by pretending you need my help. Gran might be fooled by this talk of grants but I’m not. Just please don’t let her find out that you’re footing the bill.’
‘It isn’t that simple.’
‘But you’ve already set the wheels in motion?’
He tipped his head in abrupt acknowledgement.
She expelled a gusty sigh and straightened her shoulders. ‘So it’s sorted,’ she said, adopting a cheerful attitude. ‘And Gran’s happy to stay here, at least until her ankle is healed, but I’m in danger of outstaying my welcome. So this is really goodbye.’
Gianluca stared at the hand she extended towards him and shook his head. ‘It’s not goodbye, I …’ He stopped as two men in suits began to run along the beach towards him.
Luca, his face like thunder, walked towards them.
Poppy watched as they spoke. Whatever they said it did not appear to please Luca, who after a few moments glanced over his shoulder in her direction before turning and walking briskly in the opposite direction without a backward glance.
His actions hurt like a slap in the face. At least it was a wake-up call … Did she really want to be the girl expected to fade into the background when her presence was deemed unnecessary?
He had reached the other end of the beach when the news crew his security had told him was responding to a tip-off caught up with him. To his relief Poppy had vanished.
About a million no comments later he arrived back at his hotel.
CHAPTER TWELVE
POPPY waved goodbye to Fergus and Emma, resisting a crazy impulse to duck down in her seat of her taxi as she drove past the hotel where Luca was staying. For all she knew he had probably already left—maybe that was what the calls she had not picked up last night had been about—and he was even now being whisked away, no doubt in a blacked-out car flanked by bodyguards.
It was a life but not as she knew it.
For about five minutes it had seemed as if they occupied the same planet, but the events of the past few days had made it abundantly clear that they did not.
She had done the right thing. She didn’t want to be with a man who was too embarrassed to acknowledge she existed. It was just a pity that the right thing hurt so much.
Luca’s decision to drive himself back to London had caused a minor furore among his anxious staff, who were showing inexplicable signs of mass anxiety and a sudden irritating desire to wrap him in cotton wool. He had done what he had to and not what he wanted to for a couple of days.
He had turned the charm on for the media and restored the share price by appearing live on television—something he never normally did. He had phoned his family—this involved a great deal of tears and almost as many remonstrations, which he had meekly accepted.
Now it was time to do what he wanted, and he wanted Poppy.
The news delivered by his godmother that she had already left was a minor setback.
The journey to the railway station that should have taken him half an hour took him double—the road was covered with roadworks and several sets of traffic lights, which all turned red as he approached.
Forced to sit, wait, he found it hard not to take the delays personally. By the time he reached his destination he had begun to realise how seemingly sane people were on occasion driven to buy into conspiracy theories!
Perhaps he was not meant to catch Poppy …?
Not a man inclined to meekly accept his fate, actually not a man who believed in fate or destiny, Gianluca glanced at his watch and looked around for a parking space. He was not just cutting it fine, he was … Then he saw a parking space and gave a grunt of satisfaction. He was due a bit of luck.
He released his seat belt and began to scan the crowds, his long fingers beating out an impatient tattoo on the steering wheel. There were too many people moving in and out of the terminal building to pick out one small one. He was reaching for the door handle when in the rear-view mirror a group of noisy teenage schoolboys moved to cross the road and she was there. As he watched she had stopped to transfer her large canvas bag from one hand to the other, tossing her head to shake her glossy ponytail back over her shoulder and losing her balance slightly, until some passing guy in a suit placed a hand on her waist.
It seemed to Gianluca that this stranger’s hand stayed on the cinched waist of her red jacket far longer than was necessary and the smile of gratitude he received for his trouble was over the top.
The stranger paused and watched her, tugging at the collar of his shirt, as she moved on, but Poppy remained totally oblivious to the effect of her smile and the lecherous eyes directed towards her denim-covered rear. Her skinny designer jeans fitted rather too well, emphasising the curve of her bottom and the feminine flare of her hips.
Gianluca fought the crazy impulse to leap out and confront the stranger and he swore softly under his breath before he leaned across to open the passenger door. She was close enough now for him to hear the clicking sound of the heels of her ankle boots on the pavement.
The wheelie arrangement on her bag had jammed and, forced to carry it, Poppy was wishing she had not packed quite so many shoes. The lopsided posture she was forced to adopt was making the base of her spine ache.
Approaching the busy entrance to the station, she turned her head in response to the prolonged honking of a taxi horn in time to see the driver stick his head out of the window and deliver a vocal protest.
The protest was directed at the driver of the car who pulled his car into a space beside her reserved for taxis.
The car itself was some sleek low-slung metallic silver monster that would not have looked out of place on a racing circuit. It looked very out of place outside the provincial railway station.
The door of the car almost brushed her leg as it swung open.
‘Get in!’
Poppy’s heart lurched. The voice was more heavily accented than normal, it seemed to her, but still totally unmistakeable.
For the space of several heartbeats she stood frozen like a small statue until a gulping gasp left her lips and
her nerveless fingers released their grip on the holdall.
The driver, dark, sleek and grim-faced, leaned across to repeat the terse command. Every synapse in her skull started firing off messages simultaneously as her brain tipped into wild panic.
‘Get in, Poppy.’ He sounded bored.
‘Luca …? How …?’ She took a deep breath and lifted her chin and met his eyes and rapidly changed her mind about the bored. The anger smouldering in the dark depths was hard to miss—not that she could see what he had to be angry about …
‘I don’t think so.’
Her brain was emerging from total shutdown but her heart continued to beat so fast in reaction to the shock of seeing him that it felt as if she had a wild bird trapped in her chest.
‘I am not asking you to think.’
Just as well.
‘I am asking you to get in the car.’
Poppy gave a bitter little laugh. Asking? He was telling—so no change there! ‘As you ask so charmingly—no.’ She bared her teeth in a cold smile.
He swore under his breath, and Poppy shook her head in mock disapproval. ‘Someone got out of bed the wrong side this morning.’
‘The wrong bed,’ he corrected under his breath, then added louder, ‘I got out of the wrong bed.’ Not strictly accurate. Actually he had not got out of any bed—he had not slept. ‘It should have been your bed.’
A tiny gasp left her lips. ‘What makes you think you can talk to me like that?’ The answer was the excitement squirming in her belly.
He could deal with the animosity in her glare because it was mingled with an equal measure of longing. ‘Because it’s what you want too—you want me in your bed.’
The arrogance of his retort sent the mortified colour rushing to her cheeks. ‘Could you say that any louder? I think that a man getting on the Crewe train didn’t hear you and the lady with the hearing aid might have missed the last bit.
‘I’m amazed you want to risk being seen with me in a public place.’ He was already drawing a lot of attention, but if anyone realised who was driving the monster car the attention would zoom off the scale.
The furrow above his hawkish nose deepened. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘A Ranieri and the daughter of a notorious mother?’
‘What has your mother got to do with this? You don’t still think I slept with her?’
The reminder of the earlier suspicion made her flush. ‘No, I don’t. Now, please, go away!’ she hissed, casting a furtive look over her shoulder. ‘People are staring! And what do you expect when you drive some stupid car that probably cost a hundred thousand pounds?’
The abrupt change of subject made him blink. ‘Rather more than that, actually.’
Poppy, speaking across him, continued her denunciation. ‘Goes a billion miles an hour and looks like a spaceship.’
‘You do not like my car?’ He sounded amused rather than offended by the possibility.
Any second now someone was going to realise who he was and people would start recording the moment on their mobile phones. Her stomach muscles tightened in sick anticipation of this moment. ‘I don’t like being stared at.’
Welcome to my world, he thought. ‘They will stare a lot more when I pick you up and throw you in.’ The accompanying image of this action that formed in his head sent a strong pulse of lust through his body. ‘And yes …’ He paused, flashed her a white wolfish grin that made her stomach flip, before adding softly, ‘I would.’
Poppy met the dark shadowed eyes, almost tempted to call his bluff.
‘I don’t respond well to threats!’ she told him haughtily.
‘It was intended to be more in the nature of a promise.’
Watching her staring at him, her big eyes reminding him of a trapped fawn, Gianluca was filled with a strong desire to follow through with his threat, to feel her soft body in his arms, hear her heartbeat, enjoy the warm passion of her response to him.
‘What do you think I’m going to do, Poppy? This is a public place …’ Possibly, given the thoughts going through his head, a good thing.
He produced what Poppy supposed was his version of a harmless puppy smile, only in his case the puppy would grow up to be a big bad wolf—he already had.
‘Fine.’ She consulted her watch and added frigidly, ‘Two minutes.’
His nostrils flared at the stipulation but he made no comment, not even when the bag she lobbed into the car glanced off his shoulder.
I hope it hurt, she thought viciously as she ducked her head and slid into the passenger seat, sinking immediately into the deep leather upholstery of the bucket seat. Crossing one booted foot over the other, she directed a cold look at his profile.
‘I think he wants this parking space,’ she said, indicating the taxi driver who was flashing his lights. ‘Look, what did you want to say?’ She glanced at her watch. ‘Because your two minutes is almost up.’
He nodded in the direction of the gesticulating taxi driver, gave a Latin gesture of his own in response, then proceeded to crunch the gears.
There was a short time delay before the relevance of the noise hit Poppy. She broke off, her eyes widening just as he began to reverse rapidly out of the space.
‘Stop this car immediately!’ she yelled, banging her hand on the state-of-the-art dashboard to emphasise her point.
Gianluca glanced her way, holding her eyes for a brief moment before planting his foot on the accelerator. The car shot forward into the traffic flow.
‘Fasten your seat belt, Poppy.’
His voice sounded calm. The gleam she had seen in his heavy-lidded eyes had not been calm, it had been … A shudder snaked its way up her spine. Poppy lifted a hand to her throat where a blue veined pulse was throbbing. She was shaking.
There was zero chance that he hadn’t noticed.
‘I’m not going to fasten my seat belt. My train leaves in ten minutes!’ she wailed, agitation causing her to literally bounce in the deeply upholstered leather seat.
‘I have to tell you that, while it might be a fascinating subject, railway timetabling holds little interest for me,’ Gianluca drawled at his driest.
Poppy’s laugh had an edge of hysteria. ‘So sorry to bore you.’ Like a trapped animal, she let her glance slide to the door handle.
‘Don’t bother, it’s locked.’
She turned her head jerkily towards him; Gianluca was looking straight ahead. ‘I’m not insane …’ Maybe I am—I got in the car. ‘I’m not about to jump out of a moving car.’
His heavy-lidded eyes met hers in the driving mirror. The bottom fell out of Poppy’s stomach, leaving a black, squooshy, empty space where it had been.
‘This is silly, Gianluca. What are you doing?’ she asked, struggling to channel calm.
There was no need to panic—after all, what was the worst that could happen?
The answer to her silent question made her groan—he could touch her and she could melt, dissolve like a bowl of ice cream in the sun and scream, Why don’t you love me?
‘I am trying to concentrate.’ Gianluca wrenched his wandering eyes from the curve of her denim-covered thigh and trained it grimly on the road ahead where several streams of heavy traffic were merging, the frustrated drivers all reluctant to give way.
He had stopped short of saying, So shut up—just—but it was implicit in his abrupt response.
Poppy clenched her teeth and flung him a look of loathing. ‘Wait until I start singing.’
The bizarre threat caused the grim lines bracketing his mouth to relax fractionally. ‘I have rarely felt so intimidated.’
‘You mock, now, but you won’t be laughing for long …’ Poppy trained her eyes on her hands folded in her lap as her thoughts drifted back to those long-off schooldays. ‘I was in the school choir.’ Back row because the front row was for the pretty girls. ‘But only to make up the numbers. I had strict instructions to mime.’
Laughter came easier now than it had back then, but one of the
first lessons a plumpish schoolgirl learnt was it was easier to laugh at yourself before someone else had the chance to.
Momentarily distracted, Gianluca allowed his eyes to brush her glossy bowed head. ‘Harsh.’
‘Not really. I had … have a terrible singing voice. We are talking once heard never forgotten. I’m just not musical.’
A buried memory from the past surfaced in his head: a heather-clad hillside, the kid with bare feet, her arms lifted above her head, swirling wildly to the beat of a pop tune being played on the small old-fashioned cassette player propped up on a rocky outcrop.
‘That’s not true—you can dance.’
Her startled gaze flew to his face. ‘How would you know …? I mean, I can’t as such. I like to dance but I’ve never actually learnt … just a few salsa classes.’
The work colleague who had persuaded her to go along had dropped out after that first lesson, miffed because she’d thought Poppy had been holding out—there was no way, she’d insisted, that Poppy was a beginner and she had totally monopolised the handsome dance teacher.
It had, she had claimed, been embarrassing.
Despite the jibe, Poppy had gone back the next week alone.
‘You can tell by the way someone moves that they can dance.’ There was a graceful fluidity to the way Poppy moved.
Poppy responded to this suggestion with a derisive snort. ‘And I suppose you can tell by the way I talk I can’t sing.’
The muscles along his strong jaw tightened as he trained his eyes on the road ahead. ‘You have a … pleasant voice.’ Men immune to her throaty laugh or husky stammer would be difficult to find.
‘Well, I don’t have a pleasant singing voice … The music sounds great in my head. The problem starts when I open my mouth, and this is an enclosed space.’
‘Look, if you want to sing, fine … sing along with Puccini.’ He pressed a button and the mellifluous voice of a famous tenor filled the car. ‘And I couldn’t stop the car here even if I wanted to.’ He nodded outside where men with drills and dumper trucks lined the narrow single lane of traffic. ‘So just relax and enjoy the music.’
Relax!