Leonetti's Housekeeper Bride

by Lynne Graham

  ‘I had no problem deciding what to do next. I’m very decisive but unfortunately what I do next is heavily dependent on what you decide to do,’ Gaetano admitted quietly, disconcerting her while his extraordinarily beautiful eyes rested on her full force.

  ‘What I decide…?’

  ‘Only a fake fiancée can become a fake bride!’ Gaetano derided, watching her pale.

  ‘You can’t seriously be suggesting that we carry this masquerade as far as a wedding!’ Poppy exclaimed with a look of disbelief.

  ‘Rodolfo likes you. He’s really excited and happy about our relationship,’ Gaetano breathed grimly. ‘In fact it’s many years since I saw him this enthusiastic about anything or anyone. I would like to give him what he wants even if it’s not real and even though it can’t last.’

  ‘You love your grandfather. I understand that you don’t want to disappoint him, but—’

  ‘We could get married for a couple of years while I continue to pay for your mother’s care.’

  Poppy leant forward to say sharply, ‘If Mum does well, she will probably be released from the clinic next month.’

  Gaetano shook his handsome dark head slowly as if in wonder at her naivety. ‘Poppy… Jasmine is most probably a long-term rehabilitation project. To stay off alcohol for the foreseeable future she’s going to need regular ongoing professional support.’

  It was true, Poppy conceded painfully. What Gaetano was saying was true, horribly true, but until that moment Poppy had not thought that far ahead. Indeed she had dreamt only of the day when she hoped and prayed that her newly sober parent would walk out of the clinic and back into the real world. Sadly, however, the real world offered challenges Jasmine Arnold might struggle to handle. And Poppy already knew that she did not have the power to stop her mother drinking because she had already tried that and had failed abysmally.

  ‘If you agree to marry me I will faithfully promise to take care of your mother’s needs for however long it takes for her to regain her health and sobriety,’ Gaetano swore. ‘At the same time I will make it possible for you to return to further education. That would mean that by the time we divorce you would be in a position to pursue any career you chose.’

  Poppy sucked in a steadying breath because he was offering to deliver momentous benefits and security. But she still didn’t want to sell herself out for the money that would empower her to transform her mother’s life and give them both the best possible chance of a decent future. ‘I can’t take your money or your support. It’s immoral,’ she argued jaggedly. ‘Stop trying to tempt me into doing what I know would be wrong.’

  ‘I’m offering you the equivalent of a job. All right…’ Gaetano shifted an expressive bronzed hand in the air with the fluid arrogance that came as naturally as breathing to him. ‘Taking on the role of being my wife would be an unusual job but it’s not a job you want, so why shouldn’t you be paid for sacrificing your freedom? Because make no mistake—you would be giving up your freedom while you were pretending to be my wife.’

  ‘Fooling your grandfather, faking and pretending. It wouldn’t be right,’ Poppy protested vehemently.

  ‘If it makes Rodolfo genuinely happy, why is it wrong?’ Gaetano fired back at her in challenge. ‘It’s the best I’ve got to offer him. I can’t give him the real thing. I can’t give him a real marriage when I don’t want one. Marrying you, a woman he has readily accepted and approved, is as good as it’s likely to get from his point of view.’

  Poppy was pale and troubled. ‘You’re good in an argument,’ she allowed ruefully. ‘But I’m never going to win a trophy for my acting skills.’

  ‘You don’t need to act. Rodolfo likes you as you are. Think about what I’m offering you. You can reclaim your life and return to being a carefree student,’ Gaetano pointed out, his persuasion insidious. ‘No more fretting about your mother falling off the wagon again, no more scrubbing floors or serving drinks.’

  ‘Shut up!’ Poppy told him curtly, leaping to her feet to walk restively round the room while she battled the tempting possibilities he had placed in front of her.

  Gaetano studied her from below heavily lashed eyelids. She would surrender, of course she would. She had had a very tough time coping with her mother over the past couple of years and it had stolen her youthful freedom of choice. As a teenager she had been ambitious and he could still see that spirited spark of wanting more than her servant ancestors had ever wanted glowing within her.

  ‘And how long would this fake marriage have to last to be worthwhile?’ she demanded without warning.

  Gaetano almost grinned and punched the air because that was when he knew for sure that he had won. ‘I estimate around two years with three years being the absolute maximum. By that stage both of us will be eager to reclaim our real lives and I would envisage that divorce proceedings would already have begun.’

  ‘And you think a divorce a couple of years down the road is less of a disappointment for Rodolfo than a broken engagement?’

  ‘At least he’ll believe I tried.’

  ‘And of course your ultimate goal is becoming CEO of the Leonetti Bank and marrying me will deliver that,’ Poppy filled in slowly, luminous green eyes skimming to his lean, darkly handsome features in wonderment. ‘I can’t believe how ambitious you are.’

  ‘The bank is my life, it always has been,’ Gaetano admitted without apology. ‘Nothing gives me as much of a buzz as a profitable deal.’

  ‘If I were to agree to this…and I’m not saying I am agreeing,’ Poppy warned in a rush, ‘when would the marriage take place?’

  ‘Next month to suit Rodolfo’s schedule and, for that matter, my own. I won’t be here much over the next few weeks,’ Gaetano explained. ‘I have a lot of pressing business to tie up before I can take the kind of honeymoon which Rodolfo will expect.’

  At that disconcerting reference to a honeymoon a tension headache tightened in a band across Poppy’s brow and she lifted her fingers to press against her forehead. ‘I’m very tired. I’ll sleep on this and give you an answer in the morning.’

  Gaetano slid fluidly out of his seat and approached her. ‘But you already know the answer.’

  Poppy settled angry green eyes on his lean, strong face. ‘Don’t try to railroad me,’ she warned him.

  ‘You like what I do to you,’ Gaetano husked with blazing confidence, running a teasing forefinger down over her cheek to stroke it along the soft curve of her full lower lip.

  In all her life Poppy had never been more aware of anything than she was of that finger caressing the still-swollen surface of her mouth. But then, as she was learning, Gaetano couldn’t touch any part of her body without every nerve ending standing to attention and screaming for more of the same. Her breathing fractured in her throat and sawed heavily in and out of her chest. His fingertip slid into her mouth and before she could even think about what she was doing she laved it with her tongue, sucked it, watched his brilliant eyes smoulder and then his outrageous long black lashes lower over burning glints of gold.

  ‘Are you offering to let me have you tonight?’ Gaetano enquired, startling and mortifying her with that direct question.

  Her luminous eyes flew wide. ‘I can’t believe you just asked me that!’

  ‘And I can’t believe that you can still try to act the innocent when you’re teasing me,’ Gaetano riposted.

  ‘You touched me first,’ she reminded him defensively, her cheeks scarlet as she thought of what she had done with his finger and the expectation he had developed as a result. ‘Are you always this blunt?’

  ‘Pretty much. Sex requires mutual consent and I naturally dislike confusing signals, which could lead to misunderstandings.’

  Poppy stared up at him, momentarily lost in the tawny blaze of his hot stare. He wanted her and he was letting her see it. Her whole body seized up in response, her nipples prickling while that painful hollow ached at the heart of her. She tore her gaze from his, dropped her eyes and then, noticing the s
izeable bulge in his jeans, felt pure unashamed heat curling up between her thighs.

  ‘If you’re not going to let me have you, sleep in one of the spare rooms tonight,’ Gaetano instructed. ‘I’m not a masochist, bella mia.’

  ‘Spare room,’ Poppy framed shakily, the only words she could get past her tight throat because it hurt her that she wanted to say yes so badly. She didn’t want to be used ‘to scratch an itch’, not her first time anyway. Surely some day somewhere some man would want her for more than that? Gaetano only wanted the release of sex and would probably not have wanted her at all had they not been forced into such proximity.

  Gaetano let her reach the door. ‘If I marry you, I’ll expect you to share my bed.’

  Wide-eyed, Poppy whirled round to gasp, ‘But…’

  ‘I’m too well-known to get away with sneaking around having affairs for a couple of years,’ Gaetano asserted silkily. ‘If we get married it should look like a happy marriage, at least at the start, and there’s no way I’d be happy in a sex-free marriage. Is that likely to be a deal-breaker?’

  ‘I’ll think it over.’ Her heart-shaped face expressionless, Poppy studied the polished floor. She wanted to discover sex with Gaetano but she wasn’t about to confess that to him. That was private, strictly private. Her body burned inside her clothing at the thought of that intimacy. Meaningless, sexual intimacy, she reminded herself doggedly. And it disturbed her that even though she knew it would mean nothing to him she still wanted him…

  CHAPTER SIX

  POPPY SANK INTO the guest-room bed and rolled over to hug a pillow. She was incredibly tired but so wired she was convinced that she would not sleep a wink.

  She was going to marry Gaetano Leonetti. Gorgeous, filthy rich, super-successful Gaetano. Who sent her body into spasms of craving with a single kiss. If she was honest with herself, she really hadn’t needed a night to think it over. He would help her protect her mother and he would support her getting back onto a career path. Really, marrying Gaetano would be win-win whichever way she looked at it, wouldn’t it be?

  As long as she didn’t get too carried away and start acting as if it were a real marriage. As long as she didn’t fall for Gaetano. Well, she wasn’t about to do that, was she? He was almost thirty years old and had never been in love. The closest he had come to love was with a woman who had married his friend. And he had acted as best man at their wedding, which didn’t suggest to her that it had been very close to love at all. Gaetano might be planning to marry her but he wasn’t going to love her and he wasn’t going to keep her either. It would be a temporary marriage and it would make Rodolfo happy…at least for a while, she thought guiltily, because faking it for the older man’s benefit still troubled her conscience. He was such a kind, genuine sort of man and so unlike Gaetano, who kept the equivalent of a coffin lid slammed down hard on his emotions.

  While Poppy was ruminating over her bridegroom’s lack of emotional intelligence, Gaetano was subjecting himself to yet another cold shower. She had to marry him. There was no alternative. Just at that moment in the grip of a raging inferno of frustrated lust he felt as though he would spontaneously combust if he didn’t get Poppy spread across his bed as the perfect wedding gift. The definitive wedding gift, with those ballerina legs in lace stockings, those pert little breasts in satin cups, that voluptuous pink mouth pouting as she looked up at him with those witchy green spellbinding eyes. He groaned out loud. He couldn’t credit that he had barely touched her when he wanted so much more.

  But if they married, a few weeks down the matrimonial road he’d be back to normal, he told himself bracingly. The challenge would be gone. The lust would die once he could have her whenever he wanted her. He would soon be himself again, cooler, calmer, back in control, fully focussed on the bank. How was it possible that just the fantasy of sinking into Poppy’s wet, willing body excited him more than he had ever been excited? What was it about her?

  Maybe it was the weird clothes, maybe he had a secret Goth fetish. Maybe it was her argumentative nature, because he had always thrilled to a challenge. Maybe it was her cheeky texts that made him laugh. The fact she could still blush? That was strange. Every time he mentioned sex she went red, as if he had said something outrageous. She couldn’t possibly be that innocent, although he was willing to allow that she might well have considerably less experience between the sheets than he had acquired.

  Gaetano shook Poppy awake at the ungodly hour of six in the morning, obstinately and cruelly ignoring her heartfelt moans to insist that she join him for breakfast. After a quick shower and the application of a little make-up, Poppy teamed a black dress enlivened with a red rose print with high heels and sauntered down to the dining room. Gaetano was already ensconced with black coffee, a horrendously unhealthy fry-up and the Financial Times.

  She was gloriously conscious of his attention as she helped herself to cereal and took a seat at the other end of the table, her ruby cluster ring catching the light. Gaetano put down the newspaper and regarded her levelly, dark golden eyes steady as a rock and full of an impatience he didn’t need to voice.

  ‘Yes, I’ll marry you,’ Poppy told him straight off.

  ‘Does that mean I get to share my bed with you tonight?’ was Gaetano’s first telling question.

  ‘You are incredibly goal-orientated about entirely the wrong things!’ Poppy censured immediately. ‘You can wait until we’re married.’

  ‘Nobody waits until they’re married these days!’

  ‘I haven’t had sex before. I want it to feel special,’ she told him stubbornly.

  His expressive dark eyes flared with incredulity. ‘I refuse to credit that. I saw you with Toby Styles…’

  ‘I hate you!’ Poppy launched at him in a sudden tempest of furious embarrassment, her pale skin flushed to her hairline. ‘Of all the moments I don’t want to be reminded of, you have to bring that one up and throw it at me!’

  ‘Well, it was one of those unforgettable moments that did seem fairly self-explanatory. I saw you sidling out of the shrubbery covered in blushes and grass stains,’ Gaetano commented with grudging amusement. ‘So, why lie about it? This is purely about sex, bella mia, and I’m all for full bedroom equality. Whether or not you’re a virgin or a secret slut matters not a damn to me.’

  Poppy compressed her lips. ‘If you must know—although it’s none of your blasted business—I did plan to have sex that day with Toby but I changed my mind because it wasn’t what I really wanted.’ No, what she had really, really wanted that day, she acknowledged belatedly, was to wander off into the shrubbery and be ravished by Gaetano, who had dominated her every juvenile fantasy. Sadly, however, Gaetano hadn’t been an option.

  ‘Poor Toby…’ Gaetano frowned.

  ‘He was very decent about it,’ Poppy muttered in mortification. ‘He’s married to one of my friends now.’

  ‘But there must have been someone since then?’

  ‘No.’

  Gaetano continued to stare at her as if she were a circus freak. ‘But you’re so full of passion…’

  Only with you. The words remained unspoken.

  Gaetano lifted his coffee with a slightly dazed expression in his shrewd gaze. ‘I’ll be the first…really?’

  Poppy shrugged a shoulder. ‘But if you think it’s likely to be a turn-off I can always go and look for a one-night stand.’

  ‘Don’t even think about it,’ Gaetano growled.

  ‘That was a joke.’

  ‘It’s not a turn-off, simply a surprise,’ Gaetano admitted flatly. ‘OK, I’ll wait until we’re married if it’s so significant to you. But I think you’re making an unnecessary production out of it.’

  Her body was all he wanted from her, Poppy interpreted painfully. At least if she was his legal wife, it would feel less demeaning, wouldn’t it?

  ‘I’ll organise a gynae appointment for you,’ Gaetano continued briskly. ‘Reliable birth control is important. We don’t want any slip-ups in that departmen
t when we’re not planning to stay together.’

  ‘Obviously not,’ she agreed, sipping with determination at her hot-chocolate drink while thinking for the very first time in her life about having a baby. She had always liked children, always assumed that she would become a mother one day, but she reckoned that day lay a long way ahead in her future.

  ‘And whatever you do,’ Gaetano warned with chilling precision, ‘don’t go falling for me.’

  ‘And why would I do that?’ Poppy demanded baldly, her cheeks hotter than hell in fear of him mentioning that so mortifying teenaged crush again. ‘Having sex with you is not going to make me fall in love with you. I know you think you’re fantastic in bed, Gaetano, but you’re not fantastic enough out of bed.’

  Infuriatingly, Gaetano did not react badly to that criticism. ‘That’s good because that’s one complication I can do without. I hate it when women fall for me and make me feel that it’s my fault.’

  Well, that was frank, and forewarned was forearmed, Poppy told herself squarely. ‘It’s probably your money they’re falling for,’ she suggested in a tone of saccharine sweetness. ‘You have yet to show me a single loveable trait.’

  ‘Grazie al cielo…thank goodness,’ Gaetano responded in a tone of galling relief. ‘I don’t want you to get the wrong idea about me or this marriage.’

  ‘I won’t. This marriage will be like one of those business mergers. You are so safe,’ Poppy declared brightly. ‘You will merely be the first stepping stone on my sexual path.’

  Gaetano was taken aback to discover that he didn’t want to think of a string of other men enjoying her along that particular path. In fact it gave him a slightly nauseated sensation in the pit of his stomach. The acknowledgement bemused him and he put it down to the simple fact that as yet he had not enjoyed her either. He was thinking too much about something relatively unimportant, he reflected impatiently. Sex was sex and his wedding night would provide the cure for what was currently afflicting him. Since when had he ever attached so much consequence to sex? Even so, it had been entirely right to have the conversation with Poppy to ensure that they perfectly understood each other’s expectations.