‘Sei la persone giusta,’ the old man said, nodding and smiling at her.
‘What? Oh...yes.’ Poppy turned to face him, relieved to have the unwanted spell of his grandson broken. ‘Okay, well...’ She moistened her lips and turned just as Sebastiano stepped forward, bringing them almost nose to chest. ‘Sorry.’ She stepped back quickly. ‘I’ll...uh...let you have your meeting. It was nice to meet you, Signor Castiglione.’
‘What? No coffee?’ Sebastiano mocked.
Poppy’s eyes widened. Was he making a joke?
‘Yes. It was a joke. Seems I’m a bit rusty. Thank you for tying my tie,’ he said softly. Intimately.
‘You’re welcome.’
Cut and run! her common sense shouted at her. ‘Have—er—have a good meeting,’ she said, finally kicking her brain into gear and hurrying through the office door. She didn’t take another breath until the lift doors had closed around her and she could put that surreal experience behind her. Then she slumped against the wall and wondered if any of that had really happened.
* * *
As soon as she closed his office door, Sebastiano turned back to his grandfather. ‘How was your flight?’
‘Good. This woman.’ He nodded slowly. ‘I approve.’
An image of his intern’s nimble fingers skating over his chest as she fixed his tie jumped into Sebastiano’s consciousness.
He approved as well, or at least his body did.
From the first moment he’d looked round and seen her standing in his doorway he’d felt as if he’d been punched in the gut. It was why he had sounded so rude about her clothing. Of course she could wear casual clothing to the office on a weekend if she wanted. He wasn’t a tyrant. He’d just been thrown by those velvet-blue eyes staring squarely back at him with no artifice in them at all.
The rest of her wasn’t bad either. Understatement, he acknowledged wryly. Her figure was glorious: slim hips, rounded breasts pushing against her thin sweater and a thick pile of ash-brown hair pulled into a high ponytail, revealing a slender neck below sweet rosebud lips. She wasn’t his usual type by a long shot but there was something about her that was at once innocent and impish. And hot. The way she had looked at him...an intelligent sparkle lighting those blue eyes as if she could see right through him.
When she had turned pink and asked him why he had been holding her wrist, he’d had an inexplicable desire to know what it would be like to wake up beside her, her face that colour from his love-making.
The memory pulled him up short. She was an intern in his office so she was automatically off limits—no matter how tempting—and, even if she wasn’t, he kept his relationships light and uncomplicated. Something about the way she hadn’t turned coy or giggly to attract his attention told him that she was neither light nor uncomplicated. Which was why he intended to forget that he had even met her.
‘I’m glad you approve,’ he said to his grandfather. ‘But it’s your approval for me to take over as CEO of Castiglione Europa that I want. You can’t keep travelling to Rome every other day to bark at everyone, and you know it. You also know that Nonna wants you to retire,’ he added, playing his trump card. ‘It’s time.’
‘Time to do what?’ his grandfather grouched. ‘Play boules? Pick grapes? Spend time with my grandchildren? Now there—’ he pointed a knotted finger at Sebastiano ‘—there would be a reason to retire.’
And here were go, Sebastiano thought. Operation Marriage. It was a clever name for it but he’d still give Paula grief about not informing him of the office betting pool when she came in tomorrow morning. ‘Yes, yes, I know what you want,’ he said. ‘And I’m working on it.’
‘So what is the hold-up?’ his grandfather asked. ‘You are having trouble making her say yes, is that it?’ His grandfather grinned, seeming to like that idea. But having a woman say yes wasn’t a problem Sebastiano had ever encountered. Quite the opposite, in fact, but regardless of that he understood that he was too much of a loner to make any relationship work in the long term. A fact many of his women would be more than happy to attest to.
Realising that his grandfather was waxing lyrical about how nice Poppy seemed, Sebastiano shrugged off his uncharacteristic lapse in concentration. ‘Forget all that,’ he dismissed, not wanting to let his mind wander back to his sassy little intern. ‘Tell me what I want to hear. You need to retire, and now, with this new deal I just finalised, the timing couldn’t be better to merge SJC with the family business. You know it as well as I do.’
His grandfather steepled his hands beneath his chin, taking his time answering, as he was wont to do. When he was a child Sebastiano had grown fidgety under that steady regard—now he just used it himself when it suited him.
‘I’ll tell you right now, I’m impressed with what I just saw,’ his grandfather said slowly. ‘You should have mentioned Poppy sooner.’
Poppy? Were they still talking about his intern? ‘Why would I mention her sooner?’ he rasped, his brain prodding him that he was missing something important.
‘Ah, I see, you want me to hand over the family company on your terms and not mine. That pride of yours will not do you any good in the long run, I’ve always told you that.’
‘Nonno—’
‘You always were a good boy, and now you have grown into a fine man. But seriously, Sebastiano, sometimes you cannot see what is in front of your face. Fortunately for you I am here to point out the obvious.’
Sebastiano frowned. ‘Wait, do you...?’
His grandfather reached across the desk and laid a hand over his. His nonno’s skin was old and leathery, almost papery in its frailty, his fingers vibrating slightly as they gripped onto him. ‘We have been waiting for you to ditch all those party girls and choose a nice girl to settle down with. And this girl is good.’
Sebastiano went perfectly still. His grandfather thought he and Poppy were an item—it was written all over his craggy features—which was ironic, when in fact they had only just met. But he supposed he could see how his grandfather had got that impression. For one, she had turned up in the office looking as much like an intern as he looked like a monk. And, two, he had very nearly lost his head and kissed her when she’d finished tying his tie.
‘She is the one for you, and when your grandmother sees you together she will be so proud that we did right by you after all.’
Hold on—what? ‘The one?’
‘Si. And she said she knows how to handle you.’ His grandfather chuckled. ‘You need a strong woman like that.’
Sebastiano knew his grandmother ruled their casa but, hell, had Poppy—Miss Connolly—truly said she had him under the thumb?
His frown deepened; no wonder his grandfather had jumped to all the wrong conclusions. But why would she say that? And more importantly what was he going to do about it?
He recalled the slumberous way her eyes had moved over him when she’d been tying his tie. It had been from desire; he would have put money on it because his own body had sent the same message to his brain.
I want her, it had said, right now.
Sebastiano didn’t want to think about his grandfather’s reaction when he told him that, far from being his latest girlfriend, Poppy Connolly was nothing more than a temporary employee. But, instead of wasting his breath to try and convince the old man he was wrong, Sebastiano tried again to direct him away from his love life. ‘Let’s get down to business.’
‘No. Let’s save it for your trip to Italy.’
Sebastiano went as still as a stone. As a general rule he limited his trips to his home country as much as possible. Especially to the family casa where his memories were so strong. ‘What trip to Italy?’
‘For your grandmother and my sixtieth wedding anniversary. We are having a party. Bring your lovely Miss Connolly.’
Sebastiano couldn’t move as his grandfather stood up. A look of sorrow briefly clouded his nonno’s eyes, his voice quiet when he broke the lengthening silence between them.
‘We
need to put the past to bed, nipote mio, and we want you to come. No more excuses. No more putting work first. It is time to move forward.’ He cleared the emotion from his throat. ‘After I tell Evelina about Miss Connolly she will want to meet her. In fact, I will text her now.’
Sebastiano blinked. ‘Since when do you and Nonna text?’
‘Since I bought her a smart phone for her birthday.’
His grandfather pulled his own phone out of his pocket and pressed the keys with the agility of someone half his age.
Sebastiano watched him, brooding. He would do a lot of things for his grandparents—he would even cast aside his deeply buried memories of the past to attend their anniversary—but pretend he had a relationship with a woman he barely knew and who might have just set herself up to become the next Mrs Castiglione?
Not a chance in hell.
CHAPTER THREE
‘TWO HUNDRED AND fifty thousand pounds?’ Poppy stared at Sebastiano, who sat behind his desk like a leanly muscled King Tut with a pot of gold in front of him.
When he had requested to see her in his office she’d been convinced she was about to be fired. Instead he had offered her enough money to make her heart stop beating, in exchange for her pretending to be ‘the light of his life’, as he had condescendingly put it.
‘As in two hundred and fifty thousand pounds cash?’
‘You want more? Fine. Make it five hundred.’
Poppy’s mouth was so dry it was arid. The man was insane. Or drunk. She narrowed her gaze, scanning his face for signs she was right. ‘Have you been drinking?’
‘Not since last night, and unfortunately the effects have worn off by now.’
She glanced around, waiting for a camera crew to jump out from behind his Chesterfield and yell, ‘Surprise!’ Only they didn’t. All that happened was her heart thumped so fast she felt faint. ‘I don’t think this is very funny.’
‘I never joke about money. And you only have yourself to blame.’
‘Excuse me?’
‘Something you said to my grandfather suggested that we were a couple. Something about handling me.’ His dark brows rose mockingly. ‘Which I can assure you, Miss Connolly, no woman will ever do.’
Poppy’s throat felt tight and uncomfortable. ‘I didn’t say I could handle you.’ She frowned. ‘Your grandfather said something about you needing a firm hand and I agreed. Then he said something in Italian that I didn’t get.’
‘Do you remember what it was?’
She gave him a look. ‘I grew up in the outskirts of Leeds, Mr Castiglione. My Italian starts with si and ends with ciao.’
‘Well, thanks to my grandfather mistaking you for my latest mistress, it’s about to extend to a few days on the Amalfi coast. So, what’s your price?’
Poppy was so shocked at the thought that anyone could mistake her for this man’s anything that she couldn’t take any of this seriously. ‘You’re so desperate to impress him you’re prepared to lie?’
‘I like to think of it as taking advantage of an opportunity when it arises. And, believe me, I spent most of those wasted hours last night trying to come up with an alternative plan. I failed.’ His sculpted mouth quirked at one corner. ‘Something I don’t admit to easily.’
Poppy let the subtle insult that he would rather do anything else than pretend he was in a relationship with her slide. She felt a little drunk herself at the thought of all that money. Five hundred thousand pounds? That kind of offer only happened in the movies, didn’t it?
She stood up. ‘I... I can’t take your money.’
‘Really? You’ll do it for free?’
She heard the mockery in his tone and frowned. ‘No, of course not, I—’
‘Which is as I suspected. So, what is your price?’
‘I’m not a prostitute,’ she informed him sharply, those early schoolyard taunts about her biological mother coming back to haunt her.
‘There’s no reason to get in a temper,’ he said calmly. ‘I’m not suggesting we sleep together.’
Poppy scowled. ‘Your arrogance knows no bounds, does it?’
‘I’m a businessman, Miss Connolly, and I have a problem. Like it or not, you’re my solution.’
‘You’re out of your mind.’ Poppy shook her head. ‘I won’t do it.’
He regarded her steadily, making her feel hot in her navy suit. ‘You’re knocking back half a million pounds?’ His toned was loaded with arrogant disbelief and it only made Poppy more determined to deny him. ‘In cash.’
‘I just...’ She frowned. Growing up poor and without a proper family made a half a million pounds seem like a dream come true. ‘It doesn’t feel right.’
‘It doesn’t feel right?’ She had no doubt that if he’d been a car he would have blown a head gasket by now. ‘Are you seriously turning me down because it doesn’t feel right?’
‘I don’t expect you to understand,’ she shot at him, thinking of the devastated woman on the end of the phone the day before. ‘You’d need to have feelings for that.’
‘I have feelings,’ he shot at her.
Poppy might have debated that but she still had a week left of her internship and she wanted to get a good reference—and, frankly, she felt a little dizzy. Five hundred thousand pounds was a lot of money. What she could do with it was mind-boggling.
Buy Simon new trainers, for one. The poor kid had been wearing hand-me-downs for as long as she had. But he was fifteen and the right trainers were integral to a teenager’s self-esteem. With five hundred thousand pounds he would never have to go without anything again!
And five hundred thousand would be enough to help Maryann, whom she’d spent the rest of Sunday visiting. She’d also been researching MS on the computer to see if there was something she could do to help. Unfortunately the information had been depressing. Once the effects of the disease set in, Maryann would need a flat on the ground floor and, with no family or funds at her disposal, moving was going to be difficult. Poppy had already thought of asking Maryann to move in with her and Simon, but Maryann was as fiercely independent as Poppy was herself, so she knew she wouldn’t take to that idea easily.
But with half a million pounds Poppy might be able to buy her a flat rather than have her continue to rent. She could pay Maryann back for all the help she had given her over the last eight years. Or could she? She had no idea how far half a million pounds would stretch.
For a moment she was tempted to take the money, oh, so tempted, but she knew there was no such thing as a free lunch. Taking money for nefarious reasons would always come back to haunt her. It would make her feel as cheap as her beginnings.
‘Well?’
Poppy felt a jolt go through her as Sebastiano impatiently advanced into her personal space with the lazy grace of a man who had it all.
‘Well, what?’ she asked, wishing she didn’t sound so breathless.
A muscle ticked in his jaw. ‘Your answer?’ he said in his rich bedroom voice.
Holding her ground against his intimidating force, Poppy shook her head. ‘I’m not for sale, Mr Castiglione.’
‘I know that.’ He ran a hand through his hair. ‘I’m not asking for this to be real. It’s a few days of your time. A trip to Italy.’ He pinned her to the spot with his stare alone. ‘I’ll even throw in a new wardrobe. No budget. It’s every woman’s dream. Not to mention you could buy yourself jeans that aren’t about to fall apart.’
The fact that he had noticed her unfashionably worn jeans made Poppy feel unclean. The fact that he was so arrogant, and thought he could buy anyone with his money, made her even more resolved to hold her own against him.
‘No.’ Poppy stepped back from him, feeling immediately cold without his body heat radiating close to hers. ‘You’ll have to find someone else.’
‘Admit it,’ he demanded quietly, his voice preventing her from turning around and walking out. ‘You’re tempted.’
‘Of course I’m tempted,’ she shot at him. He was so sure of hi
mself. So sure of her. ‘I wouldn’t be human if I wasn’t tempted, but...’ She smoothed her already neat hair into place and noticed her hand was shaking. Turning it into a fist at her side, she raised her chin. ‘I don’t think I would like myself very much if I agreed to take your money to pretend to be something I’m not.’
Sebastiano blew out a beleaguered breath. ‘Dio, save me from martyrs.’
‘I’m not a martyr.’ She tilted her head back to glare up at him, wishing he wasn’t quite so tall. ‘I just have principles.’
He nodded and she felt that finally she’d penetrated his shallow exterior. It should have only taken the flick of her nail, given his lack of depth. Somehow finding out that he really wasn’t a man of substance, but a self-absorbed rat like the rest of his ilk, had seriously disappointed her.
‘Will that be all?’ she asked stiffly, a picture of five hundred thousand pounds flashing like a neon sign inside her head.
Sebastiano stuck his hands in his pockets, his thunderstruck expression priceless. ‘You’re really turning me down?’
‘Yes.’ She tilted her chin higher, wondering if she wasn’t being an idiot to do so. But then she thought about what she would have to do to get that money. Pretend to be this man’s girlfriend. There was no way she could carry that off. Not for a million pounds!
His eyes gleamed predator-like as he watched her, and Poppy had the distinct impression she was in danger. Run, her inner voiced urged. So she did, reversing out of his office with the pace of a teenager texting on a phone.
When she was safely on the other side of the door she blew out a breath and walked on unsteady legs towards the lift. Since Paula’s husband had indeed broken his ankle, she wasn’t in the office, and Poppy was glad she didn’t have to face the older woman’s knowing gaze. Various employees had already warned her that every woman who came into contact with Sebastiano fell in love with him, and Poppy didn’t want anyone to think that she had joined their adoring ranks when she hadn’t.
Taking her phone from her handbag, she decided to duck into the ladies powder room before heading downstairs and facing her colleagues. She was tempted to call Maryann—Lord knew she could use the pep talk, and Maryann had been there for her right from the start. Well, not the start, exactly. Maryann had found her and Simon after Poppy had made the mistake of trusting a man that she shouldn’t have. She had met him on the long train ride to London and somehow he had wheedled out of her that she was underage and that she and Simon were runaways with no place to stay.
The Italian's Virgin Acquisition Page 3