Leonetti's Housekeeper Bride

‘It’s almost midnight!’ he hissed. ‘You can’t go calling on him now!’

‘If I wait until tomorrow I’ll lose my nerve,’ she said truthfully.

Damien hung back in the shadows, watching as she rang the doorbell and waited, her hands dug in the pockets of her faux-leather flying jacket. A voice sounded somewhere close by and she flinched in surprise, turning her head as a man in a suit talking into a mobile phone walked towards her in the moonlight.

‘I’m security, Miss Arnold,’ he said quietly. ‘I was telling Mr Leonetti who was at the door.’

Poppy suppressed a rude word. She had forgotten the tight security with which the Leonetti family surrounded themselves. Of course, calling in on Gaetano late at night wouldn’t go unquestioned.

‘I want to see your boss,’ she declared.

The security man was talking Italian into the phone and she couldn’t follow a word of what he was saying. When the man frowned, she knew he was about to deliver a negative and she moved off the step and snapped, ‘I have to see Gaetano! It’s really important.’

Somewhere someone made a decision and a moment later there was the sound of heavy bolts being drawn back to open the massive front door. Another security man nodded acknowledgement and stood back for her entrance into the marble-floored hall with its perfect proportions and priceless paintings. A trickle of perspiration ran down between her taut shoulder blades and she straightened her spine in defiance of it although she was already shrinking at the challenge of what she would have to tell Gaetano. At this juncture, coming clean was her sole option.

* * *

Poppy Arnold? Gaetano’s brain had conjured up several time-faded images. Poppy as a little girl paddling at the lake edge in spite of his warnings; Poppy sobbing over Dino with all the drama of her class and no thought of restraint; Poppy looking at him as if he might imminently walk on water when she was about fifteen, a scrutiny that had become considerably less innocent and entertaining a year later. And finally, Poppy, a taunting sensual smile tilting her lips as she sidled out of the shrubbery closely followed by a young estate worker, both of them engaged in righting their rumpled, grass-stained clothing.

Bearing in mind the number of years the Arnold family had worked for his own, he felt that it was only fair that he at least saw Poppy and listened to what she had to say in her mother’s defence. He hadn’t, however, thought about Poppy in years. Did she still live with her family? He was surprised, having always assumed Poppy would flee country life and the type of employment she had soundly trounced as being next door to indentured servitude in the modern world. Touching a respectful forelock had held no appeal whatsoever for outspoken, rebellious Poppy, he acknowledged wryly. How much had she changed? Was she working for him now somewhere on the pay roll? His ebony brows drew together in a frown at his ignorance as he lounged back against the edge of the library desk and awaited her appearance.

The tap-tap of high heels sounded in the corridor and the door opened to reveal legs that could have rivalled a Vegas showgirl’s toned and perfect pins. Disconcerted by that startlingly unexpected and carnal thought, Gaetano ripped his attention from those incredibly long shapely legs and whipped it up to her face, only to receive another jolt. Time had transformed Poppy Arnold into a tall, dazzling redhead. He was staring but he couldn’t help it while his shrewd brain was engaged in ticking off familiarities and changes. The bright green eyes were unaltered but the rounded face had fined down to an exquisite heart shape to frame slanting cheekbones, a dainty little nose and a mouth lush and pink enough to star in any male fantasy. The pulse at Gaetano’s groin throbbed and he straightened, flicking his jacket closed to conceal his physical reaction while thinking that Poppy might well get the last laugh after all because the ugly duckling he had once rejected had become a swan.

‘Mr Leonetti,’ she said as politely as though they had never met before.

‘Gaetano, please,’ he countered wryly, seeing no reason to stand on ceremony with her. ‘We have known each other since childhood.’

‘I don’t think I ever knew you,’ Poppy said frankly, studying him with bemused concentration.

She had expected to notice unappetising changes in Gaetano. After all, he was almost thirty years old now and lived a deskbound, self-indulgent and, by all accounts, decadent life. By this stage he should have been showing some physical fallout from that lifestyle. But there was no hint of portliness in his very tall, powerfully built frame and certainly no jowls to mar the perfection of his strong, stubbled jaw line. And his dense blue-black curly hair was as plentiful as ever.

An electrifying silence enclosed them and Poppy stepped restively off one foot onto the other, her slender figure tense as a drawn bow string while she studied him. Taller and broader than he had been, he was even more gorgeous than he had been seven years earlier when she had fallen for him like a ton of bricks. Silly, silly girl that she had been, she conceded ruefully, but there was no denying that even then she had had good taste because Gaetano was stunning in the way so very few men were. A tiny flicker in her pelvis made her press her thighs together, warmth flushing over her skin. His dark eyes, set below black straight brows, were locked to her with an intensity that made her inwardly squirm. He had eyes with incredibly long thick lashes, she was recalling dizzily, so dark and noticeable in their volume that she had once suspected him of wearing guy liner like some of the boys she had known back then.

‘Do you still live here with your mother and brother?’ Gaetano enquired.

‘Yes,’ Poppy admitted, fighting to banish the fog that had briefly closed round her brain. ‘You’re probably wondering why I’ve come to see you at this hour. I’m a bartender at the Flying Horseman down the road and I’ve only just finished my shift.’

Gaetano was pleasantly surprised that she had contrived to speak two entire sentences without spluttering the profanities which had laced her speech seven years earlier. Of course, right now she was probably watching her every word with him, he reasoned. A bartender? He supposed it explained the outfit, which looked as though it would be more at home in a nightclub.

‘I saw the newspaper article,’ she added. ‘Obviously you want to sack my mother for talking about the party and selling those photos. I’m not denying that you have good reason to do that.’

‘Where did the photos come from?’ Gaetano asked curiously. ‘Who took them?’

Poppy winced. ‘One of the guests invited my brother to join the party when she saw him outside directing cars. He did what I imagine most young men would do when they see half-naked women—he took pictures on his phone. I’m not excusing him but he didn’t sell those photos... It was my mother who took his phone and did that—’

‘I assume I’ll see your mother in person tomorrow before I leave. But I’ll ask you now. My family has always treated your mother well. Why did she do it?’

Poppy breathed in deep and lifted her chin, bracing herself for what she had to say. ‘My mother’s an alcoholic, Gaetano. They offered her money and that was all it took. All she was thinking about was probably how she would buy her next bottle of booze. I’m afraid she can’t see beyond that right now.’

Taken aback, Gaetano frowned. He had not been prepared for that revelation. It did not make a difference to his attitude though. Disloyalty was not a trait he could overlook in an employee. ‘Your mother must be a functioning alcoholic, then,’ he assumed. ‘Because the house appears to be in good order.’

‘No, she’s not functioning.’ Poppy sighed, her soft mouth tightening. ‘I’ve been covering up for her for more than a year. I’ve been looking after this place.’

His lean, darkly handsome features tightened. ‘In other words there has been a concentrated campaign to deceive me as to what was going on here,’ he condemned with a sudden harshness that dismayed her. ‘At any time you could have approached me and asked for my understanding and even my help—yet you chose not to do so. I have no tolerance for deception, Poppy. This meeting is at an end.’

A hundred different thoughts flashing through her mind, Poppy stared at him, her heart beating very fast with nerves and consternation. ‘But—’

‘No extenuating circumstances allowed or invited,’ Gaetano cut in with derision. ‘I have heard all I need to hear from you and there is nothing more to say. Leave.’

CHAPTER TWO

POPPY TOOK A sudden step forward. ‘Don’t speak to me like that!’ she warned Gaetano angrily.

‘I can speak to you whatever way I like. I’m in my own home and it seems that you are one of my employees.’

‘No, I’m not!’ Poppy contradicted with unashamed satisfaction. ‘I donated my services free for my mother’s sake!’

‘Let’s not make it sound as if you dug ditches,’ Gaetano fired back impatiently. ‘As I’m so rarely here there can’t be that much work concerned in keeping the house presentable.’

‘I think you’d be surprised by how much work is involved in a place this size!’ Poppy snapped back firely.

Anger made her green eyes shine blue-green like a peacock feather, Gaetano noted. ‘I’m really not interested,’ he said drily. ‘And if you donated your services free that was downright stupid, not praiseworthy.’

Poppy almost stamped an enraged foot. ‘I’m not stupid. How dare you say that? I could hardly charge you for the work my mother was already being paid to do, could I?’

Gaetano shrugged a broad shoulder, watching her tongue flick out to moisten her red-lipsticked mouth, imagining her doing other much dirtier things with it and then tensing with exquisite discomfort as arousal coursed feverishly through his lower body. She was sexy, smoulderingly so, he acknowledged grimly. ‘I’m sure you’re versatile enough to have found some way round that problem.’

‘But not dishonest enough to do so,’ Poppy proclaimed with pride. ‘Mum was being paid for the job and it was done, so on that score you have no grounds for complaint.’

‘I don’t?’ An ebony brow lifted in challenge. ‘An alcoholic has been left in charge of the household accounts?’

‘Oh, no, that’s not been happening,’ Poppy hastened to reassure him. ‘Mum no longer has access to the household cash. I made sure of that early on.’

‘Then how have the bills been paid?’

Poppy compressed her lips as she registered that he truly did not have a clue how his own household had worked for years. ‘I paid them. I’ve been taking care of the accounts here since Dad died.’

‘But you’re not authorised!’ Gaetano slammed back at her distrustfully.

‘Neither was my father but he took care of them for a long time.’

Gaetano’s frown grew even darker. ‘Your father had access as well? What the hell?’

‘Oh, for goodness’ sake, are you always this rigid?’ Poppy groaned in disbelief. ‘Mum never had a head for figures. Dad always did the accounts for her. Your grandmother knew. Whenever your grandmother had a query about the accounts she had to wait until Mum had asked Dad for the answer. It wasn’t a secret back then.’

‘And how am I supposed to trust you with substantial sums of money when your brother was recently in prison for theft?’ Gaetano demanded sharply. ‘My accountants will check the accounts and, believe me, if there are any discrepancies I will be bringing in the police.’

Having paled when he threw his knowledge of Damien’s conviction at her, Poppy stood very straight and still, her facial muscles tight with self-control. ‘Damien got involved with a gang of car thieves but he didn’t actually steal any of the cars. He’s the mechanic who worked on the stolen vehicles before they were shipped abroad to be sold.’

‘What a very fine distinction!’ Gaetano derided, unimpressed.

Poppy raised her head high, green eyes flashing defiance like sparks. ‘You get your accountants in to check the books. There won’t be any discrepancies,’ she fired back with pride. ‘And don’t be snide about my brother.’

‘I wasn’t being snide.’

‘You were being snide from the pinnacle of your rich, privileged, feather-bedded life. Damien broke the law and he was punished for it,’ Poppy told him. ‘He’s paid his dues and he’s learned his lesson. Maybe you’ve never made any mistakes, Gaetano?’

‘My mistake was in allowing that party to be held here!’ Gaetano slung back at her grittily. ‘And don’t drag my background or my wealth into this conversation. It’s unfair—’

‘Then don’t be so superior!’ Poppy advised. ‘But maybe you can’t help being the way you are.’

‘Do you really think hurling insults at me is likely to further your cause?’

‘You haven’t even given me the chance to tell you what my cause is,’ she pointed out. ‘You’re so argumentative, Gaetano!’

‘I’m...argumentative?’ Gaetano carolled in disbelief.

‘I want you to give Mum another chance,’ Poppy admitted doggedly. ‘I know you’re not feeling very generous. I know that having your kinky party preferences splashed all over the media has to have been embarrassing for you—’

‘I do not have kinky preferences—’

‘It’s none of my business whether you do or not!’ Poppy riposted. ‘I’m not being judgemental.’

‘How very generous of you in the circumstances,’ Gaetano murmured icily.

‘And if you’re not being argumentative, you’re being sarcastic!’ Poppy flared back at him with raw resentment. ‘Can you even try listening to me?’

‘If you could try to refrain from commenting about my preferences, kinky or otherwise,’ Gaetano advised flatly.

‘May I take my shoes off?’ she asked him abruptly. ‘I’ve been standing all night and my feet are killing me!’

Gaetano shifted an impatient hand. ‘Take them off. Say what you have to say and then go. I’m bored with this.’

‘You’re so kind and encouraging,’ Poppy replied in a honeyed tone of stinging sweetness as she removed her shoes and dropped several crucial inches in height, unsettled by the reality that, although she was five feet eight inches tall, he had a good six inches on her and now towered over her in a manner she instinctively disliked.

As she flexed those incredible long legs sheathed in black lace, Gaetano watched, admiring her long toned calves, neat little knees and long slender thighs. A flash of white inner thigh as she bent in that short skirt and her small full breasts shifting unbound below the clinging top sent his temperature rocketing and made his teeth grit. Was she teasing him deliberately? Was the provocative outfit a considered invitation? What woman dressed like that came to see a man at midnight with clean intentions?

‘Talk, Poppy,’ he urged very drily, infuriated at the way his brain was rebelling against his usual rational control and concentration to stray in directions he was determined not to travel.

‘Mum has had it tough the last few years—’

Gaetano held up a silencing hand. ‘I know about the stillbirth and of course your father’s death and I’m heartily sorry for the woman, but those misfortunes don’t excuse what’s been happening here.’

‘Mum needs help, not judgement, Gaetano,’ Poppy argued shakily.

‘I’m her employer, not her family and not a therapist,’ Gaetano pointed out calmly. ‘She’s not my responsibility.’

In a more hesitant voice, Poppy added, ‘Your grandfather always said we were one big family here.’

‘Please don’t tell me that you fell for that old chestnut. My grandfather is an old-fashioned man who likes the sound of such sentiments but somehow I don’t think he’d be any more compassionate than I am when it comes to the security of his home. Leaving an untrustworthy and unstable alcoholic in charge here would be complete madness,’ he stated coolly.

‘Yes, but...you could give Mum’s job to me,’ Poppy reasoned in a desperate rush. ‘I’ve been doing it to your satisfaction for months, so you’ve actually had a free trial. That way we could stay on in the flat and you wouldn’t have to look for someone new.’

Discomfiture made Gaetano tense. ‘You never wanted to do domestic work... I’m well aware of that.’

‘We all have to do things we don’t want to do, particularly when it comes to looking out for family,’ Poppy argued with feeling. ‘After Dad died I went back to my nursing course and left Damien looking after Mum. He couldn’t cope. He didn’t tell me how bad things had got here and because of that he got into trouble. Mum is my responsibility and I turned my back on her when she needed me most.’

Gaetano, who was unsurprised that she had sought a career outside domestic service, thought she had a ridiculously overactive conscience. ‘It wouldn’t work, Poppy. I’m sorry. I wish you well and I’m sorry I can’t help.’

‘Won’t help,’ she slotted in curtly.

‘You’re not my idea of a housekeeper. It’s best that you make a new start somewhere else with your family,’ he declared.

No, he definitely didn’t want Poppy with her incredibly alluring legs in his house, even though he didn’t visit it very often. She would be a dangerous temptation and he was determined that he would never go there. Never muck around with staff was a maxim etched in stone in Gaetano’s personal commandments. When a former PA had thrown herself at him one evening early in his career he had slept with her. For him it had been a one-night stand on a business trip and nothing more, but she had been far more ambitious and it had ended messily, teaching him that professional relationships should never cross the boundaries into intimacy.

‘It’s not that easy to make a new start,’ Poppy told him tightly. ‘I’m the only one out of the three of us with a job and if I have to move I’ll lose that.’

Gaetano expelled his breath on an impatient hiss. ‘Poppy... I am not going to apologise for the fact that your mother breached her employment contract and plunged me into a scandal. You cannot lay her problems at my door. I have every sympathy for your position and, out of consideration for the years that your family worked here and did an excellent job, I will make a substantial final payment—’

‘Oh, keep your blasted conscience money!’ Poppy flung at him, suddenly losing her temper, her fierce pride stung by his attitude. He thought that she and her mother and her brother were a sad bunch of losers and he was so keen to get them off his property that he was prepared to pay more for the privilege. ‘I don’t want anything from you. I won’t take anything more from you!’

‘Losing your temper is a very bad idea in a situation like this,’ he breathed irritably as she bent down to scoop up her shoes and turned on her heel, her short skirt flaring round her pert behind.

Poppy turned her head, green eyes gleaming like polished jewels. ‘It’s the only thing I’ve got left to lose,’ she contradicted squarely.

Gaetano threw up his hands in a gesture of frustration. ‘Then why the hell are you doing it? Put yourself first and leave your family to sort out their own problems!’

‘Is that what the ruthless, callous banker would do to save his own skin?’ Poppy asked scornfully as she reached the door. ‘Mum and Damien are my family and, yes, they’re very different from me. I take after Dad and I’m strong. They’re not. They crumble in a crisis. Does that mean I love them any less? No, it doesn’t. In fact it probably means I love them more. I love them warts and all and as long as there’s breath in my body I’ll look after them to the best of my ability.’

Gaetano was stunned into silence by her emotive words. He couldn’t imagine loving anyone like that. His parents had been both been weak and fallible in their different ways. His father had chased thrills and his mother had chased money and Gaetano had only learned to despise them for their shallow characters. His parents had not had the capacity to love him and once he had got old enough to understand that he had stopped loving them, ultimately recognising that only his grandparents genuinely cared about him and his well-being. For that reason, the concept of continuing to blindly love seriously flawed personalities and still feel a duty of care towards them genuinely shocked Gaetano, who was infinitely more discerning and demanding of those closest to him. He had seen Poppy Arnold’s strength and he admired it, but he thought she was a complete fool to allow her wants and wishes to be handicapped by the double burden of a drunken mother and a pretty useless kid brother.

He went for a shower, still mulling over the encounter with a feeling of amazement that grew rather than dwindled. Rodolfo Leonetti would have been hugely impressed by Poppy’s speech, he acknowledged grimly. His grandfather, after all, had wasted years striving to advise and support his feckless son and his frivolous daughter-in-law. Rodolfo had overlooked their faults and had compassionately made the best of a bad situation. Gaetano, however, was much tougher than the older man, less patient, less forgiving, less sympathetic. Was that a flaw in him? he wondered for the very first time.

Thinking of how much Rodolfo would have applauded Poppy’s family loyalty, Gaetano reflected equally on her flaws that Rodolfo would have cringed from. Her background was dreadful, the family unpalatable. Mother an alcoholic? Brother a convicted criminal? Poppy’s provocative clothing and use of bad language? And yet wasn’t Poppy Arnold an ordinary girl of the type Rodolfo had always contended would make his grandson a perfect wife?

Having towelled himself dry, Gaetano got into bed naked and lay there, lost in thought. A sudden laugh escaped him as he momentarily allowed himself to imagine his grandfather’s horror if he were to produce a young woman like Poppy as his future wife. Rodolfo was much more of a snob than he would ever be prepared to admit and it was hardly surprising that he should be for the Leonettis had been a family of great wealth and power for hundreds of years. Yet the same man had risked disinheritance when he had married a fisherman’s daughter against his family’s wishes. Gaetano couldn’t imagine that kind of love. He felt no need for that sort of excessive emotion in his life. In fact the very idea of it terrified him and always had.

He didn’t want to get married. Maybe by the time he was in his forties he would have mellowed a little and would feel the need to settle down with a companion. At some point too he should have a child to continue the family line. He flinched from the concept, remembering his father’s temper tantrums and his mother’s tears and nagging whines. Marriage had a bad image with him. Why couldn’t Rodolfo understand and accept that reality? He was just too young for settling down but not too young to take over as CEO of the bank.

The germ of an idea occurred to Gaetano and struck him as weird, so he discarded it, only to take it out again a few minutes later and examine it in greater depth. Suppose he quite deliberately produced a fiancée whom his grandfather would deem wrong for him? In that scenario nobody would be the slightest bit surprised when the engagement was broken off again and Rodolfo would be relieved rather than disappointed. He would see that Gaetano had made an effort to commit to a woman and honour that change accordingly by giving his grandson breathing space for quite some time afterwards. A fake incompatible fiancée could get him off the hook...

In the moonlight piercing the curtains, Gaetano’s lean, darkly handsome features were beginning to form a shadowy smile. Pick an ordinary girl and she would naturally have to be beautiful if his grandfather was to be convinced that his fastidious grandson had fallen for her. Pick a beautiful ordinary girl guaranteed to be an embarrassment in public. Poppy could drop all the profanities she liked, dress like a hooker and tell everybody about her sordid family problems. He wouldn’t even have to prime her to fail in his exclusive world. It was a given that she would be so out of her depth that she would automatically do so.

A sliver of the conscience that Gaetano rarely listened to slunk out to suggest that it would be a little cruel to subject Poppy to such an ordeal merely for the sake of initially satisfying and then hopefully changing his grandfather’s expectations. But then it wouldn’t be a real engagement. She would know from the outset that she was faking it and she would be handsomely paid for her role. Nor would she need to know that he was expecting, no, depending on her to be a social embarrassment to get him out of the engagement again. It would sort of be like Pygmalion in reverse, he reasoned with quiet satisfaction. Pick an ordinary girl, who was an extraordinary beauty and extremely outspoken and hot-tempered... She would be absolutely perfect for his purposes because she would be an accident waiting to happen.