Susanna Carr - Modern Romance February 2016 Editor's Choice

Poppy rolled her eyes. He was so slick and full of confidence but that caressing touch lingered with her, lighting up little pockets of melting willingness inside her treacherous body. ‘I’ll keep it in mind. If my itch has to be scratched I will seriously consider you,’ she lied stonily.

‘What more do you want from me?’ Gaetano asked silkily. ‘I’m honest. I’m clean. I don’t lie or cheat.’

‘It doesn’t stop you from being a four-letter word of a man,’ Poppy told him roundly. ‘I thought Italian lovers were supposed to be the last word in seduction. You just turned me off big time.’

‘I was respecting your intelligence by not shooting you a line,’ Gaetano traded with husky amusement that laced through his dark deep drawl in a sexy, accented purr.

Poppy pictured herself flipping over and slapping him so hard his perfect teeth rattled in his too ingenious head. Her own teeth gritted aggressively. Without warning she was also imagining easing back into the hard, allmale heat of him while his arms closed round her and his hips moved against hers. And that sensual imagery was so energising that she felt boiling hot all over. Her nipples swelled and prickled and the heat in her pelvis mushroomed. Her face burned with shame in the darkness. Wanting was wanting, she reasoned with the sexual side of her nature, but it wasn’t enough on its own. Gaetano wasn’t the man for her, she reminded herself doggedly.

‘You know, if you were a nice guy—’

‘When did I ever say I was a nice guy?’ Gaetano cut in sharply.

‘You didn’t,’ Poppy conceded grudgingly, turning over to pick out the powerful silhouette of his head and shoulders in the dim light. ‘But you shouldn’t be thinking about your sex life. Right now you should be worrying more about how your grandfather is going to feel when this engagement falls through. Because he’s making such an effort to be welcoming and accepting of someone like me, I think he’ll be devastated when our relationship comes to nothing.’

‘Allow me to know my own grandfather better than you.’

‘You’re too focused on your career plan to see beyond it. What I saw today was that Rodolfo was incredibly happy about you getting engaged. How could he be anything other than upset when it breaks down?’

Gaetano grimaced and flung his dark head back against the pillows. She didn’t understand. How could she? He could hardly tell her that she was supposed to bomb as a fiancée so that her disappearance from his life again would be more worthy of celebration than disappointment. Time would take care of that problem. After all, she had most likely been on her very best behaviour at her first meeting with his grandfather and sooner rather than later she would probably let herself down.

‘You used to swear a lot,’ he remarked out of the blue.

‘I picked it up at school because everyone used bad language. For a while I did it deliberately because I was being bullied and I was desperate to fit in,’ she confided.

‘Did it make a difference?’

‘No,’ she admitted with a wry laugh. ‘Nothing I wore or did or said could make me cool. Being plump with red hair and living at Woodfield Hall with “those posh bastards” was a supreme provocation to the other pupils.’

‘What did the bullies do?’

Thinking of her getting bullied, Gaetano was experiencing an extraordinary desire to pull her into his arms and comfort her. But he didn’t do comforting. Indeed he was downright unnerved by that perverse impulse and he actually shifted as far away from her as he could get and still be in the same bed.

‘All the usual. Name calling, tripping me up, nasty rumours and messages and texts,’ she recited wearily. ‘I hated school, couldn’t wait to get out of there. Once I was out, I stopped swearing as soon as I realised it offended people.’

He was tempted to tell her that she had never been plump. She had simply developed her womanly curves before she shot up in height. But right then he didn’t want to talk and he didn’t want to think about curves, womanly or otherwise. His hunger for her was making him uncomfortable and that infuriated him because Gaetano had never hungered that much for one particular woman. Beautiful women had always been pretty much interchangeable for him. It was the challenge, he told himself impatiently. He only wanted her because she was saying no. But that simplistic belief didn’t ease his tension in the slightest. It was, he decided grimly, likely to feel like a very long engagement.

* * *

First thing in the morning, Poppy looked amazing, Gaetano conceded hours later, studying her from across the bedroom. Her red hair streamed like a banner across the pale bedding, framing her delicate face and the rosebud pout of her lips. A narrow shoulder protruded from below his slipped tee shirt and the sheet was pushed back to bare one leg from knee to slender ankle. And that easily, that quickly, Gaetano had a hard-on again and gritted his teeth in annoyance. What the hell was it about her? He felt like a man trying to fight an invisible illness!

‘Poppy...?’

She shifted in the bed, lashes fluttering up on luminous green eyes. ‘Gaetano...?’ she whispered drowsily.

‘I left that prompt sheet I meant you to study last night on the desk in my home office. I’ll see you at Rodolfo’s party at three.’

Poppy sat up in a panic. ‘What will I wear?’

‘Your usual clothes. Be yourself,’ he reminded her as he vanished out of the door.

Poppy scrambled out of bed to follow him. ‘Where are you going?’

Gaetano swung round and sent her a pained appraisal. ‘Work...the bank.’

‘Oh...’ Having asked what appeared to be a stupid question, Poppy ducked hastily back into the bedroom and went for a shower while planning her own day.

First of all she had to go and buy the ingredients for her present for Rodolfo’s seventy-fifth. She could only hope that she wasn’t getting it wrong in the gift department. After that she had a rather more pressing need to attend to: finding work for herself. She had just about enough money in her purse to make Rodolfo’s cake but she had nothing more and no savings to fall back on.

The sleek granite-topped kitchen had a fridge packed with food and a very large selection of chocolate cereals that made her smile. Gaetano had remembered her preference. She ate while she studied the prompt sheets he had mentioned. It was like a CV written for a job: qualifications listed, sports pursuits outlined, not a single reference to any memorable moments. He just had no idea of the sort of things that a woman in love would want to know about him, Poppy reflected ruefully. When was his birthday? What was his favourite colour?

She texted him to ask.

Gaetano suppressed a groan when his phone buzzed yet again and lifted it to see what the latest irrelevant question was.

Who was the first woman you fell in love with?

He had never been in love and he was proud of it.

What do you value most in a woman?

Independence, he texted back.

As Poppy walked round the supermarket with her shopping list she raised her brows. If he liked independent women why did he always date clingy airheads? So, she asked that too and they began to argue by text until she was laughing. Gaetano had an image of himself that did not always match reality. She could have told him that he dated clingy airheads because they did as they were told, accepted his workaholic schedule and made few demands.

Noticing a ‘help wanted’ sign in the window of a café she called in, enjoyed an interview on the spot and was hired to work a shift that very evening. Relieved to have solved the problem of being broke, she returned to the town house by the separate entrance at the side and proceeded to mess up Gaetano’s basically unused kitchen with her baking session. She settled the cake into the cake carrier she had bought for the purpose and set the birthday card on top of it before going to get changed.