‘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 scrubbing floors or serving drinks.’

‘Stop!’ Poppy said, leaping to her feet to walk restively around 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. 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 of course your ultimate goal is becoming CEO of the Leonetti Bank—and marrying me will deliver that,’ Poppy filled in slowly, her 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.’

‘I’ll give you an answer in the morning.’

Gaetano slid fluidly out of his seat and approached her. ‘But you already know the answer. You like what I do to you,’ he said huskily, with blazing confidence, running a teasing forefinger down over her cheek to stroke it along the soft curve of her full lower lip.

LYNNE GRAHAM was born in Northern Ireland and has been a keen romance reader since her teens. She is very happily married to an understanding husband who has learned to cook since she started to write! Her five children keep her on her toes. She has a very large dog who knocks everything over, a very small terrier who barks a lot, and two cats. When time allows, Lynne is a keen gardener.

Leonetti’s Housekeeper Bride

Lynne Graham

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MILLS & BOON

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Contents

Cover

Introduction

About the Author

Title Page

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

Extract

Copyright

CHAPTER ONE

GAETANO LEONETTI WAS having a very bad day. It had started at dawn, when his phone went off and proceeded to show him a series of photos that enraged him but which he knew would enrage his grandfather and the very conservative board of the Leonetti investment bank even more. Regrettably, sacking the woman responsible for the story in the downmarket tabloid was likely to be the sole satisfaction he could hope to receive.

‘It’s not your fault,’ Tom Sandyford, Gaetano’s middle-aged legal adviser and close friend, told him quietly.

‘Of course it’s my fault,’ Gaetano growled. ‘It was my house, my party and the woman in my bed at the time who organised the damned party—’

‘Celia was that soap star with the cocaine habit you didn’t know about,’ Tom reminisced. ‘Wasn’t she sacked from the show soon after you ditched her?’

Gaetano nodded, his even white teeth gritting harder.

‘It’s a case of bad luck...that’s all,’ Tom opined. ‘You can’t ask your guests to post their credentials beforehand, so you had no way of knowing some of them weren’t tickety-boo.’

‘Tickety-boo?’ Gaetano repeated, his lean, darkly handsome features frowning. Although he was born and raised in England, Italian had been the language of his home and he still occasionally came across English words and phrases that were unfamiliar.

‘Decent upstanding citizens,’ Tom rephrased. ‘So, a handful of them were hookers? Well, in the rarefied and very privileged world you move in, how were you supposed to find that out?’

‘The press found it out,’ Gaetano countered flatly.

‘With the usual silly “Orgy at the Manor” big reveal. It’ll be forgotten in five minutes...although that blonde dancing naked in the fountain out front is rather memorable,’ Tom remarked, scanning the newspaper afresh with lascivious intent.

‘I don’t remember seeing her. I left the party early to fly to New York. Everyone still had their clothes on at that stage,’ Gaetano said drily. ‘I really don’t need another scandal like this.’

‘Scandal does rather seem to follow you around. I suppose the old man and the board at the bank are up in arms as usual,’ Tom commented with sympathy.

Gaetano compressed his wide sensual mouth in silent agreement. In the name of family loyalty and respect, he was paying in the blood of his fierce pride and ambition for the latest scandal. Letting his seventy-four-year-old grandfather Rodolfo carpet him like a badly behaved schoolboy had proved to be a truly toxic experience for a billionaire whose investment advice was sought by governments both in the UK and abroad. And when Rodolfo had settled into his favourite preaching session about Gaetano’s womanising lifestyle, Gaetano had had to breathe in deeply several times and resist the urge to point out to the older man that expectations and values had changed since the nineteen forties for both men and women.

Rodolfo Leonetti had married a humble fisherman’s daughter at the age of twenty-one and during his fifty years of devoted marriage he had never looked at another woman. Ironically, his only child, Gaetano’s father, Rocco, had not taken his father’s advice on the benefits of making an early marriage either. Rocco had been a notorious playboy and an incorrigible gambler. He had married a woman young enough to be his daughter when he was in his fifties, had fathered one son and had expired ten years later after over-exerting himself in another woman’s bed. Gaetano reckoned he had been paying for his father’s sins almost from the hour of his birth. At the age of twenty-nine and one of the world’s leading bankers, he was tired of being continually forced to prove his worth and confine his projects to the narrow expectations of the board. He had made millions for the Leonetti Bank; he deserved to be CEO.

Indeed, Rodolfo’s angry ultimatum that very morning had outraged Gaetano.

‘You will never be the chief executive of this bank until you change your way of life and settle down into being a respectable family man!’ his grandfather had sworn angrily. ‘I will not support your leadership with the board and, no matter how brilliant you are, Gaetano, the board always listens to me... They remember too well how your father almost brought the bank down with his risky ventures!’

Yet what, realistically, did Gaetano’s sex life have to do with his acumen and expertise as a banker? Since when were a wife and children the only measure of a man’s judgement and maturity?

Gaetano had not the slightest interest in getting married. In fact he shuddered at the idea of being anchored to one woman for the rest of his life while living in fear of a divorce that could deprive him of half of his financial portfolio. He was a very hard worker. He had earned his academic qualifications with honours in the most prestigious international institutions and his achievements since then had been immense. Why wasn’t that enough? In comparison his father had been an academically slow and spoiled rich boy who, like Peter Pan, had refused to grow up. Such a comparison was grossly unfair.

Tom dealt Gaetano a rueful appraisal. ‘You didn’t get the old “find an ordinary girl” spiel again, did you?’

‘“An ordinary girl, not a party girl, one who takes pleasure in the simple things of life,”’ Gaetano quoted verbatim because his grandfather’s discourses always ran to the same conclusion: marry, settle down, father children with a home-loving female...and the world would then miraculously become Gaetano’s oyster with little happy unicorns dancing on some misty horizon shaped by a rainbow. His lean bronzed features hardened with grim cynicism. He had seen just how well that fantasy had turned out for once-married and now happily divorced friends.

‘Perhaps you could time travel back to the nineteen fifties to find this ordinary girl,’ Tom quipped, wondering how the era of female liberation and career women had contrived to pass Rodolfo Leonetti by so completely that he still believed such women existed.

‘The best of it is, if I did produce an ordinary girl and announce that I was going to marry her Rodolfo would be appalled,’ Gaetano breathed impatiently. ‘He’s too much of a snob. Unfortunately he’s become so obsessed by his conviction that I need to marry that he’s blocking my progression at the bank.’

His PA entered and extended two envelopes. ‘The termination of contract on the grounds of the confidentiality clause which has been breached and the notice to quit the accommodation that goes with the job,’ she specified. ‘The helicopter is waiting for you on the roof, sir.’

‘What’s going on?’ Tom asked.

‘I’m flying down to Woodfield Hall to sack the housekeeper who handed over those photos to the press.’

‘It was the housekeeper?’ Tom prompted in surprise.

‘She was named in the article. Not the brightest of women,’ Gaetano pointed out drily.

* * *

Poppy leapt off her bike, kicked the support into place and ran into the village shop to buy milk. As usual she was running late but she could not drink coffee without milk and didn’t feel properly awake until she had had at least two cups. Her mane of fiery red-gold curls bounced on her slim black-clad shoulders and her green eyes sparkled.

‘Good morning, Frances,’ she said cheerfully to the rather sour-looking older woman behind the counter as she dug into her purse to pay.

‘I’m surprised you’re so bright this morning,’ the shop owner remarked in a tone laden with suggestive meaning.

‘Why wouldn’t I be?’

The older woman slapped a well-thumbed newspaper down on the counter and helpfully turned it round to enable Poppy to read the headline. Poppy paled with dismay and snatched the publication up, moving on impatiently to the next page only to groan at the familiar photo of the naked blonde cavorting in the fountain. Her brother, Damien, had definitely taken that photo on the night of that infamous party. She knew that because she had caught him showing that particular one off to his mates.

‘Seems your ma has been talking out of turn,’ Frances remarked. ‘Shouldn’t think Mr Leonetti will appreciate that...’

Glancing up to meet the older woman’s avidly curious gaze, Poppy hastily paid for the paper and left the shop. That photo? How on earth had the newspaper got hold of it? And what about the other photos? The heaving, fortunately unidentifiable bodies in one of the bedrooms? When invited to join the party by a drunken guest, had Damien taken other, even more risqué pictures? And her mother...what insanity had persuaded her to risk her job by trashing her employer to a tabloid journalist? Poppy’s soft full mouth down-curved and her shoulders slumped as she climbed back on her bike. Unfortunately Poppy knew exactly why her mother might have been so foolish: Jasmine Arnold was an alcoholic.

Poppy had once got her mother to an AA meeting and it had done her good but she had never managed to get the older woman back to a second. Instead, Jasmine just drank herself insensible every day while Poppy struggled to do her mother’s job for her as well as doing her own. What else could she do when the very roof over their heads was dependent on Jasmine’s continuing employment? And after all, wasn’t it her fault that her mother had sunk so low before Poppy realised how bad things had got in her own home and had finally come back to live with her family again?

It was very fortunate that Gaetano only visited the house once or twice a year. But then Gaetano was a city boy through and through and a beautiful Georgian country house an inconvenient distance from London was of little use or interest to him. Had he been a more regular visitor she would never have been able to conceal her mother’s condition for so long.

Poppy pumped the bike pedals hard to get up the hill before careening at speed into the driveway of Woodfield Hall. The beautiful house had been the Leonetti family home in England since the eighteenth century when the family had first come over from Venice to set up as glorified moneylenders. And if there was one thing that family were good at it, it was making pots and pots of money, Poppy reflected ruefully, shying away from the challenge of thinking about Gaetano in an any more personal way.

She and Gaetano might have virtually grown up in the same household but it would be an outright lie to suggest that they were ever in any way friendly. After all, Gaetano was six years older and had spent most of his time in posh boarding schools.

But Poppy knew that Gaetano would go crazy about the publication of those photos. He was fanatical about his privacy and if his idea of fun was a sex party, she could perfectly understand why! Her spirits sank at the prospect of the trouble looming ahead. No matter how hard she worked life never seemed to get any easier and there always seemed to be another crisis waiting to erupt round the next corner. Yet how could she look after her mother and her brother when their own survival instincts appeared to be so poor?

The Arnold family lived in a flat that had been converted from part of the original stable block at the hall. Jasmine Arnold, a tall skinny redhead in her late forties, was sitting at the kitchen table when her daughter walked in.

Poppy slapped down the paper on the table. ‘Mum? Were you out of your mind when you talked to a journalist about that party?’ she demanded, before opening the back door and yelling her brother’s name at the top of her voice.

Damien emerged from one of the garages, wiping oil stains off his hands with a dirty cloth. ‘Where’s the fire?’ he asked irritably as his sister moved forward to greet him.

‘You gave the photos you took at that party to a journalist?’ his sister challenged in disbelief.

‘No, I didn’t,’ her kid brother countered. ‘Mum knew they were on my phone and she handed them over. She sold them. Got a pile of cash for them and the interview.’

Poppy was even more appalled. She could have excused stupidity or careless speech to the wrong person but she was genuinely shocked that her mother had taken money in return for her disloyalty to her employer.

Damien groaned at the expression on his sister’s face. ‘Poppy...you should know by now that Mum would do anything to get the money to buy her next drink,’ he pointed out heavily. ‘I told her not to hand over the photos or talk to the guy but she wouldn’t listen to me—’

‘Why didn’t you tell me what she’d done?’

‘What could you do about it? I hoped that maybe the photos wouldn’t be used or that, if they were, nobody of any importance would see them,’ Damien admitted. ‘I doubt if Gaetano sits down to read every silly story that’s written about him... I mean, he’s never out of the papers!’

‘But if you’re wrong, Mum will be sacked and we’ll be kicked out of the flat.’

Damien wasn’t the type to worry about what might never happen and he said wryly, ‘Let’s hope I’m not wrong.’

But Poppy took after her late father and she was a worrier. It was hard to credit that it was only a few years since the Arnolds had been a secure and happy family of four. Her father had been the gardener at Woodfield Hall and her mother the housekeeper. At twenty years of age, Poppy had been two years into her training at nursing school and Damien had just completed his apprenticeship as a car mechanic. And then without any warning at all their much-loved father had dropped dead and all their lives had been shattered by that cruelly sudden bereavement.

Poppy had taken time out from her course to try and help her mother through the worst of her grief and then she had returned to her studies. Unhappily and without her knowledge, things had gone badly wrong at that point. Her mother had gone off the rails and Damien had been unable to cope with what was happening in his home. Her brother had then got in with the wrong crowd and had ended up in prison. That was when Poppy had finally come home to find her mother sunk in depression and drinking heavily. Poppy had taken a leave of absence from her course, hoping, indeed expecting, that her mother would soon pull round again. Unfortunately that hadn’t happened. Although Jasmine was still drinking, Poppy’s one consolation was that, after earning early release from prison with his good behaviour, her little brother had got his act together again. Sadly, however, Damien’s criminal record had made it impossible for him to get a job.

Poppy still felt horribly guilty about the fact that she had left her kid brother to deal with her deeply troubled mother. Intent on pursuing her chosen career and being the first Arnold female in generations not to earn her living by serving the Leonettis, she had been selfish and thoughtless and she had been trying to make up for that mistake ever since.

When she returned to the flat her mother had locked herself in her bedroom. Poppy suppressed a sigh and dug out her work kit and rubber gloves to cross the courtyard and enter the hall. She turned out different rooms of the big house every week, dusting and vacuuming and scrubbing. It was deeply ironic that she had been so set against working for the Leonettis when she was a teenager but had ended up doing it anyway even if it was unofficial. Evenings she served drinks in the local pub. There wasn’t time in her life for agonising when there was always a job needing to be done.

Disturbingly however she couldn’t get Gaetano Leonetti out of her mind. He was the one and only boy she had ever hated but also the only one she had ever loved. What did that say about her? Self-evidently, that at the age of sixteen she had been really stupid to imagine for one moment that she could ever have any kind of a personal relationship with the posh, privileged scion of the Leonetti family. The wounding demeaning words that Gaetano had shot at her then were still burned into her bones like the scars of an old breakage.

‘I don’t mess around with staff,’ he had said, emphasising the fact that they were not equals and that he would always inhabit a different stratum of society.

‘Stop coming on to me, Poppy. You’re acting like a slapper.’ Oh, how she had cringed at that reading of her behaviour when in truth she had merely been too young and inexperienced to know how to be subtle about spelling out the fact that should he be interested, she was available.

‘You’re a short, curvy redhead. You could never be my type.’

It was seven years since that humiliating exchange had taken place and apart from one final demeaning encounter she had not seen Gaetano since, having always gone out of her way to avoid him whenever he was expected at the hall. So, he didn’t know that she had slimmed down and shot up inches in height, wouldn’t much care either, she reckoned with wry amusement. After all, Gaetano went for very beautiful and sophisticated ladies in designer clothes. Although the one who had thrown that shockingly wild party had not been much of a lady in the original sense of the word.

Having put in her hours at the hall in the ongoing challenge to ensure that it was always well prepared for a visit that could come at very short notice, Poppy went back home to get changed for her bar work. Jasmine was out for the count on her bed, an empty bottle of cheap wine lying beside her. Studying her slumped figure, Poppy suppressed a sigh, recalling the busy, lively and caring woman her mother had once been. Alcohol had stolen all that from her. Jasmine needed specialised help and rehabilitation but there wasn’t even counselling available locally and Poppy had no hope of ever acquiring sufficient cash to pay for private treatment for the older woman.

Poppy put on the Goth clothes that she had first donned like a mask to hide behind when she was a bullied teenager. She had been picked on in school for being a little overweight and red-haired. Heck, she had even been bullied for being ‘posh’ although her family lived in the hall’s servant accommodation. Since then, although she no longer dyed her hair or painted her nails black, she had come to enjoy a touch of individuality in her wardrobe and had maintained the basic style. She had lost a lot of weight since she started working two jobs and she was convinced that her Goth-style clothes did a good job of disguising her skinniness. For work she had teamed a dark red net flirty skirt with a fitted black jersey rock print top. The outfit hugged her small full breasts, enhanced her waist and accentuated the length of her legs.

At the end of her shift in the busy bar that was paired with a popular restaurant, Poppy pulled on her coat and waited outside for Damien to show up on his motorbike.

‘Gaetano Leonetti arrived in a helicopter this evening,’ her brother delivered curtly. ‘He demanded to see Mum but she was out of it and I had to pretend she was sick. He handed over these envelopes for her and I opened them once he’d gone. Mum’s being sacked and we have a month’s notice to move out of the flat.’

An anguished moan of dismay at those twin blows parted Poppy’s lips.

‘I guess he did see that newspaper.’ Damien grimaced. ‘He certainly hasn’t wasted any time booting us out.’

‘Can we blame him for that?’ Poppy asked even though her heart was sinking to the soles of her shoes. Where would they go? How would they live? They had no rainy-day account for emergencies. Her mother drank her salary and Damien was on benefits.

But Poppy was a fighter, always had been, always would be. She took after her father more than her mother. She was good at picking herself up when things went wrong. Her mother, however, had never fully recovered from the stillbirth she had suffered the year before Poppy’s father had died. Those two terrible calamities coming so close together had knocked her mother’s feet from under her and she had never really got up again. Poppy swallowed hard as she climbed onto the bike and gripped her brother’s waist. She could still remember her mother’s absolute joy at that unexpected late pregnancy, which in the end had become a source of so much grief and loss.

As the bike rolled past the hall Poppy saw the light showing through the front window of the library and tensed. Gaetano was staying over for the night?

‘Yeah, he’s still here,’ Damien confirmed as he put his bike away. ‘So what?’

‘I’m going to speak to him—’

‘What’s the point?’ her brother asked in a tone of defeat. ‘Why should he care?’

But Gaetano did have a heart, Poppy thought in desperation. At least he had had a heart at the age of thirteen when his father had run over his dog and killed it. She had seen the tears in Gaetano’s eyes and she had been crying too. Dino had been as much her dog as his because Dino had hung around with her when Gaetano was away at school, not that he had probably ever realised that. Dino had never been replaced and when she had asked why not in the innocent way of a child, Gaetano had simply said flatly, ‘Dogs die.’

And she had been too young to really understand that outlook, that raising of the barriers against the threat of being hurt again. She had seen no tears in his remarkable eyes at his father’s funeral but he had been almost as devastated as his grandfather when his grandmother passed away. But then the older couple had been more his parents than his real parents had. Within a year of becoming a widow, his mother had remarried and moved to Florida without her son.

Poppy breathed in deep as she marched round the side of the big house with Damien chasing in her wake.

‘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.

* * *

Poppy barely slept that night. Gaetano had said and done nothing unexpected. Of course he wanted them off his fancy property, out of sight and out of mind! His incredulous attitude to her attachment to her family had appalled her though. And where were they going to go? And how would they live when they got there? She would have to throw them on the tender mercies of the social services. My goodness, would they end up living in one of those homeless hostels? Eating out of a food bank?

She got up early as usual, relishing that quiet time of day before her mother or her brother stirred. Even better it was a sunny morning and she took her coffee out to the tiny square of garden at the back of the building that was her favourite place in the world. Making plants flourish, simply growing things, gave her great pleasure.

A riot of flowers in pots ornamented the tiny paved area with its home-made bench seat that was more than a little rickety. However, her Dad had made that bench and she would never part with it. With the clear blue sky above and birds singing in the trees nearby, she felt guilty for feeling so stressed and unhappy. When she had been a little girl working by her father’s side she had wanted to be a gardener. Assuming that that would inevitably mean one day working for the Leonettis, she had changed her mind, ignorant of the reality that there were a host of training courses and jobs in the horticultural world far from Woodfield Hall that she could have aspired to. Well, so much for her planned escape, she thought heavily. Now that they were being evicted, she didn’t want to leave.

‘Miss Arnold?’ One of Gaetano’s security men looked over the fence at her. ‘Mr Leonetti wants to see you.’

Poppy leapt upright. Had he had second thoughts about his decision? She smoothed down the thin jacket she wore over a black gothic dress. She had expected Gaetano to demand to see her mother again and she had dressed up in her equivalent of armour to tell him that her mother would be incapable of even speaking to him until midday. She walked round the side of the building and headed towards the house.

‘Mr Leonetti is waiting for you at the helicopter.’

So, he was planning to toss a two-minute speech at her and depart, Poppy gathered ruefully. It didn’t sound as though he’d had a change of heart, did it? She followed the path to the helipad at the far side of the hall, identifying Gaetano as the taller man in the small clump of waiting males who included the pilot and Gaetano’s security staff. In a pale grey exquisitely tailored designer suit, his arrogant dark head held high, Gaetano looked like a king, and as she moved towards him he stood there much like a king waiting for her to come to him. So, what was new? Gaetano Leonetti didn’t have a humble bone in his magnificent body. No, no, less of the magnificent, she scolded herself angrily. No way was she going to look admiringly at the male making her and her family homeless, even if he did have just cause!

‘Good morning, Poppy,’ Gaetano drawled, smooth as glass, scanning her appearance in the form-fitting black dress that brushed her knees and what appeared to be combat boots with keen appreciation. The jacket looked as if it belonged to a circus ringmaster and he almost smiled at the prospect of his grandfather’s disquiet. Clearly, Poppy always dressed strangely and he could certainly work with that eccentricity. In fact the more eccentricities, the better. And she looked amazingly well in that weird outfit with her freckle-free skin like whipped cream and her hair tumbling in silky bronzed ringlets round her slight shoulders, highlighting her alluring face.

He was not attracted to her, he told himself resolutely. He could appreciate a woman’s looks without wanting to bed her. He wasn’t that basic in his tastes, was he? The incipient throb of a hard-on, however, hinted that he might be a great deal more basic than he wanted to believe. Of course that was acceptable too, Gaetano conceded shrewdly. Rodolfo was no fool and would soon notice any apparent lack of sexual chemistry.

Poppy thought about faking a posh accent like his and abandoned the idea because Gaetano would be slow to see the joke, if he saw one at all. ‘Morning,’ she said lazily in her usual abbreviated style.

‘We’re going out for breakfast since there’s no food in the house,’ Gaetano murmured huskily.

Poppy blinked, catching the flick of censure but too caught up in the positive purr of his deep, slightly accented drawl, which was sending a peculiar little shiver down her taut spine. ‘We?’ she queried belatedly, green eyes opening very wide.

Gaetano noted that her pupils were surrounded by a ring of tawny brown that merely emphasised the bright green of her eyes and said quietly, ‘I have a proposition I want to discuss with you.’

‘A proposition?’ she questioned with a frown.

‘Breakfast,’ Gaetano reminded her and he bent to plant his hands to her hips and swing her up into the helicopter before she could even guess his intention.

‘For breakfast we get into a helicopter?’ Poppy framed in bewilderment.

‘We’re going to a hotel.’

A proposition? Her mind was blank as to what possible suggestions he might be able to put to her in her family’s current predicament and, although she was far from entertained by his virtual kidnapping, she knew she was in no position to tell him to get lost. Even so, Poppy would very much have enjoyed telling Gaetano to get lost. His innate dominant traits set her teeth on edge, not to mention the manner in which he simply assumed that everyone around him would jump to do his bidding without argument. And he was probably right in that assumption, she thought resentfully. He had money, power and influence and she had none of those things.

The craft was so noisy that there was no possibility of conversation during the short flight. Poppy peered down without surprise as the biggest, flashiest country-house hotel in the area appeared below them. Only the very best would do for Gaetano, she thought in exasperation, wishing she’d had some warning of his plan. She had no make-up on and not even a comb with her and wasn’t best pleased to find herself about to enter a very snooty five-star establishment where everyone else, including her host, would be groomed to perfection. And here she was wearing combat boots ready to cycle to the shop for a newspaper.

Deliberately avoiding Gaetano’s extended arms, Poppy jumped down onto the grass. ‘You could’ve warned me about where we were going... I’m not dressed—’

Gaetano dealt her a slow-burning smile, dark golden eyes brilliant in the sunshine. ‘You look fabulous.’

Her mouth ran dry and suddenly she needed a deep breath but somehow couldn’t get sufficient oxygen into her lungs. That shockingly appealing smile...when he had never smiled at her before. Gaetano was as stingy as a miser with his smiles. Why was he suddenly smiling at her? What did he want? What had changed? And why was he telling her that she looked fabulous? Especially when his raised-brow appraisal as she’d approached him at the helipad had told her that he knew about as much about her style as she knew about high finance.

At the door of the hotel they were greeted by the manager as though they were royalty and ushered to the ‘Orangery’ where Gaetano was assured that they would not be disturbed. Had there been a chaise longue, Poppy would have flopped down on it like a Victorian maiden and would have asked Gaetano if he was planning a seduction just to annoy him. But if he had a proposition that might ease her family’s current situation she was more than willing to listen without making cheeky comments, she told herself. Unfortunately, her tongue often ran ahead of her brain, especially around Gaetano, who didn’t have to do much to infuriate her.

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