Italian Mavericks: In The Italian's Bed: Leonetti's Housekeeper Bride / Inherited by Ferranti / Best Man for the Bridesmaid

As they mingled she noticed Rodolfo chatting to Serena Bellingham. The blonde was wreathed in charming smiles. Poppy scolded herself for thinking bitchy thoughts. And why? Just because Serena had once shared a bed with Gaetano? Just because Serena had the looks, the social background and the education that would have made her the perfect wife for Gaetano? Or because Gaetano had once freely chosen to have a relationship with Serena when he had merely ended up with Poppy by accident and retained her for convenience?

Deliberately catching her eye, Serena strolled over to Poppy’s side. ‘I can see that you’re curious about me,’ she drawled in her cut-glass accent. ‘I’m Gaetano’s only serious ex, so it’s natural...’

‘Possibly,’ Poppy conceded, determined to be very cautious with her words and ashamed of the explosive mixture of inexcusable envy and resentment she was struggling to suppress.

‘We were too young when we first met,’ Serena declared. ‘That’s why we broke up. Gaetano wasn’t ready to commit and I was, so I rushed off and married someone else instead.’

‘Everyone matures at a different rate,’ Poppy remarked non-committally.

‘Maturity is immaterial,’ Serena responded with stinging confidence. ‘You and Gaetano won’t last five minutes. You don’t have anything to offer him.’

Disconcerted by that sudden attack coming at her out of nowhere, Poppy froze. ‘That’s a matter of opinion.’

‘But you’ll do very well for a short-lived first marriage. Gaetano is the last man alive I would expect to stay married to a Goth bride. You don’t fit in and you never will...’

As that bitingly cold forecast hit her Poppy was silenced by Gaetano’s arm closing round her spine. She encountered a suspicious sidewise glance and her temper flared inside her. Evidently, Gaetano was so far removed from the reality of Serena’s barracuda nature that it was Poppy he didn’t trust to behave around Serena. Entrapped there in Gaetano’s controlling hold, Poppy silently seethed and brooded over what Serena had said.

Sadly, the blonde’s assurance that Poppy would never fit in as Gaetano’s wife had cut deep—particularly because Poppy had quite deliberately made conventional choices when it came to what to wear for her wedding day. Why had she done that? she suddenly asked herself angrily. And there it was—the answer she didn’t want. She had done it for Gaetano’s benefit in an effort to please him and make him proud of her, make him appreciate that the housekeeper’s daughter could get it right for a big occasion. Serena’s automatic dismissal of all that Poppy had to offer had seriously hurt and humiliated her.

Fortunately from that point on their wedding day seemed to speed up and race past. Poppy’s throat was sore and she put that down to the amount of talking she had to do. She ate little during the meal even though she was trying to regain the weight she had lost in recent months while she had worked two jobs. Unfortunately her appetite had vanished.

She changed into white cropped trousers and a cool blue chiffon top for their flight to Italy. The luxurious interior of the Leonetti private jet stunned her into silence. She studied the glittering ruby cluster nestling next to the wedding band on her finger and Serena’s wounding forecast of her marriage seemed to reverberate in her ears. You don’t fit in and you never will.

And why should that matter when they didn’t plan to stay married? Poppy asked herself wearily, unsettled by the nagging insecurities tugging at her. Why should she care what Serena thought? Or what Serena truly wanted from Gaetano? She reckoned that Serena was already planning to be Gaetano’s second, rather more permanent wife. So what?

It wasn’t as though she had any feelings for Gaetano beyond tolerance, Poppy reminded herself. Lust was physical, not cerebral.

CHAPTER SEVEN (#u64add7af-088c-5c29-8c3d-b5c50158759f)

‘STOP... STOP THE CAR!’ Poppy yelled as the Range Rover wound down the twisting Tuscan country road.

Startled, Gaetano jumped on the brake. He frowned in astonishment as Poppy leapt out of the car at speed and assumed that she felt sick. But to his surprise and that of the security men climbing out of the car behind, Poppy ran back down the road and crouched down.

Bloodstains and dust had smeared her white cropped jeans by the time she stood up again cradling something hairy and still in her arms as tenderly as if it were a baby. ‘It’s a dog...it must’ve been hit by a passing car.’

‘Give it to my security. They’ll deal with this,’ Gaetano advised.

‘No, we will,’ Poppy told him. ‘Where’s the closest veterinary surgery?’

The dog, a terrier mix with a pepper and salt coat and a greying snout, licked weakly at her fingers and whined in pain. Fifteen minutes later they were in the waiting room at the local surgery while Gaetano spoke with the vet in Italian.

‘The situation is this...’ Gaetano informed Poppy. ‘The animal is not microchipped, has no collar and has not been reported missing. Arno can operate and I can obviously afford to cover the cost of the treatment but it may be more practical simply to put the animal to sleep.’

‘Practical?’ Poppy erupted.

‘Rather than put the dog through the trauma of surgery and a prolonged recuperation when the local pound is already full, as is the animal rescue sanctuary. If there is no prospect of the dog going to another home—’

‘I’ll keep him,’ Poppy cut in curtly.

Gaetano groaned. ‘Don’t be a bleeding heart for the sake of it.’

‘I’m not. I want Muffin.’

His gorgeous dark eyes widened in surprise, black lashes sky-high. ‘Muffin?’

‘Ragamuffin... Muffin,’ she explained curtly.

‘But I can buy you a beautiful pedigreed puppy if you want one,’ Gaetano murmured with unconcealed incredulity. ‘Muffin is no oil painting and he’s old.’

‘So? He needs me much more than a beautiful puppy ever would,’ Poppy pointed out defiantly. ‘Think of him as a wedding gift.’

Having made arrangements for Muffin’s care, they drove off again.

‘You’ve become so cold-hearted,’ Poppy whispered ruefully, studying his lean dark classic profile. ‘What happened to you?’

‘I grew up. Don’t be a drama queen,’ Gaetano urged. ‘When you care too much you get hurt. I learned that from a young age.’

‘But you’re shutting yourself off from so many good things in life,’ she argued.

‘Am I? Rodolfo enjoyed a long and happy marriage but he was so wretched after my grandmother passed that he too wanted to die.’

‘That was grief. Think of all the happy years he enjoyed with his wife,’ Poppy urged. ‘Everything has a downside, Gaetano. Love brings its own reward.’

Gaetano voiced a single rude word of disagreement in Italian. ‘It didn’t reward my mother when the husband she once adored ran round snorting cocaine with hookers. It didn’t reward me as her son when her super-rich second husband persuaded her to forget that she had left a child behind in England. But you’ll be glad to know that my mother’s second husband loved her,’ Gaetano continued with raw derision. ‘As she explained when she tried to foolishly mend fences with me a few years ago, Connor loved her so much that he was jealous of her first marriage and the child born from it.’

Poppy had paled. ‘That’s a twisted kind of love.’

‘And there’s a lot of that twisted stuff out there,’ Gaetano completed in a chilling tone of finality. ‘That’s why I never wanted anything to do with that kind of emotion.’

Poppy knew when to keep quiet. Of course, his outlook was coloured by his background, she reflected ruefully. Her parents had been happily married but his had not been. And his mother’s decision to turn her back on her son to please her second husband had done even more damage. Poppy had been surprised that Gaetano’s mother had not been invited to the wedding but Rodolfo had simply shrugged, saying only that his former daughter-in-law rarely returned to England.

Gaetano turned off the winding road onto a lane that threaded through silvery olive groves. Woods lay beyond the groves, occasionally parting to show views of rolling green hills and vineyards and an ancient walled hilltop village. Gaetano indicated another track to the left. ‘That leads down to the guest house where Rodolfo spends his summers.’

‘We’ll have to be careful to stay in role with your grandfather staying so close,’ Poppy remarked.

‘La Fattoria, the main house, is over a mile away. He won’t see us unless we visit. He is very keen not to intrude in any way on what he regards as our honeymoon,’ Gaetano said drily.

‘So this property has belonged to your family for a long time,’ she assumed.

‘Rodolfo bought it before I was born, fondly picturing it as the perfect spot for wholesome family holidays with at least half a dozen children running round.’ Gaetano sounded regretful on the older man’s behalf rather than scornful. ‘Sadly I was an only child and my parents only ever came here with parties of friends. The house was signed over to me about five years ago and I had it fully renovated.’

A magnificent building composed of creamy stone appeared round the next corner. It was larger than Poppy had expected but she was learning to think big or bigger when it came to Leonetti properties, for, while the family might only consist of Rodolfo and his one grandson, the older man did not seem to think in terms of small or convenient. Glorious urns of flowers adorned the terrace and a rotund little woman in an apron, closely followed by a tall lanky man, appeared at the front door.

‘Dolores and Sean look after La Fattoria.’ Gaetano introduced the friendly middle-aged Irish couple and their cases were swept away.

Poppy accepted a glass of wine and sat down on the rear terrace to enjoy the stupendous view and catch her breath in the sweltering heat. She was feeling incredibly tired and had tactfully declined Dolores’s invitation to do an immediate tour of the house. Worse still, she was getting a headache and she had an annoying tickle in her sore throat that had made her cough several times and was giving her voice a rough edge. It was just her luck, she thought ruefully. She was on her honeymoon in Tuscany in the most gorgeous setting, with an even more gorgeous man, and she was developing a galloping bad cold.

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