“This is why the house you found us is so perfect.” He stroked her bare arms. “It’s even farther away from them than this one.”
Her hurt faded and her mouth twitched. “That’s not nice.”
“No. And you don’t realize it, but he was being as nice as he gets. His asking to observe you is quite the commendation.”
“Really?” She dipped her chin, skeptical.
“Mmm-hmm. If I cared about scoring points with my parents, I would be high-fiving you right now.”
“We could dance instead,” Poppy suggested. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” Except he’d just recalled the steps he was taking that, as far as scoring points with his parents went, would wipe him to below zero in their books. He would owe future favors. That was the cost of giving in to base feelings like passion and infatuation.
So he wouldn’t.
“Let’s dance,” he murmured and drew her onto the floor.
CHAPTER NINE
POPPY WAS FALLING for Rico. Really falling. This wasn’t the secret crush of a maid for a man who hadn’t even noticed her. It wasn’t the sexual infatuation of a woman whose husband left her weak with satisfaction every night. It wasn’t even the tender affinity of shared love for their daughter, although what she was feeling had its roots in all of those things.
This was the kind of regard her grandparents had felt for each other. She knew because she began doing the sorts of little things for Rico that they used to do for one another. If he tried a particular brandy while they were out, and liked it, she asked the housekeeper to order some in. When discussing the decor of his home office in the new house, she had the designer track down a signed print of his favorite racecar driver, now retired but still revered.
And when she had an appointment to spend the morning looking at photography equipment, she impulsively called Rico’s assistant and asked if her husband had plans for lunch. He was pronounced available so she booked herself as his date and made a reservation, dropping in to surprise him.
His PA, a handsome man about her age whom she was meeting in person for the first time, rose to greet her. He looked startled. Alarmed. Maybe even appalled.
“Senora Montero. You’re early.” He smoothed his expression to a warm and welcoming smile. “I’m Anton. So good to meet you. Why don’t I show you around while Senor Montero finishes his meeting?”
Poppy might be a country girl at heart, but she knew a slick city hustle when she was the victim of one. She balked, heart going into free fall. All her optimistic belief that she and Rico were making progress in their marriage disintegrated. One dread-filled question escaped her.
“Who is he with?”
Before Anton could spit out a suitable prevarication, the door to Rico’s office cracked. He came out with an older couple. Everyone wore somber expressions.
Rico’s face tightened with regret when he saw her. Anton offered a pinched smile of apology. He moved quickly to the closet where the older woman’s light coat had been hung.
The older couple both stiffened, clearly recognizing her while Poppy’s brain scrambled and somehow made the connection that they must be Faustina’s parents.
The brief anguish she had suffered mildewed into horror. Rico wasn’t meeting some Other Woman. She was that reviled creature.
How did one act in such a profoundly uncomfortable moment? What should she say? All she could conjure was the truth.
“I wanted to surprise you,” she admitted to Rico, voice thick with apology. “I didn’t realize you would be tied up.” She thought she might be sick.
Rico introduced her to the Cabreras. Neither put out their hand to shake so Poppy kept her own clutched over her purse, nodding and managing a small smile that wasn’t returned.
“The woman you ‘dated very briefly when your engagement was interrupted,’” Faustina’s mother said with a dead look in her eye.
“I’m very sorry,” Poppy choked, reminding herself that they had lost their only child and would hurt forever because of it.
“I’m sure you are,” Senora Cabrera said bitterly. “Despite gaining all the prestige and wealth my daughter brought to this marriage. What do you bring except cheap notoriety and a bastard conceived in adultery?”
Poppy gasped and stumbled slightly as Rico scooped her close, pressing her to stand more behind him than beside him.
“The hypocrisy is mine. Don’t take your anger out on Poppy.” His tone was so dark and dangerous, she curled a fist into the fabric of his jacket in a useless effort to restrain him, fearing he would physically attack them. “Leave innocent babies out of this altogether.”
A profound silence, then Senora Cabrera sniffed with affront. Her husband clenched his teeth so hard, Poppy could have sworn she heard them crunching like hard candy behind the flat line of his lips.