He blew out a breath and pushed to his feet.
In truth he didn’t need to take her to Italy with him. Yes, it would be easier to present the package his grandfather believed to get what he wanted, but it wasn’t essential. He hadn’t even confirmed that his grandfather was right in his assumptions.
He could easily turn up to the villa alone and they could laugh at the mistake over a negroni or two. Sebastiano could then assure his grandfather that he was perfectly fine as he was, and wear the old man down without having to revert to a lie.
The problem was that he still remembered how soft the skin was on the inside of Poppy’s wrist, and he’d enjoyed meeting a woman who hadn’t behaved as if he was the best thing since sliced bread.
His lips twisted into a self-mocking smile. Was it just the novelty of having a woman say no to him? Surely he hadn’t become that arrogant, or full of himself?
Or was it the thought of returning to his family home at this time of the year, alone?
Yes, that made his stomach knot, but it had been fifteen years since the accident. And, while he might still live with the guilt and loss, it didn’t govern his actions any more. He’d mastered that years ago. Hadn’t he?
Perhaps it was nothing more than simple lust. He’d felt it straight away, an edgy hunger to feel her against him. Feel her against him and under him and over him. Feel every soft, satiny, naked inch of her as he buried himself deep inside her. Just the thought of it aroused him to a burning point of hardness. Which was ridiculous in the extreme. His libido did not control him. He controlled his libido.
Regardless, this relationship was fake, he reminded himself, one-hundred-percent fake. And that made Poppy Connolly one-hundred-percent off limits.
CHAPTER FOUR
‘WHERE DID YOU say you were going?’
‘I didn’t,’ Poppy signed back to her brother, debating between packing black linen dress trousers that had seen better days or a navy skirt that was a little on the short side. ‘But it’s somewhere in Italy. I was planning to text you the details after I arrived.’
Black trousers definitely. She didn’t want to give Sebastiano Castiglione any ideas that this relationship was anything other than phony.
‘Italy!’ Her fifteen-year-old brother signed excitedly, bouncing up and down on the bed as if he’d just been stung by a wasp. ‘I want to come.’
‘You can’t,’ she signed. ‘I already told you, it’s a work thing, and I deliberately didn’t tell you where I was going because I knew you’d want to come.’ She went to smooth his fringe back from his face like she’d used to when he was little but he moved back out of range. ‘You know I’d love to take you. Don’t make me feel guilty.’
‘I won’t if you at least let me stay in the flat by myself.’
Poppy pressed her two fingers to her thumb to signal no. ‘You have to stay with Maryann. And make sure you heat up the Bolognaise I prepared for dinner tomorrow night. I don’t want her having to do any cooking this weekend.’
Her brother gave her a belligerent stare. ‘I’m old enough to stay by myself.’
‘You’re fifteen.’
‘Exactly.’
Poppy sighed. ‘If you don’t leave now you’ll be late for school,’ she signed to him. ‘And stay off your phone this weekend. You need to read a real book instead of playing games all the time.’
‘I tell you what...’ He uncoiled his lanky frame from the bed, signing rapidly. ‘I’ll read a real book if I can stay here by myself.’
Poppy grabbed a couple of tops that went with the black trousers. ‘Go to school.’ She pulled him in for a kiss. ‘I love you.’
He gave her the shorthand sign for ‘love you’ in return before blowing out of the door like a dervish in his new trainers. Or one of the ten pairs of new Nike trainers! They had arrived the day after she had struck her devil’s pact with Sebastiano and Poppy had been forced to say she had won them in a work raffle to explain the extravagance.
She didn’t know if Sebastiano’s generosity was a sign of the man himself, or just his desperation to get his own way. Somehow she suspected the latter.
Straightening her bed, she padded into the bathroom and took a shower. It was still a few hours until Sebastiano was due to arrive, but she felt jittery.
Around noon she received a phone call from her brother. Usually they used messaging, but due to a new hearing app she was able to speak into the phone and have her words converted to text. Simon wanted to know if he could go to the movies that afternoon with some friends he had made at his new school and Poppy’s heart swelled. Because her brother had been born deaf he’d had many developmental delays and those, combined with their volatile childhood, had seen him become a shy and insecure kid. Lately, though, he seemed to be coming out of his shell and it made Poppy’s heart sing to see it.
Telling him it was fine with her, she jumped when a decisive knock sounded at her front door. Knowing who it would be, she told Simon she loved him before opening the door wide, all her nerves from earlier returning full force at the sight of her boss standing in her dank hallway.
He was so tall, dark and utterly male he took her breath away. It just wasn’t fair that a man should look this good and yet have no decent moral fibre about him. The reminder of his poor character had her determined that she would not let him walk all over her.
‘Are you early, or am I late?’ she asked, raising her chin in an unconscious challenge.