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!