Poppy compressed her lips. ‘If you must know—although it’s none of your blasted business—I did plan to have sex that day with Toby but I changed my mind because it wasn’t what I really wanted.’ No, what she had really, really wanted that day, she acknowledged belatedly, was to wander off into the shrubbery and be ravished by Gaetano, who had dominated her every juvenile fantasy. Sadly, however, Gaetano hadn’t been an option.
‘Poor Toby...’ Gaetano frowned.
‘He was very decent about it,’ Poppy muttered in mortification. ‘He’s married to one of my friends now.’
‘But there must have been someone since then?’
‘No.’
Gaetano continued to stare at her as if she were a circus freak. ‘But you’re so full of passion...’
Only with you. The words remained unspoken.
Gaetano lifted his coffee with a slightly dazed expression in his shrewd gaze. ‘I’ll be the first...really?’
Poppy shrugged a shoulder. ‘But if you think it’s likely to be a turn-off I can always go and look for a one-night stand.’
‘Don’t even think about it,’ Gaetano growled.
‘That was a joke.’
‘It’s not a turn-off, simply a surprise,’ Gaetano admitted flatly. ‘OK, I’ll wait until we’re married if it’s so significant to you. But I think you’re making an unnecessary production out of it.’
Her body was all he wanted from her, Poppy interpreted painfully. At least if she was his legal wife, it would feel less demeaning, wouldn’t it?
‘I’ll organise a gynae appointment for you,’ Gaetano continued briskly. ‘Reliable birth control is important. We don’t want any slip-ups in that department when we’re not planning to stay together.’
‘Obviously not,’ she agreed, sipping with determination at her hot-chocolate drink while thinking for the very first time in her life about having a baby. She had always liked children, always assumed that she would become a mother one day, but she reckoned that day lay a long way ahead in her future.
‘And whatever you do,’ Gaetano warned with chilling precision, ‘don’t go falling for me.’
‘And why would I do that?’ Poppy demanded baldly, her cheeks hotter than hell in fear of him mentioning that so mortifying teenaged crush again. ‘Having sex with you is not going to make me fall in love with you. I know you think you’re fantastic in bed, Gaetano, but you’re not fantastic enough out of bed.’
Infuriatingly, Gaetano did not react badly to that criticism. ‘That’s good because that’s one complication I can do without. I hate it when women fall for me and make me feel that it’s my fault.’
Well, that was frank, and forewarned was forearmed, Poppy told herself squarely. ‘It’s probably your money they’re falling for,’ she suggested in a tone of saccharine sweetness. ‘You have yet to show me a single loveable trait.’
‘Grazie al cielo...thank goodness,’ Gaetano responded in a tone of galling relief. ‘I don’t want you to get the wrong idea about me or this marriage.’
‘I won’t. This marriage will be like one of those business mergers. You are so safe,’ Poppy declared brightly. ‘You will merely be the first stepping stone on my sexual path.’
Gaetano was taken aback to discover that he didn’t want to think of a string of other men enjoying her along that particular path. In fact it gave him a slightly nauseated sensation in the pit of his stomach. The acknowledgement bemused him and he put it down to the simple fact that as yet he had not enjoyed her either. He was thinking too much about something relatively unimportant, he reflected impatiently. Sex was sex and his wedding night would provide the cure for what was currently afflicting him. Since when had he ever attached so much consequence to sex? Even so, it had been entirely right to have the conversation with Poppy to ensure that they perfectly understood each other’s expectations.
‘I’ll make a start on the wedding arrangements today,’ Gaetano completed smoothly.
* * *
‘You look beautiful,’ Jasmine Arnold told her daughter warmly as she emerged from her bedroom in her wedding dress.
The older woman was attending her daughter’s wedding with a member of the clinic support staff. Although Poppy could see a big improvement in her mother’s appearance and mood, she knew how hard it was for Jasmine to return to Woodfield Hall where she had been so depressed. And while Poppy had asked her mother to walk her down the aisle, her brother was doing it instead because Jasmine could not face being the centre of that much attention.