‘Now do you believe I really want you?’ Santino breathed raggedly.
Poppy stumbled back from him, lips still throbbing and body still thrumming from that little demonstration against which she had discovered she was without defence. He could turn her into a shameless hussy with incredible ease, but he didn’t love her. ‘It wouldn’t work…us, I mean.’
‘Why not?’
‘Don’t you know how to take no for an answer?’ Poppy muttered shakily from the door.
‘I took it the last time. It gained me a daughter of three months old whom I have still to meet.’ As Santino made that raw retaliation Poppy’s discomfited gaze slewed from his and she left the room and was relieved when he didn’t follow her, for he had given her a lot to think about.
Getting changed into jeans and a sweater, Poppy put Florenza in her buggy and went out for a walk. She was starting to see that all she had ever done with Santino was think the worst of his motivations and run away as fast as her legs could carry her. Twelve months ago, she had still had a lot of growing up left to do. So many misunderstandings might have been avoided had she not performed a vanishing act after the staff party. She had reacted like an embarrassed little girl, afraid to face reality after the fantasy of the night. Scared of getting hurt, she had ended up just as hurt anyway. She had assumed that everything that had happened between them had somehow been her fault and had denied them both the chance to explore their feelings.
Poppy sat down on a fallen log below the trees. In the same way she had just accepted that Santino was engaged to Jenna Delsen and had hidden behind her pride rather than confront him. But what she could forgive herself for least was the conviction that Santino was a liar and a cheat when he had never been anything but honest and straight with her.
How much could she still blame Santino for effectively getting her the sack? She understood all too well his angry impatience and his need to take control when she herself seemed to have made such a hash of things. He had made it clear that if she conceived his child, he would stand by her. What good had it been for her to talk about a letter that he had never received? Had he got the chance, he would have been a part of Florenza’s life from the start. And that was why he was asking her to marry him. Her wretched pride had made her too quick to refuse that option. After all, she loved Santino, could not imagine ever loving anyone else…
Fifty feet away, Santino came to a halt to study Poppy on her log and Florenza snuggled up in her buggy. Poppy did not look happy. The marriage proposal had not been a winner. But then he had not promoted his own cause by depriving her of her employment, had he? However, an ever-recurring image of Poppy sailing away in a Brewett limo the following day never to return had driven him to a desperate act. He had known exactly what he’d been doing, he acknowledged grimly. He had cut the ground from beneath her feet in a manoeuvre calculated to make her more vulnerable to his arguments.
Glancing up and seeing him, Poppy froze. Dressed in tan chinos and a beige padded jacket that accentuated his black hair and olive skin, Santino looked stunning. Her mouth ran dry. Should she admit that she’d been a bit too hasty in turning him down?
‘Won’t your guests miss you?’ she asked as he dropped down into an athletic crouch to look at Florenza.
‘Country house guests entertain themselves and most of them are still in bed. As long as I show up for dinner, nobody’s offended,’ Santino told her, resting appreciative eyes on his baby daughter. ‘She’s something special, isn’t she?’
In a sudden decision, Poppy reached into the buggy and lifted Florenza free of the covers. Santino vaulted upright, looking ever so slightly unnerved. ‘I’ve never held a baby before. It might upset her.’
‘She’s a very easy-going baby. Just support her head so that she feels secure.’
Santino cradled Florenza in careful arms. He looked down into his daughter’s big, trusting blue eyes and then he smiled, a proud, tender, almost shy smile that made Poppy’s eyes glisten. ‘She’s not crying. Do you think she sort of knows who I am?’
‘Maybe…’ Her throat was thick.
‘And maybe not, but she can learn.’ Santino studied Poppy with sudden, unexpected seriousness. ‘Let’s hope that Florenza never does to me what I did to my own mother. I’m in your debt for what you said the night of the party about me having taken my father’s side when my parents divorced.’
Poppy blinked. ‘How in my debt?’
‘I went over to Italy to see Mama and found out what a pious little jerk I’d been,’ Santino admitted with a rueful grimace. ‘I blamed her for the divorce and she didn’t want to ruin my relationship with my father by telling me that throughout their marriage he’d had a whole string of casual affairs. I just wish he’d been man enough to admit that to me, instead of going for the sympathy vote to ensure that I chose to live with him when they broke up.’
Knowing how close he had been to his father, Maximo, Poppy muttered, ‘I’m sorry…’
‘No. Don’t be.’ Santino smiled. ‘Thanks to what you said, my mother and I are getting to know each other again.’
Poppy was delighted at that news. ‘That’s brilliant!’
‘I would never be unfaithful to you,’ Santino informed her in steady continuation, and then his wide sensual mouth curved in self-mocking acknowledgement. ‘I’m even working on my narrow-minded response to pink graphs…’
Poppy froze at that teasing conclusion. ‘That was you…that emailed me the day of the party?’
‘Who did you think it was?’ Santino glanced at her in surprise before hunkering down to settle their sleeping daughter back into her buggy with gentle hands.
It meant so much to Poppy to know that that teasing exchange had been with him. Her heart just overflowed, and when Santino sprang back up again he was a little taken aback but in no mood to complain when Poppy flung her arms round him and hugged him. ‘I think I might just want to marry you, after all,’ she confided. ‘Is the offer still open?’
‘Very much,’ Santino breathed not quite levelly, unable to drag his gaze from her happy, smiling face and absolutely terrified that she might change her mind. ‘How do you feel about getting married next week in Italy?’
Her lashes fluttered up on shaken blue eyes. ‘That…soon?’
‘I’m really not a fan of long engagements,’ Santino swore with honest fervour.
‘Neither am I,’ Poppy agreed with equal conviction, her heart singing, for there was something very reassuring about a guy who just couldn’t wait to get her to the altar.
CHAPTER NINE
WALKING back towards the priory, Santino said with smooth satisfaction, ‘I’ll feel a lot more comfortable when you sit down to dinner with my guests this evening.’
At that prospect, Poppy’s eyes widened in dismay. ‘But I can’t do that. I came here as the Brewetts’ nanny and what are people going to think if I suddenly—?’
‘That you’re my future wife with more right than most to grace the dining table.’ Impervious, it seemed, to the finer points of the situation, Santino exuded galling masculine amusement.
‘Well, it can’t be done. I didn’t bring any dressy clothes. I’ve got nothing but jeans!’ Poppy exclaimed.
‘If that’s the only problem…we’ll go out and get you something to wear right now, cara mia.’
Nothing pleased Santino so much as solving problems with decisive activity. The village a few miles away rejoiced in a very up-market boutique. It took him only twenty minutes to run Poppy there, stride in, select a short, strappy, soft blue dress off the rail, which struck him as absolutely Poppy, and herd her into the changing room, paying not the slightest attention to her breathless and shaken protests.
Inside the cubicle, Poppy stared at her reflection dreamily in the mirror and wondered how Santino had managed to pick the right size and a shade of blue that looked marvellous with her hair. Then she looked at the price tag and almost had a heart attack.
‘Poppy…?’ Santino prompted f
rom the shop floor.
Poppy emerged. Santino had Florenza draped over one shoulder and looked for all the world like a male who had been dandling babies from childhood. Impervious to the sales woman oozing appreciation over him, he studied Poppy with shimmering dark golden eyes that made her cheeks fire with colour and her heart pound like a manic road drill.
‘We’ll take the dress,’ Santino pronounced without hesitation. ‘What about shoes?’