Standing very still, Gaetano lost colour and watched her intently. ‘There probably is. But I want very badly for you to stay.’
‘No, you don’t, not really,’ Poppy reasoned thinly. ‘You think our baby would be the icing on the cake for Rodolfo but you don’t want to be married and you don’t want to be a father.’
‘I do want to be married to you.’ Gaetano flung back his shoulders and studied her with strained dark eyes. ‘And I know that I can learn how to be a good father. I meant that the situation of being unprepared for a child was a nightmare. I’m not good with surprises but I can roll fast with the punches that come my way. And believe me, watching you pack to leave me is a hell of a punch.’
The firm resolution in that response surprised her. She paused to roughly fold up a dress before thrusting it into the case, sending an unimpressed glance at his lean, darkly handsome face. She wasn’t listening to him, she told herself urgently. She had made her decision. It was better for her to leave him with her head held high than to consider giving him another chance...wasn’t it?
‘Is it? Are you really capable of changing your outlook to that extent? Accepting being married without feeling that you’re somehow doing me a favour and settling for second best?’ she queried with scorn. ‘Accepting our child as the gift that a child is?’
‘I know that I was difficult when I married you.’ Gaetano compressed his lips on that startling admission. ‘I’m not easy-going but I am adaptable and I do learn from my mistakes. Dio mio, bella mia...my attitude to you has changed most of all.’
‘How?’ Poppy prompted, needing him to face up to the major decision he was trying to make for both of them. She didn’t want Gaetano deciding that they should stay married and then changing his mind again because he felt trapped by the restrictions. She had to know and understand exactly what he was thinking and feeling and expecting. How else could she make a decision?
His wide sensual mouth twisted. ‘I don’t want to discuss that.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because sometimes silence is golden and honesty can be the wrong way to go,’ he framed grudgingly. ‘And knowing my luck, I’ll say the wrong thing again.’
‘But you should be able to tell me anything. We shouldn’t have secrets between us. How has your attitude to me changed?’ Poppy persisted, curiosity and obstinacy combining to push her on.
Gaetano glanced heavenward for a brief moment and then drew in a ragged breath. ‘I asked you to pretend to be engaged to me because I thought you would be a huge embarrassment as a fiancée.’
Shock gripped Poppy in a debilitating wave only to be swiftly followed by a huge rush of hurt. ‘In what way?’
‘I was the posh bloke who made unjustified assumptions about you,’ Gaetano admitted, his deep voice raw-edged with regret. ‘I assumed you’d still be using a lot of bad language. I expected you to be totally lost and unable to cope in my world. In fact I believed that your eccentric fashion sense and everything about you would horrify Rodolfo and put him off the idea of me getting married, so that when the engagement broke down he would be relieved rather than disappointed...’
Gaetano had finished speaking but his every word still struck through the fog of Poppy’s shell-shocked state like lightning on a dark stormy night. She felt physically sick.
Gaetano had watched the blood drain from below her skin and fierce tension now stamped his lean dark features. ‘So that’s the kind of guy I really am, the kind of guy you get to stay married to and the father of your future child. I know it’s not pretty but you have earned the right to know the truth about me. Most of the time I’m an absolute bastard,’ he stated bleakly. ‘I tried to use you in the most callous way possible and it didn’t once occur to me to wonder how that experience would ultimately affect you...or Rodolfo.’
Poppy wrapped her arms round her slim body as if she were trying to hold the dam of pain inside her back from breaking its banks. She couldn’t bear to look at him any longer. He had seen from the outset how unworthy she was to be even his fiancée and he had planned to use her worst traits and the handicap of her poor background as an excuse to dump her again without antagonising his grandfather. In short he had handpicked her as the fake fiancée most likely to mortify him.
Poppy cringed inside herself. His prior assumptions appalled her, for she had not appreciated how prejudiced he had still been about her. Shattered by his admission, she felt humiliated beyond bearing. He had seen her flaws right at the beginning and had pinned his hopes on her shaming him. How could he then adapt to the idea of staying married to her for years and years? Raising a child with her? Taking her out in public?
‘The moment I picked you to fail was the moment that I sank to my all-time personal low,’ Gaetano confessed in a roughened undertone. ‘I got it horribly wrong. You showed me how wrong my expectations were. You proved yourself to be so much more than I was prepared for you to be and I became ashamed of my original plan.’
‘But you didn’t need to tell me this once we went as far as getting married,’ she whispered brokenly, backing in the direction of the door, desperate to lick her wounds in private.
‘You’ve always been honest with me. I’m trying to give you the same respect.’
‘Only a couple of months ago you had no respect for me!’ Poppy condemned with embittered accuracy.
‘That changed fast,’ Gaetano fielded, moving a step closer, wanting to hold her so badly and resisting the urge with a frustration that coiled his big hands into fists. ‘I learned to respect you. I learned a lot of other stuff from you as well.’
Feeling as though he were twisting a knife in her heart, Poppy voiced a loud sound of disagreement and snapped, ‘You didn’t learn anything...you never do. You’re dumb as a rock about everything that really matters from giving Muffin a second chance at life to raising our child!’ she accused. ‘How could I ever trust you again?’
Poppy stalked out of the door and he fought his need to follow her. He didn’t want her racing down the stairs and falling in an effort to evade him. ‘Muffin trusts me,’ he murmured flatly to the empty room. Muffin? Muffin who couldn’t even tell him and Rodolfo apart? Admittedly, Muffin wasn’t the sharpest tool in the box.
Gaetano groaned out loud. Maybe he should have kept on pretending to be a better man than he was but Poppy would only have found him out in the end. Poppy had a way of cutting through the nonsense to find the heart of an issue and see what really mattered. Just as Gaetano had finally seen what really mattered. Unfortunately that single instant of inner vision and comprehension had arrived with him pretty late in the day. He wasn’t dumb as a rock about emotional stuff. He simply wasn’t very practised at it. It wasn’t something he’d ever bothered with until Poppy came along.
Poppy pelted out into the cool night. She needed air and space and silence to pull herself back together. The garden was softly lit, low-sited lights shining on exotic leaves and casting shadows in mysterious corners. Her face was wet with tears and she wiped her cheeks with angry hands. Damn him, damn him, damn him! What he had confessed had wounded her deeply. She loved Gaetano and he had always been her dream male. Handsome, brilliant, rich and glitzy, he had met every requirement for an adolescent fantasy. Now for the first time she was seeing herself through his eyes and it was so humiliating she wanted to sink into the earth and stay hidden there for ever.
He had only remembered the highly
