over before it hit the stone wall with a tremendous crash to reveal, not her grandmother, but the tall sinister outline of a man—a large man.
It was a situation where an active imagination became a curse and Poppy’s immediately went into overdrive. She flinched and sucked in a deep breath as the tall figure was suddenly backlit by a flash of lightning that illuminated the sky for a brief moment.
A scream locked in her throat, Poppy stood there nailed to the spot by a stab of visceral fear while her heart tried to batter its way out of her chest and a bass toll of thunder cracked in perfect horror movie tradition overhead.
The scream emerged as a choked gasp when the figure, without saying a word, took a step forward. Jolted free of the fear-induced paralysis that had gripped her, Poppy shadowed the step hastily retreating, one hand pressed to her throat, before she turned and ran back to the fireplace.
She lifted the heavy poker that lay there. It took both hands to raise it and she whirled back to face the intruder warning fiercely, ‘I’m not alone!’ The normally husky timbre of her voice became shrill as she warned darkly, ‘It’s true!’
Not the best of time to discover that the people who had claimed she couldn’t lie convincingly if her life depended on it were right.
‘I’m glad to hear it.’ Gianluca scanned the room. Of his godmother there was no immediate sign, just the weapon-wielding figure in a thick padded jacket. His glance moved to the face framed by a knitted hat complete with furry earflaps.
The resulting jolt of recognition sent a pulse of shock zigzagging through his body with the strength of a lightning bolt. The last time he had looked directly at those spectacular, exotically slanted green eyes they had been filled with sad tears.
It was an image he had spent years trying to bury.
‘And don’t think I’m afraid to use this because I’m not—’ She stopped abruptly, her eyes widening … that voice … deep with the faint foreign inflection … no. Her heartbeat rocketed and her stomach dropped into a big black hole.
Calm down, Poppy, she counselled herself. You’re imagining things. It can’t be … Could it?
Still brandishing her weapon, she tilted her head back, directing a wary look at the intruder’s face. The furrow in her brow deepened and her arms began to ache with the effort of maintaining her defensive pose as she struggled in the gloom to see the man’s face.
Frustratingly all she could make out was an undefined blur and the impression of strong angles, sharp planes and dramatic hollows. Then the figure, not apparently deterred by her threats, stepped forward into a convenient pool of candlelight.
Poppy shook her head in a negative motion, intensifying the dizzy sensation.
‘No! You can’t be here.’ She began to cough as the candle on the table beside her guttered, sending up a plume of acrid smoke. ‘Luca?’
As if there could be two men that looked like this!
Poppy had no doubt that one day she would be able to look back on the last occasion they had spoken and not feel physically sick, but seven years and that day had definitely not come!
Heart pounding—was she going to have a heart attack?—she slowly laid the heavy poker down onto the hearth and tried frantically to marshal her rioting thoughts as she watched Luca brace his shoulder against the door and push. The wind and ancient wood resisted his efforts until, angular jaw clenched, the sinews in his brown neck standing out, with a final grunt of effort he managed to force the door that had been built to hold back armies closed with a loud bang.
The noise of the storm raging outside immediately lowered by several decibels. It was quiet enough now for Poppy to hear the click of the grandfather clock and the steady drip of the water gathering in a pool on the stone flagstones around the feet of Gianluca Ranieri.
She was here alone with Luca. Somewhere in her chest a bubble of terror burst … I can’t do this! Poppy yanked herself back from the brink of outright panic and hid her confused feelings behind a tight controlled smile.
‘I barely recognised you,’ she lied, averting her gaze from the perfect symmetry of a bronzed face bisected by a masterful nose and slashing cheekbones. ‘You’ve changed, Luca.’
This at least was not a lie. He was still the best-looking man imaginable—it was really nice to be able to make the observation with total objectivity, not soppy, misty-eyed foolishness, but the aura of power that hung around him like a second skin made him seem more aloof. And his heavy-lidded eyes, dark and fringed by incredibly long, spiky lashes—they had not in the past held a cynical gleam that suggested their owner expected the worst from the world and was rarely disappointed.
‘You haven’t.’ It was hard to tell from his abrupt delivery if this was a criticism or a compliment. ‘I did not expect you to be here.’
He didn’t add or wild horses would not have dragged me here to his vaguely accusatory statement, but he didn’t have to. He looked about as happy to see her as he had two years earlier, the night she had almost literally bumped into him as she was emerging with a group of friends from a popular West End show.
He had cut her dead.
Poppy had been left standing on the pavement, the awkward half-smile of polite acknowledgement still on her face. The public slight had not gone unnoticed.
‘Someone you know?’ one of the men in the group had asked.
Poppy had shrugged off the hurt inflicted by the chilling indifference in the dark eyes that had moved with the barest hint of recognition over her face.
‘Not really.’
Shaking some of the excess moisture from his hair, Luca moved forward into the room. Poppy responded with several backwards steps, reminding him of a jittery thoroughbred.
‘I am not, to my knowledge, infectious.’
She had no smart response to the mild sarcasm and no easy answer for why she felt the need to keep him at several arms’ lengths.
‘This is …’ she expelled a gusty sigh, her expression reflecting her dismay, and tore off her cap, tossing it on top of a pile of newspapers on a nearby armchair ‘… a total nightmare.’ There seemed very little point putting a brave face on what was an awful situation. A dangerous stranger she could have legitimately clonked on the head with a poker … what was she meant to do with Luca?
Her glance slid to the stern outline of his beautiful—it really was—mouth … A tiny sigh escaped her parted lips. She had once had a lot of ideas about what to do with and to Luca, but few, actually none, were any longer appropriate.
He tilted his head in acknowledgement. ‘The storm is bad.’
Poppy gave herself a mental shake and let his misinterpretation remain uncorrected as she struggled to make her fuzzy brain work … How … why was Luca here? ‘Was Gran expecting you?’
‘No.’
Gianluca’s eyes followed the golden brown waves as they continued to bounce, settling in a silky messy halo around her shoulders. It slid down her back, falling below shoulder-blade level, longer than she had used to wear it. The shaggy fringe was
