LITMIR.BIZ

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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 unsuitable bold girl with the potty mouth, and eccentric clothes, who could be depended on to embarrass him. And being Gaetano, who was never ever straightforward when he could be devious, manipulative and complicated instead, he had hoped to utilise her very obvious faults to frighten Rodolfo out of demanding that his grandson marry. And ironically, Rodolfo himself had set Poppy up for that fall by advising Gaetano to marry ‘an ordinary girl’. And just how many ordinary girls did a jet-setter like Gaetano know?

      None. Until Poppy had stumbled in that night at Woodfield Hall, to demand his attention and his non-existent compassion.

      An embarrassment to him? No conventional dress sense, a dysfunctional family, no idea how to behave in rich, exclusive circles. Well, nothing had changed and she would never reach the high bar of social acceptability. Poppy shuddered, sick to her stomach with a galling sense of defeat and failure. She had never cared about such things but evidently Gaetano did. Even worse, Gaetano was currently offering to stay married to his unsuitable bride because she was pregnant.

      She sat down on one of the cold stone seats sited round the table and her face burned hot in spite of the cool evening air when she remembered what had happened on that table only the day before. Gaetano was like an addiction, toxic, dangerous. He had gone from infuriating her to charming her to making her fall very deeply in love with him. And yet she had still never guessed how he really saw her. The gardener’s daughter with the unfortunate family. It hurt—oh, my goodness, it hurt. But he had been right to tell her because she had needed to know the truth and accept it before she could stop weaving silly dreams about their future. So, how did she stay married to a male who had handpicked her to be an embarrassment?

      The answer came swiftly. In such circumstances she could not stay married to Gaetano. Regardless of her pregnancy, she needed to leave him and go ahead with a divorce.

      ‘Poppy...’

      Poppy stiffened. He must have walked across the grass because she would have heard his approach had he used the gravel paths. She breathed in deep, stiffening her facial muscles before she lifted her head.

      ‘Should I have kept it a secret?’ he asked her in a raw undertone.

      He knew she was upset. His dark eyes were lingering on her, probably picking up on the dampness round her eyes even though she had quickly stopped crying. He noticed too much, knew too much about women. ‘No,’ she said heavily. ‘It was better to tell me. I don’t like you for it and it’ll be hard to live with what I now know but you can’t build a relationship on lies and pretences.’

      Gaetano stilled in the shadow of the trees, his white shirt gleaming, his spectacular bone structure accentuated by the dim light. ‘Don’t leave me,’ he framed unevenly. ‘Even the idea of being without you scares me. I wouldn’t like my life without you in it.’

      Poppy couldn’t imagine Gaetano being scared and she imagined his life would be a lot more normal and straightforward without her in it. Their child deserved better than to grow up with unhappily married and ill-matched parents. A divorce would be preferable to that. She would give Gaetano as much access as he wanted to their child but she didn’t have to live with him or hang round his neck like an albatross to be a good parent. They could both commit to their child while living separately.

      ‘I can’t stay married to you,’ she told him quietly. ‘What would be the point?’

      ‘I’m not good with emotions. I’m good at being angry, at being passionate, at being ambitious but I’m no good at the softer stuff. I lost that ability when I was a kid,’ Gaetano admitted grittily. ‘I loved my parents but they were incapable of loving me back and I saw that. I also saw that in comparison to them I felt too much. I learned to hide what I feel and eventually it became such a habit I didn’t have to police myself any more. Emotion hurts. Rejection hurts, so I made sure I was safe by not feeling anything.’

      Involuntarily, Poppy was touched that he was talking about his parents in an effort to bridge the chasm that had opened up between them. He never ever talked about his childhood but she would never forget his determined non-reaction when his dog had died, his stark refusal to betray any emotion. ‘That makes sense,’ she conceded.

      ‘The only woman I ever loved

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