‘Your grandfather is waiting outside...’ a nurse informed him.
‘There was no need for you to leave your bed,’ Gaetano scolded the older man. ‘I only texted you so that you would know where I was.’
‘How is she?’ Rodolfo asked worriedly.
And Gaetano told him, withholding nothing. ‘I’ve been a pretty lousy husband so far,’ he breathed in grim conclusion, conceding the point before it could be made for him.
‘You have a steep learning curve in front of you.’ His grandfather sighed. ‘But she’s a wonderful girl and well worth the effort. And it’s not where you start out that matters, Gaetano...it’s where you end up.’
Rodolfo could not have been more wrong in that estimate, Gaetano reflected austerely. Where you started out mattered very much if you had previously blocked the road to journey’s end. His marriage was not a marriage and the relationship was already faltering. He had put up a roadblock with the word divorce on it and used that as an excuse to behave badly. He had screwed up. He had been shockingly selfish and with Poppy of all people, Poppy who had trailed round after him and his dog, Dino, on the estate when they were both kids. And what had she been like then?
Like an irritating little kid sister. Kind, madly affectionate, his biggest fan. He exhaled heavily. He had had more compassion as a boy than he had retained as an adult and he had not lived up to Poppy’s high expectations. Worse still, he had taken advantage of her despair over her family’s predicament. He had forced through the terms he wanted, terms she should have denied for her own sake, terms only a complete selfish bastard would have demanded. But it was a little too late to turn that particular clock back.
Was the selfishness a Leonetti trait? His father had been the ultimate egotist and his mother had never in her life, to his knowledge, put anyone’s needs before her own. Had his dysfunctional parents made him the ruthless predator that he was at heart? Or had wealth and success and boundless ambition irrevocably changed him? Gaetano asked himself grimly.
Poppy surfaced to appreciate that her head had stopped aching. She discovered that she could swallow again and that her breath was no longer trapped in her chest. She opened her eyes on the unfamiliar room, taking in the hospital bed and the drip attached to her arm before focusing on Gaetano, who was hunched in the chair in the corner.
Gaetano looked as if he had been dragged through hell and far removed from the sophisticated, exquisitely groomed image that was the norm for him. His black curls were tousled, his jaw line heavily stubbled. His jacket was missing. His shirt was open at his brown throat and his sleeves were rolled up. As she stared he lifted his head and she collided with glorious dark golden eyes.
Snatches of memory engulfed her in broken bits and pieces. She remembered the passion and the pleasure he had shown her. Then she remembered his fury about the nude photos, his refusal to credit that she was ill. But she remembered nothing after that point.
Gaetano stood up and pressed the bell on the wall. ‘How are you feeling?’
‘Better than I felt when I fainted...er...did I faint?’
‘You passed out. Next time you feel ill, tell me,’ he breathed with grim urgency.
Poppy grimaced. ‘It was our first night together.’
‘That’s irrelevant. Your health comes first...always,’ he stressed. ‘I’m not a little boy. I can deal with disappointment.’
She was relieved to see that his anger had gone. A nurse came in and went through a series of checks with her.
‘Why did I pass out?’ Poppy asked Gaetano once the nurse had departed.
‘You had an infection and it ran out of control. Your immune system was too weak to fight it off,’ he shared flatly. ‘From here on in you have to take better care of yourself. But first, give me an honest answer to one question...do you have an eating disorder?’
‘No, of course not. I’m naturally skinny...well, I have lost weight over the last few months,’ she conceded grudgingly.
‘You have to eat more,’ Gaetano decreed. ‘No more skipping meals.’
‘I didn’t eat on our wedding day because I wasn’t feeling well,’ she protested.
‘Am I so intimidating that you couldn’t tell me that?’ Gaetano asked, springing restively upright again to pace round the spacious room.
‘Come on, Gaetano. All those guests, all that fuss. What bride would have wanted to be a party pooper?’
‘You should have told me that night,’ Gaetano asserted.
Poppy’s lashes lowered over her strained eyes. ‘You weren’t in the mood to hear that I was ill.’
‘Dio mio! It shouldn’t have mattered how I felt!’
A flush drove away her pallor but she kept her gaze firmly fixed on the bed. ‘We had an agreement.’
‘That’s over, forget about it,’ Gaetano bit out in a raw undertone.
She wondered what he meant and would have questioned him but the doctor arrived and there was no opportunity. Gaetano spoke to the older man at length in Italian. Breakfast arrived on a tray and she ate with appetite, mindful of the doctor’s warning that she needed to regain the weight she had lost. She was smothering a yawn when Gaetano lifted the tray away.
‘Get some sleep,’ he urged. ‘I’m going back to the house to shower and change and bring you back some clothes. As long as you promise to eat and rest, I can take you out of here this evening.’
‘I’m not an invalid...’ Uneasy with his forbidding attitude, Poppy fiddled with her wedding ring, turning it round and round on her finger. ‘What’s happened about the photos you mentioned?’
Gaetano froze and then he reached for the jacket on the chair and withdrew a folded piece of paper. ‘It was a hoax...’
The newspaper cutting depicted a reproduction of a calendar shot headed Miss July. In it Poppy was reclining on a chaise longue with her bare shoulders and long legs on display while a giant floral arrangement was sited to block any more intimate view of her body.
‘I kept my knickers on,’ she told him ruefully. ‘But I had to take my bra off because the straps showed. I was a student nurse on the ladies’ football team. We did the charity calendar to raise funds for the children’s hospice. There was nothing the slightest bit raunchy about the shots. It was all good, clean fun...’
Dark colour now rode along Gaetano’s cheekbones. ‘I know and I accept that. I’m sorry I shouted at you. When Rodolfo showed me that photo in the newspaper I felt like an idiot.’
‘No, you’re not an idiot.’ Just very very possessive in a way Poppy had not expected him to be. My wife, he had growled, outraged by the prospect of anyone else seeing her naked.
‘You have an old-fashioned streak that I never would have guessed you had,’ Poppy remarked tentatively.
‘What is mine is mine and you are mine,’ Gaetano informed her in a gut reaction that took control of him before he could even think about what he was saying.
That gut reaction utterly unnerved him. What the hell was wrong with him? Mine? Since when? Only weeks earlier he would have leapt on the excuse of inappropriate nude photos to break off their supposed engagement. He had not intended to stay engaged to Poppy for very long at all, had actually been depending on her to do or say something dreadful to give him a good reason to reclaim his freedom. How had he travelled from that frame of mind to his current one? All of a sudden she felt like his wife, his real wife. Why was that? Sex had never meant that much to Gaetano and had certainly never opened any doors to deeper connections. But he had wanted Poppy as he had never wanted any woman before and that hunger had triumphed.
Poppy went pink. ‘Not really...’
‘For as long as you wear that ring you’re mine,’ Gaetano qualified.
Poppy hadn’t needed that reminder of her true status, hadn’t sought that more detailed interpretation. Her heart sank and she closed her eyes to shut out his lean, darkly handsome features. It was no good because she still saw his beautiful face in her mind’s eye.
‘Lie down, relax,’ Gaetano urged. ‘You’re exhausted. I’ll be back later.’
You’re mine. But she wasn’t. She was a fake bride and a temporary wife. Casual sex didn’t grant her any status. Suppressing a groan, she shut down her brain on her teeming thoughts and fell asleep.
Late that afternoon, she left the hospital in a wheelchair in spite of her protests. In truth she still felt weak and woozy. Gaetano lifted her out of the chair and stowed her carefully in the passenger seat before joining her.
She was wearing the faded denim sundress Dolores had packed for her.
‘I need to organise new clothes for you,’ Gaetano told her.
‘No, you don’t. When this finishes we go our separate ways and I won’t have any use for fancy threads.’
‘But this isn’t going to finish any time soon,’ Gaetano pointed out softly.
Poppy studied his bold bronzed profile. So far they had enjoyed the honeymoon from hell but he was bearing up well to the challenge. His caring, compassionate husband act was off-the-charts good but she guessed that was purely for Rodolfo’s benefit. They were supposed to be in love, after all, and a loving husband would be upset when his bride fell ill on their wedding day. Lush black lashes curled up as he turned his head to look at her, blue-black hair gleaming in the bright light, spectacular golden eyes wary.