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‘It’s not that easy to make a new start,’ Poppy told him tightly. ‘I’m the only one out of the three of us with a job and if I have to move I’ll lose that.’
Gaetano expelled his breath on an impatient hiss. ‘Poppy... I am not going to apologise for the fact that your mother breached her employment contract and plunged me into a scandal. You cannot lay her problems at my door. I have every sympathy for your position and, out of consideration for the years that your family worked here and did an excellent job, I will make a substantial final payment—’
‘Oh, keep your blasted conscience money!’ Poppy flung at him, suddenly losing her temper, her fierce pride stung by his attitude. He thought that she and her mother and her brother were a sad bunch of losers and he was so keen to get them off his property that he was prepared to pay more for the privilege. ‘I don’t want anything from you. I won’t take anything more from you!’
‘Losing your temper is a very bad idea in a situation like this,’ he breathed irritably as she bent down to scoop up her shoes and turned on her heel, her short skirt flaring round her pert behind.
Poppy turned her head, green eyes gleaming like polished jewels. ‘It’s the only thing I’ve got left to lose,’ she contradicted squarely.
Gaetano threw up his hands in a gesture of frustration. ‘Then why the hell are you doing it? Put yourself first and leave your family to sort out their own problems!’
‘Is that what the ruthless, callous banker would do to save his own skin?’ Poppy asked scornfully as she reached the door. ‘Mum and Damien are my family and, yes, they’re very different from me. I take after Dad and I’m strong. They’re not. They crumble in a crisis. Does that mean I love them any less? No, it doesn’t. In fact it probably means I love them more. I love them warts and all and as long as there’s breath in my body I’ll look after them to the best of my ability.’
Gaetano was stunned into silence by her emotive words. He couldn’t imagine loving anyone like that. His parents had been both been weak and fallible in their different ways. His father had chased thrills and his mother had chased money and Gaetano had only learned to despise them for their shallow characters. His parents had not had the capacity to love him and once he had got old enough to understand that he had stopped loving them, ultimately recognising that only his grandparents genuinely cared about him and his well-being. For that reason, the concept of continuing to blindly love seriously flawed personalities and still feel a duty of care towards them genuinely shocked Gaetano, who was infinitely more discerning and demanding of those closest to him. He had seen Poppy Arnold’s strength and he admired it, but he thought she was a complete fool to allow her wants and wishes to be handicapped by the double burden of a drunken mother and a pretty useless kid brother.
He went for a shower, still mulling over the encounter with a feeling of amazement that grew rather than dwindled. Rodolfo Leonetti would have been hugely impressed by Poppy’s speech, he acknowledged grimly. His grandfather, after all, had wasted years striving to advise and support his feckless son and his frivolous daughter-in-law. Rodolfo had overlooked their faults and had compassionately made the best of a bad situation. Gaetano, however, was much tougher than the older man, less patient, less forgiving, less sympathetic. Was that a flaw in him? he wondered for the very first time.
Thinking of how much Rodolfo would have applauded Poppy’s family loyalty, Gaetano reflected equally on her flaws that Rodolfo would have cringed from. Her background was dreadful, the family unpalatable. Mother an alcoholic? Brother a convicted criminal? Poppy’s provocative clothing and use of bad language? And yet wasn’t Poppy Arnold an ordinary girl of the type Rodolfo had always contended would make his grandson a perfect wife?
Having towelled himself dry, Gaetano got into bed naked and lay there, lost in thought. A sudden laugh escaped him as he momentarily allowed himself to imagine his grandfather’s horror if he were to produce a young woman like Poppy as his future wife. Rodolfo was much more of a snob than he would ever be prepared to admit and it was hardly surprising that he should be for the Leonettis had been a family of great wealth and power for hundreds of years. Yet the same man had risked disinheritance when he had married a fisherman’s daughter against his family’s wishes. Gaetano couldn’t imagine that kind of love. He felt no need for that sort of excessive emotion in his life. In fact the very idea of it terrified him and always had.
He didn’t want to get married. Maybe by the time he was in his forties he would have mellowed a little and would feel the need to settle down with a companion. At some point too he should have a child to continue the family line. He flinched from the concept, remembering his father’s temper tantrums and his mother’s tears and nagging whines. Marriage had a bad image with him. Why couldn’t Rodolfo understand and accept that reality? He was just too young for settling down but not too young to take over as CEO of the bank.
