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‘The moment I picked you to fail was the moment that I sank to hened undertone ‘I got it horribly wrong You showedmy expectations were You proved yourself to be so much more than I was prepared for you to be and I becainal plan’
‘But you didn’t need to tellin the direction of the door, desperate to lick her wounds in private
‘You’ve always been honest with ive you the same respect’
‘Only a couple of o you had no respect for me!’ Poppy condemned with embittered accuracy
‘That changed fast,’ Gaetano fielded,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 disagreeyou never do You’re du 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 hih the nonsense to find the heart of an issue and see what really mattered Just as Gaetano had finally seen what really le 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 si he’d ever bothered with until Poppy ca
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 ith 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 drealitzy, he had met every requirement for an adolescent fantasy Now for the first tih his eyes and it was so hu she wanted to sink into the earth and stay hidden there for ever
He had only reirl with the potty mouth, and eccentric clothes, who could be depended on to ehtforhen he could be devious, manipulative and complicated instead, he had hoped to utilise her very obvious faults to frighten Rodolfo out of derandson marry And ironically, Rodolfo hi Gaetano to irls did a jet-setter like Gaetano know?
None Until Poppy had stuht 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 sto sense of defeat and failure She had never cared about such things but evidently Gaetano did Even worse, Gaetano was currently offering to stay nant
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 fro her fall very deeply in love with hiuessed how he really saw her The gardener’s daughter with the unfortunate faht 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 circuardless of her pregnancy, she needed to leave hio ahead with a divorce