The Italian's Virgin Acquisition. Michelle Conder

them.

      ‘We need to put the past to bed, nipote mio, and we want you to come. No more excuses. No more putting work first. It is time to move forward.’ He cleared the emotion from his throat. ‘After I tell Evelina about Miss Connolly she will want to meet her. In fact, I will text her now.’

      Sebastiano blinked. ‘Since when do you and Nonna text?’

      ‘Since I bought her a smart phone for her birthday.’

      His grandfather pulled his own phone out of his pocket and pressed the keys with the agility of someone half his age.

      Sebastiano watched him, brooding. He would do a lot of things for his grandparents—he would even cast aside his deeply buried memories of the past to attend their anniversary—but pretend he had a relationship with a woman he barely knew and who might have just set herself up to become the next Mrs Castiglione?

      Not a chance in hell.

       CHAPTER THREE

      ‘TWO HUNDRED AND fifty thousand pounds?’ Poppy stared at Sebastiano, who sat behind his desk like a leanly muscled King Tut with a pot of gold in front of him.

      When he had requested to see her in his office she’d been convinced she was about to be fired. Instead he had offered her enough money to make her heart stop beating, in exchange for her pretending to be ‘the light of his life’, as he had condescendingly put it.

      ‘As in two hundred and fifty thousand pounds cash?’

      ‘You want more? Fine. Make it five hundred.’

      Poppy’s mouth was so dry it was arid. The man was insane. Or drunk. She narrowed her gaze, scanning his face for signs she was right. ‘Have you been drinking?’

      ‘Not since last night, and unfortunately the effects have worn off by now.’

      She glanced around, waiting for a camera crew to jump out from behind his Chesterfield and yell, ‘Surprise!’ Only they didn’t. All that happened was her heart thumped so fast she felt faint. ‘I don’t think this is very funny.’

      ‘I never joke about money. And you only have yourself to blame.’

      ‘Excuse me?’

      ‘Something you said to my grandfather suggested that we were a couple. Something about handling me.’ His dark brows rose mockingly. ‘Which I can assure you, Miss Connolly, no woman will ever do.’

      Poppy’s throat felt tight and uncomfortable. ‘I didn’t say I could handle you.’ She frowned. ‘Your grandfather said something about you needing a firm hand and I agreed. Then he said something in Italian that I didn’t get.’

      ‘Do you remember what it was?’

      She gave him a look. ‘I grew up in the outskirts of Leeds, Mr Castiglione. My Italian starts with si and ends with ciao.’

      ‘Well, thanks to my grandfather mistaking you for my latest mistress, it’s about to extend to a few days on the Amalfi coast. So, what’s your price?’

      Poppy was so shocked at the thought that anyone could mistake her for this man’s anything that she couldn’t take any of this seriously. ‘You’re so desperate to impress him you’re prepared to lie?’

      ‘I like to think of it as taking advantage of an opportunity when it arises. And, believe me, I spent most of those wasted hours last night trying to come up with an alternative plan. I failed.’ His sculpted mouth quirked at one corner. ‘Something I don’t admit to easily.’

      Poppy let the subtle insult that he would rather do anything else than pretend he was in a relationship with her slide. She felt a little drunk herself at the thought of all that money. Five hundred thousand pounds? That kind of offer only happened in the movies, didn’t it?

      She stood up. ‘I... I can’t take your money.’

      ‘Really? You’ll do it for free?’

      She heard the mockery in his tone and frowned. ‘No, of course not, I—’

      ‘Which is as I suspected. So, what is your price?’

      ‘I’m not a prostitute,’ she informed him sharply, those early schoolyard taunts about her biological mother coming back to haunt her.

      ‘There’s no reason to get in a temper,’ he said calmly. ‘I’m not suggesting we sleep together.’

      Poppy scowled. ‘Your arrogance knows no bounds, does it?’

      ‘I’m a businessman, Miss Connolly, and I have a problem. Like it or not, you’re my solution.’

      ‘You’re out of your mind.’ Poppy shook her head. ‘I won’t do it.’

      He regarded her steadily, making her feel hot in her navy suit. ‘You’re knocking back half a million pounds?’ His toned was loaded with arrogant disbelief and it only made Poppy more determined to deny him. ‘In cash.’

      ‘I just...’ She frowned. Growing up poor and without a proper family made a half a million pounds seem like a dream come true. ‘It doesn’t feel right.’

      ‘It doesn’t feel right?’ She had no doubt that if he’d been a car he would have blown a head gasket by now. ‘Are you seriously turning me down because it doesn’t feel right?’

      ‘I don’t expect you to understand,’ she shot at him, thinking of the devastated woman on the end of the phone the day before. ‘You’d need to have feelings for that.’

      ‘I have feelings,’ he shot at her.

      Poppy might have debated that but she still had a week left of her internship and she wanted to get a good reference—and, frankly, she felt a little dizzy. Five hundred thousand pounds was a lot of money. What she could do with it was mind-boggling.

      Buy Simon new trainers, for one. The poor kid had been wearing hand-me-downs for as long as she had. But he was fifteen and the right trainers were integral to a teenager’s self-esteem. With five hundred thousand pounds he would never have to go without anything again!

      And five hundred thousand would be enough to help Maryann, whom she’d spent the rest of Sunday visiting. She’d also been researching MS on the computer to see if there was something she could do to help. Unfortunately the information had been depressing. Once the effects of the disease set in, Maryann would need a flat on the ground floor and, with no family or funds at her disposal, moving was going to be difficult. Poppy had already thought of asking Maryann to move in with her and Simon, but Maryann was as fiercely independent as Poppy was herself, so she knew she wouldn’t take to that idea easily.

      But with half a million pounds Poppy might be able to buy her a flat rather than have her continue to rent. She could pay Maryann back for all the help she had given her over the last eight years. Or could she? She had no idea how far half a million pounds would stretch.

      For a moment she was tempted to take the money, oh, so tempted, but she knew there was no such thing as a free lunch. Taking money for nefarious reasons would always come back to haunt her. It would make her feel as cheap as her beginnings.

      ‘Well?’

      Poppy felt a jolt go through her as Sebastiano impatiently advanced into her personal space with the lazy grace of a man who had it all.

      ‘Well, what?’ she asked, wishing she didn’t sound so breathless.

      A muscle ticked in his jaw. ‘Your answer?’ he said in his rich bedroom voice.

      Holding her ground against his intimidating force, Poppy shook her head. ‘I’m not for sale, Mr Castiglione.’

      ‘I know that.’ He ran a hand through his hair. ‘I’m not asking for this to be real. It’s a few days of your time. A trip to Italy.’