Poppy glowered at him. ‘What the hell are you doing? She’ll phone the nearest journalist and give an exclusive. I bet she’ll even tell them what we ate and drank.’
‘So?’
‘So? How can you be so casual about this? You deliberately gave her the impression we were seeing each other. I’ll be laughed at and mocked in the press. I’m nothing like the women you usually date. Everyone will make horrible comments about me and call me a gold-digger or something equally offensive.’
Just like they had done to her mother.
Poppy had found some of the news clippings in her gran’s things after she had died. It had been devastating to find out a little more of her mother’s back story. How a normal, mostly sensible girl had been lured into a rich man’s world and dropped when she’d ceased to be of interest to him. Poppy was sure that was what had shattered her mother—the public humiliation of being rejected, discarded like a toy that no longer held any appeal. Poppy’s playboy father had denied paternity when her mother had told him she was pregnant, and in those days it hadn’t been as easy to prove or disprove as it was today when you could buy a testing kit online. Her mother had been painted as a social-climbing, gold-digging slut who wanted to land herself a rich husband.
Wouldn’t the same be said about Poppy if she were seen in the press with Rafe Caffarelli?
‘Why are you so worried about what people will think?’ he asked.
Poppy chewed at her lower lip. ‘It’s all right for you. You’re used to it. I bet hardly a day goes by without an article appearing somewhere with you at the centre of it. I hate having my photo taken even when I’m prepared for it. Some unscrupulous photographer will probably catch me off-guard with parsley stuck in my teeth, or without make-up, or dressed in my shabbiest tracksuit or something.’
He was looking at her with a smile tilting the edge of his mouth. ‘I quite liked how you looked in that tracksuit the other night.’
‘It had lint balls all over it.’
‘I think you looked stunning in it.’
Poppy picked up her champagne flute for something to do with her hands. He was lethally charming in this playful, flirty mood. But she mustn’t forget she had something he wanted—the dower house. He had tried other means to get her to sell it to him. Maybe this new approach was nothing to do with how attractive or unique or cute he found her, but rather another clever ploy of his to achieve his goal. ‘I suppose you think that if you flatter me enough I’ll change my mind and sell you my house?’
‘I think you’re mistaking my motives.’
She gave him an arch look. ‘Oh really? So you’re going to sit there and tell me you asked me out to dinner, not as a ploy to get me to change my mind, but just because you find my company scintillating?’
That sexy half-smile was still lurking around the edges of his mouth. ‘I find your company electrifying. You’re so unlike anyone I’ve ever met before.’
Poppy felt her belly do a complicated tumble turn as his wicked gaze held hers. ‘I guess I must be even more of a challenge to you now.’
‘Why’s that?’
‘Because I’m...you know...what I told you before.’
He cocked his head quizzically. ‘What did you tell me before?’
Poppy blew out a breath. Did she really have to spell it out for him? She felt the heat of embarrassment ride up from her neck as the silence continued.
Finally, she let out a little breath and dropped the V-bomb. ‘I’m still a virgin.’
CHAPTER SEVEN
RAFE PICKED HIS jaw up from the table where he felt it had dropped. ‘Are you serious?’
‘I told you before...’
‘You told me you hadn’t slept with your ex. You didn’t tell me you hadn’t slept with anyone.’
Her expression was defensive. ‘Go on—call me a dinosaur. Call me a pariah.’
Rafe couldn’t get his head around it. He had slept with dozens of women and not one of them had ever been without experience. Some had had much more than him, particularly those he had slept with in his teens.
He liked to think he didn’t operate a double-standard; he liked to think he was as twenty-first-century, open and progressive about sex as everyone else. But something about Poppy’s inexperience struck a chord of something terribly old-fashioned deep inside him that he hadn’t even been aware of possessing until now.
A virgin.
In this day and age!