CHAPTER ONE

SHE was not going to do the girly thing and burst into

tears, Jodie told herself, gritting her teeth. It might be

growing dark; she might be feeling sick with that familiar

stomach-churning fear that she had made a big

mistake — and about more than just the direction she

had taken in that last village she had passed through

what seemed like for ever ago; tonight might be the

night she and John should have been spending at their

romantic honeymoon hotel — their first night as husband

and wife…but she was not going to cry. Not

now, and in fact not ever, ever again over any man.

Not ever. Love was out of her life and out of her

vocabulary and it was going to stay out.

She winced as her small hire car lurched into a

deep rut in the road — a road which was definitely

climbing towards the mountains when it should have

been dropping down towards the sea.

Her cousin and his wife, her only close family since

her parents" death in a car accident when Jodie was

nineteen, had tried to dissuade her from coming to

Italy.

"But everything’s paid for," she had reminded

them. "And besides…"

Besides, she wanted to be out of the country, and

she wanted to stay out of it for the next few weeks

during the build-up to John’s marriage to his new

fiance.e, Louise, who had taken Jodie’s place in his

heart, in his life, and in his future.

Not that she’d told her cousin David or Andrea, his

wife, about that part of her decision as yet. She knew

they would have tried to persuade her to stay at home.

But when home was a very small Cotswold market

town, where everyone knew you and knew that you

had been dumped by your fiance. less than a month

before your wedding because he had fallen in love

with someone else, it was not somewhere anyone with

any pride could possibly want to be. And Jodie had

as much pride as the next woman, if not more. So

much more that she longed to be able to prove to

everyone, but most especially to John and Louise

themselves, how little John’s treachery mattered to

her. Of course the most effective way to do that would

be to turn up at their wedding with another man — a

man who was better-looking and richer than John, and

who adored her. Oh, if only…

In your dreams, she scoffed mentally at herself.

There was no way that that scenario was likely to

happen.

"Jodie, you can’t possibly go to Italy on your own,"

David had protested, whilst he and Andrea had exchanged

meaningful looks she hadn’t been supposed

to see. It was probably just as well they were now in

Australia on an extended visit to Andrea’s parents.

"Why not?" she had demanded with brittle emphasis.

"After all, that’s the way I’m going to be spending

the rest of my life."

"Jodie, we both understand how hurt and shocked

you are," Andrea had added gently. "Don’t think that

David and I Don’t feel for you, but behaving like this

isn’t going to help."

"It will help me," Jodie had answered stubbornly.

***

It had been John’s idea that they spend their honeymoon

exploring Italy’s beautiful Amalfi coast.

Jodie winced as the hire car hit another pothole in

the road, which was so badly maintained that it was

becoming increasingly uncomfortable to drive.

Her leg was aching badly, and she was beginning

to regret not having chosen to spend her first night

closer to Naples. Where on earth was she? Nowhere

near where she was supposed to be, she suspected.

The directions for the small village set back from the

coast had been almost impossible to follow, detailing

roads she had not been able to find on her tourist map.

If John had been here with her none of this would

have happened. But John was not with her, and he

was never going to be with her again.

She must not think of her now ex-fiance., or the fact

that he had fallen out of love with her and in love

with someone else, or that he had been seeing that

someone else behind her back, or that virtually everyone

in her home village had apparently known about

it apart from Jodie herself. Louise, so Jodie’s friends

had now told her, had made it obvious that she

wanted and intended to have John from the moment

they had been introduced, following her parents"

move to the area. And Jodie, fool that she was, had

been oblivious to all of this, simply thinking that

Louise, as a newcomer, an outsider, was eager to

make friends. Now she was the outsider, Jodie reflected

bitterly. She should have realised how shallow

John was when he had told her that he loved her "in

spite of her leg". She winced as the pain in it intensified.

She was never going to make the kind of mistake

she had made with John again. From now on her heart

was going to be impervious to "love"—yes, even

though that meant at twenty-six she would be facing

the rest of her life alone. What made it worse was

that John had seemed so trustworthy, so honest and

so kind. She had let him into her life and, even more

humiliatingly painful to acknowledge now, into her

fears and her dreams. No way was she going to risk

having another man treat her as John had done — one

minute swearing eternal love, the next…

And as for John himself, he was welcome to

Louise, and they were obviously suited to one another,

too, since they were both deceitful cheats and

liars. But she, coward that she was, could not face

going home until the wedding was over, until all the

fuss had died down and until she was not going to be

the recipient of pitying looks, the subject of hushed

gossip.

"Well, let’s look on the bright side," Andrea had

said lightly when she had realised Jodie was not going

to be persuaded to abandon her plans. "You never

know — you might meet someone in Italy and fall

head over heels in love. Italian men are so gorgeously

sexy and passionate."

Italian men — or any kind of men — were off the life

menu for her from now on, Jodie told herself furiously.

Men, marriage, love — she no longer wanted

anything to do with any of them.

Angrily Jodie depressed the accelerator. She had

no idea where this appallingly bumpy road was going

to take her, but she wasn’t going to turn back. From

now on there would be no U-turns in her life, no

looking back in misery or despair, no regrets about

what might have been. She was going to face firmly

forward.

David and Andrea had been wonderfully kind to

her, offering her their spare room when she had sold

her cottage so that she could put the sale proceeds

towards the house she and John were buying — which

had not, with hindsight, been the most sensible of

things to do — but she couldn’t live with her cousin

and his wife for ever.

Luckily John had at least given her her money

back, but the break-up of their engagement had still

cost her her job, since she had worked for his father

in the family business. John was due to take over

when his father retired.

So now she had neither home nor job, and she was

going to be—

She yelped as the offside front wheel hit something

hard, the impact causing her to lurch forward painfully

against the constraint of her seat belt. How much

further was she going to have to drive before she

found some form of life? She was booked into a hotel

tonight, and according to her calculations she should

have reached her destination by now. Where on earth

was she? The road was climbing so steeply…

"You, I take it, are responsible for this? It has your

manipulative, destructive touch all over it, Caterina,"

Lorenzo Niccolo d’Este, Duce di Montesavro, accused

his cousin-in-law with savage contempt as he

threw his grandmother’s will onto the table between

them.

"If your grandmother took my feelings into account

when she made her will, then that was because—"

"Your feelings!" Lorenzo interrupted her bitingly.

"And what feelings exactly would those be? The same

feelings that led to you bullying my cousin to his

death?" He was making no attempt whatsoever to conceal

his contempt for her.

Two ugly red patches of angry colour burned betrayingly

on Caterina’s immaculately made-up face.

"I did not drive Gino to his death. He had a heart

attack."

"Yes, brought on by your behaviour."

"You had better be careful what you accuse me of,

Lorenzo, otherwise…"

"You dare to threaten me?" Lorenzo demanded.

"You may have managed to deceive my grandmother,

but you cannot deceive me."

He turned his back on her to pace the stone-flagged

floor of the Castillo’s Great Hall, his pent-up fury

rendering him as savagely dangerous as a caged animal

of prey.

"Admit it," he challenged as he swung round again

to confront her. "You came here deliberately intending

to manipulate and deceive an elderly dying

woman for your own ends."

"You know that I have no desire to quarrel with

you, Lorenzo," Caterina protested. "All I want—"

"I already know what you want," Lorenzo reminded

her coldly. "You want the privilege, the position, and

the wealth that becoming my wife would give you—

and it is for that reason that you harried a confused

elderly woman you knew to be dying into changing

her will. If you had any compassion, any—" He broke

off in disgust. "But of course you do not, as I already

know."

His furious contempt had caused the smile to fade

from her lips and her body to stiffen into hostility as

she abandoned any pretence of innocence.

"You can make as many accusations as you wish,

Lorenzo, but you cannot prove any of them," she

taunted him.

"Perhaps not in a court of law, but that does not

alter their veracity. My grandmother’s notary has told

me that when she summoned him to her bedside in

order to alter her will, she confided to him the reason

that she was doing so."

Lorenzo saw the look of unashamed triumph in

Caterina’s eyes.

"Admit it, Lorenzo. I have bested you. If you want

the Castillo — and we both know that you do — then

you will have to marry me. You have no other

choice." She laughed, throwing back her head to expose

the olive length of her throat, and Lorenzo had

a savage impulse to close his hands around it and

squeeze the laughter from her it. He did want the

Castillo. He wanted it very badly. And he was determined

to have it. And he was equally determined that

he was not going to be trapped into marrying

Caterina.

"You told my grandmother I loved you and wanted

to make you my wife. You told her that the fact that

you were so newly widowed, and that your husband

Gino was my cousin, meant that society would frown

upon an immediate marriage between us. And you

told her you were afraid my passion would overwhelm

me and that I would marry you anyway and

thus bring disgrace upon myself, didn’t you?" he accused

her. "You knew how na..ve my grandmother

was, how ignorant of modern mores. You tricked her

into believing you were confiding in her out of concern

for me. You told her you didn’t know what to

do or how you could protect me. Then you ""helped""

her to come up with the solution of changing her will,

so that instead of inheriting the Castillo from her — as

her previous will had stated — I would only inherit it

if I was married within six weeks of her death. As

you told her, everyone knows how important to me

the Castillo is. And then, as though that were not

enough, you conceived the added inducement of persuading

her to add that if I did not marry within those

six weeks, you would inherit the Castillo. You led her

to believe that in making those changes she was enabling

me to marry you, because I could say I was

fulfilling the terms of her will rather than following

the dictates of my heart."

"You can’t prove any of that." She shrugged contemptuously.

Lorenzo knew that what she had said was true.

"As I’ve already told you, Nonna confided her

thoughts to her notary," he continued acidly. "Unfortunately,

by the time he managed to alert me to what

was going on, it was too late."

"Much too late — for you." Caterina smirked at him.

"So you admit it?"

"So what if I do? You can’t prove it," Caterina repeated.

"And even if you could, what good would it

do?"

"Let me make this clear to you, Caterina. No matter

what my grandmother has written in her will, you will

never become my wife. You are the last woman I

would want to give my name to."

Caterina laughed. "You have no choice."

Lorenzo had a reputation for being a formidable

and ruthless adversary. He was the kind of man other

men both respected and feared — the kind of man

women dreamed excitedly of enticing into their beds.

He was also a superb male animal, strikingly handsome,

with a hormone-unleashing combination of arrogance

and a predatory, very dangerous male sexuality—

a sexuality that he wore as easily as a panther

wore its coat. He was not just a prize, but perhaps the

most coveted prize amongst the very best of Italy’s

most eligible and wealthy men. All through his twenties

gossip columns had seethed with excited interest,

trying to guess which high-born young woman he

would make his duchess. It certainly wasn’t from any

lack of willing partners to share his wealth and his

title, along with enjoying the sexual pleasure of mating

with such a vigorously sensual man, that he had

escaped into his thirties without making any kind of

formal commitment to the women who had pursued

him.

Lorenzo looked at his late cousin’s wife. He despised

and loathed her. But then, he despised most

women. From what he had experienced of them they

were all willing to give him whatever he wanted because

of what he had, what was outside the inner him:

wealth, a title, and a handsome male body. What he

actually was was of no interest to them. His thoughts,

his beliefs, all that went to make up the man who was

Lorenzo d’Este didn’t matter to them anywhere near

so much as his money and his social position.

"You have no choice, Lorenzo," Caterina repeated

softly. "If you want the Castillo you have to marry

me."

Lorenzo permitted his mouth to curl in sardonic

disdain.

"I have to marry, yes," he agreed softly. "But nowhere

does it say that I have to marry you. You have

obviously not read my grandmother’s will thoroughly."

Her face blanched, her narrowed eyes betraying her

confusion and distrust.

"What do you mean? Of course I have read it. I

dictated it! I—"

"I repeat, you did not read the will my grandmother

signed thoroughly enough," Lorenzo told her. "You

see, it stipulates only that I must marry within six

weeks of her death if I want to inherit the Castillo

from her. It does not specify who I should marry."

Caterina stared at him, unable to conceal her anger.

It stripped from her the good looks which had in her

youth made her a sought-after model, and left in their

place the ugliness of her true nature.

"No, that cannot be true. You have altered it,

changed it — you and that sneering notary. You

have— Where does it say? Let me see!"

She virtually flung herself at him and Lorenzo retrieved

the will he had thrown down onto the table

earlier. Seizing it, she read it, her face white with

rage.

"You have changed it. Somehow you have— She

wanted you to marry me!" She was almost hysterical

with fury.

"No." Lorenzo shook his head, his face impassive

as he watched her. "Nonna wanted to give me what

she believed I wanted. And that, most assuredly, is

not you."

As Lorenzo stood beneath the flickering light of the

old-fashioned flambeaux, the small abrupt movement

of his head was reflected and repeated in the shadows

from the flames.

The Castillo had been designed as a fortress rather

than a home, long before the Montesavro Dukes of

the Renaissance had captured it from their foes and

then clothed and softened its sheer stone walls with

the artistic richness of their age. It still possessed an

aura of forbidding and forbidden darkness.

Like Lorenzo himself.

Dark shadows carved hollows beneath the sculptured

bone structure he had inherited from the warrior

prince who had been the first of their line, and his

height and the breadth of his shoulders emphasised

the predatory sleekness of his body. His mouth was

thin-lipped—"cruel", women liked to call it, as they

begged for its hardness against their own and tried to

soften it into hunger for them. It was his eyes, though,

that were his most arresting feature. Curiously light

for an Italian, they were more silver than grey, and

piercingly determined to strip away his enemies" defences.

His well-groomed hair was thick and dark, his

suit hand-made and expensive. But then, he did not

need to depend on any inheritance from his late maternal

grandmother to make him a wealthy man. He

was already that in his own right.

There were those who said, foolishly and theatrically,

that for a man to accumulate so much money

there had to be some trickery involved — some sleight

of hand or hidden use of certain dark powers. But

Lorenzo had no time for such stupidity. He had made

his money simply by using his intelligence, by making

the right investments at the right time, and thus

building the respectable sum he had been left by his

parents into a fortune that ran into many, many millions.

Unlike his late cousin, Gino, who had allowed his

greedy wife to ruin him financially. His greedy widow

now, Lorenzo reminded himself savagely. Not that

Caterina had ever behaved like a widow, or indeed

like a wife.

Poor Gino, who had loved her so much. Lorenzo

lifted his hand to his forehead. It felt damp with perspiration.

Caused by guilt? It had after all been by

claiming friendship with him that Caterina had first

brought herself to Gino’s attention.

Lorenzo had been eighteen to Caterina’s twenty-

two when he had first met her, and was easily seduced

by her determination. It hadn’t taken him long,

though, to recognise her for the adventuress that she

was. No longer, in fact, than her first hint to him that

she expected him to repay her sexual favours with

expensive gifts. As a result of that, he had ended his

brief fling with her immediately.

He had been at university when she had inveigled

herself into his kinder cousin Gino’s heart and life,

and the next time he had seen her Caterina had been

wearing Gino’s engagement ring whilst his cousin

wore a besotted expression of adoration. He had tried

to warn his cousin then, of just what she was, but

Gino had been in too deeply ever to listen, and had

even accused him of jealousy. For the first time that

Lorenzo could remember they had quarrelled, with

Gino accusing Lorenzo of wanting Caterina for himself,

and she had cleverly played on that to keep them

apart until after her and Gino’s marriage.

Later, Lorenzo and his cousin had been reconciled,

but Gino had never stopped worshipping his wife,

even though she had been blatantly unfaithful to him

with a string of lovers.

"Where are you going?" Caterina demanded shrilly

as Lorenzo turned on his heel and walked away

from her.

From the other side of the hall Lorenzo looked

back at her.

"I am going," he told her evenly, "to find myself a

wife — any wife. Just so long as she is not you. You

could have seen to it that I was warned that my grandmother

was near to death, so that I could have been

here with her, but you chose not to. And we both

know why."

"You cannot marry someone else. I will not let

you."

"You cannot stop me."

She shook her head. "You will not find another

wife, Lorenzo. Or at least not the kind of wife you

would be willing to accept — not in such a sort space

of time. You are far too proud to marry some little

village girl of no social standing, and besides…" She

paused, then gave him a taunting look and said softly,

"If necessary I shall tell everyone about the child I

was to have had, whom you made me destroy."

"Your lover’s child," he reminded her. "Not Gino’s

child. You told me that yourself."

"But I shall tell others that it was your child. After

all, many people know that Gino believed you loved

me."

"I should have told him that I loathed you."

"He would not have believed you," Caterina told

him smugly. "Just as he would not have believed the

child was not his. How does it feel to know that you

are responsible for the taking of an unborn child"s

life, Lorenzo?"

He took a step towards her, a look of such blazing

fury in his eyes that she ran for the door, pulling it

open and sliding through it.

Lorenzo cursed savagely under his breath and then

went back to the table where he had dropped his

grandmother’s will.

He had been filled with fury and disbelief when his

grandmother’s notary had finally managed to make

contact with him to tell him of his fears, and how he

had managed to prevent Caterina from having all her

own way by deliberately removing her name from the

will so that it merely required Lorenzo to marry in

order to inherit, rather than specifically having to

marry Caterina.

The notary, almost as elderly as his grandmother

had been, had apologised to Lorenzo if he had done

the wrong thing, but Lorenzo had quickly reassured

him that he had not. Without the notary"s interference

Caterina would have trapped him very cleverly. She

was right about one thing. He did want the Castillo.

And he intended to have it.

Right now, though, he had to get away from it before

he did something he would regret, he reflected

as he strode out into the courtyard and breathed in

the clean tang of the evening air, mercifully devoid

of Caterina’s heavy, smothering perfume.

CHAPTER TWO

SHE was going to have to give in and do that U-turn

she had sworn she would not make, Jodie admitted

unhappily to herself. She hadn’t a clue where she was,

and the bright moonlight was illuminating a landscape

so barren and hostile that she was actually beginning

to feel quite unnerved. To one side of her the ground

dropped away with dramatic sharpness, and on the

other it was broken by various jagged outcroppings

of rock.

Up ahead of her she could see where the narrow

track widened out to provide a passing place.

Determinedly she headed for it, and started to manoeuvre

the vehicle so that she could turn round.

Suddenly there was a loud noise, and the back

wheels of the hire car began to spin whilst the car

itself lurched horribly to one side. Thoroughly

alarmed, Jodie put the car in neutral and climbed out,

her alarm turning to despair as she saw that one of

the rear wheels was stuck fast in a deep rut and looked

as though it had a flat tyre.

Now what was she going to do? She certainly

couldn’t drive anywhere in it.

She went back to the car, massaging her aching leg

as she did so. She was tired, and hungry, and thoroughly

miserable. Opening her bag, she reached for

her mobile phone, and the wallet in which she had

placed all the details of her travel arrangements and

car hire.

As she picked up the phone her eyes widened in

dismay. Her phone was already on, and by the looks

of it there was no signal. Not only that, but when she

attempted to dial a number anyway the phone gave

an ominous bleep and the display light died. She must

have left it on, and now the battery was flat. How

could she have been so stupid? She needed help, but

what was she going to do? Stay here and wait for

someone to drive past? She hadn’t seen another sign

of life, never mind another vehicle, for miles. Walk?

To where? Back down the hundreds of kilometres to

the last village she had passed through what felt like

hours ago? The pain in her leg was gnawing at her

now. Should she walk on up into the mountains? She

gave a small shiver.

She hadn’t seen another driver in the whole of the

time she had been on this road, but someone must use

it because she could see tyre tracks in the dust. She

looked up towards the mountains, and, as though

somehow her own despair had conjured it up, she saw

the distant lights of another vehicle racing towards

her.

The relief made her feel almost giddily weak.

Savagely Lorenzo depressed the accelerator of the

black Ferrari, letting the powerful car take his anger

and turn it into a speed that demanded every ounce

of his driving skill as he negotiated the twisting road

in front of him.

Caterina had been very clever, working on his

grandmother in the way that she had. Had he been

here… But he had not. He had been abroad, visiting

the scene of the latest world disaster, helping to find

ways of alleviating the misery of those who had been

caught in it via his unofficial and voluntary role

within the government, unifying different charities

and providing hands-on administrative practical help

and expertise.

The severity of this particular crisis had meant that

he had not even been able to return to Italy for his

grandmother’s funeral, although he had managed to

find time within his meeting-packed day to go into a

local place of worship and add his prayers to those

of her other mourners.

A gentle, unsophisticated woman, who had once

told him she had hoped as a young girl to become a

nun, she had died peacefully in her sleep.

The Castillo had come to her through her first husband

who, in the way of things in aristocratic circles,

had also been the second cousin of her second husband,

Lorenzo’s own father, which was why the

Castillo had been hers to leave as she wished.

He had always been her favourite out of her two

grandsons, Lorenzo knew. He had spent his holidays

with her after the divorce of his parents, and it had

been his grandmother he had turned to when his

mother had announced that she was marrying her

lover — a man Lorenzo detested.

He had never been able to bring himself to forgive

his mother for that. Not even now when she, like his

father, was dead. Her actions had opened his eyes to

the deceitful, self-serving ways of the female sex, and

their determination to put themselves first whilst laying

claim to a sanctity they did not possess. His

mother had always insisted that her decision to divorce

his father had been taken to spare him the pain

of growing up in an unhappy home. She had lied, of

course. His feelings had been the last thing on her

mind when she had lain in the arms of her lover and

chosen him above her husband and her son.

The Ferrari snarled and bucked at the bad condition

of the road. Lorenzo ignored its complaints and

changed gear, hurling it into a sharp corner, and then

cursed beneath his breath as, right in front of him, he

saw a car blocking the road and a young woman

standing beside it.

Jodie winced as she heard the screech of brakes,

choking on the dust raised by the Ferrari’s tyres as it

skidded to a halt only inches away from the side of

the hire car. Automatically she had made herself stand

upright, instead of leaning on her vehicle for support,

the moment she had seen the other car.

What kind of madman drove like that down a road

like this — and in the dark, too? she wondered shakily,

holding on to the door of the car for support as she

watched him uncoil himself from the driver’s seat and

come towards her.

"Disgraziata!" A stream of Italian followed the

snarlingly contemptuous word he had already hurled

at her. But Jodie was not going to let herself be cowed

by him — or by any man — ever again.

"When you’ve quite finished…" Jodie interrupted

him, her own voice every bit as hostile as his. "For a

start, I’m not Italian. I’m English. And—"

"English?" He made it sound as though he had

never heard the word before. "What are you doing

here? Why are you on this road? It is a private road

and leads only to the Castillo." The questions were

thrown at her like so many deadly sharp stiletto

knives.

"I took a wrong turning," Jodie defended herself. "I

was trying to turn round, but a wheel got stuck, and

now the tyre is flat."

She was pale and thin, her eyes huge in the exhausted

triangle of her small face, her fair hair

scraped back. She looked about sixteen, and an underfed

sixteen at that, Lorenzo decided unflatteringly,

as he swept her from head to toe with an experienced

male glance that took in the droop of her shoulders,

the hardly discernible shape of her breasts, the narrowness

of her waist and her hips, and the unexpected

length of the denim-clad legs attached to such a small

frame. Was she wearing heels, or were they really as

long as they looked?

"How old are you?" he demanded.

How old was she? Why on earth was he asking her

that?

"I’m twenty-six," Jodie responded stiffly, tilting her

chin as she looked up at him, determined not to be

intimidated by him despite the fact that she was already

aware that he was so spectacularly good-

looking she wanted to run away and hide before he

realised how pathetically inferior as a woman she was

to him as a man. Automatically, her hand went to her

bad leg. It was really hurting her now.

Twenty-six! Lorenzo frowned as he looked down

at her hands. No rings. "Why are you here on your

own?"

Jodie was beginning to feel she had had enough.

"Because I am on my own. Not that it is any business

of yours," she informed him.

"On the contrary, it is very much my business—

since you have seen fit to trespass on my land."

His land? Of course it would be his land; it possessed

exactly the same harsh, arrogant inhospitality as

he did.

"And what do you mean, you are on your own?"

she heard him demanding. "Surely you have a…a

husband, or a lover. A man, a partner, in your life."

Jodie winced, and then laughed bitterly. He didn’t

know about the still tender nerves he was brutalising.

"I thought I did," she agreed angrily, "but unfortunately

for me he decided he wanted to marry someone

else. This—" she gestured towards the landscape and

the car "—was supposed to be our honeymoon. But

now…" Just saying the words still hurt, but strangely

there was also a savage sense of relief in being able

to vent her emotions instead of having to keep them

locked inside her for the sake of others, as she had

had to do at home.

"Now what?" Lorenzo challenged her. "Now you

are travelling alone and looking for someone to replace

him in your bed? The coastal resorts are the

best hunting ground for that. Not the mountains."

Jodie drew in her breath in outraged fury. "How

dare you say that? I am most certainly not looking

for anyone, let alone someone to replace him. In fact,

that is the last thing I want to do," she found herself

adding. "I shall never let another man into my life to

hurt me. Never. From now on I intend to live by

myself and for myself." Bold words, but she meant

every single one of them!

Lorenzo frowned as he heard in her voice the passionate

intensity of her determination.

"You still want him so much?"

"No!" Jodie told him fiercely, without stopping to

wonder why he was asking such a personal thing. "I

Don’t want him at all — not now."

"So why are you here — running away?"

"I am not running away! I just Don’t want to be

there to see him marry someone else," she added defensively

when she saw the way he was looking at

her. "Especially when she’s all the things I’m not.

Exciting, glamorous, sexy…" Jodie lifted her hand to

her face to rub away the tears that had suddenly filled

her eyes. She had no idea why she was telling this

stranger all of this, admitting to him things she had

not even admitted to herself before.

"It is the man who determines whether or not a

woman is "sexy", as you put it," Lorenzo decreed

dismissively, as caught up in this strangely intimate

exchange as Jodie. "A skilled lover has it in his power

to create a full flowering of even the most tightly

closed bud."

A shock of tingling awareness quivered through her

belly as Jodie absorbed the meaning of his astoundingly

arrogant statement.

"Not that many young women are tightly closed

buds in this day and age," Lorenzo added sardonically,

as he watched the colour come and go in the

pale face that was so shadowed with tiredness.

"Modern women have claimed the right to their

own sexuality," Jodie responded fiercely. "They do

not—"

"It does not sound to me as though you have been

very effective in claiming yours," Lorenzo told her

derisively. "In fact, if I were to make an assessment

of it, I would guess that your experience is extremely

limited — otherwise you would not have lost your man

to another woman."

His sheer arrogant machismo both astounded and

infuriated her. But she was forced to admit that non

existent would have been a more accurate estimation

of her sexual expertise. Painfully she released the

pent-up breath his words had caused her to hold, in

shaky relief that he had not added to her existing humiliation

by somehow recognising that she was still

a virgin. Not by choice, though. All those months in

hospital, after the car crash in which her parents had

been killed and she had been so badly injured that at

one point it had been feared she would not survive,

had stolen a large chunk out of her life.

"Which, presumably, is why you are confusing

physical lust with love — a word, an emotion, your sex

has laid claim to and downvalued to the extent that

is now worthless," Lorenzo continued harshly.

"My sex?" Jodie took up the challenge immediately,

the gold-hued warmth of her eyes heating to an indignant

dark amber.

"Yes, your sex! Do you deny that women have now

become as much serial adulterers as they once

claimed only men could be? That their reasons for

marriage are based on their own selfish and shallow

emotions and needs — needs which in their eyes come

before the needs of anyone else, even the children

they bear?"

The bitterness she could hear in his voice momentarily

shocked Jodie into silence. But she rallied

quickly to defend her sex, pointing out, "If that is your

consistent experience of women, then maybe you are

the common factor — and the one to blame."

"I? So you believe that if a child is abandoned by

its mother, it is the child who is at fault? A novel

mindset — which only underlines what I have just

been saying!"

"No, that is not what I meant—" Jodie began.

But it was too late. He was ignoring her words to

demand autocratically, "What is your name?"

"Jodie. Jodie Oliver. What is your name?" she

asked equally firmly, not to be outdone.

For the first time since he had stopped his car she

sensed a momentary hesitation in him before he said

coolly, "Lorenzo."

"The Magnificent?" Jodie quipped, and then went

bright red as he looked at her.

Il Magnifico. That had always been Gino’s teasing

way of addressing him, claiming that it was no wonder

he had been so successful when he carried the

same name as one of Florence’s most famous Medici

rulers.

"You know the history of the Medici?" he shot at

Jodie.

"Some of it," she said neutrally, suddenly not wanting

any more argument with a stranger. She was beginning

to feel very tired and weak. "Look, I need to

get in touch with the car hire firm and tell them about

the car, but my mobile isn’t working. Could you possibly…?"

He must surely be going back through the

village she had driven through — there was nowhere

else to go. If he would take her there she might be

able to find a room for the night and telephone the

car rental people.

"Could I possibly what?" Lorenzo demanded. "Help

you? Certainly." She had just started to sag with relief

when he added softly, "Provided that you agree to

help me."

Instantly warning signals flashed their messages inside

her head, causing her to tense.

"Help you?" she repeated cautiously.

"Yes. I need a wife."

He was mad. Completely and utterly insane. She

was stuck on a deserted road with a madman.

"You…want me to help you find a wife?" she managed

to ask, as though it were the most natural request

in the world.

Lorenzo’s mouth compressed, and he gave her a

look of cold derision. "Don’t be ridiculous. No, I do

not want you to help me find a wife. I want you to

become my wife," he told her coolly.

CHAPTER THREE

SHE was being ridiculous?

"You want me to be your wife?" Jodie repeated

slowly. "I’m sorry, but—"

"You Don’t want to marry — ever. Yes, I know,"

Lorenzo interrupted dismissively. "But this would not

be an ordinary marriage. I need a wife, and I need

one within the next few weeks. I have as little real

desire for a wife as you have for a husband — although

for different reasons. Therefore it seems to me that

you and I could come to a mutually beneficial arrangement.

I get the wife I need, and you, after we

have been married for twelve months, get a divorce

and…shall we say one million pounds?"

Jodie blinked and shook her head, not sure that she

had actually heard him correctly.

"You want me to agree to marry you and stay with

you for twelve months?"

"You will be well reimbursed for your time — and

it is only your time and your status as my wife that I

shall require. Your presence in my bed will not be

part of the arrangement."

"You’re crazy," Jodie told him flatly. "I Don’t know

anything about you, and I—"

"You know that I am prepared to pay you a million

pounds to be my wife. As for the rest…" He gave an

arrogant shrug of his powerful shoulders, and told her,

briefly and dismissively, "There will be time later for

me to explain to you everything you need to know."

By rights she ought to be scared to death, Jodie

decided. But, despite the fact that she was obviously

in the presence of a madman, for some reason the

main emotion that filled her was not fear but bemusement.

Bemusement and a certain sense that fate

had listened in to her secret thoughts and decided to

take a hand in her life. Here was the opportunity—

the man — her pride had ached for…

Was she mad? She surely couldn’t be thinking of

accepting his ridiculous proposition?

"If you want a wife that badly, surely there must

be someone—"

"Many someones," Lorenzo stopped her sardonically.

"Unfortunately they would all want what I do

not want to give — it is amazing how easily your sex

claims undying love when money and social position

are involved."

"You mean you would be targeted by fortune-

hunters?" Jodie guessed shrewdly. It was obvious, after

all — not just from his car and his clothes, but more

betrayingly from his manner — that he was wealthy.

"Is that why you want to marry me, because a fake

marriage will keep them at bay?"

"Not exactly."

"Then why?"

"It’s a condition of my late grandmother’s will that

I either marry within a certain time of her death or I

forfeit…something that means a great deal to me."

Jodie’s forehead crinkled into a small frown.

"But why on earth would she do that? I mean, either

she wanted you to inherit whatever it is or she

didn’t."

"The situation is more complex than that, and involves…

other issues. Let us just say that my grandmother

was persuaded to do something that she

thought was in my best interests by someone who was

following their own agenda."

Jodie waited for him to continue, but instead he

reached for her hand. "Give me your car keys and—"

She gave a small, determined shake of her head.

"No." If she wasn’t already totally off men for life,

this man and his unbelievable arrogance would surely

be enough to put her off them, she decided angrily.

But at the same time an insidiously tempting possibility

had begun to form inside her head. What if

she were to agree, on condition that Lorenzo escorted

her to John and Louise’s wedding? With the whole

village invited, two extra guests wouldn’t cause any

problems…and, yes, she admitted it, there was a part

of her that was sore enough and woman enough to

want to be there, showing the world and the newly

married couple that not only did she not care about

their betrayal, but that she had a new partner of her

own. wasn’t there a saying, "Living well is the best

revenge"? And how much better could a discarded

and unwanted fiance.e live than by showing off her

new, better-looking and far more eligible man? A

man, moreover, who desperately wanted to marry her!

She was wrenched out of this mental triumphant

return to the scene of her humiliation by Lorenzo’s

arrogantly disbelieving voice. "No?"

It was ridiculous that she could even contemplate

doing something so shallow, and it showed the effect

that just a few minutes in the company of a man like

Lorenzo was having on her. She was not going to let

herself listen to the urgings of her pride. Leaving it

and her conscience to wage war on one another with

an undignified exchange of inner accusations, she

tried to do the sensible thing, and told Lorenzo firmly,

"Even someone as…as arrogant and used to getting

what they want as you seem to be must see that what

You’re suggesting just isn’t—"

"A million isn’t enough? Is that what You’re trying

to say?"

Her face burned. "The money has nothing to do

with it." The cynical look he gave her at that made

her burst out angrily, "I can’t be bought. Not by John,

and certainly not by you."

"John?"

He hadn’t pounced so much as leapt on her small

betrayal, and now he was looking at her as she imagined

a large sleek cat might look at a mouse it was

enjoying tormenting.

But she was not a mouse, and she wasn’t going to

be either bullied or tormented by any man ever again.

She lifted her head and told him coolly, "My exfiance.

He offered me money, too, but he was offering

it out of guilt, because he didn’t want to marry me,

not as a bribe because he did. He wanted me to be

the one to break off our engagement, so that no one

could accuse him of dumping me. Obviously you both

share the same male mindset. Like you, he thought

that he could buy what he wanted, regardless of what

I might be feeling." Despite her attempt to appear unaffected

by what she was revealing, a mixture of sadness

and cynicism shadowed her eyes. Her mouth

twisted slightly as she added, "In a way, I suppose he

did me a favour. Knowing that he thought so little of

me that he would buy his way out of our relationship

made me realise that I was better off without him."

"But, despite that, you still want him."

The unemotional statement made her heart thud

nauseatingly inside her chest.

"No!" she said quickly. "I do not ""still want him""."

"So why have you run away, if it is not because

you are afraid of what you still feel for him?"

"I have not run away! I’m having a holiday, and

when I go back…" The small involuntary movement

that caused her shoulders to droop as she contemplated

returning home was more telling that she realised.

When she went back — what? She had no job to

go back to. Not now. And no home — she had, after

all, sold her cottage, and even if she had not done so

she doubted that she would have wanted to live there,

with all its memories of her false happiness. But she

could go back with her head held high and on the arm

of a man she could truthfully say was going to become

her husband, she reminded herself.

And then what? He had already told her the marriage

was only to last twelve months.

Then she would shrug her shoulders and say, as so

many others did, that it hadn’t worked out. There was

far less shame in that than there was in being labelled

as a dumped reject.

"In twelve months" time you could go back with a

million pounds in your bank account," she heard

Lorenzo saying, as though he had read her mind.

It was so tempting to give in and agree. And she

resented him for putting her in a position where she

was tempted. What had she promised herself about

never being manipulated by a man again? Gritting her

teeth, Jodie pushed herself back from the edge of giving

in.

"If you really want a wife," she told him crossly,

"then why Don’t try finding one without using your

money? Someone who wants to marry you because

she loves you, and believes that in you she has found

a man who loves her back, a man she can respect and

trust, and…" She saw the way he was looking at her

and shook her head. "Oh, what’s the use? Men like

you and John are all the same. He only values the

kind of woman he can show off, the kind of woman

who makes other men envy him, and you only want

the kind of woman you can buy so that you can control

her and your relationship with her. Well, I am not

that kind of woman. And, no, I will not marry you."

As she turned away from him Lorenzo could feel

the anger surging through him. She was refusing him?

This…this too-thin nobody of a tourist — a woman

who had been rejected publicly by the man who had

promised to marry her? didn’t she realise just what

he was offering her or how fortunate she was?

Marriage to him would transform her instantly from

an unwanted dab of a woman into the wife of someone

wealthy enough to buy her ex-fiance. a hundred

thousand times over. She would instantly be raised to

a social height most women could only dream of, she

would be courted by the famous and the rich, and, if

she was intelligent enough to capitalise on what he

would be giving her when their marriage was over,

she could find herself a new husband. Any amount of

men would be only too willing to marry the woman

who had been selected by a man like him. All she

had to do in order to totally transform her life was

agree to be his wife.

And yet, instead of recognising her good fortune,

she was actually daring to take it upon herself to lecture

him! Well, she was no loss to him. She wouldn’t

have lasted a day, not even twelve hours once

Caterina had got her claws into her, and he was a fool

to have wasted his time on her in the first place. He

could drive down to the coast and find a dozen

women within one hour who would jump at the opportunity

she had turned down.

"Fine," he snapped, turning his back on Jodie as he

strode back towards the Ferrari.

He was leaving her here? He couldn’t — he

wouldn’t! Jodie’s eyes widened in mute shock as she

watched him walk away from her.

"No, wait!" she called out, as she stumbled anxiously

after him, gasping at the pain in her weak leg,

her anger giving way to a fear that was only slightly

alleviated when he eventually stopped and turned

round. "I need to get in touch with the car hire firm

and let them know what’s happened."

"They won’t be very happy about the fact that you

have damaged their vehicle. I hope you have brought

plenty of money with you," Lorenzo warned her

coldly.

"I’m insured," Jodie protested, but a cold, hard knot

of anxiety gripped her stomach as she remembered

her cousin warning her about the problems she would

face if she were to be involved in an accident.

"I doubt that will benefit you, especially when I

inform the authorities that you were driving on a private

road, and in doing so that you endangered not

just your own life but mine as well. You are going to

need a very good solicitor, and that will be very expensive."

"But that’s not true!" she protested. "You weren’t

even here when…"

Her voice trailed away as she saw the look in

his eyes.

"You’re trying to frighten me and — and blackmail

me!" she accused him.

He shrugged and continued to walk back to his car.

She watched helplessly as he opened the door, whilst

her emotions raged in impotent fury. He was the most

hateful, horrible man she had ever met — arrogant, selfish,

and the very last kind of man she would have

wanted to marry for any kind of reason. But a logical,

practical voice inside her head was pointing out that

it was late at night and she was miles from anywhere

down a private road, wholly dependent on the goodwill

of the man now about to leave her here.

He had started the engine and was pulling out to

drive past her. Panic filled her. She started to run towards

the car, gasping at the pain in her weak leg as

she flung herself at the driver’s door and banged on

it.

Expressionlessly, Lorenzo opened the window.

"All right, I’ll do it," she told him recklessly. "I’ll

marry you."

He was staring at her so impassively that she wondered

if he had changed his mind. Her heart started

hammering uncomfortably fast, making her feel

slightly sick.

"You’re agreeing to marry me?"

Jodie nodded her head, and then exhaled shakily in

relief as he pushed open the passenger door of the car

and said brusquely, "Give me your keys and wait here

whilst I get your things."

It was a warm night, but anxiety and exhaustion

were making her shiver slightly, so that her fingers

trembled against the impersonal hand he had stretched

out for her car keys. A prickle of unwanted sensation

raced up her arm, causing her to recoil from her physical

contact from him. He had long, elegant hands,

with lean, strong fingers — unlike John, who had had

somewhat plump hands with short fingers. The

knowledge that the stroke of those hands against a

woman"s body would deliver a dangerous level of

sensual pleasure pierced the thin skin of her defences,

making her emotional recoil from it even more intense

than her physical recoil from his touch.

Lorenzo frowned as he got out of the Ferrari and

strode over to Jodie’s hire car, unlocking the boot.

Her recoil from him had the hallmark of a kind of

sexual inexperience he had imagined no longer existed.

In fact, the last time he had seen a grown

woman recoil like that from a man"s casual touch had

been the last time he had visited his grandmother,

when he had sat with her watching one of the old

fashioned black and white films she’d loved so much.

He lived in a world peopled by the sophisticated, the

blase., the experienced, the rich and the aristocratic: a

world driven by cynicism and greed, by self-interest

and envy. Power did not go hand in hand with goodness,

as he had every reason to know. Jodie Oliver

wouldn’t survive a month in that world.

He shrugged away his thoughts. Her survival was

not his concern. He had other matters, another kind

of survival, to worry about, and she was merely the

instrument by which he would achieve that. Had he

genuinely wanted to marry her… His frown deepened.

What kind of thought was that? He had no desire

to marry anyone, much less a thin, wan-faced

young woman who had "broken heart" written all over

her.

He glanced down at the small case he had removed

from the boot of the car, and then went to check the

interior of the car itself.

"How long did you say you intended to stay away

from your home for?" he asked Jodie wryly as he

carried her things back to the Ferrari.

Jodie flushed at the implication she could hear in

his voice. "I have enough with me for my needs," she

told him defensively, adding with angry dignity, "And

there are such things as laundries, you know." She

wasn’t going to tell him that she had chosen her small

trolley case specifically because it was light enough

for her to lift, and that the last thing she had felt like

when she was packing had been bringing with her all

the pretty things she had bought for her honeymoon.

She felt the increase in weight of the car as Lorenzo

got back into the driver’s seat. There was a disconcerting

intimacy about being in a machine like this

one with a man who was so very much a man.

The scent of expensive leather reminded her poignantly

of an afternoon she had spent with John,

when he had gone to buy a new car and taken her

with him. They had visited showroom after showroom

as he admiringly inspected their top-of-the-range vehicles.

But none of them, no matter how expensive,

had come anywhere near being as luxurious as this

car, she thought now, her senses suddenly picking up

on the cool, subtle woody scent of male cologne

mixed with the very sensual smell of living, breathing

male flesh.

By the time she had finished absorbing the messages

with which her senses were bombarding her,

Lorenzo had reversed the Ferrari and turned it round.

"Where are we going?" she demanded uncertainly.

"To the Castillo."

The Castillo. It sounded impossibly grand. But five

minutes later, when she saw its steep escarpments rising

sharply up out of the rock face, she decided that

it was more barbaric than grand — like something left

over from another less civilised age. An age where

might was more valued than right; an age where a

man could take what he wanted simply because he

chose to do so. An age surely well suited to the man

seated next to her, she decided a little sourly.

They drove into the Castillo through a narrow

arched entrance, so evocative of the Middle Ages that

Jodie had to blink to dismiss her mental images of

chainmailed men at arms and heralds announcing

their arrival.

The empty courtyard was lit by the flames from

large metal sconces that threw moving shadows

against the imposing stone walls with their watching

narrow slit windows.

"What an extraordinary place," Jodie heard herself

saying apprehensively.

"The Castillo is a relic left over from a time when

men built fortresses rather than homes. I warn you, it

is every bit as inhospitable inside as it is out."

"You live here?" She couldn’t keep the dismay out

of her voice.

"I Don’t, but my grandmother did."

"So where…?" Jodie began, and then stopped uncertainly

as she saw the way his mouth was compressing.

It was obvious that he did not like her asking

so many questions. He had opened the door of

the car and she wrinkled her nose as she caught the

pungent smell of something burning. "Something’s on

fire," she told him.

Lorenzo shook his head. "It is merely the mixture

of wood and pitch that is used in the sconces. After

a while you will grow so accustomed to it that you

won’t even notice it," he added in a matter-of-fact

voice.

After a while? Did that mean that she was to live

here? Without electricity?

As though he had read her mind, Lorenzo informed

her, "My grandmother preferred the old-fashioned

way of life. Fortunately I was able to persuade her to

have a generator installed to provide electricity inside

the Castillo."

When one thought of an Italian castle one thought

of something out of a fairy tale, but this place was

nothing like that. Bleak and brooding, it made her

shudder just to look up at the granite walls.

"Come…"

Sitting in the Ferrari had caused her weak leg to

stiffen and seize up. Jodie could feel her face burning

as Lorenzo waited impatiently for her to get out of

her seat whilst he held the door open for her. The

agonising pain that shot through her leg as she finally

managed to do so made her bite down hard on her

bottom lip to stop herself from betraying what she

was feeling. John had hated anything that drew attention

to her infirmity, insisting that she always wore

jeans or trousers to hide the thinness of her leg with

its tell-tale scars.

"If you wear trousers no one is going to know that

there’s anything wrong with you," he had told her

more than once. Jodie could feel her throat closing

with painful tears. She had wanted so desperately to

hear him say to her that he didn’t care what she wore,

because he loved her so very much that every part of

her was equally precious to him. But, of course, men

were not like that. Louise had said as much when she

had explained to Jodie just why John preferred her.

"The trouble is, sweetie, that men Don’t like all that

disfigurement stuff. It makes them feel uncomfortable.

Plus, they want a woman they can show off—

not one they’ve got to apologise for."

"You mean some men Don’t," Jodie had corrected

her, with as much dignity as she could muster.

"Most men," Louise had insisted, before adding

bluntly, "After all, how many men besides John have

actually wanted so much as a date with you, Jodie?

Think about it. And let’s not forget," she had added,

pressing home her advantage, "any man is bound to

worry about what he’s going to have to face in the

future, with a wife who’s got health problems, from

a financial point of view alone."

"I haven’t got health problems," Jodie had objected.

"The hospital has given me a complete all-clear—"

"Because they can’t do any more for you. You told

me that yourself. Your leg is never going to be as it

was, is it? You get tired if you have to walk any

distance now — imagine how awful it would be for

poor John if in, say, ten years you needed to be in a

wheelchair. How would he cope? With the business

booming the way it is, John needs a wife who is a

social asset to him, not one who is going to be a

handicap. You really mustn’t be so selfish, Jodie.

John and I are trying to make this as easy for you as

we can."

It was the "John and I" that had done it, igniting

Jodie’s temper so that she had exploded and told her

one-time friend in no uncertain terms exactly what

she thought of both her and of John, ending up with,

"And, personally, the last kind of man I would want

to commit to is one so shallow that all he sees is what

lies on the surface. To be honest with you, Louise,

you’ve done me a big favour. If it hadn’t been for

you I might have gone ahead and married John with

out knowing how weak and unreliable he is. You obviously

aren’t as fussy in that regard as I am." She

had finished pointedly, "But I should be careful, if I

were you. After all, you won’t be young and glamorous

for ever, will you? And, since you’ve said yourself

that looks are so immensely important to John,

You’re going to have to live with the knowledge that

ultimately he may dump you for someone younger

and prettier."

She had been shaking from head to foot as she

walked away from Louise. And when John had turned

up on her doorstep less than an hour later, accusing

her of upsetting Louise, she hadn’t known whether to

laugh or to cry. In the end she had laughed. Somehow

it had seemed the better option.

It was then she had gone out and bought herself

the shortest denim miniskirt she could find. The accident

had not been her parents" fault, and she had

fought long and hard to be able to overcome her own

injuries. From now on, she had decided, she was going

to wear her scars with pride, and no man was

ever, ever again going to tell her to cover up her legs

because of them.

For ease of travelling, though, right now she was

wearing a pair of jeans — an old, faded pair of jeans

that made her look totally out of place next to

Lorenzo in his beautifully tailored suit, she thought,

as he propelled her across the courtyard and into a

cavernous baronial hall, his hand resting firmly on the

middle of her back.

CHAPTER FOUR

THE room they entered was furnished with several

pieces of intricately carved dark wooden furniture. A

coat of arms had been cut into the stone lintel above

the huge fireplace. The carpet on the stone floor beneath

her feet looked worn and shabby, and she could

see where the film of dust on a table in the middle of

the room had been disturbed by something thrown

down on it with such force that it had skidded through

it.

A door in the far wall was thrown open, and a

woman stood there, framed in the opening. Immediately

Jodie forgot her surroundings as she focused on

her. Tall and soigne.e, she was everything one imagined

a wealthy and elegant Italian woman should be.

Her dark hair was pulled back in a smooth knot to

reveal the perfect bone structure of her face. Dark

eyes flashed a look of triumphant possessive mockery

towards Lorenzo — the same kind of predatory female

look Jodie had seen in Louise’s eyes when she had

looked at John. The other woman hadn’t even seen

her, hidden as she was in the shadows. Who was she?

A sense of disquiet started to seep through her; an

awareness of deep and dark waters driven by dangerous

unseen currents that could suck her down into

their icy depths if she wasn’t careful. Instinctively

Jodie sensed that Louise and this woman were two of

a kind, and that knowledge was enough to rub against

the still painfully raw emotional nerves inside herself.

She looked at Lorenzo. He looked relaxed, but she

could feel his tension in the sudden increased pressure

of his fingers, where they were splayed across her

back. Something was going on here that she wasn’t

privy to — but what? So many unanswered questions,

and they were destined to remain unanswered, Jodie

guessed, as she watched the full mouth thin, crimson

with carefully applied lipgloss, and the delicate nostrils

flare. A huge diamond flashed blindingly as the

woman raised one hand to touch the deep vee neckline

of the expensive black dress she was wearing in

a deliberate gesture of enticement. What man could

resist following with his gaze the scarlet glisten of the

long nails as they rested briefly in the valley between

the tight, high fullness of her perfectly shaped

breasts?

Her dress moulded to a waist so small that Jodie

guessed it must be the result of a tightly laced corset,

before curving lushly over rounded hips. Its hemline

revealed a pair of long, slender, warmly tanned legs,

whilst her feet, with their scarlet-painted toenails,

were adorned with the highest and most delicate pair

of strappy sandals Jodie had ever seen. She looked

like someone who was about to walk into the most

sophisticated and luxurious kind of setting there was,

instead of being here in this dilapidated fortress in the

middle of nowhere.

A look of open triumph lit the Italian woman"s face

as she sashayed towards Lorenzo. But her brown eyes

lacked any kind of warmth, Jodie noticed, and as she

walked, talking quickly, her voice sounded harsh and

slightly flat, jarring against Jodie’s ears, rather than

warm and musical as she had expected.

She had almost reached them when Lorenzo held

up a commanding hand and said smoothly, "In

English, if you please, Caterina. That way, my wife-

to-be will be able to understand you."

The effect of his words on the woman was cataclysmic.

She stopped moving and turned to look at

Jodie, who discovered that she was being propelled

forward out of the shadows and anchored to

Lorenzo’s side by means of his almost manacle-like

grip on her wrist.

A furious, disbelieving female glare savaged Jodie

where she stood, followed by an equally furious outburst

of Italian.

"This way," Lorenzo instructed Jodie, ignoring her.

"No!" The woman placed herself in front of them,

and said in English, "You will not do this to me. You

cannot! Who is she?"

"I have just told you. My wife-to-be," Lorenzo answered

her dismissively.

"No. You cannot do this." The flat, metallic voice

was filled with fury. "No. No!" She was shaking her

head from side to side so violently that Jodie felt

dizzy, but not one single strand of the immaculately

coiffed hair escaped. "No," she repeated. "You will

not make such a nothing your duchessa, Lorenzo?"

His duchess?

"You will not speak so of my intended wife," she

heard Lorenzo saying coldly.

Dear God, what on earth had she got herself into?

"Where has she come from? What gutter did you—?"

Immediately a look of haughty rejection stiffened

Lorenzo’s expression, but Caterina ignored it, grabbing

hold of his arm and insisting, "Answer me,

Lorenzo, or I will…"

"Or you will what, Caterina?" he demanded unkindly,

removing her hand from his arm. "As it happens,

Jodie and I met some months ago. It was my

intention to bring her to the Castillo to meet my

grandmother, but unfortunately she died before I was

able to do so. Knowing now, though, that it was her

dearest wish that I should marry, I intend to follow

the dictates of my own heart as well as fulfil the terms

of her will by marrying Jodie as soon as possible."

Jodie blinked in disbelief as she listened to his entirely

fictitious account of their "relationship".

"You’re lying. None of that is true. I know the

truth, and I shall—"

"You know nothing, and you will do nothing."

Lorenzo stopped her immediately, adding grimly,

"And let me warn you now against any attempt on

your part to spread gossip or rumours about either my

wife-to-be or my marriage."

"You cannot threaten me, Lorenzo," Caterina almost

screamed at him. "Does she know why you are

marrying her? Does she know that it was your grandmother’s

dying wish that you should marry me? Does

she know that you—?"

"Silencio!" Lorenzo commanded harshly, his icy,

furious glare slicing down in front of her like a jagged-

toothed portcullis slicing into an enemy force.

"No. I will not be silent!" She swung round to give

Jodie a contemptuously hostile look. "Has he told you

that the only reason he is marrying you is because of

this place? Because unless he marries he cannot inherit

it?"

This woman must surely be the person with their

own agenda he had spoken of earlier, Jodie thought.

Somehow she managed to stop her expression from

betraying what she was feeling — a legacy, no doubt,

from all those hospital visits, and her determination

not to let others see her in pain and pity her for it.

Was Lorenzo really prepared to marry a woman he

didn’t know simply to inherit this grim, crumbling

fortress?

"It is impossible that he would want to marry a

woman like you," Caterina told her venomously.

Pain jerked through her. Caterina’s words were so

similar in content to the words Louise had said to

her — just as Caterina’s brunette beauty was also very

much like Louise’s. They ignited a surge of angry

pride inside Jodie that burned along her veins. She

took a deep breath, and then heard herself saying

recklessly, "But he is marrying me."

For a few seconds Jodie was so lost in the heady

euphoria of delivering the very words she had so

longed to deliver to Louise that nothing else mattered—

least of all the small inner voice trying desperately

to beg her to be more cautious.

Even when she heard Caterina’s infuriated shriek

and caught the scent of her alcohol-laden breath she

still didn’t realise her danger, and the other woman"s

scarlet-tipped hand was already raised to rake savagely

down the soft flesh of her face when Lorenzo

suddenly released Jodie and took hold of Caterina,

forcing her back from Jodie as he snapped, "Basta!

Enough."

"You cannot do this to me. I will not let you!"

Caterina screamed at Lorenzo.

Jodie’s head was ringing with the shock of listening

to her, and her body shook in the aftermath of

Caterina’s attempt to physically attack her.

"You will pack your things and leave the Castillo

immediately," she heard Lorenzo order bitingly.

"You cannot make me. I have as much right to be

here as you. Remember, until you are married the

Castillo belongs as much to me as it does to you. Only

when you are married does it become yours. And you

will not—"

"Basta!"

The command cracked across her outburst like a

whip against naked flesh, causing Jodie herself to

wince and shudder as she watched Lorenzo give the

other woman a hard shake before releasing her.

Ignoring Jodie, Caterina complained to Lorenzo,

"You have hurt me. Tomorrow there will be a

bruise…" She switched to Italian and said something

softly to him, then laughed mockingly.

Jodie waited impassively. Her female instincts,

honed now by the belated recognition of all those

glances and soft, not-quite-caught words she had witnessed

John and Louise exchanging in the weeks before

they had admitted their betrayal of her, were immediately

suspicious that what Caterina had said to

Lorenzo had been both intimate and sexual. Why?

Because their relationship had once been intimate and

sexual? Had been…or still was? There was clearly

animosity between them now — animosity and contempt

where Lorenzo was concerned — or at least that

was the way it seemed.

"He is using you. You know that, Don’t you? And

once he has what he wants he will discard you,"

Caterina told Jodie venomously, and then as abruptly

as she had arrived she was gone, banging the door

shut behind her as she left.

Completely ignoring what had just happened,

Lorenzo announced autocratically, "This way. I will

show you to our apartments."

The scene with Caterina had left her feeling slightly

sick and shaky now that it was over, Jodie realized.

Much as she had felt in the aftermath of Louise’s

revelations. But Lorenzo was already halfway towards

the door through which Caterina had disappeared, and

Jodie had to hurry to catch up with him. Beyond the

door was another hallway, this one containing an imposing

and unexpectedly elegant marble staircase.

"This part of the interior of the Castillo was remodelled

during the Renaissance," Lorenzo explained

when he saw her surprise.

At the top of the stairs a wide corridor branched to

the right and left. Lorenzo took the right fork, which

was dimly lit with old-fashioned electric wall lights,

beyond which Jodie could see a pair of ornate double

doors.

"My grandmother made this part of the Castillo

over to me for my own use after the divorce of my

parents," Lorenzo announced as he opened the doors.

"Gino always said—"

"Gino?" Jodie questioned, her thoughts still seething

with curiosity.

"My cousin, and Caterina’s late husband."

"She is a widow, then?" Jodie couldn’t help asking

him.

"Yes, she is a widow."

"And she lives here?"

A cynical grimace touched his mouth and then disappeared,

to be replaced by a look of bitterness.

"She has an apartment in Milan, but she moved

here when my grandmother became ill." He frowned,

and then said abruptly, "You ask too many questions.

It is late now, and I have things to do. I will explain

everything that you need to know tomorrow. Just remember

that so far as everyone else is concerned our

relationship is of some duration, as are our plans to

marry."

"Caterina said that your grandmother wanted you

to marry her," Jodie couldn’t help commenting.

His mouth hardened, and Jodie began to regret her

challenge.

"She was lying," he told her harshly. "She is the

one who desires a marriage between us, because she

covets my title and my wealth. Caterina is a bloodsucker

and a leech, a woman who has proved beyond

any doubt that she is happy to sell herself to the highest

bidder."

Jodie was curious to know more, but there was a

look on his face which said that the subject was now

closed. Cautiously she walked through the doors he

had just opened, and once she had done so her curiosity

about Caterina was pushed to one side by her

surprise. The room into which she had walked was

surprisingly modern, and furnished very simply. Plain

plastered walls had been painted a soft cream, and a

heavy-textured natural-coloured carpet covered the

floor, on which stood two large leather sofas.

"The original panelling was taken from this room

during the war, when the Castillo was occupied,"

Lorenzo informed her. "That was when my grandmother’s

first husband was killed." Jodie gave a small

shudder without knowing why she should suddenly

feel chilled.

"Where…where are Caterina’s rooms?" she asked

him uncertainly.

"She is occupying the state rooms, as did my grandmother,"

Lorenzo informed her dismissively, continuing

briskly before Jodie could ask any more questions,

"I shall arrange for my lawyer to come here

tomorrow so that we can draw up a contract and make

the necessary arrangements for our marriage."

Jodie tensed. "I’ve been thinking…"

"Caterina has alarmed you — is that it? You are

afraid of her?"

"No!" Jodie denied the charge vigorously. "I’m not

afraid of her at all."

Lorenzo lifted one dark eyebrow as though in disbelief.

"It isn’t that," Jodie insisted again, "but if you are

serious about this marriage between us, then I

want…"

"Yes?" Lorenzo invited her. It was just as he had

thought. Already she was working out how much she

could get out of him. "You want what? Two million

instead of one?"

Jodie flashed him an angry look. "No. I’ve already

told you I Don’t want your money."

"But you do want something?"

"Yes," she agreed, and took a deep breath. "I want

you to go with me to John and Louise’s wedding."

She held her breath, waiting for him to refuse, telling

herself that this would be the get-out, her reason

for insisting that she was not going to be dragged any

further into whatever devious plans he was hatching.

But, instead of refusing her, Lorenzo accused

softly, "So you do still want him?"

"No! I just want…" She paused and shook her head.

"I Don’t have to explain my reasons to you. Those are

my terms for marrying you. It is up to you whether

or not you accept them." Please, let him refuse…

"Very well, then. We will go to your ex-fiance."s

wedding, but it will be as husband and wife."

Jodie could feel her body sag with relief. Relief?

Because of a fatalistic sense of having any more decisions

taken out of her hands? Because she had

weakly handed over control of her life to an arrogant

stranger?

"Come with me…"

Tiredly, Jodie followed him through another set of

doors that led into a very male study, and from there

into an ante-room from which two doors opened.

"This is my room," Lorenzo informed her, indicating

one door, "and this is the guest room."

He was looking at her almost as though he was

testing her, as though he was waiting for her to make

a choice. Determinedly she stepped towards the door

to the guest room and turned the handle.

Like the other rooms, it was decorated and furnished

in a plain, modern style, but all Jodie was interested

in was the wonderful large bed. Her leg was

hurting so much she was beginning to drag it slightly.

"Those doors on either side of the bed lead into a

dressing room and a bathroom," she could hear

Lorenzo explaining. "I shall have your bag sent up.

Are you hungry?"

Jodie shook her head. She had gone beyond that.

All she wanted was to lie down and feel the pain

easing out of her leg. She took a step forward and her

weak leg, already overtired from the long drive, buckled

and started to give way. Automatically she put out

her hands to try and save herself as she fell. She heard

Lorenzo cursing, and then he was reaching for her,

just managing to catch her before she hit the floor,

yanking her back to her feet so sharply that the pain

slicing into her made her cry out.

"Diablo! What is it? what’s wrong?"

"Nothing. It’s just my leg," Jodie told him, pushing

him away and trying to stand up straight. But it was

too late. Her leg had had enough and was refusing to

support her properly. She could see the way Lorenzo

was frowning. Immediately her chin tilted proudly.

"I have a problem with my leg. I was in an accident

and it was damaged. Sometimes when it gets overtired…"

She looked away from him. "If you Don’t

want to marry me because of it, then—"

"Is that what he told you? The man you were to

marry?" Lorenzo guessed. "That he didn’t want you

because of it?"

Jodie’s face burned. She had said too much — a

mistake she could only put down to her tiredness and

the stress of everything that had happened to her.

"No."

"But it was a cause of some conflict between you?"

Lorenzo continued to probe.

"He didn’t like the fact that it was…damaged." She

made an attempt at a dismissive shrug. "But then,

that’s only natural, isn’t it? Men do like beautiful

women, and—"

"It is an intrinsic part of human nature to value

beauty," Lorenzo told her. "But sometimes the greatest

beauty of all comes only through suffering and pain."

Jodie looked at him uncertainly. She was too tired

to try and analyse such a cryptic, sombre remark.

Instead, she looked longingly towards the bed.

Lorenzo followed the direction of her gaze.

"I’ll leave you now. You should find everything

you need in the bathroom, but if you do not then just

ask Pietro when he brings up your case. He will inform

Maria, and she will attend to it."

"Pietro and Maria," she said, carefully repeating

their names. "Your servants?"

"They look after the Castillo. Originally they were

employed by my grandmother. By rights they should

both retire, but this has always been their home and

it would be a cruelty to send them away now — or to

imply that they are not able to be of any use," he

added warningly. "Once I have spoken with my lawyer,

and put in hand the arrangements for our marriage,

I shall address the matter of making this place

more habitable."

They were going to be living here? There were so

many questions she knew she ought to be asking, but

right now she was too exhausted to care about anything

other than getting some sleep.

CHAPTER FIVE

AT LEAST the bath water was hot, and the towels

Maria had brought for her, bustling importantly into

the bedroom on a stream of incomprehensible Italian

whilst she inspected Jodie with her sharp gaze, were

deliciously soft and thick.

As in the bedroom, the decor in her en suite bathroom

was very plain, but there was no mistaking the

quality of the sanitaryware or the cool smartness of

the marble covering the floor and walls.

Wrapped in one of the towels, Jodie padded barefoot

back to her bedroom and opened her case,

quickly searching through it for the nightshirt she

knew she had packed. But when she lifted her neatly

packed tops out of the case she started to frown. Her

nightshirt was there, all right, but so also was the

deliciously frivolous new underwear she had bought

for her honeymoon: bras and short knickers in floral

patterns; silk thongs that fastened with satin bows; a

sheer floral mini-slip that was so pretty she hadn’t

been able to resist it; even the cream lace and satin

basque she had bought on a sudden impulse one

lunchtime after yet another evening spent with John

refusing to do anything more than indulge in gentle

"petting".

She hadn’t known then, of course, that the reason

he had not taken their intimacy to its logical conclusion

had not been because he had loved her so much,

but because he had loved her so little. Now, thanks

to Louise, she knew that all the time she had been

aching for him and admiring his restraint he had secretly

been turned off by her.

What on earth was this stuff doing in her case? She

found the answer in a small note from her cousin-inlaw,

tucked in between the folds of her nightshirt.

It seemed such a pity not to take these with you.

You never know, you might meet someone who will

appreciate them — and you.

Jodie almost laughed out loud. Andrea had had

more of a presentiment than even she could have

guessed! As a bride-to-be, she ought to be able to find

a use for such frivolous items, but she knew that

Lorenzo would be even less appreciative of both them

and her than John had been.

She pulled on her nightgown and closed the case,

placing it on the floor before crawling into the middle

of the huge bed and switching off the light.

By rights she ought to be thinking about the situation

she had put herself into and working out how

best to extricate herself from it, but she was far, far

too tired.

Lorenzo shut down his computer and got up from the

desk where he had been working. He had e-mailed

several people: his lawyer, explaining to him his

plans — or at least as much of them as he wanted him

to know; a certain very highly placed diplomat who

owed him several favours, requesting his help in cutting

through the normal procedures so that he could

marry his British fiance.e as quickly as possible; and

the Cardinal, who was his second cousin once re-

moved. Fortuitously he already had in his possession

Jodie’s passport, having found it in the wallet of

travel documents she had left on the passenger seat

of her car, and he had faxed its details to all three

men. His instructions to his lawyer were that he

should draw up a marriage agreement with the utmost

haste, and at the same time to make arrangements for

the sole ownership of the Castillo to be transferred to

Lorenzo, in accordance with the terms of his grandmother’s

will.

He then left his apartments and headed downstairs,

striding through the warren of unused rooms with

their old-fashioned furnishings and musty air until he

reached the door he wanted. Already the tension was

building inside him, and along with it the excitement;

already his senses were anticipating the pleasure that

lay ahead of him. He would marry a dozen pale-faced,

too-thin English women if necessary, in order to satisfy

the desire that had driven him for so long.

The cramping pain seizing her leg muscles was savage

and unrelenting, wrenching Jodie out of her deep

sleep with a sharp cry of pain.

Lorenzo heard it as he walked out of his bathroom,

his forehead pleating into a frown when it was repeated.

Securing his towel round his hips, he strode

towards the guest room, thrusting open the door and

switching on the light.

Jodie was lying in the middle of the bed, desperately

trying to massage the pain out of her locked

muscles.

Lorenzo recognised immediately what was happening.

Going over to the bed, he took hold of her by

her shoulders, demanding curtly, "What is it? Cramp?"

Jodie nodded her head, and managed to gasp painfully,

"Yes. In my leg…"

The intensity of the pain had turned her face bonegrey,

and Lorenzo could see the small beads of perspiration

forming on her forehead.

"Do you suffer like this often?"

Why was he asking her that? Was he afraid of saddling

himself with a wife who would be a liability

even if she was only a twelve-month wife?

"No, only when I get overtired — oh!" Jodie winced

and cried out as his strong fingers found the exact

spot on her leg where the pain was bunched.

"Lie still," Lorenzo instructed her. "It’s all right."

He added, when she looked warily at him, "I do know

what I’m doing."

Jodie would have continued to resist if a second

bout of cramp hadn’t seized her, leaving her with no

energy to do anything other than focus on coping with

the searing pain. Lorenzo cursed out loud and then

lifted her up, ignoring her protests as he turned her

over and placed her back on the bed.

Now, with her legs exposed by the ridiculously infantile

elongated tee shirt she was wearing, he could

see that he had been right about their length, and that

she had not been wearing heels. He could also see

that one of her legs was slightly more slender than

the other, and that on the inside of its knee there was

a delicate silver tracery of scars.

With the cramp continuing its brutal assault on her,

Jodie wasn’t even aware that she was digging her fingers

into Lorenzo’s arm as she willed herself not to

cry out. This was the worst she could ever remember

it being.

Lorenzo waited until her grip had started to relax

before releasing himself and going quickly to work,

his long, lean fingers probing the knot of locked muscle

until Jodie wanted to scream in agony. She tried

to drag her leg free of his fingers, but then slowly,

blissfully, they started to take away the pain, kneading

and stroking until the muscle began to relax. A tiny

quiver jerked through her muscle and automatically

she clenched it, waiting for a fresh onslaught, her

whole body shaking.

"Relax…" Lorenzo was still massaging her leg, but

now the long, firm strokes of his hands were moving

upwards, and the tension that was gripping her as she

felt his fingers brushing against the hem of her nightshirt

was caused by the cramping sensation in her

stomach, not her leg. And it had nothing whatsoever

to do with over-tiredness.

"To judge from these scars you must have had several

operations?"

Jodie tensed again. She wanted to pull her leg

away, but she was afraid to move in case in doing so

she caused the hem of her nightshirt to ride even

higher. It was too late now to wish she had put on

some underwear as well as the nightshirt.

"Yes," she said briefly.

"How many?"

She exhaled. "Does it matter? It isn’t as if You’re

going to be left having to look after me if I end up

in a wheelchair or anything, is it?"

"Is that a possibility?" He was still massaging her

leg, but now his fingers were slowly stroking over the

tight scar tissue itself. For some odd reason Jodie discovered

that she badly wanted to cry. No one had ever

touched her scars with anything other than clinical

detachment. The long months in hospital had inured

her to physical examinations, to doctors discussing

her as though she were a piece of broken equipment

they were trying to piece together again and put in

working order. Which, of course, to them, was exactly

what she had been. She was grateful to them for everything

they had done for her — how could she not

be? — but at the same time…

At the same time what? Secretly, she had craved a

more personal touch, a comforting, knowing touch

that neither flinched from her scars nor made a dramatic

fuss about them.

But not a touch that made her feel the way

Lorenzo’s touch was making her feel!

"No. My leg is always going to be weak, but it has

healed properly now," she blurted out, then bit her lip,

not wanting to remember those horrifying days when

the doctors had feared they might have to amputate.

"Thank you. You can stop now. The cramp has gone,"

she told him as she forced herself to concentrate on

something — anything — other than on the smooth gliding

stroke of his fingers against her skin. No lover

could have… No lover? Now what was she thinking?

She rolled over so that she could face him, all too

conscious of the warm weight of his hand where it

still lay across her bare thigh, her eyes widening as

she took in what she hadn’t realised before: namely

that all he was wearing was a towel, wrapped low on

his hips, and that the body it revealed was enough to

make any right-thinking woman go weak with female

appreciation. But from now on she was not going to

allow herself to want any man, she reminded herself

fiercely, and certainly not a man like this one. Every

instinct she possessed told her he was far too dangerous.

He was an autocratic alpha male who was

determined to get what he wanted, no matter who he

had to use in order to do so, and it was that she ought

to be concentrating her attention on — not the taut

muscles of his flat belly, or the distracting maleness

of the body hair that arrowed downwards to where

his towel had slipped slightly to reveal where it began

thickening out. Jodie touched her tongue-tip to her

lips and sucked in a shaky gulp of air.

Lorenzo removed his hand from her thigh and

straightened, pausing in the act of resecuring his towel

to watch as Jodie focused on the movement of his

hands, her breathing accelerating.

"If you keep on looking at me like that," he began

in a warning tone, "I’m going to think—"

"What do you mean?" Jodie protested, her face

burning.

"You were looking at me like a girl looking at her

first man," Lorenzo said mockingly. "Which leads me

to wonder what kind of woman you are that you look

at me like that — and what kind of man this ex-fiance.

of yours was to give you that need."

"I wasn’t looking at you like anything," Jodie argued

frantically. "You’re imagining it. No modern

woman needs to wonder what a man"s body looks

like."

"So it wouldn’t bother you, then, if I weren’t wearing

this?" Lorenzo suggested, his fingers resting

against the top of his towel.

Jodie made a valiant attempt at a small nonchalant

shrug. "No — why should it? One naked male body is

much like any other."

"Was your ex-fiance. circumcised?"

Jodie opened her mouth and then closed it again,

her face slowly turning a deep shade of pink whilst

her heart skidded and bounced around inside her chest

cavity as though seeking the same invisible escape

route as her thoughts. Was he asking her that because

he had guessed that she simply didn’t know? Because

he wanted to humiliate her by making her admit how

limited her sexual experience really was?

"Er…why do you ask?"

"Why Don’t you answer?"

"I’m not questioning you about your past sex life.

And if we"re going to get married—"

"If? There is no if about it. I’ve already contacted

my lawyer. He"ll be here in the morning."

"It will take quite a long time to go through all the

legal formalities, I expect."

"Not for us. Once we have seen Alfredo we shall

be leaving for Florence."

"Florence?"

"I have some business to attend to there, and you

will want to buy a wedding outfit."

"A wedding outfit?"

The dark eyebrows lifted. "I take it that you didn’t

bring your bridal gown with you when you ran

away?"

Jodie looked away from him. "No, I didn’t," she

agreed quietly. Her wedding dress was still hanging

up in the shop where she had bought it, paid for but

never collected.

Lorenzo watched her impassively. "There are any

number of designer shops in Florence. You are bound

to find something in one of them."

Designer shops? Finding something would be the

easy bit, Jodie reflected; paying for it at designer shop

prices with her limited budget would be the hard part.

She moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue.

"What if…? What if I’ve changed my mind?"

"I shan’t let you."

"But you can’t stop me."

The way he was looking at her brought it home to

her that she was trapped here in this ancient stronghold,

where no doubt his ancestors had once held their

prisoners captive in the depths of its dank dungeons.

"What is it exactly that you are so afraid of?" he

asked.

"I’m not afraid of anything — or anyone," Jodie lied.

"So there is no reason why we should not be married,

then, is there? It is an arrangement from which

we both stand to gain something of importance to us.

When is this ex-fiance. of yours to marry?"

"The middle of next month."

"Bene. We will be married ourselves by then, so

you will have the pleasure of introducing me to him

as your husband. Now, it is late, and tomorrow there

is much to be done."

"Why Don’t you want to marry Caterina?"

Immediately his face hardened. "That is no concern

of yours," he told her dauntingly. "I shall leave you

now to sleep. With any luck the cramp will not return."

In other words, mind your own business, Jodie reflected

ruefully as she watched him leave.

CHAPTER SIX

THE sound of her bedroom door opening and the rattle

of crockery brought Jodie out of a complicated dream

in which she had been forced to watch as John walked

down the aisle towards his waiting bride. But when

he reached her it wasn’t John who was marrying

someone else but Lorenzo. Bizarrely, instead of feeling

relieved, she had actually felt searingly jealous.

"Buongiorno," Maria greeted her cheerfully as she

put down the tray she was carrying and then walked

over to the windows to draw back the heavy curtains.

Sunshine immediately flooded the room, followed by

deliciously soft warm air as Maria opened the windows

to reveal a small balcony.

The smell of fresh coffee and the sight of rolls and

fruit made Jodie salivate with hunger.

"Grazie, Maria." She thanked the elderly maid with

a warm smile, pushing back the bedclothes as Maria

turned to leave the room.

She hadn’t realised her room had a balcony, and

when she hurried over to investigate it she discovered

that it looked out onto an enclosed courtyard garden

that was almost Moorish in style. Fretted archways

were swathed with tumbling masses of pink roses, and

from her vantage point above them she could look

down into the heart of the garden to a fish pond,

where an ornate fountain sent sprays of water jetting

upwards before they fell back to dimple the surface

of the pond, disturbing the fat goldfish basking in the

morning sunshine.

Returning to the bedroom, Jodie poured herself a

cup of coffee and then headed back to the balcony.

It was wide enough to hold a small wrought-iron table

and two chairs, and she was just about to sit down on

one of them when her bedroom door opened a second

time. Thinking that Maria had come back, she looked

up with a smile that faded as she saw that it was not

Maria who had come in but Lorenzo.

"Bene, you are awake. Alfredo has telephoned to

say that he is on his way and will be here within the

hour. I trust you slept well, with no return of your

cramp?"

"No — I mean, yes — I did sleep well, and, no, the

cramp didn’t come back." It hadn’t come back, but

the faint tingle in her flesh where he had massaged it

had kept her awake for a long time after he had gone.

Unlike her, Lorenzo was fully dressed, making her

feel acutely conscious of the brevity of her nightshirt.

Not that he was looking at her. Instead he was frowning

as he stared at something on the floor beside her

bed, next to the case she had been too tired to unpack

last night.

Striding over to it, he leaned down and retrieved

the basque she had forgotten to put back in the case,

holding it up between his thumb and forefingers and

looking at her with a query in his scowl.

"What is this?"

"What does it look like?" Jodie challenged him

crossly

"It looks like something a certain type of showgirl

might wear."

"It…it was part of my trousseau," Jodie told him

reluctantly. She certainly didn’t want him thinking it

was something she had brought with her to wear on

holiday. "It got into my case by…by mistake."

"Your trousseau? You mean you were going to

wear this as a means of enticing your husband to

make love to you? What was he? Some kind of bondage

fetishist?"

It took several seconds for his meaning to hit her

defences.

"It’s a chainstore basque, that’s all," she told him

furiously. "If you want to give it some kind of sleazy,

sordid interpretation, then that’s up to you." She was

perilously close to angry tears of humiliation as she

remembered the shy uncertainty with which she had

purchased the boned and lace-tied item of underwear,

hoping that it might tempt John to behave more passionately

towards her. "Right now They’re a fashion

item. Some women even wear them as outerwear."

"Yes, I have seen them. They display their breasts

as crudely as whores, offering up their wares for any

man who feels like examining them."

Whores? Was he suggesting…? "I suppose the way

you like your women dressed is—" Jodie began angrily,

only to have Lorenzo interrupt her.

"The way I like to see a woman dressed is in something

that hints subtly at her sexuality instead of

flaunting it, and in fabrics as sensual as her skin. Not

clothes that make her look like either a child or a

whore," he told her and he dropped her basque onto

the bed.

A child? Was he referring to her nightshirt?

"How is your leg this morning?" he added calmly,

as he helped himself to a cup of coffee and walked

over to the balcony to join her.

Suddenly what had seemed like a pleasant spot to

enjoy the morning air had become an intensely intimate

and very small space. Had he deliberately referred

to her leg now because he guessed how sensitively

aware she was that its weakness made her less

desirable as a woman? If she hadn’t already sworn

off men and love for ever, Jodie decided bitterly, then

surely Lorenzo would have been enough to make her

do so.

"It’s fine. Anyone can get cramp, you know," she

told him defensively. "Even someone with two perfectly

normal legs."

"Which you think yours are not? There are many

places in the world where people, often children, subjected

to the injustice of wars they Don’t understand,

have been left with injuries, including the loss of

limbs, that make a mere weakness such as yours

something they would welcome."

Jodie listened to him in disbelieving fury. Was he

actually daring to preach at her? When he lived the

kind of privileged life isolated from reality he obviously

did?

"What would you know about other people"s suffering?"

she demanded scornfully. "I bet the closest

you have ever been to witnessing the ravages of war

is in a newspaper or on a television screen."

She put her cup down on the small table with a

small angry movement and made to walk past him

back into the bedroom. But Lorenzo, who had become

engrossed in looking down into the garden, put his

hand on her arm to stop her.

"Caterina is watching us from the garden," he told

Jodie quietly.

"So?"

Putting down his own cup, he turned towards her,

saying softly, "So this…"

He was closing the distance between them and

there was nowhere for her to go. His arms locked

round her, imprisoning her, their warmth pressing

through the thin fabric of her nightshirt. His hands

spread against her back, curving her into his own

body as though she were completely formless and

malleable, his to do with as he chose. One hand remained

flat against the small of her back, arching her

against him — draping her against him, she recognised

dizzily — whilst the other slid up to her neck, his fingers

burrowing into the soft thickness of her hair, tangling

in it so that he could draw her head back and

lift her face towards his own.

Trembling from head to foot with furious outrage,

Jodie glared up at him.

His head blotted out the sunlight as he lowered it

so that his mouth could take possession of hers. Jodi

stiffened defensively, not daring to move. His lips felt

cool and firm against her own. She could smell the

fresh scent of soap and clean linen. Stubbornly she

refused to return his kiss. The pad of his thumb

stroked caressingly behind her ear and against the vulnerable

flesh of her neck, and a small betraying shudder

of reaction galvanised her whole body.

His lips brushed hers, the silver-grey eyes glinting

with a knowledge that made her whole body burn as

he demanded silkily, "Don’t you even know how to

kiss properly? And you were betrothed! Open your

mouth."

Faced with a choice of being branded as a woman

so sexually inept that she couldn’t even kiss, or giving

in to his arrogant demand, Jodie chose female pride

over anger. Her lips softened and parted, the golden

shimmer of her gaze meshing recklessly with the hypnotic

silver of Lorenzo’s as though it were a lodestone

luring her to a destiny she couldn’t escape. Her mouth

clung to his and her arms lifted to wrap around his

neck. She could feel the warmth of the sun on her

back, but it was the heat of Lorenzo’s touch that her

flesh was responding to, the sensation of his hand

spread flat against the bare skin of her back beneath

her nightshirt, whilst she stood on tiptoe, arched

against him, kissing him with a sensual intimacy that

would normally have shocked her.

She could feel his hand shaping her waist and then

moving upwards to cup her bare breast beneath the

nightshirt, his thumb-pad brushing with deliberate

emphasis against her suddenly tight nipple, making it

and her quiver as readily as a bow drawn by an expert

archer. His other hand was massaging the base of her

spine and then moving lower, pushing aside her briefs

so that he could stroke the naked rounded curve of

her bottom.

The sudden fierce sexual thrust of Lorenzo’s

tongue against her own brought her up intimately

against him, her breath escaping on a soft, shivered

rush of pleasure. "What is it?" Lorenzo whispered.

"Do you want me to stroke your breasts? To kiss them

and caress them? Do you want me to take your nipple

into my mouth and bring it and you to the highest

pinnacle of pleasure? Is that what you are asking me

for with that wanton thrust of your hips against

mine?" As he was whispering to her Lorenzo’s hand

moved round to caress the soft swell of her sex.

This was what she had longed for so much from

John — desire, intimacy, sensuality — and she absorbed

it into herself with each and every one of her senses,

lost in a private world of erotic pleasure.

It was the sound of angry footsteps crunching

across the gravel beneath the balcony that brought her

back to reality, her body stiffening in outraged rebuttal

as she wrenched her mouth from beneath

Lorenzo’s.

"You had no right to do that," she told him angrily.

"So why didn’t you stop me?" Lorenzo shrugged,

infuriatingly matter-of-fact.

She hadn’t stopped him because she had been enjoying

what was happening too much to want to,

Jodie realised guiltily. "You said there would be

no…no intimacy between us," she retorted, sidestepping

Lorenzo’s charge.

"That wasn’t intimacy," Lorenzo informed her. "If

I’d wanted intimacy with you, I’d have taken you

somewhere where we couldn’t be overheard, and right

now, instead of standing here glowering at me, you’d

be lying under me, and the only words you’d be uttering

would be your eager pleas for my possession.

As I warned you, I was simply demonstrating for

Caterina’s benefit the fact that you and I are to marry.

Or is that glower you are giving me because you are

not lying beneath me right now, while I show that

virginal body of yours what sex is all about?"

"I am not—"

"You are not a virgin? Is that what you were going

to tell me?"

"I wasn’t going to say that. I was going to say that

I’m not interested in having sex with you."

"So you are a virgin?"

"What if I am? Is it a crime?"

"In law, no. Against nature, yes. Where is the plea-

sure in a closed book that has never been read? A

song that that never been sung? A scent that has never

filled the air with its fragrance or a woman who has

never cried out her fulfilment to the lover who has

taken her to it?"

Beneath them the golden silence of the morning

was suddenly broken by the sound of a car arriving

in the adjacent courtyard.

"That will be Alfredo," Lorenzo told her, suddenly

businesslike. "Come through into my office as soon

as you are dressed. Alfredo will want to go through

all the necessary paperwork for our marriage."

As she watched him leave, Jodie wanted very badly

to tell him that she had changed her mind; to break

through his arrogance and to pierce his pride the way

he had pierced hers. How could she possibly have

reacted to him as she had? How could she have let

her guard down so far that she had actually physically

responded to him? Now he obviously thought that he

could use her own vulnerability against her to make

her do anything he wanted her to do. Anything. Every

word he had just said to her, every look he had given

her, had said quite plainly that he now believed she

was his for the taking.

But she wasn’t, and she never, ever would be. She

knew that, and she was going to make sure that he

knew it as well. And if she couldn’t? How much did

she really want to bolster her pride and appear at John

and Louise’s wedding with her own brand-new husband?

Enough to take that risk?

More than enough, Jodie decided with renewed determination

as she gathered up some clean clothes and

headed for the shower. Especially since she already

knew that, no matter what Lorenzo said or did, or

even fleetingly made her feel, nothing could alter the

fact that she simply did not want an intimate one-toone

emotional or physical relationship with a man

ever again. John had shown her that she could not

trust his sex, and if John could not be trusted to mean

it when he said that he loved her and wanted to marry

her, then she certainly wasn’t going to risk trusting a

man like Lorenzo!

Fifteen minutes later, showered and dressed, and with

her still damp hair caught back off her face, Jodie

hesitated outside the door to the study-cum-office

Lorenzo had shown her the previous night.

She could have sworn she hadn’t betrayed her presence

by the smallest sound, much less even raised her

hand to knock politely on the door, but somehow

Lorenzo must have divined it, because before she

could do so he was opening the door and taking her

by the arm to draw her into the room. Taking her by

the arm or imprisoning her? Certainly to any onlooker

the way the strong, lean fingers were curling round

her wrist might look both protective and possessive—

the hold of a lover wanting to establish the exclusivity

of a relationship — but she, of course, knew better.

"I was just beginning to wonder what was keeping

you," he told her.

"I’ve only been half an hour," Jodie protested defensively.

"A lifetime for us to be apart," he told her softly,

giving her a look of such sexually explicit hunger that

her own eyes widened and darkened before she could

stop herself from reacting to it. She was awed by the

impact of a look that somehow managed to convey a

desire to strip every item of clothing from her body

and explore and pleasure it in the most intimate way

possible, but at the same time made it fiercely clear

that he also wanted to wrap that same body in the

protection of his love and adoration, to keep it and

her for himself alone. What on earth must it be like

to be truly loved and desired by a man who looked

at one like that? A man who was not either afraid of

or embarrassed to show his feelings? But Lorenzo had

no feelings for her, she reminded herself, and nor did

she want him to.

"Alfredo, come and let me introduce you to my

wife-to-be."

Lorenzo’s lawyer was about the same age as

Lorenzo himself, but nothing like so tall or so awesomely

good-looking, Jodie thought. He did, though,

have very nice, warm brown twinkling eyes, and a

kind smile.

"Lorenzo has just been telling me about you. I

thought he must be exaggerating, in that deranged

way that lovers have, but now I see that he was not

doing you justice," Alfredo complimented Jodie

warmly.

Lorenzo’s lawyer was just being courteous, that

was clear, albeit in a flattering, slightly over-the-top

way. Jodie knew that, but she still couldn’t help dimpling

him a laughing smile, immediately feeling at

ease with him.

"No wonder you are so anxious to rush her to the

altar, Lorenzo," Alfredo continued. "In your shoes—"

"But you are not in my shoes, are you?" Lorenzo

pointed out, with what Jodie thought was almost insufferable

arrogance.

The lawyer, though, did not seem to be offended.

Instead he laughed and said, "There is no need to be

jealous, my friend. I can see that Jodie only has eyes

for you." Whilst Jodie was still digesting this untruth,

he continued, "I was just asking Lorenzo where you

met. I assume it must have been when he was out of

the country, in the aftermath of that dreadful earthquake.

I know that Lorenzo was there in his capacity

of adviser to those government officials who run our

own aid programmes. Which reminds me, Lorenzo—

I have, as you instructed, ensured that sufficient

money has been put aside to cover the medical fees

of the children who are to join the prosthetic limb

replacement programme." Alfredo turned to Jodie and

gave her a charming smile accompanied by a small

rueful shrug. "You will already know that your husband-

to-be has a soft heart and digs deep into his

pockets to help those in need. Did you meet him

through his charitable work?"

Jodie could feel her face starting to burn as she

remembered her earlier accusatory comments to

Lorenzo. And she couldn’t even allow herself the satisfaction

of inwardly believing that Lorenzo had

primed his lawyer to speak as he had. One look at

Lorenzo’s grim expression was enough to make it

plain that Alfredo’s unwitting revelations had not

pleased him.

"Jodie does not work in any capacity for any of the

aid programmes, Alfredo." Lorenzo stopped him. "As

it happens I met her some time ago, when I was in

England. I had planned to bring her here to meet my

grandmother, but unfortunately Nonna died before I

could do so…which brings me to the matter of my

late cousin’s widow, Caterina."

"She can have no claim on the Castillo once you

have complied with the terms of your grandmother’s

will and are married," Alfredo assured Lorenzo immediately.

"No claim on the Castillo, no, but it seems that

Caterina feels she has the right to make a claim on

me," Lorenzo told him cynically.

Alfredo started to frown. "But that is impossible."

"Indeed. But Caterina, as we both know, is somewhat

prone to exaggeration. Ridiculously, she has

even suggested that my grandmother wished me to

marry her! Having run through Gino’s money, and

dragged his name in the gutter, it seems she desires

to do the same with mine."

"There has been gossip about her," Alfredo agreed

uncomfortably.

"Indeed. And I do not wish there to be any about

my marriage or my future wife, so perhaps a few

words in the right ears to warn them to ignore anything

Caterina might have to say?" Lorenzo suggested

smoothly.

"An excellent idea," Alfredo agreed, whilst Jodie

listened and silently digested the suavely subtle, lethal

way in which Lorenzo was dismantling Caterina’s

power base. When it came to getting what he wanted,

Lorenzo was obviously a ruthless opponent. A ruthless,

arrogant, dangerous man — who voluntarily gave

both his time and his wealth to help the young victims

of far-off wars and disasters. That wasn’t just one

man, it was two very different men inside the same

skin — like Janus, the double-faced Roman god of beginnings

and endings, from whom the month of

January took its name. Lorenzo was an enigma of a

man, and the polar differences within himself made

him toxically dangerous. But not to her. No man

would ever again be a danger to her.

"I have brought with me all the various documents

you will both need to sign in preparation for your

marriage. The Cardinal was most helpful. He suggested

the Church of the Madonna in Florence for the

service, and he has undertaken to arrange for the

banns to be read from this Sunday. Since the law is

that they must be read on two consecutive Sundays

before the marriage can be conducted, that means that

you can be married just over two weeks from today."

Banns? And a church service? Their marriage was

to be just a temporary business arrangement: it didn’t

need to be celebrated in church. A simple civil ceremony

was all that was necessary. Jodie started to step

forward, but somehow Lorenzo had managed to get

between her and Alfredo. She could feel his fingers

curling determinedly around her wrist, and she could

see the warning in his eyes as he lifted her now tightly

clenched palm towards his lips.

"You have done well, Alfredo," he said approvingly,

without shifting his gaze from Jodie. "Hasn’t

he, cara?"

His lips were caressing her knuckles, each individual

one in turn, until, helplessly, she could feel her

fingers uncurling from her palm, as though eager for

more.

"I have also prepared the necessary papers for you

both to sign with regard to the financial agreement.

There is one for you to sign, Jodie, renouncing any

future financial claim you might have against Lorenzo

in the event of a divorce, and the other which you

asked me to draw up, Lorenzo, stating that in the

event of the marriage breaking down within twelve

months of the ceremony you will pay Jodie one mil-

lion pounds sterling, plus a further million pounds for

every year after that that you remain married."

"I’ll sign the papers renouncing any future claim I

might have against Lorenzo, but I Don’t want his

money." The words were spoken before Jodie could

stop herself. She could see that Alfredo looked both

rueful and slightly embarrassed.

"Of course it is unpleasant to have to talk about

such things now, before you are even married, but—"

"I Don’t want the money," Jodie repeated.

"This is something we can discuss in private later,"

Lorenzo informed her in a warning tone, before turning

to smile at Alfredo and telling him, "You have a

long journey back to Rome, so the sooner we get all

the paperwork dealt with, the better."

"Why do we have to have a church service instead of

just a civil ceremony?"

It was over an hour since Alfredo had left, but

Jodie’s system was still in full adrenalin-producing

mode as she confronted Lorenzo across the width of

his desk.

"Why should we not? It is customary within my

family, and will be expected."

"You should have told me before. I thought we

would just be having a civil wedding. Being married

in church will make it seem so real…"

Lorenzo was frowning now.

"Our marriage will be real," he informed her. "That

is the whole point of undertaking it. It has to be

"real", as you put it, in order for me to fulfil the

terms of my grandmother’s will. Or at least, "real"

in the sense that it will be conducted as a real wedding.

We shall not, of course, be consummating it."

"No, we most certainly won’t," Jodie agreed vehemently.

"I’m beginning to wish that I had never got

involved in any of this."

"It is too late for that now, and besides, you will

be well remunerated."

"I’ve already told you I Don’t want your money.

All I want is for you to attend John and Louise’s

wedding with me."

"I could hardly have that put in the marriage contract.

As it is, there is bound to be some degree of

gossip and speculation about our relationship. You

have Alfredo on your side, though. He was obviously

afraid that your feelings had been hurt by the necessity

of legalising the financial aspects of our marriage."

"You could never hurt my feelings. You aren’t important

enough to me, and I intend to make sure that

no man ever is from now on."

"You intend to die a virgin?"

He was mocking her, Jodie knew.

"And if I do? There are more important things in

life than sex!"

"How would you know? By your own admission,

you have never truly experienced it."

Jodie had had enough.

"A woman does not need to have penetration in

order to experience sexual pleasure. Nor does she

need a man," she told him frankly.

"Is that the only way you feel able to allow yourself

to reach fulfilment? Either by your own hand or

through the use of some battery-driven device that

cannot—?"

"No! I wasn’t talking about me. I just meant… I’m

not listening to any more of this." Jodie could feel her

face burning with self-conscious colour as she covered

her ears with her hands.

"I am simply making the point that you are rejecting

something without having experienced it."

"What about you? You’re rejecting marriage, aren’t

you — at least a proper marriage? And you haven’t

been married, have you?"

"I haven’t been married myself, but I have witnessed

the marriages of others and seen what a destructive

sham the state of marriage is — how it is used

to cover greed and selfishness, and how children born

into it are left to deal with the fall-out from their

parents" deceit."

"That isn’t true of all marriages. Some Don’t work

out, yes, but there are happy marriages. My cousin

and his wife love one another very deeply, and my

parents were happy together…"

"Really? So how come this wonderful gene that has

enabled them to achieve the rare state of bliss bypassed

you?"

"It’s all down to having the ability to pick the right

partner. I realised with John that I Don’t have that

ability, and that is why I never intend to let myself

fall in love again. But that doesn’t mean I Don’t believe

marriage can work or that some people — other

people — have the ability to make the right partner

choice and to share commitment."

"Only a fool believes that sexual love can be permanent,"

Lorenzo told her challengingly, as though

he expected her to disagree with him. But Jodie was

wary of getting involved in any more arguments that

featured sex. Every time she did, a funny little sensation

deep inside her sprang into life and pulsed in

such an intimate and demanding way that she could

barely concentrate on what she was saying because

of it.

"Oh, and by the way," Lorenzo continued, "Don’t

think that I was taken in by that artful comment of

yours about not wanting the million pounds. What are

you hoping? That if you refuse it now then later,

when we divorce, you will be in a much stronger

position to claim far more? If that is the case, let me

warn you—"

Jodie had had enough. "No, let me warn you that

the only reason I am marrying you is so that I can

show John he isn’t the only man in the world, and so

that I can hold my head up high at home, instead of

being pitied. It’s my pride that’s motivating me, not

any desire for money. I do not want your money! And

I certainly Don’t want your…your sexual expertise,

either!"

"that’s just as well, because you aren’t going to be

offered it," Lorenzo said unkindly. "It amazes me that

still in this modern day the myth persists that adult,

sexually mature men have a secret yearning for the

untutored body of a virgin. Personally I can think of

nothing more unenticing. Maybe that was why your

ex-fiance. chose someone else over you. Have you

thought of that?"

Had she thought of it? There had been endless

nights and days when she had thought of nothing else

in those early weeks. Nights when she had lain in bed,

feverishly wondering how she might suddenly transform

herself from a virgin into an alluringly experienced

woman who could seduce him away from

Louise just as Louise had seduced John away from

her. But that had been in the maddening furnace of

new rejection, and those fires, with their dangerous,

damaging compulsion to prove herself as a woman,

had now cooled. And they certainly weren’t going to

be re-ignited by a man like Lorenzo — a man who

looked and behaved as though he knew everything

there was to know about a woman"s sensuality and a

man"s ability to rouse and enjoy it.

The pulsing inside her body suddenly became

sharply intense. Not just a pulse now, but a deep-

seated ache as well.

CHAPTER SEVEN

"THERE is something I want to say to you."

Caterina stood in front of Jodie, blocking her exit

from the pretty garden she had left her room to explore.

"Alfredo was here earlier. Why?"

"isn’t that something you should be asking

Lorenzo, not me?" Jodie tried to head her off.

"He doesn’t want to marry you really. It’s me he

wants. he’s always wanted me and he always will.

Always and for ever. I was his first woman and I shall

be his last. But, because I chose to marry his cousin,

Lorenzo feels he has to punish me, and to show me

that he no longer cares. But he does. He still wants

me, and I can prove it any time I like."

Jodie could feel herself wanting to reject the intimacy

of the information being forced on her, along

with the shockingly graphic images that were already

forming inside her head. She was no voyeur, she told

herself angrily, and the last thing she wanted to imagine

was Lorenzo making love to Caterina.

"Whatever he may have told you, the only reason

he’s marrying you is because his own stubborn pride

makes him believe that he has to resist his feelings

for me to prove how strong he is. The truth is that

Lorenzo is afraid of his need for me," Caterina

boasted, adding mockingly, "When he beds you it will

be me he is imagining he is holding, and me he secretly

wishes he were holding." She gave Jodie a con

temptuous look, the same kind of look that Louise

had given her. Her heart seemed to miss a beat, and

she could feel what must surely only be an echo of

remembered pain and rejection stealing away her self-

confidence and hard-won self-belief.

"You and Lorenzo may once have been lovers—"

she began bravely.

"May? There is no ""may"" about it. We were."

Caterina stopped her. "He adored me, worshipped me.

He could not resist me."

Jodie’s stomach rolled queasily. Inside her head she

could hear Louise saying triumphantly to her, "John

can’t resist me."

"There was a quarrel — a misunderstanding. Lorenzo

was young and hot-headed. I could not allow him to

treat me thus, so to teach him a lesson I left him."

Jodie could well imagine how Lorenzo must have

reacted to that kind of treatment. His pride would certainly

have been outraged. But surely true love was

stronger than pride?

"He is only marrying you because he does not have

any feelings for you. Lorenzo is afraid of his feelings

for me and that makes him fight against them. But he

will not fight them for ever. He cannot. His desire for

me is too strong."

"that’s ridiculous," Jodie forced herself to protest.

"After all, there is nothing to stop him marrying you

if he wanted to do so."

"It is his mother who is to blame for his ridiculous

refusal to marry me," Caterina insisted angrily. "It is

because of her that he fears to publicly acknowledge

his love for me. Because of her he tries to deny and

reject it. But I can still make him want me."

"isn’t his mother dead?" Jodie pointed out.

"Lorenzo has never forgiven his mother for betraying

his father and leaving them both when she went

off with her lover." Caterina gave a small, almost contemptuous

shrug. "Such a fuss about nothing. He was

a child of seven, with a father rich enough to provide

him with all the care he needed. But, no, that was not

good enough for Lorenzo. He wanted his mother to

come back…he even pleaded with her to come back.

Gino told me. He adored her. They both did—

Lorenzo and his father. She could do no wrong. To

them she was a madonna. I have told Lorenzo many

times that it is crazy for him to still brood now on

what happened when he was a child. Women leave

their husbands and their children all the time, and

Lorenzo will leave your bed for mine if you are fool

enough to marry him," she warned Jodie. "I shall

make sure of it. And I promise you, when I do, he

will not be able to resist me."

Just as John had not been able to resist Louise.

What was it about women like Louise and Caterina

that made men so vulnerable to them and so impervious

to their selfishness?

For a woman who professed to love Lorenzo as

much as Caterina was doing, Jodie reflected, she

didn’t seem to have very much sympathy with him.

For a seven-year-old boy to lose the mother he loved

as intensely as Caterina had said Lorenzo did must

have had a deeply psychological effect on him. And

if he had actually loved Caterina, her marriage to his

cousin must surely have intensified his belief that

women were not to be trusted, and that they were

amoral, shallow and selfish cheats.

What am I doing? Jodie asked herself wryly. Surely

she wasn’t actually feeling sympathy for Lorenzo?

As she watched Caterina walk away, Jodie told herself

that it was a good job she was not marrying

Lorenzo for love.

Jodie turned to look at the granite hulk of the Castillo

walls. She was alone in the garden now, Caterina apparently

having grown tired of issuing her dark warnings.

She would not have entered an unwanted marriage

in order to possess such a place, Jodie thought

wryly, but she was not Lorenzo. It must be a matter

of family pride to him that he was its master.

She tensed as she heard footsteps on the gravel,

recognising them immediately as Lorenzo’s. A tiny

feathering of sensation started to uncurl slowly inside

her: a potent blend of danger, excitement, and challenge

pumped intoxicatingly throughout her whole

body by the jerky, speeded-up bursts of her heartbeat.

It was reassuring to compare what she was feeling

now with the emotions and sensations she had felt

when she had first met John. The two reactions had

nothing in common, and therefore this feeling she had

now was not a sign that she was in any way attracted

to Lorenzo.

"I saw Caterina speaking with you earlier. Tell me

what she was saying."

It was typical of him, of course, that he should not

only make such a demand but actually expect it to be

met — as though he had the right to question her, and

also to be answered.

Jodie answered him as bluntly. "She told me that

you were lovers."

"And what else?" he demanded, refusing to react.

Jodie shrugged her shoulders. "Only that you would

do anything to gain possession of the Castillo — but

then I already knew that. And that your mother deserted

you and your father when you were a small

child — which of course I did not."

Now she had the reaction she had not had before.

Immediately Lorenzo’s expression hardened. "My

childhood is in the past and has no bearing on either

the present or the future."

He was wrong about that, Jodie decided. It was

obvious from the way he was reacting that his childhood

held painful issues which had never been resolved.

"How is your leg? I noticed that you were rubbing

it earlier, when Alfredo was here."

What had motivated that comment? Concern for

her? Or a deliberate attempt to change the subject?

Jodie knew which she believed was the more likely

reason, but that wasn’t enough to stop her answering

him.

"that’s just a…a habit I have. It doesn’t mean…

My leg’s fine." She was behaving in as flustered a

manner as though he had paid her some kind of unexpected

compliment, she realised angrily. John’s rejection

might have battered her self-esteem, but it certainly

hadn’t reduced her to the pathetic state where

she was grateful to a man for asking after her health!

But Lorenzo’s comment had reminded her of something

she knew she had to do.

And now was probably a good time to do it, she

thought, since the fading light meant that Lorenzo

wouldn’t be able to see her red face.

"I–I owe you an apology," she told him abruptly.

"I realise from what Alfredo said that I was wrong to

suggest that you knew nothing about the horrors

of war."

"You are apologising to me for an error of judgement?"

Jodie risked a quick glance up at him through the

indigo-tinted evening air, and discovered that the

downward curve of his mouth was revealing the same

cynical disbelief she could hear in his voice.

"Yes, I am," she said. "But if you’d told me about

your aid work in the first place, I wouldn’t have

needed to, would I?"

"Ah, I thought so. I’ve yet to meet any woman who

will genuinely admit that she could be to blame for

anything."

"that’s the most ridiculous exaggeration I have

ever heard!" Jodie objected immediately. "It’s like

saying that—"

"That You’re never going to trust another man because

one man has let you down?" Lorenzo suggested

silkily.

"No! that’s a personal decision I’ve made about

my own future. It doesn’t mean — and I have never

said — that all men can’t be trusted. Maybe you should

look more closely at why you think the way you do,

instead of making unfounded accusations against my

sex!" she told him recklessly.

"That was an apology?" Lorenzo said derisively.

She felt so tempted to tell him that she had changed

her mind, and he would have to find someone else to

help him to secure his wretched Castillo. But her determination

to salve her pride with the possession of

a husband to replace the one she had so humiliatingly

lost was stubbornly refusing to let her do so. She

would withstand whatever she had to in order to enjoy

the sweet satisfaction of seeing John and Louise’s expression

when she introduced them to her "husband".

She didn’t want revenge, or money — such negative

aspirations were empty and worthless — but she so

badly did want the ego-boosting experience of seeing

everyone’s faces when she turned up at the wedding

with Lorenzo.

With a handsome, multi-millionaire, titled husband

at her side, no one was going to pity her, or glance

at her leg when they thought she wasn’t looking, or

whisper about her, explaining who she was and what

had happened. Yes, it was shallow. Yes, it was foolish.

Yes, a part of her felt ashamed that she should

give in to such a need. But she was still going to do

it. And if it turned out that she ended up upstaging

the bride? Tough!

A small shiver of shocked awareness of her own

growing strength tingled over her skin. Two months

ago she had been so low she couldn’t even have contemplated

feeling like this. Who knew what she could

achieve once the wedding was behind her? She could

begin a whole new life, a life doing the things she

wanted to do, without having to worry about pleasing

any man ever again.

"What are you hoping for? That he will turn round

at the altar, see you and leave her?" Lorenzo demanded

harshly.

Jodie stared at him and blurted out, "How did you

know I was thinking about John?"

"There is a certain look in your eyes when you do

so."

"Well, You’re wrong," she fibbed. "I wasn’t thinking

about him. I was thinking about what I am going to

do in the future. I wasn’t well enough to go to university,

or to train to do anything after the accident,

but there is nothing to stop me doing so now."

"Most admirable," Lorenzo said, making it clear

that he found her mission statement for the future anything

but. "Now, if we Don’t go in soon Maria will

be coming to warn us that it is time for dinner. I hope

you like pasta, because that is all you are likely to

get. Her cooking is of the plain and simple variety,

but at least it might add some flesh to your bones."

Perhaps she was a little bit on the thin side — emotional

pain did that to a person, after all — but there

was no need for him to keep on pointing it out to her,

was there? Jodie decided crossly as she turned away

from him.

"Be careful," he warned her sharply. "There is a step

here—"

But it was already too late, and Jodie gave a small

cry as she missed it in the darkness and stumbled

forward.

Powerful hands seized her waist, and, as he had

done before, Lorenzo caught her before she hit the

ground, lifting her back onto her feet and steadying

her there.

When was it that her instincts registered and recognised

the subtle shift in the way those hands were

holding her? The movement that took their hold on

her body and turned it from the impersonal dig of his

fingers into the curve of her waist as he supported her

into an explorative search for the femaleness of that

curve? Was it really after it was too late to check or

reject his instinctive male reaction? Had he really

drawn her closer? Or had she been the one to move

towards him?

In the shadowy darkness it was impossible for her

to see his face, or to judge which of them had promoted

the body-to-body intimacy they were now

sharing, and she hoped it was equally impossible for

him to read her expression.

He bent his head towards her and took her mouth

in a shockingly intimate kiss of hard passion that was

over almost as soon as it had begun. Then, without a

word of either apology or explanation, he released

her.

She was in more danger of stumbling now than she

had been before, Jodie realised, as her suddenly shaky

legs carried her unsteadily towards the light of the

Castillo.

Jodie was on the verge of falling asleep when she

heard the sound of Lorenzo’s bedroom door opening.

Sucking in her breath, she tensed her body, her concentration

focused on her own door, but the firm footsteps

were already fading as Lorenzo walked past her

room without even hesitating.

Jodie sat up and looked at her watch. It was gone

midnight. Where was he going? To Caterina? And if

he was there was no reason for her to be concerned,

was there? And certainly not enough to lie here wide

awake, checking her watch every few minutes, her

ears stretched for the sound of his return, like a jealous

lover.

CHAPTER EIGHT

FLORENCE! How well its medieval ruler Lorenzo de

Medici had loved his city, and how willingly he had

shown that love, commissioning the best of the

Renaissance"s gifted artists to embellish and enhance

both its glory and his own.

Jodie could only catch her breath as she sat beside

Lorenzo in the Ferrari whilst he edged it through the

city"s busy traffic, stretching every sense she could to

take in as much as possible of the wonders all around

her. Lorenzo turned off the busy main road that ran

alongside the River Arno and drove the Ferrari down

a street lined with elegant seventeenth-century buildings.

"My apartment is in the block above us," he informed

Jodie casually, as he turned into a narrow alleyway

and then down into an underground car park.

Jodie’s eyes adjusted to the gloom of the car park

after the brilliance of the sunlit street. He had already

informed her that he lived in Florence, but he hadn’t

said as yet just where they would be living once they

were married. Given the choice she would far rather

be in Florence than the Castillo, Jodie thought as they

left the car.

Lorenzo guided her towards a door which opened

onto a flight of stairs that took them up to an impressive

entrance hall, with an equally impressive coat of

arms prominently displayed above its main doorway.

The same coat of arms, surely, which she had seen

carved into the fireplace lintel in the great hall of the

Castillo?

"Come — the lift is this way," Lorenzo instructed

her. "My apartment is on the top two floors. I chose

it when I had the Palazzo remodelled because of its

views — although my grandmother used to complain

that she wished I had chosen one at ground level. She

did not care for enclosed spaces or lifts."

"The Palazzo?" Jodie questioned suspiciously

"Does that mean that the whole of this building—?"

"Was originally the home of my family? Yes. The

Palazzo was built for the tenth Duce, who had many

business interests in Florence. During my grandfather"s

lifetime it fell into disrepair — much like the

Castillo. When I inherited it I was faced with two

choices. Either I abandoned it and sold it, or I restored

it and found a way to make it pay for itself.

Converting it into apartments seemed the most sensible

option. That way I could retain control over any

work to be done."

"Is this where we will be living, then?" Jodie asked

as they got out of the lift and she followed him across

an elegant marble-floored outer hallway to a pair of

intricately carved heavy wooden doors.

"There will be times when we will live here in

Florence, yes, which is why—" He broke off from

whatever he had been about to say to unlock the doors

before opening them for her.

The room beyond them was another hallway: a

long, rectangular double-height space, with a gallery

around the whole of the upper storey. Its ceiling was

domed in the centre and painted with allegorical

scenes from mythology, whilst its walls were hung

with paintings.

"My family were at one time renowned patrons of

the arts. The eleventh Duce enjoyed entertaining the

English visitors who came to Florence in the seventeenth

and eighteenth centuries. He held court here in

the Palazzo, and his mistress"s salons were famous."

"His mistress"s salons?" Jodie queried uncertainly.

"The eleventh Duce was something of a rebel.

While he stayed here in Florence, and set up home

with his mistress, his wife and children were banished

to a villa outside the city. He was a great patron of

beauty in all its forms. He caused something of a

scandal in Florence by having his mistress depicted

in a series of paintings, each one portraying her readiness

to receive him in a different sexual position. It

is rumoured, in fact, that in order for the artist to

faithfully portray the correct angles of her body, the

original sketches were made whilst she and the Duce

were in the act of making love. But the Duce’s figure

was removed by the artist for her final painting, so

that her patron could visualise his lover’s body as she

waited to receive him."

"Oh," said Jodie weakly. "The artist was a woman?"

Lorenzo shrugged. "My ancestor was probably concerned

that a male artist might find such an erotic

commission too much for his self-control. And rumour

has it that Cosimo himself was not averse to

persuading his artist to abandon her work in order to

join them in their pursuit of sexual pleasure."

When Jodie couldn’t help glancing at the walls,

Lorenzo told her grimly, "You will not find any of

the paintings here — they vanished a long time ago—

looted, so it is believed, on Napoleon"s instructions.

He had heard of them and wanted them. If they still

exist they will be in the possession of some private

collector." Lorenzo give another shrug. "Their value

was not in the hand of the artist who painted them so

much as in their notoriety." He flicked back the cuff

of the linen jacket he was wearing and glanced at his

watch.

"It is now almost four o"clock. I telephoned ahead

and arranged for you to have a private showing at a

designer salon on Via Tornabuoni. The manager there

understands the situation, and she will help you to

select a suitable wardrobe — including a wedding

dress. It isn’t very far from here, and—"

"No!" Jodie could see the look of hauteur darkening

Lorenzo’s eyes. He obviously didn’t like having his

plans questioned. Tough, she decided grittily. No way

was she going to be treated like some kind of mindless

doll he could have dressed up in over-priced designer

clothes to suit his own idea of how his wife

should look.

"I agree that I need to buy something suitable to be

married in, but I am perfectly capable of making my

own choice and paying for whatever I need with my

own money. Think of how much medical care you

could donate to those children in need, instead of

wasting money on designer clothes for me," she urged

him.

"You have a valid point," he agreed. "But Italian

society, like any other society, has its rules and its

obligations. For you as my wife not to be dressed as

the other wives will cause questions to be asked—

which could raise doubts as to the true validity of our

marriage. That in turn could lead to a legal challenge

that the terms of my grandmother’s will are not being

met. Indeed, I wouldn’t put it past Caterina to do

everything she can to achieve just that. And, since the

whole purpose of this marriage is to meet those terms,

it is necessary that we both conform to society’s expectations.

If it will make you feel any better, I shall

undertake to donate an equal amount to charity as you

spend on clothes."

"that’s bribery," Jodie told him, but Lorenzo was

already walking away from her, leaving her no choice

but to follow him.

To her surprise the gallery opened out into a second,

even longer single-storey rectangular space, this

one housing more modern paintings and sculptures.

"Like my ancestors, I substitute my own lack of

artistic skill by taking an interest in and supporting

those who do have it," Lorenzo was explaining dryly.

But Jodie wasn’t fully listening to him. Instead her

attention had been caught by the large wall space in

the middle of the gallery, which was filled with what

seemed to be unsophisticated, childlike drawings.

"Ah, my most valued commissions," Lorenzo told

her quietly.

Jodie looked at him uncertainly. "They look like

children’s drawings."

"That is exactly what they are. These drawings

were all produced by children who have lost limbs—

sometimes but not always a dominant hand — as victims

of a variety of wars. These drawings were done

after they had been fitted with their new limbs, as part

of their ongoing therapy. The very special paintings

in the middle of the wall are painted with those new

limbs."

Jodie discovered that emotional tears had suddenly

rushed to fill her eyes. Blinking them away, she told

Lorenzo huskily, "No wonder you value them so

much."

He turned away. "I shall introduce you to Assunta,

who is my housekeeper here, and she will show you

over the rest of the apartment while I make some

telephone calls."

In other words, he was bored with her company

and wanted to be free of it. Well, that certainly did

not bother her, Jodie assured herself ten minutes later,

as she was handed over into the care of a shrewd-

eyed middle-aged woman who subjected her to open

scrutiny and then inclined her head. In excellent

English, she said calmly, "If you will come this way,

please…"

Half an hour later Jodie had seen every room in

the apartment, which covered not one but two floors

of the Palazzo and included an astonishingly luxuriant

roof garden.

It was plain that Lorenzo favoured modern design

and furnishings over antiques, but she had to admit

that the strong lines of the furniture complemented

the large rooms with their high ceilings.

Her bedroom was across the corridor from

Lorenzo’s, and had its own dressing room and bathroom.

To Jodie’s relief, Assunta unbent enough to

explain that she had worked in London for a time at

a restaurant owned by a cousin of her father, which

was where she had learned her English. Now a

widow, who prized her independence, she added that

working for Lorenzo had up until now suited her very

nicely.

"I shan’t be wanting to interfere in the way you

manage things," Jodie assured her, picking up her cue.

Indeed, she would not! She doubted that Lorenzo

would thank her if she were to be the cause of his

housekeeper handing in her notice.

"It is my cousin Theresa who is housekeeper at the

Duce’s villa near Sienna. It is a very good place for

bambini there, with much space and fresh air."

Another hint? Jodie wondered as she stood beneath

the welcome spray of the shower, mentally revising

their conversation. Well, she certainly wouldn’t be

providing Lorenzo with his bambini. The shower continued

to pound her skin with its needle-sharp spray

whilst Jodie stood perfectly still and let images of

small dark haired children stampede over her defences

and trample them into nothing.

There was a sharp rap on her bathroom door and

she heard Lorenzo calling out briskly, "It is time for

us to leave."

"I’m nearly ready," she fibbed, and then gave a

small gasp as he took her at her word and walked into

the bathroom.

Was it possible to be caught at any worse disadvantage

than naked and dripping wet? Jodie wondered,

pink-cheeked, as Lorenzo folded his arms and

leaned against the now closed door.

"That is nearly ready?" he demanded pithily.

"It won’t take me long to dry myself and get

dressed…" And it would take her even less time if he

wasn’t standing between her and the thick warm towels

on the towel rail on the other side of the bathroom.

Why didn’t he leave? Did he really expect her to walk

past him stark naked while he subjected her to more

of that steely scrutiny with which he was already

openly studying her legs? Out of habit she turned to

one side, trying to tuck her injured leg out of sight,

more anxious to conceal that from him than either her

breasts or the neat soft triangle of damp curls covering

her sex.

"Do you want to have a closer look at my leg?" she

demanded tartly. "I know the scars aren’t a pretty

sight, but Don’t worry — I can cover them up."

Lorenzo took his time about lifting his gaze from

her legs to her face, and when he eventually did so

her heart thumped heavily against her ribs.

"Perhaps I should have you painted like this," he

told her softly. "A fair-haired Northern water nymph,

with legs long enough to encourage a man to imagine

how it would feel to have them wrapped around him.

Or maybe spread on a silk-covered bed, with them

wantonly open, begging for the touch of your lover’s

lips against their tender flesh. There are sexual positions

that require… No! Do not look at me with that

hungry virgin look in your eyes," he told her sharply.

"Otherwise I might be tempted to satisfy that hunger

for you."

"You were the one who came in here," Jodie reminded

him. "I didn’t invite you."

"Liar. You invite me every time you look at me,

with those virginal half-glances that say how curious

you are to know what it is like to lie with a man."

"That is not true!" Jodie said hotly. "If I wanted to

have sex with a man, which I do not, then you are

the last man I would choose."

She realised immediately that she had gone too

far — Lorenzo was so arrogantly male that there was

no way he would allow her to get away with that kind

of challenge to his masculinity. But it was too late.

He was striding towards her, ignoring both her

shocked cry of protest and the effect her wet body

was having on his clothes as he hauled her out of the

shower and picked her up in his arms.

"Put me down," Jodi demanded, but Lorenzo wasn’t

listening to her. Instead he was carrying her through

her bedroom and towards the bed, where he put her

down against the pale green silk coverlet and held her

there.

He knelt over her and demanded softly, "So, what

is it you want to know most? How it feels to have a

man caress you here, like this?" Still holding her

shoulder with his left hand, he trailed the fingers of

his right hand down the whole length of her body to

her knee, and then slowly stroked up the inside of her

clenched thigh.

Helplessly, Jodie closed her eyes as her flesh absorbed

the intimacy of his touch and then reacted with

a series of sensual shudders that ricocheted relentlessly

through her.

"Ah, so you like that? And this?" His lips were

caressing the sensitive spot just behind her ear, causing

the ache deep inside her body to become a fiercely

urgent eager pulse.

Jodie moaned in outraged protest. He had no right

to be doing this to her.

But Lorenzo had obviously mistaken the cause of

her moan, because he murmured, "More curiosity?

Very well, then — you shall have your answer." His

hand swept up over her body to her breast, shaping it

and then rubbing the pad of his thumb over the erect

swelling of her nipple until all she could visualise

inside her head was his tongue curling round her nipple

and then lapping rhythmically at it.

Knowing her own desire had never been an issue

for her; it was having that desire not just satisfied but

aroused to the pitch it was being aroused to now that

had always been her problem. She had imagined she

might feel like this, but her imagination had fallen

way short of the reality, she acknowledged dizzily as

she locked her fingers in the thick darkness of

Lorenzo’s hair and urged his head down towards her

eager nipple. In the afternoon sunshine that filled the

room through the slats in the window blind, she could

see the telltale hardness of Lorenzo’s erection, and

her senses twisted with sweet triumph at the sight of

his arousal.

"Still curious?" Lorenzo’s tongue stroked the sensitive

flesh of her nipple and her body arched up towards

him for more. His hand dipped between her

legs, his palm warm against the eager swelling of her

mound. Instinctively Jodie held her breath, willing

him to part the closed lips of her sex and find the wet

heat waiting so urgently for him. Reality, reason, responsibility

were forgotten. She was like someone

possessed by a sudden fever — taken over by it so that

it overruled every other control system within her.

The knowing fingers answered her silent plea, parting

the soft pads of flesh and then stroking her with intimately

long, slow strokes that made her cry out

whilst her body jerked in frantic response.

"Now you see what your curiosity has brought you

to," she heard Lorenzo saying thickly. But he wasn’t

making any attempt to stop giving her the pleasure

his touch was inciting. Instead his touch became

stronger and deeper, until — suddenly and shockingly—

the ache inside her became a fierce convulsion

that gripped her and then exploded into an intense

orgasm.

Jodie lay stiffly on the bed, refusing to look at

Lorenzo. She felt scorched by the humiliation of what

had happened, and too close to tears to risk allowing

herself to speak. Not because she had had an orgasm

— it wasn’t her first, after all — but because of

the way she had had it. And because of the man who

had called it up out of her body so effortlessly.

"You shouldn’t have done that," she finally managed

to say.

"No," Lorenzo agreed heavily. "I should not."

Jodie closed her eyes. She could feel him withdrawing

from her as he stood up.

"I’ll go and ring the salon and tell them we shall

be later than arranged."

Why had she let that happen? Why hadn’t she

stopped him straight away? Her post-orgasm lethargy

clung heavily to her body as she showered again and

dressed as quickly as she could, promising herself that

it was never, ever going to happen again. Lorenzo

was a man — and an Italian — he was probably driven

by machismo and all those other things that gave such

men their powerful sexuality. And of course her unwitting

challenge had meant that he had had to make

his point to her. Other than that she had no idea why

he had done what he had — only that he must not be

allowed to do so again.

Lorenzo stood in his study and looked broodingly

out of the window. He had never been the kind of

man who allowed himself to be driven or ridden by

the needs of his body, so why, why had he allowed

himself to give in to them now? She was just another

woman, that was all, and not even an obviously sexually

available woman.

Not sexually available, no, but sexually responsive…

Lorenzo closed his eyes and immediately saw

Jodie as he had seen her minutes before, lying naked

on the bed, giving herself up to her pleasure…the

pleasure he had given her. Immediately his body, still

half tumescent from its earlier unsatisfied arousal,

stiffened into a painfully hard erection. He couldn’t

possibly want her as badly as that. Wanting the

woman — the virgin — he had chosen to marry for

purely practical reasons was a complication he did not

need in his life right now.

How had he managed to find a woman who was

still a virgin — a hungry sexually curious virgin — who

looked at him with a question in her eyes as old as

Eve? But he couldn’t afford the time it would take to

find someone to replace her now. At the moment

Caterina was still shocked enough for him to gain the

upper hand in the war between them, but once she

had time to recover from that shock she would be

back to her plots and the subtle, mind-poisoning tricks

at which she excelled. And besides, by now the whole

of Florence probably knew the identity of his bride-

to-be.

What did one wear to buy clothes sold in a designer

showroom? Jodie wondered ruefully. Probably not

what she was wearing — which was her spare pair of

clean jeans and a clean top — but since she had

brought only the bare necessities to Italy with her,

they would have to do.

Lorenzo was waiting for her when she found her

way back to the main salon. As soon as she walked

into the room he announced grimly, as he ushered her

towards the main door, "What happened earlier in

your room must not be allowed to happen again."

He was looking at her, speaking to her — lecturing

her, almost! — as though it had been her fault, Jodie

recognised indignantly as they stepped into the lift.

"It certainly mustn’t," she agreed fiercely. "But I

wasn’t the one who instigated it."

"Maybe not. But you didn’t stop me, did you?" The

lift had reached the ground floor.

"Why do men always blame women when it is they

who—?" Jodie began heatedly, only to be stopped by

Lorenzo.

"It was Eve who offered Adam the apple," he reminded

her flatly, as he held open the lift door for

her.

"Man"s eternal get-out," Jodie seethed. "The

woman tempted me…"

"So you admit that you did?" Lorenzo demanded as

he guided her towards the street exit.

"I admit no such thing," Jodie retorted angrily,

blinking in the fierce sunlight.

"It will take less time if we walk to Via

Tornabuoni," Lorenzo informed her as he took hold

of her arm and nodded in the direction they were to

walk, ignoring her fury. "It is this way. We will cut

through this alleyway here, which brings us out into

this square."

Jodie forgot her annoyance and caught her breath

in awed delight at her surroundings. She longed to be

able to take her time and absorb everything around

her, but Lorenzo was hurrying her through the square

and down another narrow street, where an ancient

church crouched between the other buildings, its

doors open in welcome.

Via Tornabuoni turned out to be a wide street filled

with imposing buildings and even more imposing

shops — so much so that Jodie found herself hanging

back a little when they reached one store. A uniformed

doorman opened the door for them and

Lorenzo ushered her inside. Almost immediately a

soigne.e, pencil-thin, immaculately groomed young

woman who looked more like a model than a sales

assistant glided towards them, her attention focused

on Lorenzo rather than Jodie. Of course Jodie

couldn’t understand what Lorenzo was saying to her,

but there was no mistaking its impact. They were ushered

towards the back of the store and into an enclosed

private area, where Ms Soigne.e disappeared

and was replaced by a slightly older, even more

dauntingly stunning woman, who quickly introduced

herself as the direttrice of the store.

"I received your message and conveyed it to the

maestro," she informed them reverently in English.

"The designer has himself selected several gowns for

your consideration, and they have been couriered here

from Milano."

They were being left in no doubt as to the great

honour being bestowed on them, Jodie reflected, but

she had to admit that it was equally obvious that the

direttrice was very impressed by Lorenzo.

She turned to look anxiously at Jodie and then exhaled

slightly. "Bene, your fiance.e is not tall, it is true,

but she has the right slenderness for our clothes. If

you will come with me…"

"I am afraid that I have several business appointments

I must keep," Lorenzo apologised. "But I know

I can leave my fiance.e safely in your hands. I shall

return for her in two hours."

The direttrice looked disappointed, but resigned,

whilst Jodie watched Lorenzo leave and told herself

that it was ridiculous for her to feel somehow abandoned.

She was taken to a private room, where she perched

on a small gilt chair as label-clad acolytes reverently

presented her with a selection of wedding gowns from

what she understood from the direttrice was the very

latest collection.

Jodie was no designer label junkie, but these were

very special, and she was forced to admit that she

was in danger of losing her heart to them all. But in

the end there could only be one choice, and she made

it, rebelliously selecting a gown that was in fact a

tightly fitting corset bodice with an elegantly draped

skirt that fitted it so perfectly it looked as though it

were actually a dress and not two pieces.

The direttrice beamed her approval.

"Yes, that is the one I would have chosen for you.

It is very simple, but very elegant, very regal — truly

a wedding gown for a princess. We have guessed your

size from the Duce’s description of you. So many

times a man tells us one thing and we discover…"

She gave a small resigned shrug. "But fortunately the

Duce was correct."

Half an hour later, Jodie faced her own reflection

in the mirror. A young woman who was almost a

stranger to her looked back. Jodie blinked and felt her

eyes blur with emotional tears. If only her parents,

her mother, could have seen her dressed like this. The

gown made her look taller, and emphasised her tiny

waist. A fitted lace jacket with three-quarter sleeves

concealed any bare flesh. The train was so long and

so heavy that Jodie worried that she wouldn’t be able

to manage it.

"It is perfect for you," the direttrice sighed ecstatically.

"The maestro will be so pleased. Now, for the

other things you will need…"

It was another hour before the direttrice finally declared

herself satisfied, by which time Jodie had been

provided with a deliciously curvy suit that could be

dressed up for evening or worn more simply during

the daytime, along with a selection of tops to go with

it, two pairs of impossibly flatteringly cut trousers, a

summer-weight coat with a matching skirt, two pretty

silky dresses, plus shoes and handbags, and what

seemed like an enormous amount of "everyday

things", as the direttrice had called them, from the

designer"s more casual jeans-based range. The only

way she could assuage her guilt over such blatant

consumerism would be to insist that Lorenzo made

good his promise to make a charity donation equivalent

to the cost of her new clothes, Jodie reflected.

She was just beginning to get tired, and felt relieved

when the door to the private room opened and

Lorenzo walked in.

"You have everything you need?" he asked her.

Jodie nodded her head.

Thanking the direttrice, who promised that those

items that were in need of small alterations would be

delivered to the apartment by the following afternoon,

Lorenzo ushered her back out onto the now dark

street.

"Are you hungry?" he asked.

"Very," Jodie admitted.

"There is a restaurant a short distance from here

where they serve simple but excellent local food."

The restaurant was down a narrow street, its tables

set out on the pavement, and they had to edge their

way to one of the few tables that was empty.

"If you would like me to recommend something for

you?" Lorenzo offered once they were seated and the

waiter had brought menus.

"Yes, please — but nothing too heavy," Jodie begged

him, "otherwise I won’t be able to sleep."

"Very well, then. Perhaps not the affettati misti to

start with, which is a traditional selection of cold

meats, but instead pinzimonio, which is fresh vegetables

with olive oil?"

"That sounds perfect," Jodie agreed.

"Then, if it will not be too heavy for you, you

should try the lasagne al forno — it is a speciality of

Florence and like no other lasagne you will ever have

tasted," he assured her.

Smiling, Jodie nodded her head. "What are you going

to have?" she asked him.

"I shall start with the affettati misti and then I think

calamari in zimino — stewed squid," he explained, and

Jodie pulled a face.

All around them other diners were talking and

laughing, whole families eating together, Jodie noticed

slightly enviously. Her only family were her

cousin David and his wife Andrea, and though she

and David had always got on well, there was a nine-

year gap between them. David had already been married

when her parents had been killed, and his parents—

her father"s brother and his wife — had returned

to her aunt"s home country of Canada.

"Tomorrow morning I have arranged for us to visit

my bank," Lorenzo was telling her. "There are some

papers there it is necessary for you to sign. I have

opened a bank account for you, and the family betrothal

ring is in the bank"s vaults, along with certain

other pieces of jewellery. The ring will have to be

cleaned, and possibly resized — although, like you, my

mother had very slender fingers."

Their first course had arrived, but Jodie discovered

that she had lost her appetite a little.

"what’s wrong?" Lorenzo asked her.

"I Don’t feel happy about the idea of wearing a

valuable piece of jewellery," she told him truthfully.

"Especially not some kind of family heirloom. What

if I were to lose it?"

"I am the head of my family and you are to be my

bride. It will be expected that you will wear the family

betrothal ring," Lorenzo told her firmly.

"couldn’t you have a copy made or something?"

Jodie persisted.

Lorenzo started to frown. "If it concerns you so

much, then I shall think about it. Now, eat your dinner—

otherwise Carlo will think that you do not like

his food, and to a Florentine that is a very great insult."

The next morning Lorenzo allowed Jodie a little more

time to gaze in awe at her surroundings as they

walked through the city to his bank. She was wearing

some of her new clothes — an outfit she had privately

labelled Roman Holiday, because it comprised a pair

of linen Capri pants in a mixture of creams and tans

that sat low on her hips, teamed with a plain tan top.

Woven wedges with tan ties and a quirky little bag

completed the outfit, to which Jodie had been forced

by the bright morning sunshine to add her own sunglasses.

Although she was too engrossed in her surroundings

to be aware of the admiring male glances she

was collecting, Lorenzo most certainly wasn’t.

Remembered bitterness darkened his eyes. Women

were too vulnerable to the flattery of other men and

their own egos, as he already knew. But it didn’t matter

to him how many other men found Jodie desirable,

did it? He had no feelings for her, and nor was he

going to allow himself to develop any.

"This way."

Lorenzo’s curt instruction reminded Jodie of how

much she disliked and resented his arrogance. She felt

nothing but pity for the poor woman who did eventually

become his "real" wife, she decided.

Nowadays Florence might be famous for its works

of art, but there had been a time when its fame had

rested on the reputation of its bankers — of whom the

Medici family had been members, Jodie remembered

as they stepped into the cool, cathedral-like sombreness

of Lorenzo’s bank.

The formalities appertaining to the opening of a

bank account for her were soon dealt with, allowing

them to be taken down a marble stairway to an impressive

pillared and gilded room patrolled by two

armed guards. They were given a key and escorted to

one of several small private rooms, furnished with a

table and several chairs. Here they had to wait for the

vault manager and one of the armed guards to return

with a locked safety deposit box, which was put on

the desk in front of Lorenzo. He then produced a key

and inserted it into the lock. Only then did the manager

and the guard leave them to lock themselves in

the small room.

Only the hum of the air-conditioning broke the silence

as Lorenzo turned the key. She was, Jodie discovered,

actually holding her breath.

Lorenzo lifted the lid of the box. Quickly Jodie

looked away. She had very mixed feelings about old

and priceless jewellery. For one thing, it always

seemed to possess a dark and tainted history — if not

because of the way it had been mined, then often

because of the acts of cruelty and greed of those people

who had wanted to possess it. No wonder priceless

stones were so often said to be cursed.

Lorenzo looked down into the box. The last time

it had been opened had been following the death of

his mother. He had a savage impulse to slam the lid

shut, to take Jodie by the hand and to go out into the

bright warmth of the sunshine. But he could not do

that. He was a Montesavro, and the head of his family,

and besides, what ghosts — if there were such

things — could possibly lurk here, in this piece of

metal? His fingers closed round the familiar faded

velvet box he remembered from his childhood.

"Here it is," he told Jodie brusquely, closing the

safety deposit box and relocking it before opening the

ring box.

"There is a legend that when the woman who wears

this ring is pure the stone glows with a particular clarity.

My mother always claimed that it was the stone

itself that was clouded," he added cynically, as Jodie

stared in disbelief at the huge rectangular emerald surrounded

by white flashing diamonds.

"I can’t possibly wear that," she protested. "I’d be

terrified of losing it. I wouldn’t feel safe unless I had

an armed guard with me. It must be worth…" She

shook her head, and Lorenzo frowned, recognising

not awed excitement in her voice at the thought of

the ring"s value but instead shocked distaste. A

woman who felt distaste rather than excitement at the

thought of wearing expensive jewellery? Such a

woman was so far removed from his own experience

that he hadn’t imagined one might exist.

"let’s see if it fits before we start arguing about

whether or not you will wear it," he told her coolly.

Jodie could feel her hand starting to shake when

Lorenzo gripped her wrist and then slid the ring down

onto her ring finger. The very weight of it felt uncomfortable.

Jodie frowned, and immediately went to

tug it off.

"No, leave it!"

The peremptory bite of Lorenzo’s voice shocked

her into stillness.

Lorenzo’s frown deepened as he studied the ring,

lifting her hand so that he could inspect it more

closely.

"what’s wrong?" she asked him uncertainly.

"Look into it and tell me what you can see,"

Lorenzo instructed her.

Reluctantly Jodie did so. "I can’t see anything," she

told him, confused.

And neither could he, Lorenzo acknowledged. The

ring was totally free of the vague cloudiness which

he remembered had so dissatisfied his mother. A freak

of chance? A difference in chemical reactions between

one woman"s skin and another"s? There had to

be a logical reason for the clarity of the emerald when

Jodie wore it.

Oblivious to the conflicting emotions Lorenzo was

trying to repress, Jodie tugged off the ring and handed

it back to him.

"I meant what I said. I’m not wearing it," she told

him hardily.

"We shall see. Certainly you will have to wear it

on Sunday, when we attend church for the first reading

of our banns," Lorenzo informed her.

She knew someone who would be envious of her

supposed betrothal ring, Jodie thought half an hour

later, after they had left the bank. And that was

Louise. Jodie could well imagine her reaction were

she to turn up at John’s wedding wearing it!

Automatically, to cheer herself up, she tried to conjure

up some satisfying images of her moment of triumph—

but somehow the sense of elation she wanted

just wasn’t there. But that was the only reason she

was putting herself through this whole palaver, allowing

herself to be bullied and hectored…and made love

to…by Lorenzo. wasn’t it?

CHAPTER NINE

THERE could be far, far worse ways in which to spend

the next twelve months than exploring this wonderful

city, Jodie thought happily as she took her reluctant

leave of the Medici Palace and headed for the Piazza

Signoria.

She had the day to herself, Lorenzo having announced

earlier that he had some business to attend

to and would be gone until after lunch. Not that she

minded — not one little bit. It was just the sight of so

many couples strolling hand in hand that was making

her aware of not having his imperious, imposing presence

at her side, and nothing at all personal. How

could it be? She was determined not to let down her

emotional guard with any man ever again, and even

if she hadn’t been she would have to be a complete

fool to fall in love with a man like Lorenzo.

No, it was just the warmth of the summer sun and

the effect of Florence itself on her emotions that was

giving her that inner feeling of sadness. Of course if

Lorenzo had been with her he would have been able

to tell her much more about the city than any guidebook.

But determinedly she reminded herself firmly

of how the tension that had somehow crept into even

their most mundane conversational exchanges made

her feel on edge — as though somehow she was on a

constant adrenalin surge, her body waiting… For

what? For him to touch her again? Her thoughts were

drifting down dangerous pathways, she warned

herself.

She tried to focus on the square and its famous

sculptures, pausing to check the guidebook she had

bought earlier. While she was living here she could

even try to learn Italian and turn her year of marriage

into a means of adding to her future CV. That would

give her something far better to occupy her thoughts

than these dangerous sensual longings that had begun

to creep up on her so disturbingly. Of course Lorenzo

would be a good lover, she told herself scathingly.

She didn’t need to experience his lovemaking at first

hand to know that!

The city was busy with other tourists, and by the

time she had walked as far as the Uffizi, having decided

to leave exploring the Palazzo Vecchio for another

occasion, she was beginning to feel both tired

and thirsty. There was a cafe.-bar in the square near

to the apartment, she remembered, and it would not

take her long to walk there.

When she got there, the small square was so busy

that at first she thought she wouldn’t be able to get a

table. But finally she found one, and sat down with a

small sigh of relief.

Half an hour later, she was just finishing her second

cup of coffee when a handsome young Italian approached

her table.

"Scusi, signorina," he apologised, giving her a

boldly flattering smile. "May I share your table? Only

the cafe. is full and…"

He was very good-looking, and quite obviously an

expert at recognising solitary female tourists, Jodie

reflected in rueful amusement as she looked back

at him.

From the other side of the square Lorenzo watched

the age-old tableau being played out in front of him.

Young male Florentines traditionally spent the summer

months flirting with gullible female tourists — so

much so, in fact, that it was an accepted rite of passage

that moved from the discreet pick-up, via walks

through the city, to the speedy conclusion of sex in

the tourist"s hotel and another notch in her partner"s

belt. And of course Jodie, with her woman"s body so

eager to make up for her lost teenage years, even if

she was not prepared to acknowledge it, would no

doubt fall into this particular young Florentine"s

hands like a ripe peach.

Lorenzo could already see how openly responsive

she was to her admirer, tilting her head back to look

up at him, no doubt smiling at him… How often had

he seen his mother give that same smile to her lover

when as a young boy she had used him to camouflage

those early meetings. When he had also smiled guilelessly

at the man with whom she’d planned to betray

his father. Well, Jodie was not going to get the opportunity

to follow his mother"s example, no matter

how clinically businesslike their own marriage was to

be. Purposefully he started to make his way toward

the cafe..

"Please do have the table," Jodie told the waiting

young man gently. "I was just about to leave anyway."

"No — why Don’t you stay and allow me to buy you

another cup of coffee?" he suggested, leaning towards

her, his hand reaching to her arm.

Immediately Jodie stood up and stepped back from

him, shaking her head as she refused politely. "No,

thank you." She could see the confusion and disbelief

in his eyes and had to struggle not to laugh. He was

very good-looking, and no doubt used to having his

overtures met with far more acceptances than refusals.

Lorenzo came to an abrupt halt as he saw the way

Jodie got up from the table and then shook her head.

Her body language made her feelings quite plain, and

he could see from the sag of the young man"s shoulders

that he was as aware as Lorenzo that he had been

turned down.

Jodie took her bill to the cash desk and, having paid

it, started to head back towards Lorenzo’s apartment.

Lorenzo turned the small incident over inside his

head, frowning as he did so. He tried to visualise either

his mother or Caterina doing what Jodie had just

done in the same situation, knowing that neither of

them would have walked away as she had. Could

Jodie be different from them? Could she be that rare

woman — at least in his experience — who was not

driven by ego and vanity, who did not need a constant

influx of new and admiring male attention?

As he walked past the cafe. his young fellow citizen

was already eyeing up another tourist, who, to judge

from the way she was smiling back at him, was rather

more appreciative of his endeavours than Jodie had

been.

It had become impossible for her to walk into the

apartment without having to go and stand in front of

Lorenzo’s "children of courage" gallery, Jodie knew,

and each time she did she saw something new in the

artwork that she hadn’t seen before. On a low table

beneath the drawings there was an expensive leather-

bound album in which Lorenzo had placed details of

every child whose work hung in the gallery. She was

studying it when Lorenzo walked in.

"Tired of sightseeing?" he asked her.

"My feet are," Jodie admitted ruefully. "So I

thought I’d come back and do some reading instead.

I bought lots of books about Florence while I was

out. Some of them have descriptions in several different

languages, but I was thinking, while I’m here,

I’d like to try to learn Italian."

"Since we shall be moving between Florence and

the Castillo, it might not be wise for you to enrol in

a formal language school, if that is what you were

thinking. But it would certainly be possible to hire a

private tutor if you wish," Lorenzo offered, adding,

"Have you had lunch yet?"

Jodie shook her head. "No. I stopped for a cup of

coffee at the cafe. in the square." She paused and wrinkled

her nose.

"You didn’t enjoy it?"

"The coffee was fine, but I got hit on by one of

those professional flirty types. I suppose that’s one of

the downsides of being alone."

"Some women enjoy the attention."

Jodie closed the album and stood up. "Well, I didn’t."

Lorenzo could see that she meant what she was

saying.

"Why Don’t I ask Assunta to make us some lunch

and bring it up to the roof garden? You can read your

guidebooks to me if you wish — in Italian."

Jodie was staring at him in astonishment, and

Lorenzo had to admit he was just as startled by his

own suggestion. He had intended to spend the afternoon

working, not playing at being a language tutor.

She really, really did not want to do this, Jodie realised,

hesitating in front of the entrance to the church

where their banns were to be read for the first time

this morning.

As though he sensed her reluctance, Lorenzo

stepped forward and took hold of her arm, so that she

had no option other than to step forward with him.

She had had to guess at what to wear, opting in the

end for a plain black linen skirt and a short-sleeved

chocolate-brown tee-shirt, over which she had draped

one of the beautiful multicoloured silk squares she

had found tucked away with her new clothes as a

small gift from the store, thinking that if necessary

she could adjust the square and cover her head.

She had been glad she had opted for dark colours

when she had seen Lorenzo, wearing a formal dark

suit complete with a crisp white shirt and a tie. Now,

unable to stop herself looking slightly anxiously towards

him, she stepped with him into a world that

was totally unfamiliar to her. She recognised how forbidding

and arrogant he looked. Take away the suit

and clothe him in the costume of a Medici warlord,

and he could have been a Renaissance soldier prince,

she decided with a small shudder.

The huge emerald on her ring finger flashed green

fire in the sunlight, and someone in the small congregation

filing in through the narrow door gasped — although

whether in awe or shock, Jodie didn’t know.

Although no one spoke, it was obvious from the looks

that were exchanged that the other worshippers knew

Lorenzo, and Jodie could feel the sharp weight of

their speculation resting almost as heavily on her as

the betrothal ring.

People entered the dark interior of the church and

slipped into pews, kneeling immediately in prayer,

and Jodie turned towards the nearest pew herself, only

to find that Lorenzo was shaking his head and walking

past. Their footsteps echoed on the cold stone

floor, the stones themselves worn and slippery with

use. Ahead of them at the altar the priest kneeled,

head bowed in prayer, whilst smoke from the incense

drifted lazily upwards in the beam of light coming in

through the narrow stained glass windows.

They had reached the last pew, and Jodie’s eyes

widened a little when she recognised Lorenzo’s family

crest carved into the wood. A little uncomfortably

she bowed her own head in prayer. A prayer for her

parents, and for David and Andrea, for her friends

and for all those in need, and then to her own astonishment

she found herself suddenly praying fiercely

that Lorenzo might find some way of making peace

with his own past.

Even though she knew why they were here in the

church, she was still not prepared for the effect hearing

their banns read had on her — or the emotional

poignancy and turmoil she felt. Unconnected images

blurred her vision — a sunny day, and her parents

laughing down at her as they walked together; the

shock of learning of their deaths; her aunt and uncle"s

unhappy faces as they struggled to explain to her what

had happened, and that she herself might still lose her

leg; the first time she stood up properly after the accident;

the first time John had asked her out, standing

awkwardly beside her desk in the small office where

she had worked for his father; the first time he had

kissed her, and the let-down feeling of disappointment

she had had because she didn’t feel more excited.

The small ceremony they had just been part of

should surely be about more than fulfilling the demands

of someone"s pride, or gaining material pos-

sessions, and she should now be standing here outside

the church feeling uplifted by the promise of future

shared love — instead of which she actually felt

slightly guilty and shabby.

The priest was heading towards them, smiling

warmly as he congratulated them, his warmth increasing

Jodie’s discomfort. He was tall and unexpectedly

vigorously male, with an intent gaze.

"If there are any matters you feel you wish to discuss

with me, my child, I am at your disposal," he

told Jodie gently, in excellent English.

"My grandmother’s will has meant that we have

had to change our plans to marry in England and

bring our wedding forward," Lorenzo informed him,

slightly coolly. "And we are grateful to you for your

co-operation."

The priest inclined his head gravely, and Lorenzo

placed his hand in the middle of Jodie’s back in what

she bemusedly recognised as a classic male possessive

gesture, firmly ushering her away. She could feel

the warmth of his hand through her top, and the wilful

thought crept into her mind, like the incense smoke

rising to the light, that had they truly been in love she

might have turned to look up at him and smile at him,

and his hand might have stroked her flesh in mute

promise as he returned her smile. But they were not

in love, and she had absolutely no wish for them to

be in love!

"I wish we didn’t have to get married in church,"

she told him uncomfortably as they made their way

back to the Palazzo. "It made me feel so guilty when

Father Ignatius prayed for us and for our marriage,

knowing that it isn’t going to be a real marriage."

"A real marriage as in a sexual marriage, I assume

you mean?"

"No." Jodie denied it immediately, but she could

see from his expression that he didn’t believe her.

"Real marriage is about much more than just sex," she

persisted.

"But sex is a part of it — and you, as we both know,

are dangerously curious to know the reality of a man"s

possession."

"You keep saying that, but it isn’t true!"

"Your lips say one thing," Lorenzo told her softly,

"but your eyes say another."

She might be a virgin, but she could still recognise

the growing sexual tension between them for what it

was, Jodie decided shakily.

"I need to return to the Castillo for a few days,"

Lorenzo added abruptly. "It would be easier to leave

you here in Florence, but, since we are so newly betrothed,

it would be better if you were to accompany

me. When is your next fitting for the wedding dress?"

"On Thursday."

"Bene, we shall be back by then."

Jodie looked at the emerald ring she had just removed

and replaced in its box, prior to getting ready for bed.

The apartment was well set up with burglar alarms,

she knew that, but even so she didn’t feel happy about

the thought of the ring being in her room overnight,

and would far rather it were in Lorenzo’s keeping.

Closing the box, she picked it up and hurried out

of her own room and across the corridor, hesitating

briefly before she knocked on Lorenzo’s bedroom

door.

His brisk "Si?" had her opening the door and step

ping into the room, explaining, "I’ve brought you the

ring. I wanted to…" Her voice trailed away as her

gaze slid helplessly over the smooth golden flesh of

his torso, where it was revealed by the unbuttoned

shirt he was removing.

"You wanted to what?" he prompted silkily, walking

past her to close the door before shrugging off his

shirt completely. The gold strap of his watch gleamed

subtly in the lamplight, the dark vee of his body hair

a silky mesh of male sexuality that riveted and

trapped her spellbound gaze.

Her mouth had gone dry. She touched her tongue-

tip to her lips, unable to focus properly on answering

him, her senses too overwhelmed by the sight of him.

He was so arrogantly, so devastatingly, so magnificently

male.

If just the sight of those broad shoulders and that

solidly muscled chest could make her feel like this,

what would it do to her to see him fully naked? She

drew a deep, juddering breath of silent recognition at

the ache uncoiling inside her.

"The ring," she managed to tell him unsteadily,

stretching out the hand in which she was holding the

small box. "I want you to have it."

"Do you? Or do you mean you want me to have

you, to satisfy that curiosity of yours and to satisfy

you along with it?"

Beneath her angry outrage a shiver of something

sensual and excited stroked her senses. Was he right?

Was that secretly why she had come to his room?

Because she had wanted…hoped…?

Lorenzo watched as her expression reflected her

feelings. Somehow she was burrowing deeper and

deeper into his thoughts, causing him to question

things — beliefs — he did not want to question. He

might be better at concealing his desire than she was,

but that didn’t mean he was any better at controlling

it, he knew.

"I didn’t come here for that reason at all," Jodie

protested belatedly. "I just didn’t want to be responsible

for looking after the ring." Could he hear in her

voice, as she could, her own uncertainty about her

subconscious motivation?

"As you Don’t want to be responsible for "looking

after" your own virginity any more?" Lorenzo suggested

harshly. "You are overwhelmed by your virginal

curiosity — admit it! It eats at you, and aches

deep inside you, keeping you awake at night, wondering…

wanting…"

"No," Jodie breathed, but she knew she might just

as well have been saying yes. "I Don’t want you," she

said fiercely, trying to cling on to some kind of reality.

"Not me," Lorenzo agreed. "But you do want what

I can give you — the knowledge your time in hospital

has denied you. You want to know what it feels like

to know a man"s body, to know a man"s possession.

You can deny it with these," he told her mockingly,

reaching out and rubbing the pad of his thumb against

her parted lips, "as much as you wish, but I could take

them now with my own and they would tell me something

very different."

"No," Jodie repeated, but she was looking helplessly

up into his eyes, just standing there without

moving as he came to her and slowly slid his hands

up over her arms, from her wrists to her shoulders,

and she trembled almost violently with sensual pleasure

and anticipation. He was drawing her closer, so

close that the hot, primitive male scent of him engulfed

her. She put her lips to the bare flesh of his

collarbone with a small moan, and then pressed eager

open-mouthed kisses the length of his throat, greedily

tasting his flesh before running her tongue-tip over

his Adam"s apple whilst her fingers dug into the hard

muscles of his shoulders and she strained against him.

Was this what happened when a woman was a virgin?

Lorenzo wondered, as he struggled to control his

sudden savage longing to feel her mouth on every part

of him. This wild, wanton outpouring of need — not

for male possession, but for the right to take her own

pleasure in whatever way she wished? And why

should he stop her? Why should he not let her take

her pleasure where she wished and in whatever way

she wished?

He looked down at her, to where he could see outlined

by her strappy top the stiff thrust of her nipples,

and his male instincts surged in feral need. He cupped

her face and took her mouth with his own, driving

into it with the slow rhythmic thrust of his tongue as

he tugged down her top with his free hand until her

breasts spilled over the fabric, creamily fleshed, with

warm brown nipples already swollen hard with desire.

Jodie didn’t even hear herself moan with hot

delight at the feel of Lorenzo’s naked flesh against

her own. She was lost in her own arousal. His silky

dark body hair sensitised her already eager nipples

while the stroke of his tongue in the hollow behind

her ear brought her arching compulsively into him,

into him and against him, grinding her hips against

his body in a frenzy of eager longing.

Jodie could see their twinned images in the bedroom

mirrors, and she watched passion-bound as

Lorenzo cupped her breast and readied the dark peak

of her nipple for the downward descent of his head

and the deliberately erotic caress of his tongue.

This time as she arched her body up to his, willingly

sacrificing it to her growing pleasure, Jodie did

hear herself cry out in female longing. But the sound

of her own desire only increased the fevered beat of

her blood as it surged through her veins, heating her

belly and spreading through it an ache that weakened

her muscles and softened her flesh into warm, wet

compliance.

When Lorenzo picked her up bodily, she wrapped

her arms around him and gasped in pleasure to feel

him suckling on the taut peak of her nipple whilst he

tugged off the rest of her clothes.

By the time he placed her on the bed they were

both naked, and he was leaning over her whilst he

trailed slow kisses over her openly eager body. Jodie

could see how the thick strength of his erection rose

stiffly toward his belly, and she yearned to reach out

and touch it.

The sensation of Lorenzo circling her navel with

his tongue-tip as his hand stroked slowly up the inside

of her thigh was melting away whatever desire she

might have had to conjure up some kind of resistance.

Her rapt gaze was fixed unashamedly and avidly on

his erection.

Lorenzo lifted his head to watch her as she reached

out half hesitantly and took him in her hand, her eyes

widening as she absorbed the texture and heat. A soft

slow burn of excited colour warmed her skin when

she registered the pulse that flooded his darkly engorged

thickness. She stroked him with fervent female

appreciation and approval, and Lorenzo closed

his eyes and exhaled, unable to withstand his body"s

longing to enjoy her wondering exploration.

How powerful it made her feel to touch Lorenzo

like this, and how eternally female, in a way that

somehow connected her with the whole of her sex

from the dawn of time. It was woman who aroused

this maleness in a man, woman who controlled and

commanded it, drawing from it her own pleasure as

well as allowing man to take his. Her fingers explored

and stroked, and her lips parted and her breath caught

on a small whisper of soft wanton pleasure as she felt

the response Lorenzo couldn’t quite control. He felt

so rigid, and yet at the same time so malleable. Silky

desire flushed her, tempted her to bend her head

and…

"No!"

The harshness of Lorenzo’s refusal sent a shock

through her. Confusion and disappointment darkened

her gaze as it met his, and then returned to cling to

his now openly pulsing stiffness.

If he let her place her lips against him now, he

wouldn’t be able to control himself, Lorenzo knew.

She had already aroused him well beyond his own

personal safety limit. If he let her caress him so intimately,

he wouldn’t be able to stop himself from

taking her.

"Why not?" Jodie protested.

"We can’t have full sex," he answered her curtly.

With her own arousal an unsatisfied ache that physically

hurt, Jodie persisted doggedly, "Why not?"

"I Don’t have any condoms, and there’s no way I

intend to fall into the trap of fathering a child I Don’t

want and which ultimately I would have to pay for,"

he told her harshly.

"wouldn’t it have been better to have thought of

that earlier?" Jodie asked him pointedly as she moved

away from him and got off the bed, retrieving her

clothes and redressing with clumsy haste.

No way was she going to let him guess how much

his rejection of her reminded her of John’s, or how

much it and he had hurt her. And she certainly didn’t

want him to know how shamingly and how very, very

much she was aching deep inside herself for what he

was not going to give her.

How foolish she had been to think that she was in

control of his desire. In this relationship she wasn’t

in control of anything, she decided bitterly, as she

almost ran for the door, desperate for the sanctuary

of her own bedroom.

CHAPTER TEN

JODIE tensed as she heard the sound she had been

lying awake waiting for. The now familiar click of

Lorenzo’s bedroom door being opened very quietly,

and then closed again equally secretively.

In two days" time they would be getting married,

but on no less than four occasions now Jodie had been

aware of Lorenzo leaving his bedroom late at night

and not returning to it for at least an hour. And

Caterina was still living at the Castillo, in Lorenzo’s

late grandmother’s rooms. If Caterina had made good

her threat to get Lorenzo back into her bed, then

surely she had a right to know about it? Even though

she was only going to be a temporary wife.

Getting out of bed, Jodie pulled on her robe and

slipped her feet into a pair of soft-soled shoes. She

was determined to confront Lorenzo with her suspicions.

Being a business arrangement wife was one

thing, but being the unwanted wife of a man who had

a mistress was very definitely another. And the kind

of humiliating situation she had no intention of allowing

Lorenzo to put her in.

She hurried along the landing to the top of the

stairs, and as she looked anxiously down them she

saw Lorenzo’s shadow moving swiftly along the hallway

below. Determinedly she hurried after him, wondering

why he had not simply used the upper corridor

that led to Caterina’s apartments.

Several narrow passageways led off the hallway

which linked the old part of the Castillo to this newer

wing, which had been added in the seventeenth century.

Which passage had Lorenzo taken? There was

a light burning on the stairs that led down to a lower

level. Exhaling nervously, Jodie turned down them.

The stairs were directly under Caterina’s apartment,

so perhaps—

She gave a small shocked scream as suddenly, out

of the shadows, a hand curled round her wrist.

"What the hell do you think You’re doing?"

"Lorenzo!"

He must have realised that she was following him

and waited to trap her.

"I wanted to know where you were going. This is

the fourth time I’ve heard you leave your room late

at night," she told him boldly, lifting her chin.

"You were spying on me?"

The narrow-eyed look he was giving her was making

her feel acutely uncomfortable, but she wasn’t

going to let him see that.

"If I’m going to marry you then I have a right to

know if You’re having sex with Caterina."

"What?"

"I won’t marry you if you are," Jodie told him

fiercely. "And I mean that."

"You mean You’re snooping around following me

because you thought you were going to find me in

Caterina’s bed?"

Put that way, he made it sound as though her behaviour

was verging on the bunny-boiling, Jodie realised

guiltily. How could she tell him that his rejection

of her, so closely mirroring John’s lack of sexual interest

in her, had not only heightened her own insecurities

but had also led to her wondering if, like

John, Lorenzo was actually finding sexual satisfaction

with someone else?

"You can’t deny that you and she have been lovers,"

she told him stubbornly.

"Have been, yes," he agreed tersely. "But that was

nearly twenty years ago, when I was a boy."

"She says you still want her."

"She may choose to think that, but it is most certainly

not true," Lorenzo told her firmly. His fingers

were still clamped round her wrist, and suddenly he

cursed beneath his breath, saying grimly, "You want

to know where I go? Very well, then — come with

me."

He was walking so fast along the narrow, tunnellike

corridor in front of them that Jodie almost had to

run to keep up with him. She could smell damp, and

see it too on the vaulted curve of the ancient stone

walls. She gave a small shiver, and then a shocked

gasp as they reached a heavy oak door and Lorenzo

told her emotionlessly, "The corridor beyond here was

once know as the via eternal, because it led to the

Castillo’s dungeons and torture chambers."

"The torture chambers?" Jodie could hear the horrified

revulsion in her own voice.

Lorenzo gave a dismissive shrug as he unlocked

and then opened the heavy oak door. "They were considered

a necessary part of warfare."

"In medieval times, perhaps," Jodie acknowledged.

"But—"

"No, not merely in medieval times," Lorenzo interrupted,

his voice and his expression both so savagely

forbidding that she shivered.

Beyond the door lay a large cavernous room with

a low, vaulted ceiling. Wine racks leaned emptily

against one wall, whilst moisture dripped onto the

floor from the ceiling.

"It’s all right," Lorenzo told her following her anxious

upward glance. "The ceiling is quite safe, and the

coldness of the air, although unpleasant, does have

certain merits."

"More torture for the prisoners?" Jodie suggested

sharply.

"My grandmother’s first husband was imprisoned

down here for a time."

The unexpectedness of Lorenzo’s low-voiced comment

sent a shock through her.

"He was against Mussolini and made the mistake

of saying so; for that he was imprisoned and tortured

in his own home. My grandmother never really got

over it. Oh, she remarried after his death, but her heart

wasn’t really in it. She often told me herself that,

given a free choice, she would have preferred to retire

to the contemplative life of a convent — but she had

promised him that she would provide his house with

an heir. Her marriage to my own grandfather was arranged

by her first husband as he lay dying from the

damage inflicted on his body by his torturers. They

stole many works of art from the Castillo — and emptied

the wine racks," he added grimly, nodding in the

direction of the empty racks. "But there was one treasure

they were not able to take."

Jodie looked round the bleak, cold underground

room in bewilderment.

"Down here?"

Lorenzo shook his head. "No. Come with me."

He led her over to a small door that opened onto

another set of stairs. "These lead up to the main salon

of what used to be the state apartments."

"Caterina’s rooms?" Jodie questioned him uncertainly.

"She sleeps in what was my grandmother’s room,

which forms part of the state apartments, yes — which

is why I use these stairs to reach the salon instead of

the main corridor stairs."

They had reached the top of the stairs and another

door.

"Through here, in the main salon, concealed by the

fabric which my grandmother’s first husband had specially

applied to the walls, is a series of wall paintings

by a pupil of Leonardo. Although, according to my

grandmother, family legend insists that the Master

himself had a hand in their execution."

As he spoke he was ushering her into a large elegant

room, its walls hung with green silk fabric. The

room was shabby and slightly neglected, with dust

motes hanging in the air along with the faint smell of

roses.

"The Duce was afraid that Mussolini’s men would

lay claim to the Castillo because of the paintings, and

so he had them covered up. It was his dream that one

day they would be fully restored. Our family is a large

one, and there are some members of it who feel that

the Castillo should be sold and the proceeds shared.

My grandmother wanted to leave the Castillo to me

because she knew I would fulfil on her behalf the

promise she made to her dying first husband."

"So why did she make it condition of her will that

you must marry?"

"That was through Caterina’s interference. My

grandmother was a gentle person who thought only

good of others. Caterina seized her chance after Gino

died and managed to convince Nonna that we were

star-crossed lovers and I wanted to marry her. She is

what one might term an adventuress, to whom marriage

to my cousin Gino gave social standing. She

had hoped to raise herself even higher by trapping me

into marriage with her. Money and social position are

all that matter to her."

Jodie frowned. Her instincts were telling her that

what he was saying was the truth, and that Caterina

had lied to her.

"Caterina knows how important the Castillo is to

me," Lorenzo continued. "Gino had told her of my

promise to our grandmother, and she thought she

could use that to force my hand. Fortunately for me,

my grandmother’s notary managed to conceal from

Caterina the fact that he had omitted her name from

the final signed copy of the will, so that it read merely

that I had to marry, instead of stating that I had to

marry Caterina. And, as if the situation weren’t complicated

enough already, she has been encouraging

some Russian syndicate to believe that the Castillo

will be available to buy. They wish to convert it into

a luxury hotel."

"But why do you come here at night?"

"Because I cannot do so during the day, when

Caterina is here, and because I have a need to commune

with the past, to assure the man who gave his

life to preserve it that I will do my best to fulfil his

dream." He gave a small shrug. "At the same time, I

have dreams of my own. I would like to see the

Castillo turned into a rehabilitation centre for the

young victims of war — a place where they can recover

physically and emotionally. I want it to be a

centre for young artists and artisans, gifted craftspeople

who will work on the restoration that is needed

and train their young apprentices to follow in their

footsteps. I want to banish from the Castillo, and from

the lives of young victims of war, at least some of

the shadows and dark places, and to fill them instead

with light and the pleasure of living. The meetings I

have been having in Florence are connected with my

plans for the Castillo. As soon as we are married, and

the Castillo is legally mine, my first and most important

duty is to put in hand the restoration of the paintings."

Jodie had to blink fiercely to disperse her foolish

tears, her earlier antagonistic suspicions of him swept

away by a sudden surge of admiration.

"It sounds wonderful — a truly noble enterprise," she

told him huskily, looking up at him, her admiration

warming her eyes.

Lorenzo looked back at her and Jodie caught her

breath as he took a step towards her, quickly disentangling

her gaze from his whilst her heart raced and

thudded.

"Caterina does not think so. She would far rather

the place was sold and my money was hers to do with

as she chooses. She drove my cousin to his death, and

even if I loved her rather than loathed her I could

never forgive her for that," Lorenzo told her harshly.

Jodie gave a small shiver.

"But you must have loved her once…"

"Why? Because I had sex with her?" Lorenzo shook

his head. "I was eighteen and driven by the desires of

my body, that was all." As he was being driven by

them right now, if he was honest, to take hold of Jodie

and take her back to his bed, so that he could finish

what had been started the night she had returned the

betrothal ring to him. There hadn’t been a single night

since then when he had not thought of doing so—

ached to do so. she’d got under his skin in a way that

no other woman had, mental images of her filling his

head and stealing away his thoughts whilst his body

raged and pulsed. Angrily he fought against the longing

taking hold of him.

Every bride felt nervous — it went with the territory,

Jodie assured herself as the alarmingly efficient stylist

the designer salon had insisted on sending to help her,

plus a seamstress and a dresser, bustled round her

bedroom.

Who would have thought that a small, quiet wedding

would involve so much strategic planning? A

little ruefully, Jodie suspected that it was her gown

rather than her that was the cause of the stylist"s relentless

insistence on overseeing every detail of her

wedding-day appearance — right down to the spa treatments

she had arranged for Jodie the previous day.

Now, massaged plucked, waxed and tinted to within

an inch of her life, Jodie tried to imagine how she

might be feeling if this was the real thing, a real wedding,

and she was standing here nervously being laced

into her corset in anticipation of making her vows to

a man she really loved and who really loved her.

But of course that was never going to happen.

Because she was never going to love a man, was she?

Was she? she repeated insistently, when her question

was met by a stubborn silence from the reassuring

inner voice that should have acknowledged and

agreed.

"No, you must pull it tighter," she could hear the

stylist instructing the dresser, and she winced as the

breath was squeezed out of her lungs.

Her hair had been arranged in an artless mix of

loose plaits coiled softly into an "up do" and then

threaded with invisible thread strung with diamonds

to complement the pearl and diamond embroidery on

her gown. A make-up artist had spent what felt like

hours working on her face to make it look as though

she wasn’t actually wearing any make-up at all,

merely a soft glow, although her eyelids had been

brushed with a subtle gold-green powder which made

them look enormous as well as reflecting the green

glitter of the emerald.

By the time the stylist was satisfied with the narrowness

of her waist, Jodie was afraid she might pass

out from an inability to breathe.

"Come and look," the stylist insisted, taking her to

stand in front of the full-length mirror.

The reflection gazing back at her was totally unfamiliar.

Huge gold eyes ringed with curling black

lashes looked at her, soft rose lips surely much fuller

than hers parted to show pearly white teeth. The

cream corset bodice of her gown revealed lushly

curved breasts and an impossibly narrow waist, whilst

silky fine cream hold-ups covered legs that seemed to

go on for ever, thanks to the height of the heels she

was having to wear.

"Bene," the stylist pronounced, beckoning to the

dresser. "Now for the skirt."

Heaven knew how she would have managed to

dress herself, Jodie reflected half an hour afterwards,

when both skirt and train had finally been arranged

to the stylist"s satisfaction, and the cream lace veil

and bodice had been slipped on to cover her hair and

bare skin.

There was a knock on the door, and some flurried

conversation out of Jodie’s earshot, and then the stylist

was handing her flowers and telling her urgently,

"It is time for you to leave…"

CHAPTER ELEVEN

FINALLY it was over: the church service, the walkabout

she hadn’t realised she would be expected to

make, greeting the well-wishers, the friends of

Lorenzo’s, who had included his lawyer and his

charming wife, and the impromptu wedding lunch

which Carlo had insisted on preparing for them whilst

everyone else in the restaurant joined in the celebration.

Nine hours of it in all, during which Jodie had

not dared to attempt to eat or drink, never mind sit

down.

And now they were finally alone, Assunta having

prepared and left them a cold supper before coming

to the church to see them married. Jodie was so exhausted

she could barely stand. The corset had become

a form of excruciating torture from which she

ached to be free with every muscle in her body that

hadn’t been numbed by its pressure.

In the hallway of the apartment, she headed for the

stairs, picking up her long skirts.

"You are tired?" Lorenzo guessed.

She could barely nod her head. Tired didn’t even

begin to describe her physical and emotional exhaustion.

Emotional exhaustion? Because of what, exactly?

She felt like kicking the unwanted inner voice

for probing and prodding — it, after all, knew as well

as she did exactly how she had felt standing next to

Lorenzo whilst the priest spoke the words of the marriage

ceremony. The light from the windows had illuminated

her face, but the inner light illuminating her

understanding of a truth she hadn’t wanted to recognise

had been far more powerful. She had hated the

feeling of deceit that had clung to her, the sense of

guilt and shame at the way they were using vows that

should have been sacred to suit their own purposes.

"I’ll come up with you," she heard Lorenzo saying.

How could a mere dress weigh so much? By the

time she reached the top of the stairs her heart was

pounding nauseatingly, and she was feeling oddly

light-headed.

Outside the door to her bedroom, Lorenzo touched

her lightly on the shoulder and said coolly, "If you’ve

got a minute…?"

They had only just been married, and he was asking

her if she had got a minute as though they were no

more than acquaintances. But then, wasn’t that exactly

what they were?

She could see that he was waiting for her to cross

the corridor and follow him into his room. Her leg

was aching painfully, but she refused to let it drag.

She stepped into his bedroom and stood as close to

the door as she could, refusing to look at the bed.

Lorenzo had walked over to the tallboy, where he"d

picked up something, and now he was walking back

towards her.

"Knowing how you feel about the emerald, I

thought you might prefer to wear this instead. Oh, and

you can keep it afterwards if you wish," he told her

with a dismissive shrug.

Silently Jodie took the small box from him and

opened it. Inside was a perfect pear-shaped solitaire

diamond. Mutely, she looked at it.

"I couldn’t possibly keep that. It must have been

very expensive."

Lorenzo was frowning at her as though her refusal

displeased him. "As you wish," he agreed curtly. "It

isn’t of any real consequence."

"Like our marriage," Jodie heard herself saying

shakily. "I really would have preferred not to have

had a church ceremony. It made me feel—" She broke

off and shook her head as she realised the impossibility

of making Lorenzo understand how she had felt.

The sudden action caused a wave of dizziness to

swamp her, followed by the shocked realisation that

she was about to faint. Instinctively she made grab

for the nearest solid object, which just happened to

be Lorenzo. As she swayed towards him Lorenzo

caught hold of her.

"It’s the dress," she managed to tell him. "It’s laced

so very tightly…"

The next minute he was turning her round, supporting

her with one arm whilst he inspected the fastenings

of her bodice and demanded grimly, "Why

didn’t you say something? How the hell does this

thing come off?"

"The skirt and the train have to come off first, before

I can remove the bodice," Jodie told him weakly.

"They’re just hooked onto it."

Before she could stop him he was feeling for the

tiny fastenings, unsnapping them with ruthless speed.

When they were all free the train and skirt sighed

softly to the floor, leaving Jodie standing in her silk

stockings, high heels, tiny boy-short briefs — and the

unbearably tight bodice.

"What on earth possessed you to wear something

so tight?" Lorenzo demanded.

"It wasn’t my idea. It was the stylist"s," Jodie admitted.

"She insisted on it being so tightly laced."

"How does it fasten?"

"It’s laced on the inside, and then fastened with

hooks and eyes." Just the effort of speaking was making

her feel sick from her inability to draw enough

air into her lungs.

"Don’t move," Lorenzo told her, leaving her standing

in the middle of the floor as he went over to the

tallboy and opened a drawer. When he came back he

was holding a pair of scissors.

"No, you can’t—" Jodie protested weakly, but it

was too late. He was already cutting into the fabric,

ignoring her protests.

She almost cried from the sheer bliss of simply

being able to breathe naturally as the corset fell away.

"Dio! It’s a wonder your flesh is not numbed and

dead," Lorenzo said critically as he studied the red

marks on her pale skin where the corset had cut into

her. "And why did you not say before now that your

leg is paining you?"

"Because it isn’t," Jodie fibbed.

"Yes, it is. Go and lie down on the bed. I will

massage it for you."

"there’s no need for you to do that," she protested.

"I’ll be fine now that I’m free of the corset." She

folded her arms over her breasts, suddenly, now that

she didn’t have to worry about taking her next breath,

acutely conscious her state of undress, but as she

shifted her weight from one foot to the other a sharp

pain shot up her injured leg, causing her to smother

a gasp of pain.

Lorenzo muttered something she couldn’t translate

and then picked her up, ignoring her tired protest as

he carried her over to the bed.

"You are the most stubborn woman I have ever

met," he told her grimly as he put her down. "Now,

lie down and I will massage your leg for you."

She wanted to refuse — out of pride if nothing

else — but the truth was that her leg was really hurting,

and the thought of having the pain massaged away

was too tempting to refuse.

Silently she lay down on her front and closed her

eyes. She had forgotten about the stockings she was

still wearing, and tensed as Lorenzo removed them—

as clinically and efficiently as though she were made

of plastic rather than female flesh and blood, she acknowledged

wryly. But her flesh knew that he was

male, and its response to the firm massaging movement

of his fingers against the aching muscles in her

thigh was most definitely not clinical.

She had originally lain on her stomach to conceal

from him both her naked breasts and her expression—

not so much out of modesty, but out of fear of what

they might reveal to him. Now, as she felt her nipples

hardening when his fingers stroked and kneaded her

aching flesh, she was very glad that she had done so.

As his fingers drew the pain out of her flesh their

touch replaced it with a very different kind of ache,

beginning deep inside her with a small fluttering pulse

that quickly grew stronger until the desire it generated

was spreading outwards into every nerve-ending.

Uncomfortably she pulled away, and moved to sit up,

fearing that somehow Lorenzo might guess what she

was experiencing.

"what’s the matter?" he demanded. "Are you worried

that I might try to seduce you?"

He was mocking her, she knew that. "No, of course

not. Why would I think that? After all, I already know

that you Don’t desire me."

She had rolled over now, and was sitting up. But

she couldn’t get off the bed because Lorenzo was

standing immediately in front of her.

"And you want me to desire you?"

"No!" she said fiercely.

"You’re lying." Lorenzo accused her, shocking her

as he suddenly drew her up to stand virtually body-

to-body with him. "But then, lying is second nature

to your sex, isn’t it?"

Yes, she was lying, Jodie admitted. Because she

had no other alternative, no other way to protect herself.

Why was he behaving like this towards her?

she’d realised from what Caterina had told her that

his childhood experiences with his mother and her

unfaithfulness to his father had given him a low opinion

of her sex, and a need to protect himself from

emotional pain, but that was no reason for him to

punish her. Just as she had no real reason to brand all

men as faithless, shallow cheats because of the way

John had behaved towards her? She swallowed uncomfortably,

unable to ignore her own inner critical

voice.

"You’re lying," Lorenzo repeated. "Admit it."

"Admit what?" Jodie challenged him recklessly.

"That I want you? Why? What purpose or benefit is

there in my doing that? You Don’t want me. All you

want is for me to give you an excuse to go on telling

yourself that all women are like your mother and

Caterina. Well, we aren’t. You want me to lie to you

because that way you can keep on telling yourself that

all women are the same. Because You’re afraid of

wanting—"

"Enough!"

Jodie tried to protest, but it was too late. His mouth

was already covering hers, his hands almost bruising

the tender flesh of her upper arms as he held her to

him so hard that she could feel the buttons on his

shirt pressing into her skin.

"I am afraid of nothing," Lorenzo whispered

fiercely against her mouth. "Least of all of wanting

you. And to prove it…"

Before she could evade him he was kissing her,

deeply and intimately, whilst his hands stroked over

her body to cup her breasts.

She should stop him. She knew that. But her own

desire was stronger than her will-power. The anger

that had flared up between them had unleashed a passion

in Lorenzo that ignited her own and overwhelmed

her careful restraint. He lifted one hand to

her head, sliding his fingers into her hair and exposing

the slender vulnerability of her neck to the sensual

assault of his lips.

Shudders of hot, illicit pleasure that began where

his mouth caressed her skin and ended deep inside

the female heart of hers seized her, took her to a place

where reality didn’t exist and all that mattered was

following the lure of the primitive surge of her own

desire for him.

He had captured her nipple between the long lean

finger and thumb of his free hand and was playing

softly with it, then less softly when both it and its

partner stiffened with excitement. The erotic sensation

of him tugging sensually on it was relayed to her

through what felt like a million tiny nerve-endings,

magnifying the pleasure so much that she was racked

helplessly by its domination as it took her and filled

her, weakening her will-power along with her bones,

and focusing all of her straining concentration not on

the urgent warnings of her defences, but instead on

the wet heat between her legs, and the desire-swollen

flesh she ached for Lorenzo to touch.

Had she actually verbally said what she wanted?

She had communicated it to him somehow, Jodie realised

dizzily, as his fingers untangled from her hair and

his hand stroked down her body, moulding her hipbone,

his fingers pressing into the curves of her bottom

as he held her with both hands and pulled her

into his own body so that she could feel how hard

and aroused he was. He kissed her with shockingly

deliberate intimacy as he caressed the quivering flesh

of her stomach, then stroked his fingers along the hip-

hugging line of her silky knickers, teasing her eager

flesh with a softly tantalising touch that made her

press closer to him until he responded to her need and

slipped his hand into the softly fluted leg of her underwear

to cover her sex.

Completely lost, Jodie made a small delirious

sound of pleasure into his kiss that turned to a broken

exclamation of shocked delight when he slid his fingers

into her waiting wetness. The feel of the slow

movement of his fingers over her aroused flesh was

both an exquisite pleasure and an almost unbearable

torment. She wanted him to go on doing what he was

doing, but she wanted him inside her as well, filling

her, satisfying the need that was tightening round her.

She moaned out loud as he plucked softly at the

aroused nub of her clitoris, her own hand going immediately

to the thick thrust of his own erection, easily visible

beneath his clothes but frustratingly separated

from the full intimacy of her touch by them.

"Wait," she heard him tell her thickly, and then he

was lifting her, placing her back on the bed before

swiftly removing his clothes. She lay back, her head

on the pillows, watching him with an absorbed, hungry,

unashamed eagerness, her breath coming in soft

little panting gasps of need, her hand resting over her

own sex, not to protect it, but to quieten it as it pulsed

its clamouring message of readiness.

His nakedness excited her so much. She couldn’t

drag her gaze away from the stiff length of his erection

as it thrust upwards from the soft dark mat of his

body hair. It crossed her mind that she should be feeling

virginal fear instead of such a delirious sense of

eager excitement. He was leaning over her, removing

her briefs, watching her as he did so. Heat and shock

suffused her as he slowly slid one finger the length

of her wetness. Greedily her body lifted towards him

and his finger traced her again, stroking and lingering,

caressing the hard little nub of excitement clamouring

for his attention and then slowly, very deliberately,

sliding inside her. Jodie gasped and then moaned in

delight as she felt him stretching her gently, still caressing

her.

His body was covering hers now, and he was kissing

her. Eagerly she kissed him back, only stopping

when she felt the loss of his pleasure-giving fingers.

Her eyes rounded and her face burned when he lifted

his hand towards her lips and told her thickly, "Taste

yourself on me." Hesitantly she opened her mouth and

let him place his fingers within it, closing her eyes

and obeying his whispered, "Suck them," as she drew

in the taste of her own arousal mingled with the taste

of his skin and felt the power of the aphrodisiac he

was giving her.

Now she was totally lost, a mindless slave to her

own sexuality and need as his hands and his mouth

caressed every part of her. Her shoulder, the inner

flesh of her arm, her breasts, her belly, and she

writhed and moaned and reached for him with her

own hands and mouth, savouring the sharp taste of

him as she breathed in his intimate man scent and felt

its erotic impact on her senses. She ached to let her

tongue-tip circle the stiff shiny head of his sex, but

Lorenzo wouldn’t let her. Instead his tongue was exploring

her, tracing a sensual pathway of fiery pleasure

over her wetness, stroking firmly against her clitoris,

taking her far, far beyond the furthermost

reaches of her own sensual imaginings. She wanted

him so much. Too much…

Abruptly, reality pierced her sexual arousal and she

tensed, pushing Lorenzo away whilst her body

screamed its pain at her denial of its pleasure.

Lorenzo sat up, frowning, and made to take her in

his arms, but Jodie resisted him and shook her head,

telling him fiercely, "No!"

"What? What are you saying? You want me — you

were giving yourself to me…" he insisted fiercely.

"And you want to prove that all women are like

your mother — that we all lie and cheat. Yes, I do want

you," she agreed shakily. "But I want my self-respect

more."

As she spoke she was wriggling away from his restraining

arm and getting off the bed, hurriedly gathering

up her scattered clothes, fully aware that

Lorenzo was watching her but not daring to look back

at him in case her resolve wasn’t able to withstand

her doing so.

Lorenzo lay on his bed and stared up at the ceiling.

The ache he could feel inside himself was just physical,

that was all. And the emotion burning inside him

was just furious anger that Jodie should dare to say

to him what she had. She meant nothing to him.

Nothing!

The emptiness of his bed without her was something

that he welcomed, rather than regretted. As he

would welcome the emptiness of his life once she had

gone from it, he assured himself fiercely.

The reason he had been so sexually aroused by her,

so sexually lost in the sweetness of her, was simply

that it had been too long since there had been a

woman in his bed. And that was a need he could

easily satisfy. Right now, if necessary, simply by

making a phone call. And if he couldn’t reach any of

the many women whom he knew would be pleased

to receive his summons — well, he knew, although not

from personal experience, that Florence, like any

other city, had its high-priced and high-class hookers,

women who knew how to please a man without making

any demands on him other than their fee.

But why pay a hooker when remembering one was

enough to cool his sexual desire? When he had first

met Caterina she had made no secret of the fact that

she had several rich lovers, even if later she had

claimed that it was not true and that he had misunderstood

her. And his mother, with the expensive gifts

she had received…a reward for her infidelity, even if

they had only been from one lover. His heart started

to thud angrily.

He got up off the bed. Five minutes later, standing

beneath the lash of the shower, he could feel his heartbeat

returning to normal.

What really infuriated him was that Jodie, whom

he had begun to consider someone whose thinking

was sound and rational, should start making such ridiculous

and unfounded accusations. How dared she

accuse him of being so emotionally damaged that he

wanted her to lie to him to reinforce his belief that

her sex could not be trusted? He had proved that he

trusted her, had talked to her about things that were

so close to his heart he had never discussed them with

anyone else. Did she really think that he would do

that and then try to create a reason to mistrust her? It

was totally illogical that he should do such a thing—

like a panicking child trying to protect itself from being

hurt because it feared to love.

After all, it wasn’t as though he was afraid he might

be falling in love with her and was fighting desperately

against doing so, was it? Was it?

He turned off the shower and reached for a towel.

CHAPTER TWELVE

THEY had been married for nearly a week, during

which time no mention had been made by either of

them of the night of their wedding. Lorenzo was icily

polite and indifferent towards her when they were together,

and Jodie had taken to spending so much time

sightseeing that at night she simply fell into an exhausted

sleep the moment she went to bed.

But now they were back at the Castillo, the final

paperwork having been dealt with to transfer its ownership

to Lorenzo.

"I have not forgotten that I still have to fulfil my

part of our bargain," he told Jodie crisply as they

crossed the Castillo’s courtyard. "I have put in hand

the necessary arrangements for us to fly to London at

the end of the week for your ex-fiance."s wedding. The

Cotswolds hotel I have booked us into is in a place

named Lower Slaughter?"

"Oh, yes. I know it," Jodie acknowledged. If it was

the hotel she thought it must be, it was very exclusive

and expensive.

"I thought you would want to keep some distance

between ourselves and your former home."

"Yes, I do," Jodie agreed colourlessly. She certainly

did not want anyone realising that she and her brand-

new husband were sleeping in separate rooms.

Especially not when she was going to be flaunting her

happily married state under everyone’s nose. She exhaled

hesitantly.

"I’ve been thinking," she told Lorenzo quietly. "I’m

not sure that It’s such a good idea for me to…to go

ahead with what I’d planned."

"But that was your whole purpose in agreeing to

marrying me."

"Yes, I know."

They had reached the hallway now, and Lorenzo

was frowning as he studied the untidy pile of suitcases

and boxes heaped in the middle of the floor.

"We"ll discuss this later," he told Jodie as an inner

door opened.

Caterina swept in, declaring dramatically, "So, you

have arrived to flaunt your triumph and throw me out,

have you? Well, You’re too late. I am leaving of my

own accord. You think you have gained a victory,

Lorenzo. But in truth you have gained nothing other

than this crumbling ruin and a wife you do not want.

And all for what? For the sake of some old paintings

and so that you can keep a promise made to an old

woman," she taunted him bitterly. "We could have had

so much together, but now it is too late. Ilya will be

here for me soon."

"Ilya?" Lorenzo questioned sharply.

"Yes. We met when he was interested in buying

this place. He has been a good…friend to me. And

now…" She pouted and then smiled rapaciously.

"You mean he’s your lover?" Lorenzo checked her

curtly.

"Why should I answer you? But, yes, we are lovers,

and we will be married once his divorce comes

through. He is sending a driver for me, and someone

to collect my things."

She turned and looked at Jodie. "Be careful that

Lorenzo doesn’t use you as he did me. And, if he

does, make sure that he doesn’t impregnate you.

Because he will force you to abort your child, just as

he forced me to abort mine."

Jodie could feel the blood leaving her face. She

looked wildly towards Lorenzo, expecting to hear him

deny Caterina’s horrific accusations, but instead he

simply turned on his heel and left.

"that’s not true," Jodie whispered. "It can’t possibly

be. Lorenzo would never—"

"What? Have you fallen in love with him already?"

Caterina mocked her. "You little fool. You mean

nothing to him, and you never will. And it is true.

Lorenzo forced me to abort my child. If you Don’t

believe me, go and ask him. He will not spare you

by lying to you about it. Not Lorenzo. His pride

wouldn’t let him." She started to laugh, stepping past

Jodie as a car swept into the courtyard.

Jodie had no idea how long she had been out here,

sitting alone in the Castillo garden, trying to cope

with the violence of her turbulent emotions.

It wasn’t true what Caterina had said to her, she

told herself stubbornly. She had not fallen in love

with Lorenzo. But she wanted him. Physical desire

was not love. But it was a manifestation of it. She

could not love a man who not only did not love her,

but who did not even recognise what love was. But

what if she did?

"It’s getting dark, and if you stay out here much

longer You’ll risk ending up with your leg aching."

She hadn’t heard Lorenzo come into the garden,

and automatically she moved deeper into the shadows,

because she was afraid of what he might read in

her expression. She tensed as he sat down beside her.

"You’re right. I’d better go in," she told him in a

thin, emotionless voice.

"Why Don’t you want to go back to England?"

"What?" Jodie looked at him blankly. She had almost

forgotten their earlier conversation, thanks to the

inner turmoil Caterina’s comments had caused her.

"There must be some reason," Lorenzo persisted.

"I’m not sure that It’s something that I want to do

any more," she admitted reluctantly. "It seemed a

good idea at the time, and…and it even gave me a

sense of purpose — something to focus on. But now…"

Now her old life seemed a million years away, and

she didn’t care what John and Louise did or thought,

because now… Because now what? A fear that she

didn’t want to give any room to was uncurling inside

her with all the clinging tenacity of a killer vine. Was

this seismic shift in her emotional focus because she

was falling in love with Lorenzo?

Falling in love? That implied that she was in the

middle of an act she could halt, she decided with relief,

clinging to that thought in desperation. And she

would halt it, she decided fiercely.

"I think we should go."

"Do you?" If she argued with him now, would he

start thinking that it was because she might be falling

in love with him? No way did she want that.

"Yes. It will help you to find closure and be a way

to draw a line under your relationship with both of

them. Then you will be able to move on."

"Mmm. I suppose You’re right."

"I know that I’m right," Lorenzo said. "I just

wish…"

"What? That you had married Caterina?"

"No," he denied sharply.

"Did you…? Was it…? Was it true what she said

about — about the baby?" Jodie whispered, unable to

stop herself from asking the question that had been

splintering and festering inside her since Caterina had

made her accusation.

"Yes," Lorenzo admitted heavily.

Jodie shuddered. "Your own child!" she protested

with revulsion. "How—?"

"No! Caterina was not… It was not my child. But

that does not diminish my guilt. I hadn’t thought…

That was the trouble. I didn’t think. I just assumed,

with the arrogance and stupidity of youth, that—" He

broke off and Jodie could see the tension in his jaw.

"Caterina and Gino had been engaged for about six

months when she boasted to me that she had a new

lover. She had never forgiven me for ending our brief

relationship, and I think she thought she could make

me jealous. She told me that she was to have his

child, but she had told Gino the child was his. I was

angry on behalf of my cousin, whom I knew loved

her deeply, with all the self-righteous anger of the

very young. I tried to force her hand. I told her she

must tell Gino the truth or I would do so myself. I

wanted Gino to know what she was — and, yes, it is

true I hoped he would end the engagement. For his

own sake. But instead of telling Gino the truth she

had her pregnancy terminated — and told Gino she had

lost the child. He was devastated, and immediately

insisted on marrying her. So, through my interference,

one life was lost and another destroyed."

Jodie had to swallow as she heard the raw emotion

in his voice. "You weren’t responsible."

"Yes, I was. If I had not interfered she would have

had the child."

"And she would have gone on lying to your

cousin."

"I tried to play at being God, and no man should

do that. I tried to control her behaviour because I had

not been able to control my mother"s. She left my

father and she left me, too, to be with her lover.

Caterina stayed with Gino, but, like my mother, she

sacrificed her child for her own ends. It felt like I had

murdered my own brother."

As she heard the pain in his voice it occurred to

Jodie that Caterina must have known how he would

react, and that her decision would have been motivated

by her desire to inflict that pain and guilt on

him.

"I can never forgive myself for it — never!"

"It was Caterina who made the decision — not you,"

Jodie pointed out quietly. "It was her child, and her

body. You weren’t even the father."

"If I had been there is no way she would have been

allowed to do what she did," Lorenzo told Jodie passionately.

"Not even if I had to lock her up for nine

months to make sure of it." He fell silent for a moment,

then spoke more quietly. "My mother once told

me that she hadn’t wanted me. She hadn’t even really

wanted to marry my father. There had been family

pressure, and she had decided that marriage to him

was at least a form of escape from the strict control

of her parents." Lorenzo’s voice was bleak.

"I was so lucky to have two parents who loved one

another, and me," Jodie commented softly. She

couldn’t begin to image what it must have been like

for a young child to be told by his mother that he

wasn’t wanted.

"She was little more than a child when she got married.

Seventeen, and my father was twenty-four. He

loved her intensely. Too much. Her lover was a racing

driver she met through a friend. So much more exciting

than my father. She used to take me with her

when she went to meet him. I had no idea then of the

truth. I thought… He showed me his car and…"

And you liked him, Jodie recognised compassionately.

You liked him, and then you felt you had betrayed

your father — just as your mother had done.

"They ran away together in the end, and my mother

died of blood poisoning in South America, where he

was racing. My father never got over losing her, and

I swore then that I would never…"

"Trust another woman?" Jodie finished for him.

"Let my emotions control me," Lorenzo corrected

her.

"Do we really have to stay married for a year?" she

asked him. "After all, you’ve got the Castillo now,

and Caterina has left…"

"Our arrangement was that we would remain married

for one year," he reminded her curtly. "To change

that now would give rise to gossip and speculation,

and although Caterina has left she could decide to

challenge the will if she thought she might win such

a case. I Don’t want that."

"Twelve months seems such a long time."

"No longer than it was when you agreed to remain

with me for that period."

But then she hadn’t known what she knew now,

had she? Then she hadn’t known that she would be

in danger of falling in love with him, that every extra

day she had to spend close to him would increase her

danger. But she could hardly tell him that.

"What will happen with the Castillo now?" Jodie

asked, knowing that there was nothing she could say

to explain her reluctance to stay with him that would

not give her away.

"I am arranging for several experts to come out and

inspect the paintings so that we can discuss how best

to restore them, and I also intend to put in hand the

necessary work to convert the Castillo into a centre

for rehabilitation and artistic excellence. I have spoken

already with several of Florence’s master guilders

and other craftsmen— But none of this can be of

much interest to you," he told her tersely.

Jodie dipped her head so that he couldn’t see how

much his careless words had hurt her. But of course

he didn’t see her as a part of the future he was planning.

Why should he?

What was the matter with him? Lorenzo derided

himself. Just because he felt a connection with Jodie

that he had never experienced with anyone else, a

closeness to her, it didn’t mean anything. And it certainly

didn’t mean that he was falling in love with

her. He could feel himself tensing, outwardly and inwardly,

as though he were trying to lock out his

thoughts and feelings — and not just lock them out,

but squeeze the very life out of them as well.

Because he was too afraid of them to allow them

to exist? For centuries, out of ignorance and prejudice,

man had sought to control what it feared by

destroying it. Was he doing the same? If he was really

so afraid of the effect Jodie was having on him, then

why hadn’t he seized the chance she had offered to

get rid of her? Because he wasn’t afraid at all. Why

should he be? What was there to fear? Jodie meant

nothing to him, and when the time came for them to

go their separate ways he would be able to do so

without a single qualm or regret.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

THEIR flight from Florence by executive jet, followed

by a helicopter pick-up from Heathrow to their hotel,

had been accomplished with so much speed and in so

much luxury that Jodie felt as though she were taking

part in some kind of TV extravaganza rather than real

life. They"d been escorted from the helicopter to their

suite with a focused concentration on their comfort

that had bemused her and made Lorenzo look even

more saturnine and arrogant than ever.

The stunningly beautiful seventeenth-century

Cotswold stone hotel had originally been a private

house. Now owned by a consortium of wealthy entrepreneurs,

who had originally bought and remodelled

it as an exclusive private members" country

club, it catered for the wealthy and demanding. Its

Michelin-starred restaurant was fabled and notoriously

selective about its clientele, its spa was a favourite

haunt of the A-list celebrity set, and it was

the favourite venue for private events in that same

set. A coterie of very wealthy clients were said to

have set up a private gambling club there, in which

fortunes were lost and made, and the world"s style

critics had declared it the place they would most like

to be.

From the welcoming hallway, with its antiques and

air of a country seat home, to the decor of their suite,

complete with vases of exactly the same flowers she

had had at their wedding and the latest Italian busi-

ness magazines, everything breathed exclusivity and

attention to detail.

This truly was a different world, Jodie thought, as

their personal butler assured her that her clothes

would be unpacked and pressed within an hour.

"I’ve arranged for us to have a hire car delivered

here today, so that I can familiarise myself with the

area ahead of the wedding," Lorenzo remarked.

"John’s parents are holding an open house party

tonight. The whole village is invited."

"We shall be attending?"

Did she really want to? Somehow the heat that had

scorched her pride and driven her to long to be able

to stand tall amongst those who knew her with a new

man at her side had cooled to an indifference that

made her wonder why she was here at all.

John, Louise, and the pain they had caused her, had

lost their power over her emotions. The life she had

known and lived before she had met Lorenzo felt so

distant from her now. Already she was making new

friends in Florence; she was developing new interests,

a wider outlook on life. She could not see herself

coming back here at the end of her year of marriage

to Lorenzo. But what would she do? Stay in Florence?

No, that would be too painful.

Painful? Why? But of course she already knew the

answer to that question. She had suspected it the night

he had told her about the history of Castillo’s hidden

paintings. And she had known it the evening she had

sat in the Castillo garden and listened to him telling

her about his childhood, his feelings.

"I’m not sure that this is a good idea any more,"

she told Lorenzo uncomfortably.

"Why not? Because You’re afraid of what you

might learn about your own feelings?"

"No! There isn’t anything to learn about them. I

already know how I feel." How true that was!

She still loved this blind fool of a man who had so

stupidly chosen another woman over her, Lorenzo

thought angrily.

"You are afraid that when you see this ex-fiance.of

yours you will be so overcome that you won’t be able

to stop yourself from running to him and begging him

to take you back?" he suggested grimly.

"that’s ridiculous," Jodie objected. "Apart from

anything else, I’m a married woman now."

"And You’re na..ve enough to believe your wedding

ring will prove an effective barrier to your emotions?"

"It doesn’t have to. I Don’t have any emotions for

John any more. He means nothing to me now. that’s

why I Don’t want to go."

Her voice rang with conviction, and Lorenzo felt

his heart slam into his ribs, urging him to ask the

question it so badly wanted answered. Ignoring it, he

flicked back the sleeve of his jacket without allowing

her to reply and told her curtly, "It’s almost lunchtime.

I suggest we have something to eat, then we can collect

the car and I can familiarise myself with this evening"s

route."

The Cotswolds lay drowsing under the warmth of the

summer sunshine, its villages filled with coachloads

of tourists. And, as she did every summer, Jodie wondered

what those drovers who had once brought their

sheep to market along these traditional roads would

have thought if they could be transported to modern

times.

The small market town of Lower Uffington, where

Jodie had grown up, was slightly off the normal tourist

track, fortunately, and Jodie felt her stomach muscles

start to clench with tension as she sat stiffly in

the passenger seat of the hired Bentley. Lorenzo negotiated

the narrow lanes as they dipped down between

familiar grey stone walls and passed the sign

that marked the boundary to the town.

Up ahead of them lay the pretty town square, with

its traditional wool merchants" houses lining its narrow

streets, beyond which the road started to rise towards

the Cotswold uplands where sheep still grazed,

as they had done for so many centuries. Its wool market

had made the town prosperous, and that prosperity

was still evident in its buildings.

Her own little cottage was hidden out of sight down

a narrow lane, its garden tucking its feet into the small

river that ran behind the main street. A pang of mingled

pain and nostalgia gripped her, but it wasn’t so

severe as she had dreaded. Anywhere could be home

if it was shared with the person you loved, she realised.

A small sign indicated the opening between two

houses that led to the yard belonging to John’s father"s

building business, and Jodie exhaled sharply as

she saw John’s car parked at the side of the road close

to it.

"What is it?" Lorenzo demanded.

"Nothing."

And that was the truth. The sight of John’s car,

which in the early days of their break-up would have

filled her with aching pain and loss, now didn’t affect

her at all — apart from a slight feeling of relief once

they had driven past it, in case John himself should

have appeared and seen her.

At the end of the town, set in its own pretty green,

was the church, small and squat, its stained glass windows

picked out by the sunlight. Preparations were

obviously already in hand for tomorrow"s wedding,

Jodie recognised as she saw bunches of white flowers

tied up with white ribbon and netting ornamenting the

old-fashioned gate.

John’s family, like her own, had been here for

many generations. John’s parents were relatively well

to do, and their converted farmhouse with its large

garden was just outside the town.

"Can we stop?" Jodie asked Lorenzo.

"If you wish." He swung the car round into the

small car park, and brought it to a halt.

There was one thing she did want to do, Jodie acknowledged.

One very personal visit she had to make.

"there’s no need to come with me," she told

Lorenzo as she reached to open the car door. "I shan’t

be very long."

"I may as well. I need to stretch my legs," Lorenzo

answered her.

She could see him frowning when she headed for

the church. And his frown deepened when, instead of

using the main gate, with its floral decorations, she

chose to make a small detour and open a much

smaller gate which led across the immaculate green

and then behind the church to the graveyard.

No one else seemed to be around, but even if there

had been, and she had seen someone she knew, Jodie

would not have allowed herself to be detained. She

had known when she stood in the church in Florence,

making her vows to Lorenzo, that this was something

she wanted to do.

She took the familiar narrow path that wove its way

between large mossed grey tombstones, so ancient

that their engraving had almost worn away, heading

deeper into the graveyard until she came to the place

she wanted.

There, set into the mown grass beneath a canopy

of soft leaves, was the small plaque that marked a

shared grave.

"My parents," she told Lorenzo simply.

Tears blurred her eyes, and her hand shook slightly

as she reached into her handbag and carefully withdrew

the small box in which she had stored the petals

from her wedding bouquet. Taking them out, she scattered

them tenderly on her parents" grave.

When she turned to look at Lorenzo a huge lump

formed in her throat. His head was bowed in prayer.

"It’s silly, I know, but I wanted them to know…"

She stopped and bit her lip.

"Do you want to go inside the church?" Lorenzo

asked.

Jodie shook her head. "No. They’ll be getting it

ready for the wedding and I Don’t want…"

"You Don’t want what? To confront the friend who

stole your fiance.? I thought that was why we are

here?"

"John’s an adult. No one forced him to break his

engagement to me for Louise." Her head had begun

to ache slightly. "Can we go back to the car?"

Lorenzo shrugged. "If that is what you want."

What she wanted was for Lorenzo to love her as

she had discovered she loved him. What she wanted

was to be back in Florence with him, living her life

with him, creating a future with him.

"I’m getting a headache," she told him instead.

"It is probably anxiety. What exactly are you hoping

for tonight, Jodie?"

You. I’m hoping for you to look at me and love me.

"I’m not hoping for anything."

"No? You’re not hoping secretly that John will see

you and recognise that it is you he wants after all?"

"that’s not going to happen."

"But you want it to?"

"No."

They were back at the car, and Jodie was so engrossed

in rejecting Lorenzo’s suggestion that she

didn’t notice the woman looking sharply at her until

a familiar voice announced in surprise, "Jodie? Good

heavens! I thought you were still away."

Lucy Hartley — whose husband worked for John’s

father!

Somehow or other Jodie managed to produce the

necessary smile. "It’s just a flying visit," she explained.

"I wanted to show my…my husband—"

"Your husband? You’re married?"

To Jodie’s relief, Lorenzo stepped forward and extended

his hand. Quickly Jodie performed the introductions,

watching Lucy’s eyes widen as she did so.

"You’ll be going to John’s parents" open house

party this evening, will you?" she enquired.

"We certainly hope to do so," Lorenzo answered

smoothly, before Jodie could say anything. "If we

won’t be encroaching. Jodie has told me so much

about her home and her friends, and I’m looking forward

to meeting them."

"Oh, no. I’m sure that Sheila and Bill will be only

too delighted." Lucy was beaming. "I’ll certainly tell

them I’ve seen you. Where are you staying, just in

case anyone asks?"

Reluctantly Jodie told her, and saw how her eyes

widened a little more in recognition of the exclusivity

of the hotel.

"My! You have gone up in the world, Jodie!"

Jodie could feel her face starting to burn.

"We must go — but hopefully we shall see you this

evening," Lorenzo offered politely, quickly steering

Jodie away before she could give vent to her feelings.

"That woman is such a snob," she complained angrily

as Lorenzo unlocked the car and opened the

door for her. "The moment I mentioned the hotel she

was all over us like a rash. And she doesn’t even

know about your title."

Lorenzo closed the passenger door and walked

round to get into his own side of the car.

As soon as he had started the engine, Jodie told

him fiercely, "Lorenzo, I Don’t want to go tonight.

When I first said that I wanted to, I wasn’t thinking

things through properly. I Don’t think we should go."

"We can hardly not go now," Lorenzo pointed out

calmly. "We will be expected."

She ought to be grateful to Lorenzo, Jodie knew.

He had rearranged his schedule in order to accommodate

this visit for her, and now here she was, telling

him that she didn’t want to be here.

Lorenzo looked at Jodie’s averted profile. He could

see the effect the thought of seeing her ex-fiance. and

his bride-to-be was having on her, and how much it

was upsetting her. So why was he insisting on her

doing so? What was he trying to prove that was worth

proving? Why didn’t he put his foot down on the

accelerator, head for the hotel and take her back to

Italy before she could change her mind? Once there,

he would have nearly a whole year…

A year in which to what? To persuade her to remain

married to him? That was what he wanted, was

it?

What if it was? It didn’t mean anything other than

that he was beginning to feel that it would be easier

to remain married to her than not to do so. Marriage

gave a man a certain sense of purpose and stability.

Just because previously he had not considered the

value of an old-fashioned arranged marriage, that did

not mean he was so inflexible in his thinking that he

could not recognise it now. He and Jodie were married,

after all; there was much to be said from a practical

point of view for them staying married.

He would still be able to maintain his emotional

barriers. Once he had assured himself that she accepted

that this ex-fiance. of hers was now unavailable

to her, and a part of her past, he felt confident that

they could develop a working relationship.

And a sexual relationship? His body tightened in

betrayal.

Jodie in turn would have the protection of a husband

and a life of comfort. There could even be children,

if she wished. He frowned sharply as this magnanimous

thought provoked a reaction within his

body and his emotions that went a whole lot farther

than any mere sense of self-laudatory approval of his

generosity. He had never previously considered the

production of children an essential part of his life

plan — he had more than enough male relatives to produce

the next Duce — but with the future of the

Castillo to be considered it made sense for him to

have heirs of his own to hand it on to. And Jodie

would not desert her children.

He braked sharply to avoid a cyclist, mentally denying

that his immediate and instinctive belief was a

rash emotional reaction rather than one based on

logic.

He wouldn’t, he decided as he turned into the hotel

grounds, make any firm decision until after tonight,

when he had seen how Jodie reacted to the sight of

her ex-fiance.. If after that, and further careful thought,

he was convinced that their marriage had a future,

once they were back in Italy he would tell her so.

She really wished she hadn’t ever said she wanted to

do this. Jodie studied her reflection in the bedroom

mirror and smoothed a nervous hand over her beautifully

cut cream cre.pe trousers.

"Ready?"

Numbly she nodded her head as Lorenzo walked

into her bedroom. He looked exactly what he was: a

tall, dark, impossibly handsome and even more impossibly

arrogant, totally male man — the kind of man

any woman would be attracted to. The kind of man

any woman could see would make her emotionally

vulnerable if she wasn’t careful. What a pity she

hadn’t been woman enough to recognise that right

from the start.

She could see the way he was looking at her, but

if she had been hoping for a compliment about her

appearance she was in for a disappointment, she realised.

As she started to head for the bedroom door he

reached out and stopped her. For one wild heartbeat

her head was filled with impossible images and even

more implausible scenarios — Lorenzo taking her into

his arms and refusing to let her go; Lorenzo insisting

that he wanted to keep her here in this room and make

love to her; Lorenzo telling her passionately that he

loved her. Weakly she refused to admit how much

she wished they could actually happen, and tried to

focus instead on what Lorenzo was saying to her.

"I think you should wear this tonight."

She looked down at the familiar emerald ring.

"It is, after all, your betrothal ring," Lorenzo

pointed out, "and a symbol of our relationship."

Wordlessly Jodie reached out to take it from him,

but he shook his head slightly and took hold of her

hand, sliding the ring onto her finger himself.

Tears stung her eyes. Foolish, foolish tears that betrayed

to her just how badly she had misjudged her

own vulnerability. Only a woman deeply in love

could feel the way she felt right now.

It didn’t take them very long to reach John’s parents"

home. A marquee had been set up in the garden,

and the field adjacent to the house already contained

several rows of neatly parked cars.

They were greeted at the gate by a young dinner-

suited cousin of John’s, who recognised Jodie and

gaped slightly at her, then blushed.

"I suppose we ought to try and find John’s parents

first," Jodie told Lorenzo.

"That sounds a good idea," he agreed.

"what’s that you’ve got?" Jodie asked curiously,

noticing the small parcel he was carrying.

"Hand-made chocolates for our hostess," he informed

her, adding, "I’ll have a dozen bottles of wine

sent to our host later."

Jodie gave him a rueful look and reached into her

bag, producing an almost identically wrapped box.

"Snap," she told him, laughing up at him, smiling naturally

for the first time since they had arrived in

England.

"Jodie! Lucy said that she’d seen you in town this

afternoon."

Jodie’s smile vanished as she saw John’s mother

standing in front of them.

Instinctively she moved closer to Lorenzo. John’s

mother was scrutinising them both very sharply, Jodie

saw, and her chin suddenly lifted as she looked back

at her.

"I hope we aren’t gatecrashing?" she said calmly.

"May I introduce my husband to you, Sheila?"

"Your husband? Lucy did say, but I wasn’t sure…

My goodness, this is a surprise." John’s mother gave

a small tinkling laugh. "And there we were, worrying

about you being upset and broken-hearted."

"Jodie recognised very quickly that calf love means

nothing when one finds the real thing." Lorenzo’s

smile might have taken some of the sting out of his

words, but Jodie still gave him a sharp look, and

wasn’t surprised to see the cold gleam in his eyes.

"Well, I hope the two of you will be very happy,

Mr…" Sheila began insincerely.

"Lorenzo Niccolo d’Este, Duce di Montesavro,"

Lorenzo introduced himself, with cool, insouciant

confidence.

"You’re a duke?" Sheila asked faintly.

Lorenzo inclined his head in assent, and said

suavely, "But please do call me Lorenzo."

Suddenly Jodie was almost beginning to enjoy herself.

"And how is Councillor Higgins?" she asked

sweetly, turning to explain to Lorenzo, "John’s father

is a local councillor."

John’s mother had, she noticed, begun to turn an

unflattering shade of pink. It was funny how Jodie

was beginning to remember all those occasions on

which John’s parents had let her know that they considered

her to be just that little bit inferior to them.

Of course she was behaving very badly, she knew,

but sometimes behaving badly could be fun!

"that’s one of the benefits of being married to you

and not to John," she murmured to Lorenzo as they

moved away to allow Sheila to greet some new arrivals.

"What is?"

"No mother-in-law," she said succinctly.

By now they had begun to attract rather a lot of

attention, as people recognised her and did a small

double take before turning to look more closely and

curiously.

Lorenzo had put his hand beneath her elbow in a

very solicitous manner — probably because he was

afraid that she might trip in her high heels and end

up flat on her face and thus disgrace them both, Jodie

reflected as she managed to negotiate the unlevel

ground.

"Jodie…"

She spun round with a genuine smile as she heard

the warmth and pleasure in the voice of the local doctor.

"Dr Philips!"

He gave her an enthusiastic hug and then smiled

down at her. "You’re looking well."

"Italian food, Italian sunshine—"

"And an Italian husband," Lorenzo cut in, making

the doctor laugh.

"I shouldn’t say this," the doctor whispered with a

grin, "but I always thought you were wasted on young

John. A nice enough lad, but a bit on the weak side—

and very much under his mother"s thumb."

"Poor John — that’s not very kind," Jodie protested,

but she still laughed.

Lorenzo lifted two glasses of wine from a passing

waiter"s tray and handed Jodie one.

She still hadn’t seen either Louise or John, although

she thought she had caught sight of Louise’s

parents. She had always liked Louise’s mother, but

she had no wish to see her now. Naturally, as a

mother, she would support her daughter no matter

what that daughter might have done.

And besides, honesty compelled Jodie to admit that

if Louise and John did love one another, then surely

it was only right and proper that they should be together.

She no longer cared what they did, because

her own life and her own feelings had moved on. She

looked at Lorenzo and allowed herself the pleasure of

a private fantasy in which she would suggest to him

that they leave and go back to their hotel. He"d agree

with satisfying alacrity and an even more satisfyingly

intimate smile because of the sensual pleasures to

come. She gave a small sigh as she relinquished this

unlikely but, oh, so alluring scenario.

"Your leg?" Lorenzo questioned immediately, misunderstanding

the reason for her sigh.

Should she fib and pretend that it was bothering

her so that they could leave?

But before she could say anything the vicar and his

wife had joined them, and Lorenzo had become involved

in a discussion with them about Florence.

Jodie took a small sip of her drink, and was looking

for somewhere to put her glass when she heard Louise

saying sharply, "I want a word with you!"

Louise was on her own, and there was no sign of

John.

"Don’t think I Don’t know what You’re up to and

what You’re doing here," her ex-friend whispered angrily.

Jodie could feel her face starting to burn. She was

guiltily aware of her original motive in coming here.

But perhaps there was a chance, instead, to forgive—

to end the bitterness between them?

"This is real life, Jodie, not some romantic novel,"

Louise was saying. "John isn’t going to take one look

at you and throw me over to come back to you."

"Good. Because I honestly Don’t want him to,"

Jodie told her. "Louise, I’m married now, and I—"

"Married? You?" Louise gave her a contemptuous

look. "You might have taken everyone else in, but I

Don’t believe it for one minute. My guess is that you

aren’t married at all — you certainly Don’t look it—

and I think your supposed ""husband"" is some actor

you’ve hired." She glared at Jodie angrily. "No man

as good-looking as he is would want you, with that

leg of yours. everyone’s laughing at you. You know

that, Don’t you? Pretending that you’ve married a

duke. As if! And that ridiculous ring that You’re wearing,"

she added, her lip curling. "It’s so obvious that

It’s fake — just like you and just like your marriage.

I’ll bet You’re still that same pathetic little virgin you

were when John dumped you."

Instinctively Jodie looked towards Lorenzo, a silent

plea in her eyes. He looked back at her.

And then he was coming towards them, responding

to the silent emotional message she had sent him.

Relief filled her. It was all she could do not to throw

herself into his arms and beg him to take her away.

Lorenzo felt Jodie’s pain in his own heart. Fury

and an instinctive desire to protect her boiled through

him. He had heard what Louise had said to her, and

he hadn’t needed the silent plea she had sent him,

begging for his help, to take him to her side. He

wanted to snatch her up and take her away from these

people who did not appreciate her, from the man who

had not loved her as she so deserved to be loved…as

he in his stupidity had tried to refuse to love her. But

now that love was filling him and driving out everything

else, everyone else. Nothing, no one mattered

other than Jodie and her happiness.

He reached her and took hold of her hand, watching

as relief shone emotionally in her eyes.

"For your information," he told Louise coldly, "I

am not an actor. Jodie and I are married, and I worship

the beauty of her body almost as much as I love

the sweetness of her nature. And as for the authenticity

of both my title and my family betrothal ring…"

The look he gave Louise was so withering that Jodie

was surprised it didn’t shrivel her to nothing on the

spot.

"Since you are engaged to a man who obviously

cannot tell what is genuine and what is not, I suppose

one might expect to hear you expressing ill-informed

and ignorant opinions," he continued levelly. "And so

far as our reason for being here goes…" Lorenzo now

raised his voice slightly, as a curious crowd gathered

around them. "That was my decision. I wanted to see

where Jodie had grown up, to meet the people she

had grown up amongst. And I confess I also wanted

to meet the man who was foolish enough to give her

up. Jodie merely wanted to offer you both her best

wishes."

Lorenzo was still holding her hand, Jodie recognised,

and what was more he was holding it very

firmly in his own as he moved protectively closer to

her. Automatically she leaned in to him, welcoming

the sensation of his body absorbing the sick, trembling

shock of her own.

"What a pitiful creature you are," Lorenzo said to

Louise in a very quiet voice, inaudible to most of

those around them. "You steal a friend"s fiance., and

then, because of your inadequacy and lack of emotional

depth, you are forced to live in fear of losing

him back to her."

Louise turned from red to white as Lorenzo’s cutting

words hit home, and suddenly the woman Jodie

had always thought of as such a beauty actually

looked ugly.

John had come hurrying over to Louise’s side and

was looking helplessly back and forth between the

women. When she looked at him Jodie recognised

how poorly he compared with Lorenzo, and how

weak he was as a man. If she hadn’t already realised

she didn’t love him any more, she surely would have

done so now.

"Are you ready to leave?" Lorenzo asked Jodie.

Silently she nodded her head.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

THEY had driven back to their hotel in silence, and

Jodie was only thankful that Lorenzo wasn’t saying

anything. Now that they were back in their suite she

realised how shocked and distressed Louise’s spiteful

attack had left her feeling.

All she wanted was the privacy of her room, so

that she could give way to the tears that weren’t far

off, and to her relief Lorenzo made no comment when

she said quickly, "My head aches. I…I think I might

as well have an early night."

In her room she undressed and then showered, drying

herself quickly before padding across to the bed

and slipping between the cool clean sheets, reflecting

that it was just as well that Louise had not known she

and Lorenzo were sleeping in separate rooms.

She tensed as she heard a firm tap on her bedroom

door and Lorenzo calling out, "I’ve ordered you some

supper. I’ll bring it in for you."

It was too late to tell him that she didn’t want it.

He was already opening the door and pushing a

heavily laden trolley into the room.

"It’s just a cold salad and a pot of tea. I remember

you said you liked to drink tea when you had a headache.

Or is your pain that of a heartache?" he asked

her dryly.

Jodie bit her lip and struggled to sit up, whilst holding

on to the protective cover of the bedding. Taking

a deep breath, she said huskily, "Lorenzo, I haven’t

thanked you yet for…for…for supporting me with

what you said to Louise."

"You are my wife. When it comes to the validity

of our marriage being questioned, naturally you have

my support. Equally naturally, I could not allow that

foolish woman to make her ridiculous accusations unchecked."

Jodie shook her head. "We both know it wasn’t

your idea that we should come here."

"No, it was yours, because you wanted to see your

ex-fiance.. You are better off without him, you know,"

he told her coolly. "The impression I gained from the

people I spoke with is that he is a rather weak and

shallow young man, very much still dominated by his

mother."

"Louise’s family are quite well off, and I suppose

that, coupled with Sheila"s concerns about my health,

would have made her think Louise would be a better

wife for John — not that I want him. He means nothing

to me now. I can see him for what he is, and I think

I’m lucky not to be marrying him."

Lorenzo frowned. "You sound as though you really

mean that."

"I do. I’d stopped loving him before I left England.

Coming back has just confirmed what I already

knew." In more ways than one, she admitted, but of

course she couldn’t tell Lorenzo that coming back and

seeing John had shown her just how strong her love

for Lorenzo was compared with the feelings she had

once thought she had for John. She still had her pride,

and that pride was stinging badly now from Louise’s

attack on her.

She chewed on her bottom lip and then said unhappily,

"I should have realised that people would

guess that our marriage isn’t real and that you Don’t

want me." She laughed a little wildly. "I suppose I

must have ""unwanted virgin"" written all over me,

what with my leg, and—"

"What nonsense is this?" Lorenzo demanded, putting

down the cup of tea he had been pouring for her

and coming over to stand beside the bed.

"It isn’t nonsense," Jodie persisted miserably. "John

rejected me because of my leg, and It’s because of it

that I’m still a virgin. I hate knowing that other people

pity me, and…and look down on me because of it,"

she told him fiercely. "And I just wish that…"

"That what?"

"That when Louise looked at me she had seen a

true woman."

Lorenzo sat down on the bed next to her.

"If that is really what you want, it is achieved easily

enough," he told her smokily. "Because, far from sharing

your idiotic ex-fiance."s opinion, I happen to desire

you very much."

Jodie swallowed and squeaked uncertainly,

"You…you do?"