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.

   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.

   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.

   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.

   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.

   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.

   "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.

   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?

   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.

   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…"

   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.

   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.

   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.

   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?"
   "Yes. And, what’s more, I’m more than willing to
   prove it to you. We’ve got tonight," Lorenzo told her.
   "And if you wish tomorrow you can witness their
   wretched marriage with all the bloom of a woman
   whose sexual curiosity has been answered and whose
   sexual hunger has been satisfied."
   Lorenzo was offering to make love to her?
   A little apprehensively, she wetted her lips with her
   tongue tip. "But…but before you said that we
   couldn’t because—"
   "The hotel management here are most forward
   thinking."
   When Jodie looked puzzled he explained, "There is
   a pack of condoms with the other toiletries they have
   supplied."
   "Oh. Oh, I see…"
   "The choice is yours," Lorenzo told her.
   His willingness to have sex with her meant nothing
   in any real sense, Jodie knew. It was sex he was offering
   her, that was all. Not the love she longed for,
   and certainly not the future and the permanence. But
   still she wanted what he was offering.
   Jodie swallowed hard and looked at him.
   "Then I choose to say yes."
   When he got up off the bed and walked away from
   her all she could think was that the pain was a million
   times worse, in a million different ways, than it had
   been when John had walked away from her. But then
   she saw that instead of going to the door Lorenzo had
   stopped beside the trolley. He had removed a bottle
   of champagne from an ice bucket and was opening it
   to fill two glasses.
   He walked back to the bed with them and handed
   her one.
   "To tonight and what we will give one another.
   May it be everything you wish it to be," he toasted
   her softly.
   Apprehensively Jodie took a sip of the sparkling
   champagne, and then trembled as Lorenzo took the
   glass from her and kissed her.
   His mouth tasted of champagne and of him, and
   she clung to that thought whilst his tongue-tip stroked
   her lips and then teased them apart.
   He kissed her until she couldn’t think beyond the
   pleasure of their shared intimacy and her own desire
   for more; until she had reached out to him and
   wrapped her arms around his neck whilst her lips
   parted eagerly under his; until they were lying together
   on the bed and his hands were caressing her
   naked body as he removed the unwanted barriers between
   them.
   Skin on skin with the man she loved: could there
   be anything more sensual or more desire-inducing?
   Jodie wondered deliriously as she allowed herself the
   luxury of exploring the warm flesh padding Lorenzo’s
   muscles whilst his hands skimmed and then shaped
   her body with slow, purposeful sensuality.
   He kissed the hollow at the base of her throat, and
   then the hollow between her breasts, rimming the indentation
   of her navel whilst she shivered with pleasure
   and sighed softly.
   Only when he caressed her injured leg did she tense
   and waver, shuddering anxiously and trying to pull
   away. But Lorenzo refused to release her, bending his
   head to kiss the criss-cross pattern of her scars.
   "No…" It was the first time she had spoken, her
   plea sharp and filled with pain.
   Ignoring her, Lorenzo told her softly, "I thought the
   first time I saw you that you had the most wonderfully
   long legs. I knew then that I wanted to feel them
   wrapped around me whilst I possessed you."
   "You couldn’t have thought that," Jodie protested.
   "You were so angry!"
   She saw his mouth curve into a genuinely amused
   smile. "didn’t you know, little virgin, that a man can
   be both angry and aroused? Your ex-friend is a fool.
   No man worthy of the name would ever reject you,
   Jodie."
   "My leg," she protested.
   Lorenzo kissed her scar a second time.
   "Your leg is all the more beautiful because it carries
   the evidence of your courage."
   Emotional tears filled her eyes, but before she
   could shed them Lorenzo had started to kiss his way
   up the inside of her thigh, and other, more intense
   emotions were gripping her.
   His hand covered her sex. Slowly he began to caress
   it, until she was arching up to press herself closer
   to his touch, her fingers digging into the warm flesh
   of his shoulders as her legs opened wider for him and
   his tongue joined his fingers in an erotic exploration
   of her arousal.
   She moaned with pleasure when she felt him penetrate
   her wetness to ease one finger inside her, stroking
   her and then slowly moving deeper. Immediately
   her muscles tightened eagerly around it and her body
   pulsed fiercely. Lorenzo positioned himself so that he
   could kiss her breasts whilst he slowly stroked her
   intimately, a second finger joining the first, the pleasure
   of their movement inside her making her cry out,
   then cry out again as Lorenzo answered her appeal
   with the sensual rake of his teeth against her stiff
   nipple.
   Her body was moving of its own accord, seeking
   an intimate rhythm that came from deep inside her,
   accompanied by a small growl of female frustration.
   "You want me inside you?" Lorenzo asked her
   thickly.
   Jodie nodded her head and dug her fingers into his
   flesh more tightly as he positioned her, lifting her and
   then reaching for a pillow, which he eased beneath
   her hips whilst the frustration inside her grew.
   She had no apprehensions, no reservations, only an
   aching female hunger, and she watched openly as he
   positioned himself over her, her senses delighting in
   the sight of him, so thick and strong.
   More easing himself into her than thrusting,
   Lorenzo watched the expressions chase one another
   across her face as her muscles accepted his thickness,
   closing tightly round it.
   "Do you want more?" he asked.
   Jodie took a deep breath and whispered fiercely,
   "Yes. All of you. I want all of you…"
   She could feel him filling her so completely that
   the sensation of him within her made her catch her
   breath, and then rake her nails against his back as he
   moved out and then in deeper, with rhythmic thrusts
   that took her breath and drove her to want more and
   still more, until she was moving with him, eagerly
   giving up her own control to him, as her body became
   his to fit to himself and pleasure until she could not
   endure that pleasure any more.
   She felt the onset of her orgasm gripping her, so
   much more intense than what she was already used
   to, so very different, and it took her pleasure into a
   different dimension that was filled with the feel of
   him inside her. She cried out to him, and then cried
   out again, as he filled her with his own release, clinging
   to him as she murmured words of love and pleasure.
   Lorenzo looked towards the bed where Jodie still lay
   sleeping, and wondered despairingly how it was possible
   for his whole life to have changed between one
   heartbeat and the next.
   He had looked at her in that English garden, seen
   the pain and despair in her eyes, and known immediately
   that his savage need to protect her was born
   of love.
   Love. Had it been there from their first meeting,
   unrecognised by him because he had not wanted to
   recognise it? Or had it grown as his knowledge of her
   had grown? Did it even matter?
   Jodie opened her eyes.
   "Lorenzo." She smiled, and then blushed a little.
   "Are you okay? No regrets?"
   Jodie shook her head. "No regrets."
   "You Don’t wish that it had been John?" Lorenzo
   questioned wryly.
   "No. I wanted it to be you."
   "Mmm. Well, since it was me, I think we need to
   talk about the future." He took a deep breath and
   looked away from her. "How would you feel about
   us making this marriage permanent?"
   When she didn’t reply he turned round, frowning,
   only to see the tears spilling from her eyes.
   "I can’t say yes," Jodie wept. "I want to, but it
   wouldn’t be fair to you. Not when…"
   "Not when what?"
   "Not when I know that I love you," she admitted,
   very softly.
   Lorenzo went over to the bed and sat down on it
   next to her.
   "Would it make any difference if I admitted that
   I’ve fallen in love with you?"
   "Only if It’s true," Jodie answered him gravely.
   He had reached for her hand and twined his fingers
   through her own, and now he was lifting their interlocked
   hands to his lips so that he could kiss her palm.
   Her heart was thudding heavily, slamming against her
   chest wall. She wanted so much to believe him, but
   she was afraid to do so.
   "I didn’t use a condom," he told her quietly.
   Jodie swallowed. "You mean you forgot?"
   "No, I mean I chose not to. Because I wanted our
   pleasure to be skin to skin, with no barriers between
   us, and because I can’t think of anything more wonderful
   than knowing we could have created our child."
   "You trust me enough for that?"
   "Yes, and more than that. I trust you enough to
   admit that I love you. I saw the way you looked at
   me when Louise was insulting you. I saw that you
   were asking not just for my help but for me."
   He leaned forward and kissed her softly, then drew
   back from her. Jodie gave a small murmur of protest
   and moved closer, pressing her lips to his.
   "Tell me properly that you love me," she whispered.
   "Show me."

   "LOOK at their faces," Jodie whispered to Lorenzo as
   they stood side by side in the Castillo courtyard,
   watching the expressions of the children who were
   just being helped from the specially adapted bus that
   had brought them from the airport. The first of the
   young victims of war to come to the Castillo under
   the scheme Lorenzo had initiated.
   It was a year almost to the day since they had returned
   from England, committed to one another and
   their marriage, and to the accomplishment of
   Lorenzo’s dream.
   In the state apartments the restored paintings
   glowed with the richness of their vibrant colours. In
   the newly painted and furnished dormitories, beds
   waited for the children and trained therapists waited
   in the new extension housing the swimming pool,
   treatment rooms and gym.
   "This is such a wonderful thing you are doing,
   Lorenzo," Jodie told him emotionally. "You are giving
   so much to so many, bringing so much joy to their
   lives."
   "No more than the joy you have brought to mine,"
   he told her, bending his head to kiss her, and then
   laughing as their three-month-old son, whom she was
   holding in her arms, reached out to grip his finger.
   ***