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 ki
ss, 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-
THE ITALIAN DUKE’S WIFE Page 7
