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 Caterinas heavy, smothering perfume.
CHAPTER TWO
SHE was going to have to give in and do that U-turn
she had sworn she would not make, Jodie admitted
unhappily to herself. She hadnt 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
couldnt 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 hadnt 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 hadnt 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
grandmothers 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,
Lorenzos 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.
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 Ferraris 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 drivers 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 youve quite finished" Jodie interrupted
him, her own voice every bit as hostile as his. "For a
start, Im not Italian. Im 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?
"Im 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 aa
husband, or a lover. A man, a partner, in your life."
Jodie winced, and then laughed bitterly. He didnt
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
Dont want him at all not now."
"So why are you here running away?"
"I am not running away! I just Dont 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 shes all the things Im 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