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! Im 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 hadnt 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 Dont 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, whats 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?
Thisthis too-thin nobody of a tourist a woman
who had been rejected publicly by the man who had
promised to marry her? didnt 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 wouldnt
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 couldnt he
strode back towards the Ferrari.
He was leaving her here? He couldnt he
wouldnt! Jodies 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 whats happened."
"They wont 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.
"Im 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 thats not true!" she protested. "You werent
even here when"
Her voice trailed away as she saw the look in
his eyes.
"Youre 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 drivers door and banged on
it.
Expressionlessly, Lorenzo opened the window.
"All right, Ill do it," she told him recklessly. "Ill
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.
"Youre 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 Jodies 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 shed 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
wouldnt 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
wasnt 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 drivers 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