"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? whats wrong?"
"Nothing. Its 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 Dont
want to marry me because of it, then"
"Is that what he told you? The man you were to
marry?" Lorenzo guessed. "That he didnt want you
because of it?"
Jodies 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 didnt like the fact that it wasdamaged." She
made an attempt at a dismissive shrug. "But then,
thats only natural, isnt 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.
"Ill leave you now. You should find everything
you need in the bathroom, but if you do not then just
ask Pietro when he brings up your case. He will inform
Maria, and she will attend to it."
"Pietro and Maria," she said, carefully repeating
their names. "Your servants?"
"They look after the Castillo. Originally they were
employed by my grandmother. By rights they should
both retire, but this has always been their home and
it would be a cruelty to send them away now or to
imply that they are not able to be of any use," he
added warningly. "Once I have spoken with my lawyer,
and put in hand the arrangements for our marriage,
I shall address the matter of making this place
more habitable."
They were going to be living here? There were so
many questions she knew she ought to be asking, but
right now she was too exhausted to care about anything
other than getting some sleep.
CHAPTER FIVE
AT LEAST the bath water was hot, and the towels
Maria had brought for her, bustling importantly into
the bedroom on a stream of incomprehensible Italian
whilst she inspected Jodie with her sharp gaze, were
deliciously soft and thick.
As in the bedroom, the decor in her en suite bathroom
was very plain, but there was no mistaking the
quality of the sanitaryware or the cool smartness of
the marble covering the floor and walls.
Wrapped in one of the towels, Jodie padded barefoot
back to her bedroom and opened her case,
quickly searching through it for the nightshirt she
knew she had packed. But when she lifted her neatly
packed tops out of the case she started to frown. Her
nightshirt was there, all right, but so also was the
deliciously frivolous new underwear she had bought
for her honeymoon: bras and short knickers in floral
patterns; silk thongs that fastened with satin bows; a
sheer floral mini-slip that was so pretty she hadnt
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 hadnt 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.
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
Jodies 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 grandmothers
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. "Its all right."
He added, when she looked warily at him, "I do know
what Im doing."
Jodie would have continued to resist if a second
bout of cramp hadnt 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 wasnt even aware that she was digging her fingers
into Lorenzos 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 isnt as if Youre
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