"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.