marriage. That in turn could lead to a legal challenge
that the terms of my grandmother’s will are not being
met. Indeed, I wouldn’t put it past Caterina to do
everything she can to achieve just that. And, since the
whole purpose of this marriage is to meet those terms,
it is necessary that we both conform to society’s expectations.
If it will make you feel any better, I shall
undertake to donate an equal amount to charity as you
spend on clothes."
"that’s bribery," Jodie told him, but Lorenzo was
already walking away from her, leaving her no choice
but to follow him.
To her surprise the gallery opened out into a second,
even longer single-storey rectangular space, this
one housing more modern paintings and sculptures.
"Like my ancestors, I substitute my own lack of
artistic skill by taking an interest in and supporting
those who do have it," Lorenzo was explaining dryly.
But Jodie wasn’t fully listening to him. Instead her
attention had been caught by the large wall space in
the middle of the gallery, which was filled with what
seemed to be unsophisticated, childlike drawings.
"Ah, my most valued commissions," Lorenzo told
her quietly.
Jodie looked at him uncertainly. "They look like
children’s drawings."
"That is exactly what they are. These drawings
were all produced by children who have lost limbs—
sometimes but not always a dominant hand — as victims
of a variety of wars. These drawings were done
after they had been fitted with their new limbs, as part
of their ongoing therapy. The very special paintings
in the middle of the wall are painted with those new
limbs."
Jodie discovered that emotional tears had suddenly
rushed to fill her eyes. Blinking them away, she told
Lorenzo huskily, "No wonder you value them so
much."
He turned away. "I shall introduce you to Assunta,
who is my housekeeper here, and she will show you
over the rest of the apartment while I make some
telephone calls."
In other words, he was bored with her company
and wanted to be free of it. Well, that certainly did
not bother her, Jodie assured herself ten minutes later,
as she was handed over into the care of a shrewd-
eyed middle-aged woman who subjected her to open
scrutiny and then inclined her head. In excellent
English, she said calmly, "If you will come this way,
please…"
Half an hour later Jodie had seen every room in
the apartment, which covered not one but two floors
of the Palazzo and included an astonishingly luxuriant
roof garden.
It was plain that Lorenzo favoured modern design
and furnishings over antiques, but she had to admit
that the strong lines of the furniture complemented
the large rooms with their high ceilings.
Her bedroom was across the corridor from
Lorenzo’s, and had its own dressing room and bathroom.
To Jodie’s relief, Assunta unbent enough to
explain that she had worked in London for a time at
a restaurant owned by a cousin of her father, which
was where she had learned her English. Now a
widow, who prized her independence, she added that
working for Lorenzo had up until now suited her very
nicely.
"I shan’t be wanting to interfere in the way you
manage things," Jodie assured her, picking up her cue.
Indeed, she would not! She doubted that Lorenzo
would thank her if she were to be the cause of his
housekeeper handing in her notice.
"It is my cousin Theresa who is housekeeper at the
Duce’s villa near Sienna. It is a very good place for
bambini there, with much space and fresh air."
Another hint? Jodie wondered as she stood beneath
the welcome spray of the shower, mentally revising
their conversation. Well, she certainly wouldn’t be
providing Lorenzo with his bambini. The shower continued
to pound her skin with its needle-sharp spray
whilst Jodie stood perfectly still and let images of
small dark haired children stampede over her defences
and trample them into nothing.
There was a sharp rap on her bathroom door and
she heard Lorenzo calling out briskly, "It is time for
us to leave."
"I’m nearly ready," she fibbed, and then gave a
small gasp as he took her at her word and walked into
the bathroom.
Was it possible to be caught at any worse disadvantage
than naked and dripping wet? Jodie wondered,
pink-cheeked, as Lorenzo folded his arms and
leaned against the now closed door.
"That is nearly ready?" he demanded pithily.
"It won’t take me long to dry myself and get
dressed…" And it would take her even less time if he
wasn’t standing between her and the thick warm towels
on the towel rail on the other side of the bathroom.
Why didn’t he leave? Did he really expect her to walk
past him stark naked while he subjected her to more
of that steely scrutiny with which he was already
openly studying her legs? Out of habit she turned to
one side, trying to tuck her injured leg out of sight,
more anxious to conceal that from him than either her
breasts or the neat soft triangle of damp curls covering
her sex.
"Do you want to have a closer look at my leg?" she
demanded tartly. "I know the scars aren’t a pretty
sight, but Don’t worry — I can cover them up."
Lorenzo took his time about lifting his gaze from
her legs to her face, and when he eventually did so
her heart thumped heavily against her ribs.
"Perhaps I should have you painted like this," he
told her softly. "A fair-haired Northern water nymph,
with legs long enough to encourage a man to imagine
how it would feel to have them wrapped around him.
Or maybe spread on a silk-covered bed, with them
wantonly open, begging for the touch of your lover’s
lips against their tender flesh. There are sexual positions
that require… No! Do not look at me with that
hungry virgin look in your eyes," he told her sharply.
"Otherwise I might be tempted to satisfy that hunger
for you."
"You were the one who came in here," Jodie reminded
him. "I didn’t invite you."
"Liar. You invite me every time you look at me,
with those virginal half-glances that say how curious
you are to know what it is like to lie with a man."
"That is not true!" Jodie said hotly. "If I wanted to
have sex with a man, which I do not, then you are
the last man I would choose."
She realised immediately that she had gone too
far — Lorenzo was so arrogantly male that there was
no way he would allow her to get away with that kind
of challenge to his masculinity. But it was too late.
He was striding towards her, ignoring both her
shocked c
ry of protest and the effect her wet body
was having on his clothes as he hauled her out of the
shower and picked her up in his arms.
"Put me down," Jodi demanded, but Lorenzo wasn’t
listening to her. Instead he was carrying her through
her bedroom and towards the bed, where he put her
down against the pale green silk coverlet and held her
there.
He knelt over her and demanded softly, "So, what
is it you want to know most? How it feels to have a
man caress you here, like this?" Still holding her
shoulder with his left hand, he trailed the fingers of
his right hand down the whole length of her body to
her knee, and then slowly stroked up the inside of her
clenched thigh.
Helplessly, Jodie closed her eyes as her flesh absorbed
the intimacy of his touch and then reacted with
a series of sensual shudders that ricocheted relentlessly
through her.
"Ah, so you like that? And this?" His lips were
caressing the sensitive spot just behind her ear, causing
the ache deep inside her body to become a fiercely
urgent eager pulse.
Jodie moaned in outraged protest. He had no right
to be doing this to her.
But Lorenzo had obviously mistaken the cause of
her moan, because he murmured, "More curiosity?
Very well, then — you shall have your answer." His
hand swept up over her body to her breast, shaping it
and then rubbing the pad of his thumb over the erect
swelling of her nipple until all she could visualise
inside her head was his tongue curling round her nipple
and then lapping rhythmically at it.
Knowing her own desire had never been an issue
for her; it was having that desire not just satisfied but
aroused to the pitch it was being aroused to now that
had always been her problem. She had imagined she
might feel like this, but her imagination had fallen
way short of the reality, she acknowledged dizzily as
she locked her fingers in the thick darkness of
Lorenzo’s hair and urged his head down towards her
eager nipple. In the afternoon sunshine that filled the
room through the slats in the window blind, she could
see the telltale hardness of Lorenzo’s erection, and
her senses twisted with sweet triumph at the sight of
his arousal.
"Still curious?" Lorenzo’s tongue stroked the sensitive
flesh of her nipple and her body arched up towards
him for more. His hand dipped between her
legs, his palm warm against the eager swelling of her
mound. Instinctively Jodie held her breath, willing
him to part the closed lips of her sex and find the wet
heat waiting so urgently for him. Reality, reason, responsibility
were forgotten. She was like someone
possessed by a sudden fever — taken over by it so that
it overruled every other control system within her.
The knowing fingers answered her silent plea, parting
the soft pads of flesh and then stroking her with intimately
long, slow strokes that made her cry out
whilst her body jerked in frantic response.
"Now you see what your curiosity has brought you
to," she heard Lorenzo saying thickly. But he wasn’t
making any attempt to stop giving her the pleasure
his touch was inciting. Instead his touch became
stronger and deeper, until — suddenly and shockingly—
the ache inside her became a fierce convulsion
that gripped her and then exploded into an intense
orgasm.
Jodie lay stiffly on the bed, refusing to look at
Lorenzo. She felt scorched by the humiliation of what
had happened, and too close to tears to risk allowing
herself to speak. Not because she had had an orgasm
— it wasn’t her first, after all — but because of
the way she had had it. And because of the man who
had called it up out of her body so effortlessly.
"You shouldn’t have done that," she finally managed
to say.
"No," Lorenzo agreed heavily. "I should not."
Jodie closed her eyes. She could feel him withdrawing
from her as he stood up.
"I’ll go and ring the salon and tell them we shall
be later than arranged."
Why had she let that happen? Why hadn’t she
stopped him straight away? Her post-orgasm lethargy
clung heavily to her body as she showered again and
dressed as quickly as she could, promising herself that
it was never, ever going to happen again. Lorenzo
was a man — and an Italian — he was probably driven
by machismo and all those other things that gave such
men their powerful sexuality. And of course her unwitting
challenge had meant that he had had to make
his point to her. Other than that she had no idea why
he had done what he had — only that he must not be
allowed to do so again.
Lorenzo stood in his study and looked broodingly
out of the window. He had never been the kind of
man who allowed himself to be driven or ridden by
the needs of his body, so why, why had he allowed
himself to give in to them now? She was just another
woman, that was all, and not even an obviously sexually
available woman.
Not sexually available, no, but sexually responsive…
Lorenzo closed his eyes and immediately saw
Jodie as he had seen her minutes before, lying naked
on the bed, giving herself up to her pleasure…the
pleasure he had given her. Immediately his body, still
half tumescent from its earlier unsatisfied arousal,
stiffened into a painfully hard erection. He couldn’t
possibly want her as badly as that. Wanting the
woman — the virgin — he had chosen to marry for
purely practical reasons was a complication he did not
need in his life right now.
How had he managed to find a woman who was
still a virgin — a hungry sexually curious virgin — who
looked at him with a question in her eyes as old as
Eve? But he couldn’t afford the time it would take to
find someone to replace her now. At the moment
Caterina was still shocked enough for him to gain the
upper hand in the war between them, but once she
had time to recover from that shock she would be
back to her plots and the subtle, mind-poisoning tricks
at which she excelled. And besides, by now the whole
of Florence probably knew the identity of his bride-
to-be.
What did one wear to buy clothes sold in a designer
showroom? Jodie wondered ruefully. Probably not
what she was wearing — which was her spare pair of
clean jeans and a clean top — but since she had
brought only the bare necessities to Italy with her,
they would have to do.
Lorenzo was waiting for her when she found her
way back to the main salon. As soon as she walked
into the room he announced grimly, as he ushered her
towards the main door, "What happened earlier in
your room must not be allowed to happen
again."
He was looking at her, speaking to her — lecturing
her, almost! — as though it had been her fault, Jodie
recognised indignantly as they stepped into the lift.
"It certainly mustn’t," she agreed fiercely. "But I
wasn’t the one who instigated it."
"Maybe not. But you didn’t stop me, did you?" The
lift had reached the ground floor.
"Why do men always blame women when it is they
who—?" Jodie began heatedly, only to be stopped by
Lorenzo.
"It was Eve who offered Adam the apple," he reminded
her flatly, as he held open the lift door for
her.
"Man"s eternal get-out," Jodie seethed. "The
woman tempted me…"
"So you admit that you did?" Lorenzo demanded as
he guided her towards the street exit.
"I admit no such thing," Jodie retorted angrily,
blinking in the fierce sunlight.
"It will take less time if we walk to Via
Tornabuoni," Lorenzo informed her as he took hold
of her arm and nodded in the direction they were to
walk, ignoring her fury. "It is this way. We will cut
through this alleyway here, which brings us out into
this square."
Jodie forgot her annoyance and caught her breath
in awed delight at her surroundings. She longed to be
able to take her time and absorb everything around
her, but Lorenzo was hurrying her through the square
and down another narrow street, where an ancient
church crouched between the other buildings, its
doors open in welcome.
Via Tornabuoni turned out to be a wide street filled
with imposing buildings and even more imposing
shops — so much so that Jodie found herself hanging
back a little when they reached one store. A uniformed
doorman opened the door for them and
Lorenzo ushered her inside. Almost immediately a
soigne.e, pencil-thin, immaculately groomed young
woman who looked more like a model than a sales
assistant glided towards them, her attention focused
on Lorenzo rather than Jodie. Of course Jodie
couldn’t understand what Lorenzo was saying to her,
but there was no mistaking its impact. They were ushered
towards the back of the store and into an enclosed
private area, where Ms Soigne.e disappeared
and was replaced by a slightly older, even more
dauntingly stunning woman, who quickly introduced
herself as the direttrice of the store.
"I received your message and conveyed it to the
maestro," she informed them reverently in English.
THE ITALIAN DUKE’S WIFE Page 10