by Penny Jordan
Jodi began to smile.
‘I love you too, Leo Jefferson,’ she responded, ‘and I want to marry you...’
‘Now, getting back to the matter of those kisses...’ Leo told her wickedly as he drew her back down against his body, and rolled her gently beneath him.
* * *
Several hours later, Jodi smiled a very special smile to herself. ‘And so Nigel left his key for you to find under the flowerpot by the front door?’ she questioned Leo as she licked the jam from her toast off her fingers and looked across the bedroom at him as he walked out of the bathroom, freshly showered, smiling as he watched her eating her toast hungrily.
‘Yes; he took a considerable amount of persuading, though, and he was terrified that you might suspect that something was going on.’
‘I probably would have done if I hadn’t been so tired,’ Jodi admitted.
Watching her, Leo could feel his love for her filling him. It had been a tremendous risk, short-circuiting things by installing himself in her bed, but thankfully it had worked, allowing them to talk openly and honestly to one another.
As Jodi finished her late breakfast he reached for her again, drawing her towards him, burying his face against her body before wrapping his arms around her and kissing her tenderly.
When his mobile rang he cursed and reached for it, starting to switch it off and then stopping as he murmured to Jodi, ‘It’s my mother.’
‘Hello, Mamma.’ He answered the call and from where she was standing Jodi could hear his mother quite plainly, ‘Leonardo, it is not you I wish to speak to but my daughter-in-law-to-be, your delightful Jodi. You have had her to yourself for quite long enough. Put her on the phone to me this minute, if you please, whilst I tell her about this wonderful shop for all things bambino in Milan.’
EPILOGUE
‘AND YOU STILL intend to teach at your school?’
Over her mother-in-law’s head Jodi smiled into Leo’s eyes as Luisa Jefferson cooed ecstatically over the bundle that was her baby grandson.
It was Leo and Jodi’s wedding anniversary and they had flown out to Italy to stay with Leo’s parents.
‘For the time being, but only on a part-time basis,’ Jodi replied.
All the letters of support she had received from her pupils’ parents had thrilled Jodi, and, as she and Leo had agreed, she owed it to everyone who had supported her to stay on at the school until the right kind of replacement for her had been found.
‘After all,’ she had smiled to Leo, ‘our own children will be going there.’
Leo had bought Ashton House, and Jodi had spent all her free time in the months before baby Nicholas Lorenzo’s birth organising its renovation and redecoration.
Leo’s parents had flown over to Frampton from Italy for the baby’s birth, and a special extra guest had been invited to the large family christening, much to Leo’s wry amusement and his mother’s open delight.
‘Her name is Maria, and she says that she will make a special potion for you to drink that will guarantee the happiness of you and Leonardo and your children,’ Luisa Jefferson had whispered to Jodi when she had introduced her village’s wise woman to her.
‘My happiness is already guaranteed,’ Jodi had responded with a shining smile of trust and love in her husband’s direction. ‘Just so long as I have Leo!’
* * * * *
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ISBN: 9781460303900
PRIDE & CONSEQUENCE
Copyright © 2013 by Harlequin Books S.A.
The publisher acknowledges the copyright holder of the individual works as follows:
VIRGIN FOR THE BILLIONAIRE’S TAKING
Copyright © 2008 by Penny Jordan
THE TYCOON’S VIRGIN
Copyright © 2002 by Penny Jordan
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental. This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
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