'that’s just as well, because you aren’t going to be
offered it,' Lorenzo said unkindly. 'It amazes me that
still in this modern day the myth persists that adult,
sexually mature men have a secret yearning for the
untutored body of a virgin. Personally I can think of
nothing more unenticing. Maybe that was why your
ex-fiance. chose someone else over you. Have you
thought of that?'
Had she thought of it? There had been endless
nights and days when she had thought of nothing else
in those early weeks. Nights when she had lain in bed,
feverishly wondering how she might suddenly transform
herself from a virgin into an alluringly experienced
woman who could seduce him away from
Louise just as Louise had seduced John away from
her. But that had been in the maddening furnace of
new rejection, and those fires, with their dangerous,
damaging compulsion to prove herself as a woman,
had now cooled. And they certainly weren’t going to
be re-ignited by a man like Lorenzo — a man who
looked and behaved as though he knew everything
there was to know about a woman's sensuality and a
man's ability to rouse and enjoy it.
The pulsing inside her body suddenly became
sharply intense. Not just a pulse now, but a deep-
seated ache as well.
CHAPTER SEVEN
'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
