scraped back. She looked about sixteen, and an underfed
sixteen at that, Lorenzo decided unflatteringly,
as he swept her from head to toe with an experienced
male glance that took in the droop of her shoulders,
the hardly discernible shape of her breasts, the narrowness
of her waist and her hips, and the unexpected
length of the denim-clad legs attached to such a small
frame. Was she wearing heels, or were they really as
long as they looked?
'How old are you?' he demanded.
How old was she? Why on earth was he asking her
that?
'I’m twenty-six,' Jodie responded stiffly, tilting her
chin as she looked up at him, determined not to be
intimidated by him despite the fact that she was already
aware that he was so spectacularly good-
looking she wanted to run away and hide before he
realised how pathetically inferior as a woman she was
to him as a man. Automatically, her hand went to her
bad leg. It was really hurting her now.
Twenty-six! Lorenzo frowned as he looked down
at her hands. No rings. 'Why are you here on your
own?'
Jodie was beginning to feel she had had enough.
'Because I am on my own. Not that it is any business
of yours,' she informed him.
'On the contrary, it is very much my business—
since you have seen fit to trespass on my land.'
His land? Of course it would be his land; it possessed
exactly the same harsh, arrogant inhospitality as
he did.
'And what do you mean, you are on your own?'
she heard him demanding. 'Surely you have a…a
husband, or a lover. A man, a partner, in your life.'
Jodie winced, and then laughed bitterly. He didn’t
know about the still tender nerves he was brutalising.
'I thought I did,' she agreed angrily, 'but unfortunately
for me he decided he wanted to marry someone
else. This—' she gestured towards the landscape and
the car '—was supposed to be our honeymoon. But
now…' Just saying the words still hurt, but strangely
there was also a savage sense of relief in being able
to vent her emotions instead of having to keep them
locked inside her for the sake of others, as she had
had to do at home.
'Now what?' Lorenzo challenged her. 'Now you
are travelling alone and looking for someone to replace
him in your bed? The coastal resorts are the
best hunting ground for that. Not the mountains.'
Jodie drew in her breath in outraged fury. 'How
dare you say that? I am most certainly not looking
for anyone, let alone someone to replace him. In fact,
that is the last thing I want to do,' she found herself
adding. 'I shall never let another man into my life to
hurt me. Never. From now on I intend to live by
myself and for myself.' Bold words, but she meant
every single one of them!
Lorenzo frowned as he heard in her voice the passionate
intensity of her determination.
'You still want him so much?'
'No!' Jodie told him fiercely, without stopping to
wonder why he was asking such a personal thing. 'I
Don’t want him at all — not now.'
'So why are you here — running away?'
'I am not running away! I just Don’t want to be
there to see him marry someone else,' she added defensively
when she saw the way he was looking at
her. 'Especially when she’s all the things I’m not.
Exciting, glamorous, sexy…' Jodie lifted her hand to
her face to rub away the tears that had suddenly filled
her eyes. She had no idea why she was telling this
stranger all of this, admitting to him things she had
not even admitted to herself before.
'It is the man who determines whether or not a
woman is 'sexy', as you put it,' Lorenzo decreed
dismissively, as caught up in this strangely intimate
exchange as Jodie. 'A skilled lover has it in his power
to create a full flowering of even the most tightly
closed bud.'
A shock of tingling awareness quivered through her
belly as Jodie absorbed the meaning of his astoundingly
arrogant statement.
'Not that many young women are tightly closed
buds in this day and age,' Lorenzo added sardonically,
as he watched the colour come and go in the
pale face that was so shadowed with tiredness.
'Modern women have claimed the right to their
own sexuality,' Jodie responded fiercely. 'They do
not—'
'It does not sound to me as though you have been
very effective in claiming yours,' Lorenzo told her
derisively. 'In fact, if I were to make an assessment
of it, I would guess that your experience is extremely
limited — otherwise you would not have lost your man
to another woman.'
His sheer arrogant machismo both astounded and
infuriated her. But she was forced to admit that non
existent would have been a more accurate estimation
of her sexual expertise. Painfully she released the
