CHAPTER ONE

SHE was not going to do the girly thing and burst into

tears, Jodie told herself, gritting her teeth. It might be

growing dark; she might be feeling sick with that familiar

stomach-churning fear that she had made a big

mistake — and about more than just the direction she

had taken in that last village she had passed through

what seemed like for ever ago; tonight might be the

night she and John should have been spending at their

romantic honeymoon hotel — their first night as husband

and wife…but she was not going to cry. Not

now, and in fact not ever, ever again over any man.

Not ever. Love was out of her life and out of her

vocabulary and it was going to stay out.

She winced as her small hire car lurched into a

deep rut in the road — a road which was definitely

climbing towards the mountains when it should have

been dropping down towards the sea.

Her cousin and his wife, her only close family since

her parents" death in a car accident when Jodie was

nineteen, had tried to dissuade her from coming to

Italy.

"But everything’s paid for," she had reminded

them. "And besides…"

Besides, she wanted to be out of the country, and

she wanted to stay out of it for the next few weeks

during the build-up to John’s marriage to his new

fiance.e, Louise, who had taken Jodie’s place in his

heart, in his life, and in his future.

Not that she’d told her cousin David or Andrea, his

wife, about that part of her decision as yet. She knew

they would have tried to persuade her to stay at home.

But when home was a very small Cotswold market

town, where everyone knew you and knew that you

had been dumped by your fiance. less than a month

before your wedding because he had fallen in love

with someone else, it was not somewhere anyone with

any pride could possibly want to be. And Jodie had

as much pride as the next woman, if not more. So

much more that she longed to be able to prove to

everyone, but most especially to John and Louise

themselves, how little John’s treachery mattered to

her. Of course the most effective way to do that would

be to turn up at their wedding with another man — a

man who was better-looking and richer than John, and

who adored her. Oh, if only…

In your dreams, she scoffed mentally at herself.

There was no way that that scenario was likely to

happen.

"Jodie, you can’t possibly go to Italy on your own,"

David had protested, whilst he and Andrea had exchanged

meaningful looks she hadn’t been supposed

to see. It was probably just as well they were now in

Australia on an extended visit to Andrea’s parents.

"Why not?" she had demanded with brittle emphasis.

"After all, that’s the way I’m going to be spending

the rest of my life."

"Jodie, we both understand how hurt and shocked

you are," Andrea had added gently. "Don’t think that

David and I Don’t feel for you, but behaving like this

isn’t going to help."

"It will help me," Jodie had answered stubbornly.

***

It had been John’s idea that they spend their honeymoon

exploring Italy’s beautiful Amalfi coast.

Jodie winced as the hire car hit another pothole in

the road, which was so badly maintained that it was

becoming increasingly uncomfortable to drive.

Her leg was aching badly, and she was beginning

to regret not having chosen to spend her first night

closer to Naples. Where on earth was she? Nowhere

near where she was supposed to be, she suspected.

The directions for the small village set back from the

coast had been almost impossible to follow, detailing

roads she had not been able to find on her tourist map.

If John had been here with her none of this would

have happened. But John was not with her, and he

was never going to be with her again.

She must not think of her now ex-fiance., or the fact

that he had fallen out of love with her and in love

with someone else, or that he had been seeing that

someone else behind her back, or that virtually everyone

in her home village had apparently known about

it apart from Jodie herself. Louise, so Jodie’s friends

had now told her, had made it obvious that she

wanted and intended to have John from the moment

they had been introduced, following her parents"

move to the area. And Jodie, fool that she was, had

been oblivious to all of this, simply thinking that

Louise, as a newcomer, an outsider, was eager to

make friends. Now she was the outsider, Jodie reflected

bitterly. She should have realised how shallow

John was when he had told her that he loved her "in

spite of her leg". She winced as the pain in it intensified.

She was never going to make the kind of mistake

she had made with John again. From now on her heart

was going to be impervious to "love"—yes, even

though that meant at twenty-six she would be facing

the rest of her life alone. What made it worse was

that John had seemed so trustworthy, so honest and

so kind. She had let him into her life and, even more

humiliatingly painful to acknowledge now, into her

fears and her dreams. No way was she going to risk

having another man treat her as John had done — one

minute swearing eternal love, the next…

And as for John himself, he was welcome to

Louise, and they were obviously suited to one another,

too, since they were both deceitful cheats and

liars. But she, coward that she was, could not face

going home until the wedding was over, until all the

fuss had died down and until she was not going to be

the recipient of pitying looks, the subject of hushed

gossip.

"Well, let’s look on the bright side," Andrea had

said lightly when she had realised Jodie was not going

to be persuaded to abandon her plans. "You never

know — you might meet someone in Italy and fall

head over heels in love. Italian men are so gorgeously

sexy and passionate."

Italian men — or any kind of men — were off the life

menu for her from now on, Jodie told herself furiously.

Men, marriage, love — she no longer wanted

anything to do with any of them.

Angrily Jodie depressed the accelerator. She had

no idea where this appallingly bumpy road was going

to take her, but she wasn’t going to turn back. From

now on there would be no U-turns in her life, no

looking back in misery or despair, no regrets about

what might have been. She was going to face firmly

forward.

David and Andrea had been wonderfully kind to

her, offering her their spare room when she had sold

her cottage so that she could put the sale proceeds

towards the house she and John were buying — which

had not, with hindsight, been the most sensible of

things to do — but she couldn’t live with her cousin

and his wife for ever.

Luckily John had at least given her her money

back, but the break-up of their engagement had still

cost her her job, since she had worked for his father

in the family business. John was due to take over

when his father retired.

So now she had neither home nor job, and she was

going to be—

She yelped as the offside front wheel hit something

hard, the impact causing her to lurch forward painfully

against the constraint of her seat belt. How much

further was she going to have to drive before she

found some form of life? She was booked into a hotel

tonight, and according to her calculations she should

have reached her destination by now. Where on earth

was she? The road was climbing so steeply…

"You, I take it, are responsible for this? It has your

manipulative, destructive touch all over it, Caterina,"

Lorenzo Niccolo d’Este, Duce di Montesavro, accused

his cousin-in-law with savage contempt as he

threw his grandmother’s will onto the table between

them.

"If your grandmother took my feelings into account

when she made her will, then that was because—"

"Your feelings!" Lorenzo interrupted her bitingly.

"And what feelings exactly would those be? The same

feelings that led to you bullying my cousin to his

death?" He was making no attempt whatsoever to conceal

his contempt for her.

Two ugly red patches of angry colour burned betrayingly

on Caterina’s immaculately made-up face.

"I did not drive Gino to his death. He had a heart

attack."

"Yes, brought on by your behaviour."

"You had better be careful what you accuse me of,

Lorenzo, otherwise…"

"You dare to threaten me?" Lorenzo demanded.

"You may have managed to deceive my grandmother,

but you cannot deceive me."

He turned his back on her to pace the stone-flagged

floor of the Castillo’s Great Hall, his pent-up fury

rendering him as savagely dangerous as a caged animal

of prey.

"Admit it," he challenged as he swung round again

to confront her. "You came here deliberately intending

to manipulate and deceive an elderly dying

woman for your own ends."

"You know that I have no desire to quarrel with

you, Lorenzo," Caterina protested. "All I want—"

"I already know what you want," Lorenzo reminded

her coldly. "You want the privilege, the position, and

the wealth that becoming my wife would give you—

and it is for that reason that you harried a confused

elderly woman you knew to be dying into changing

her will. If you had any compassion, any—" He broke

off in disgust. "But of course you do not, as I already

know."

His furious contempt had caused the smile to fade

from her lips and her body to stiffen into hostility as

she abandoned any pretence of innocence.

"You can make as many accusations as you wish,

Lorenzo, but you cannot prove any of them," she

taunted him.

"Perhaps not in a court of law, but that does not

alter their veracity. My grandmother’s notary has told

me that when she summoned him to her bedside in

order to alter her will, she confided to him the reason

that she was doing so."

Lorenzo saw the look of unashamed triumph in

Caterina’s eyes.

"Admit it, Lorenzo. I have bested you. If you want

the Castillo — and we both know that you do — then

you will have to marry me. You have no other

choice." She laughed, throwing back her head to expose

the olive length of her throat, and Lorenzo had

a savage impulse to close his hands around it and

squeeze the laughter from her it. He did want the

Castillo. He wanted it very badly. And he was determined

to have it. And he was equally determined that

he was not going to be trapped into marrying

Caterina.

"You told my grandmother I loved you and wanted

to make you my wife. You told her that the fact that

you were so newly widowed, and that your husband

Gino was my cousin, meant that society would frown

upon an immediate marriage between us. And you

told her you were afraid my passion would overwhelm

me and that I would marry you anyway and

thus bring disgrace upon myself, didn’t you?" he accused

her. "You knew how na..ve my grandmother

was, how ignorant of modern mores. You tricked her

into believing you were confiding in her out of concern

for me. You told her you didn’t know what to

do or how you could protect me. Then you ""helped""

her to come up with the solution of changing her will,

so that instead of inheriting the Castillo from her — as

her previous will had stated — I would only inherit it

if I was married within six weeks of her death. As

you told her, everyone knows how important to me

the Castillo is. And then, as though that were not

enough, you conceived the added inducement of persuading

her to add that if I did not marry within those

six weeks, you would inherit the Castillo. You led her

to believe that in making those changes she was enabling

me to marry you, because I could say I was

fulfilling the terms of her will rather than following

the dictates of my heart."

"You can’t prove any of that." She shrugged contemptuously.

Lorenzo knew that what she had said was true.

"As I’ve already told you, Nonna confided her

thoughts to her notary," he continued acidly. "Unfortunately,

by the time he managed to alert me to what

was going on, it was too late."

"Much too late — for you." Caterina smirked at him.

"So you admit it?"

"So what if I do? You can’t prove it," Caterina repeated.

"And even if you could, what good would it

do?"

"Let me make this clear to you, Caterina. No matter

what my grandmother has written in her will, you will

never become my wife. You are the last woman I

would want to give my name to."

Caterina laughed. "You have no choice."

Lorenzo had a reputation for being a formidable

and ruthless adversary. He was the kind of man other

men both respected and feared — the kind of man

women dreamed excitedly of enticing into their beds.

He was also a superb male animal, strikingly handsome,

with a hormone-unleashing combination of arrogance

and a predatory, very dangerous male sexuality—

a sexuality that he wore as easily as a panther

wore its coat. He was not just a prize, but perhaps the

most coveted prize amongst the very best of Italy’s

most eligible and wealthy men. All through his twenties

gossip columns had seethed with excited interest,

trying to guess which high-born young woman he

would make his duchess. It certainly wasn’t from any

lack of willing partners to share his wealth and his

title, along with enjoying the sexual pleasure of mating

with such a vigorously sensual man, that he had

escaped into his thirties without making any kind of

formal commitment to the women who had pursued

him.

Lorenzo looked at his late cousin’s wife. He despised

and loathed her. But then, he despised most

women. From what he had experienced of them they

were all willing to give him whatever he wanted because

of what he had, what was outside the inner him:

wealth, a title, and a handsome male body. What he

actually was was of no interest to them. His thoughts,

his beliefs, all that went to make up the man who was

Lorenzo d’Este didn’t matter to them anywhere near

so much as his money and his social position.

"You have no choice, Lorenzo," Caterina repeated

softly. "If you want the Castillo you have to marry

me."

Lorenzo permitted his mouth to curl in sardonic

disdain.

"I have to marry, yes," he agreed softly. "But nowhere

does it say that I have to marry you. You have

obviously not read my grandmother’s will thoroughly."

Her face blanched, her narrowed eyes betraying her

confusion and distrust.

"What do you mean? Of course I have read it. I

dictated it! I—"

"I repeat, you did not read the will my grandmother

signed thoroughly enough," Lorenzo told her. "You

see, it stipulates only that I must marry within six

weeks of her death if I want to inherit the Castillo

from her. It does not specify who I should marry."

Caterina stared at him, unable to conceal her anger.

It stripped from her the good looks which had in her

youth made her a sought-after model, and left in their

place the ugliness of her true nature.

"No, that cannot be true. You have altered it,

changed it — you and that sneering notary. You

have— Where does it say? Let me see!"

She virtually flung herself at him and Lorenzo retrieved

the will he had thrown down onto the table

earlier. Seizing it, she read it, her face white with

rage.

"You have changed it. Somehow you have— She

wanted you to marry me!" She was almost hysterical

with fury.

"No." Lorenzo shook his head, his face impassive

as he watched her. "Nonna wanted to give me what

she believed I wanted. And that, most assuredly, is

not you."

As Lorenzo stood beneath the flickering light of the

old-fashioned flambeaux, the small abrupt movement

of his head was reflected and repeated in the shadows

from the flames.

The Castillo had been designed as a fortress rather

than a home, long before the Montesavro Dukes of

the Renaissance had captured it from their foes and

then clothed and softened its sheer stone walls with

the artistic richness of their age. It still possessed an

aura of forbidding and forbidden darkness.

Like Lorenzo himself.

Dark shadows carved hollows beneath the sculptured

bone structure he had inherited from the warrior

prince who had been the first of their line, and his

height and the breadth of his shoulders emphasised

the predatory sleekness of his body. His mouth was

thin-lipped—"cruel", women liked to call it, as they

begged for its hardness against their own and tried to

soften it into hunger for them. It was his eyes, though,

that were his most arresting feature. Curiously light

for an Italian, they were more silver than grey, and

piercingly determined to strip away his enemies" defences.

His well-groomed hair was thick and dark, his

suit hand-made and expensive. But then, he did not

need to depend on any inheritance from his late maternal

grandmother to make him a wealthy man. He

was already that in his own right.

There were those who said, foolishly and theatrically,

that for a man to accumulate so much money

there had to be some trickery involved — some sleight

of hand or hidden use of certain dark powers. But

Lorenzo had no time for such stupidity. He had made

his money simply by using his intelligence, by making

the right investments at the right time, and thus

building the respectable sum he had been left by his

parents into a fortune that ran into many, many millions.

Unlike his late cousin, Gino, who had allowed his

greedy wife to ruin him financially. His greedy widow

now, Lorenzo reminded himself savagely. Not that

Caterina had ever behaved like a widow, or indeed

like a wife.

Poor Gino, who had loved her so much. Lorenzo

lifted his hand to his forehead. It felt damp with perspiration.

Caused by guilt? It had after all been by

claiming friendship with him that Caterina had first

brought herself to Gino’s attention.

Lorenzo had been eighteen to Caterina’s twenty-

two when he had first met her, and was easily seduced

by her determination. It hadn’t taken him long,

though, to recognise her for the adventuress that she

was. No longer, in fact, than her first hint to him that

she expected him to repay her sexual favours with

expensive gifts. As a result of that, he had ended his

brief fling with her immediately.

He had been at university when she had inveigled

herself into his kinder cousin Gino’s heart and life,

and the next time he had seen her Caterina had been

wearing Gino’s engagement ring whilst his cousin

wore a besotted expression of adoration. He had tried

to warn his cousin then, of just what she was, but

Gino had been in too deeply ever to listen, and had

even accused him of jealousy. For the first time that

Lorenzo could remember they had quarrelled, with

Gino accusing Lorenzo of wanting Caterina for himself,

and she had cleverly played on that to keep them

apart until after her and Gino’s marriage.

Later, Lorenzo and his cousin had been reconciled,

but Gino had never stopped worshipping his wife,

even though she had been blatantly unfaithful to him

with a string of lovers.

"Where are you going?" Caterina demanded shrilly

as Lorenzo turned on his heel and walked away

from her.

From the other side of the hall Lorenzo looked

back at her.

"I am going," he told her evenly, "to find myself a

wife — any wife. Just so long as she is not you. You

could have seen to it that I was warned that my grandmother

was near to death, so that I could have been

here with her, but you chose not to. And we both

know why."

"You cannot marry someone else. I will not let

you."

"You cannot stop me."

She shook her head. "You will not find another

wife, Lorenzo. Or at least not the kind of wife you

would be willing to accept — not in such a sort space

of time. You are far too proud to marry some little

village girl of no social standing, and besides…" She

paused, then gave him a taunting look and said softly,

"If necessary I shall tell everyone about the child I

was to have had, whom you made me destroy."

"Your lover’s child," he reminded her. "Not Gino’s

child. You told me that yourself."

"But I shall tell others that it was your child. After

all, many people know that Gino believed you loved

me."

"I should have told him that I loathed you."

"He would not have believed you," Caterina told

him smugly. "Just as he would not have believed the

child was not his. How does it feel to know that you

are responsible for the taking of an unborn child"s

life, Lorenzo?"

He took a step towards her, a look of such blazing

fury in his eyes that she ran for the door, pulling it

open and sliding through it.

Lorenzo cursed savagely under his breath and then

went back to the table where he had dropped his

grandmother’s will.

He had been filled with fury and disbelief when his

grandmother’s notary had finally managed to make

contact with him to tell him of his fears, and how he

had managed to prevent Caterina from having all her

own way by deliberately removing her name from the

will so that it merely required Lorenzo to marry in

order to inherit, rather than specifically having to

marry Caterina.

The notary, almost as elderly as his grandmother

had been, had apologised to Lorenzo if he had done

the wrong thing, but Lorenzo had quickly reassured

him that he had not. Without the notary"s interference

Caterina would have trapped him very cleverly. She

was right about one thing. He did want the Castillo.

And he intended to have it.

Right now, though, he had to get away from it before

he did something he would regret, he reflected

as he strode out into the courtyard and breathed in

the clean tang of the evening air, mercifully devoid

of Caterina’s heavy, smothering perfume.