The Italian Duke's Wife. Penny Jordan

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СКАЧАТЬ with a stranger. She was beginning to feel very tired and weak. ‘Look, I need to get in touch with the car hire firm and tell them about the car, but my mobile isn’t working. Could you possibly…?’ He must surely be going back through the village she had driven through—there was nowhere else to go. If he would take her there she might be able to find a room for the night and telephone the car rental people.

      ‘Could I possibly what?’ Lorenzo demanded. ‘Help you? Certainly.’ She had just started to sag with relief when he added softly, ‘Provided that you agree to help me.’

      Instantly warning signals flashed their messages inside her head, causing her to tense.

      ‘Help you?’ she repeated cautiously.

      ‘Yes. I need a wife.’

      He was mad. Completely and utterly insane. She was stuck on a deserted road with a madman.

      ‘You…want me to help you find a wife?’ she managed to ask, as though it were the most natural request in the world.

      Lorenzo’s mouth compressed, and he gave her a look of cold derision. ‘Don’t be ridiculous. No, I do not want you to help me find a wife. I want you to become my wife,’ he told her coolly.

      CHAPTER THREE

      SHE was being ridiculous?

      ‘You want me to be your wife?’ Jodie repeated slowly. ‘I’m sorry, but—’

      ‘You don’t want to marry—ever. Yes, I know,’ Lorenzo interrupted dismissively. ‘But this would not be an ordinary marriage. I need a wife, and I need one within the next few weeks. I have as little real desire for a wife as you have for a husband—although for different reasons. Therefore it seems to me that you and I could come to a mutually beneficial arrangement. I get the wife I need, and you, after we have been married for twelve months, get a divorce and…shall we say one million pounds?’

      Jodie blinked and shook her head, not sure that she had actually heard him correctly.

      ‘You want me to agree to marry you and stay with you for twelve months?’

      ‘You will be well reimbursed for your time—and it is only your time and your status as my wife that I shall require. Your presence in my bed will not be part of the arrangement.’

      ‘You’re crazy,’ Jodie told him flatly. ‘I don’t know anything about you, and I—’

      ‘You know that I am prepared to pay you a million pounds to be my wife. As for the rest…’ He gave an arrogant shrug of his powerful shoulders, and told her, briefly and dismissively, ‘There will be time later for me to explain to you everything you need to know.’

      By rights she ought to be scared to death, Jodie decided. But, despite the fact that she was obviously in the presence of a madman, for some reason the main emotion that filled her was not fear but bemusement. Bemusement and a certain sense that fate had listened in to her secret thoughts and decided to take a hand in her life. Here was the opportunity—the man—her pride had ached for…

      Was she mad? She surely couldn’t be thinking of accepting his ridiculous proposition?

      ‘If you want a wife that badly, surely there must be someone—’

      ‘Many someones,’ Lorenzo stopped her sardonically. ‘Unfortunately they would all want what I do not want to give—it is amazing how easily your sex claims undying love when money and social position are involved.’

      ‘You mean you would be targeted by fortune-hunters?’ Jodie guessed shrewdly. It was obvious, after all—not just from his car and his clothes, but more betrayingly from his manner—that he was wealthy. ‘Is that why you want to marry me, because a fake marriage will keep them at bay?’

      ‘Not exactly.’

      ‘Then why?’

      ‘It’s a condition of my late grandmother’s will that I either marry within a certain time of her death or I forfeit…something that means a great deal to me.’

      Jodie’s forehead crinkled into a small frown.

      ‘But why on earth would she do that? I mean, either she wanted you to inherit whatever it is or she didn’t.’

      ‘The situation is more complex than that, and involves…other issues. Let us just say that my grandmother was persuaded to do something that she thought was in my best interests by someone who was following their own agenda.’

      Jodie waited for him to continue, but instead he reached for her hand. ‘Give me your car keys and—’

      She gave a small, determined shake of her head. ‘No.’ If she wasn’t already totally off men for life, this man and his unbelievable arrogance would surely be enough to put her off them, she decided angrily.

      But at the same time an insidiously tempting possibility had begun to form inside her head. What if she were to agree, on condition that Lorenzo escorted her to John and Louise’s wedding? With the whole village invited, two extra guests wouldn’t cause any problems…and, yes, she admitted it, there was a part of her that was sore enough and woman enough to want to be there, showing the world and the newly married couple that not only did she not care about their betrayal, but that she had a new partner of her own. Wasn’t there a saying, ‘Living well is the best revenge’? And how much better could a discarded and unwanted fiancée live than by showing off her new, better-looking and far more eligible man? A man, moreover, who desperately wanted to marry her!

      She was wrenched out of this mental triumphant return to the scene of her humiliation by Lorenzo’s arrogantly disbelieving voice. ‘No?’

      It was ridiculous that she could even contemplate doing something so shallow, and it showed the effect that just a few minutes in the company of a man like Lorenzo was having on her. She was not going to let herself listen to the urgings of her pride. Leaving it and her conscience to wage war on one another with an undignified exchange of inner accusations, she tried to do the sensible thing, and told Lorenzo firmly, ‘Even someone as…as arrogant and used to getting what they want as you seem to be must see that what you’re suggesting just isn’t—’

      ‘A million isn’t enough? Is that what you’re trying to say?’

      Her face burned. ‘The money has nothing to do with it.’ The cynical look he gave her at that made her burst out angrily, ‘I can’t be bought. Not by John, and certainly not by you.’

      ‘John?’

      He hadn’t pounced so much as leapt on her small betrayal, and now he was looking at her as she imagined a large sleek cat might look at a mouse it was enjoying tormenting.

      But she was not a mouse, and she wasn’t going to be either bullied or tormented by any man ever again.

      She lifted her head and told him coolly, ‘My ex-fiancé. He offered me money, too, but he was offering it out of guilt, because he didn’t want to marry me, not as a bribe because he did. He wanted me to be the one to break off our engagement, so that no one could accuse him of dumping me. Obviously you both share the same male mindset. Like you, he thought that he could buy what he wanted, regardless of what I might be feeling.’ Despite her attempt СКАЧАТЬ