Valtieri's Bride. Caroline Anderson

she was sure they wouldn’t make her starve while she recovered.

      ‘You do that. It sounds lovely,’ Jen said wistfully, and Lydia screwed her face up and bit her lip.

      Damn. She’d been so close, and the disappointment that Jen was trying so hard to disguise was ripping Lydia apart.

      Ending the call with a promise to ring when she was coming home, she dug her clean clothes out of the flight bag and pulled her jeans on carefully over her swollen, throbbing ankle. The soft, worn fabric of the jeans and the T-shirt were comforting against her skin, chafed from her fall as well as the boning and beading in the dress, and she looked around for the offending article. It was gone. Taken away by Carlotta? She hoped she hadn’t thrown it out. She wanted the pleasure of that for herself.