by Lynne Graham
Aware that her heart was thumping so fast it left her breathless, Jess climbed out of her car and headed for the arched front doors of the hall. She was already running through a mental checklist. The engagement ring was in place, her hair tidy and she was dressed in an elegant pair of trousers teamed with a lace-edged grey cashmere twinset. All she lacked was a set of ladylike pearls and the thought made her grin. That morning she had barely recognised her reflection in the mirror. Being married to Cesario was going to be like taking on a new and taxing job with different rules from those she was accustomed to following.
Tommaso greeted her with his usual enthusiasm and swept her through to a reception room a little less opulent than the drawing room.
‘Jessica…’ Cesario strolled towards her with the pure predatory grace that always contrived to draw her attention to the lean, well-balanced flow of his powerful body.
The instant her gaze found his lean, darkly handsome features she remembered the heat and taste of that wide sensual mouth on hers and hot pink warmed her cheekbones. He was too good-looking, way too good-looking, she thought in vexation, meeting dark deep-set golden eyes fringed by ebony lashes longer than her own. She felt as if a stream of liquid fire were slowly travelling from the tautening tips of her breasts down into her pelvis to create a pool of wicked waiting warmth there. It was an unnerving sensation and it overpowered her earlier sense of being in control.
Cesario ran his intent scrutiny over her petite figure, now enhanced by garments that actually fitted her delicate proportions; he was entranced by the beauty of her fine-boned face and the lush heaviness of the ebony curls now falling round her cheekbones. ‘You look amazing…’
‘I think that’s a major exaggeration,’ Jess told him awkwardly, hugely uncomfortable with the compliment.
‘Not when you compare it to this,’ Cesario remarked drily, lifting the newspaper lying on the coffee table to display the photo of her in muddy bespattered clothing and wellington boots. ‘How can you let yourself be seen out and about looking like that?’
That question hit Jess like a slap in the face and she bridled, tipping her head back to stare at him. ‘I had just spent three hours at a calving. The calf was dead but the mother just survived. I was filthy and exhausted—that’s what my working day is like sometimes.’
‘In your role as my future wife I will expect you to consider your image,’ Cesario drawled as smoothly as though she had not spoken up in her own defence.
Jess’s chin took on a defiant angle. ‘I can’t help it if a photographer lies in wait to catch me looking my worst. I couldn’t care less about that sort of silly stuff.’
‘We do not need to discuss this. The bottom line is that I will not accept you appearing in public looking like a tramp,’ Cesario informed her in a tone of cold finality.
‘Then we’ve got a big problem,’ Jess countered, refusing to yield an inch of ground in the face of his unjust censure. ‘My job is often dirty and I often have to work outdoors. I have no intention of giving my job up just so that I can always look like a perfect doll for your benefit.’
‘I’m not asking you to look like a doll,’ Cesario fielded in exasperation, marvelling that she could be so indifferent to appearing in print in such a state.
‘Then how is it that after only three weeks of being engaged to you, I already feel like a dress-up doll? You seem to think I have nothing better to do with my time than shop or sit in a beauty salon enduring endless time-wasting treatments,’ Jess condemned thinly, her grey eyes darkening with anger to the colour of steel, because she felt he was being most unfair when she had already obediently jumped through so many hoops to smarten up.
‘Until I intervened you made no effort with your appearance at all. A woman with healthy self-esteem wants to look her best,’ Cesario contended grimly. ‘What’s wrong with yours?’
‘The level of my self-esteem is none of your business!’ Jess fielded flatly, her temper rising, as she was annoyed that he had noticed that she did not like her looks to attract attention. ‘I’m just an ordinary working woman.’
‘You work so many hours that you haven’t got time to be a woman,’ Cesario delivered, dark eyes gleaming gold with displeasure because she was refusing to accept his point of view. ‘I had no idea how long a day you worked until I began phoning you. You’re hardly ever at home and when you are you’re chasing after those animals you keep. It’s ridiculous.’
A flush of indignant disbelief slowly washing up over her face at that summary criticism, Jess shot him a furious look of resentment. ‘You said you wanted an intelligent, independent woman but obviously you lied. My career is the most important thing in my life.’
‘I thought your family was.’
The reminder sobered her but it also felt as though he were cracking a whip over her head to remind her of the terms of their agreement. Aggravated, she compressed her soft full lips. ‘If you try to interfere with my job, this arrangement isn’t going to work for either of us,’ she warned him tautly. ‘For goodness’ sake, you said you’d want a divorce in a couple of years, so why should you try to hinder my career?’
‘I also want a wife I see occasionally and you are rarely available in the evening or at weekends.’
‘Do you know what the real problem here is? You want a little wifey-slave who focuses only on her appearance and on you, a domestic goddess with nothing better to do with her time.’
‘A boudoir goddess would be more my style, piccola mia, Cesario derided with a sardonic smile. ‘You’re not being practical. At the very least, you’ll have to reduce your hours of employment to a more acceptable level.’
‘That’s out of the question!’
‘Perhaps while you remain a comparatively junior employee, but if you were to buy into the veterinary practice as a partner, you would have more control over the hours you work.’
At that unexpected suggestion, Jess rested stunned eyes on him. ‘What on earth are you talking about?’
‘I will buy you a partnership.’
‘No…no, you will not!’ Jess decreed in a shaking voice, so angry she barely trusted herself to speak. ‘Stay away from the surgery and don’t you dare meddle. My goodness, you’re unbelievable! If you can’t immediately have what you want you try to buy it!’
‘When I see a problem I come up with a solution,’ Cesario contradicted in a tone of ice-cased steel. ‘And, right now, it is obvious that you have three options.’
‘Three…options?’ Jess parroted with wrathful emphasis.
‘You allow me to purchase you a partnership, or you ask to work part-time hours or you quit altogether,’ Cesario enumerated, watching her flinch in disbelief with an impassive countenance. ‘Something has to give in your current schedule. At present there isn’t room in it for a marriage, a husband and the conception of a child.’
‘I agreed to marry you, not let you take over my entire life!’ Jess snapped back at him in raw rampant incredulity. ‘Or tell me what to do and what not to do!’
‘Madre di Dio…take a deep breath, calm down and think about what I’m saying,’ Cesario urged, stunned by the force of her fury. ‘You will have to make changes.’
‘No, I’m not about to listen to another bloody word of this nonsense!’ Jess lashed back at him, more angry than she had ever been in her life and unable to tolerate his evident conviction that he now had the right to mess about with her career. Swivelling on her heel, she headed back to the door, prompted by some sixth-sense caution that warned her to get out before she lost her temper entirely.
‘If you walk out in a tantrum, you needn’t bother coming back,’ Cesario pronounced with a chilling hauteur that hurt and stung as much as an ice burn. ‘My cousin, Stefano, and his wife are waiting in the next room to meet you at lunch.’
Jess froze and gritted her teeth like a feral cat ready to hiss and snarl in attack. He had a knack no other man had ever equalled—he filled her to overflowing with pure rage. She knotted her hands
into fists by her side, shocked by the tempest of fury gripping her and barely able to credit that she had been the most laid-back of personalities.
‘I like to deal with potential pitfalls in advance,’ Cesario asserted in soft and low continuance.
Just at that moment Jess imagined pushing him off the edge of a cliff and had the funniest suspicion that if he went over he would take her with him. She wondered in genuine horror how on earth she would ever live with him. Her narrow spine still turned to him, she breathed in slow and deep, praying for calm and composure while she reminded herself doggedly of all she stood to lose. And, embarrassingly, it was not her father’s plight that came first to mind, it was the baby she had been trying to picture at dawn that morning. A little boy, a little girl; she didn’t care as long as her baby was healthy. Her breathing began slowing in speed.
‘Obviously I’ve taken you by surprise with this.’
Grey eyes still openly alight with hostility, Jess spun back to him. ‘I live alone, I do as I like. I’m not used to anyone trying to limit me.’
A drumbeat of tension and reluctant arousal assailing him like an erotic pulse, Cesario studied her vivid and mutinous little face and marvelled that even those spiky defences of hers and the mud had contrived to keep her single and unattached for so long. For a few moments there, he had genuinely thought she would stalk out like a tigress breaking free of her cage. Her temperament was much more emotional and passionate than he had appreciated. It was a discovery that should have worried him but in reality it turned him on. Cesario was already beginning to learn the hard lesson that what he needed was not always what he wanted.
‘But you will consider those options and make a decision,’ he breathed huskily, unable to resist the suspicion that having got her metaphorically back into the cage again he was now deliberately provoking her.
The dark melting timbre of his accented drawl shimmied over Jess like a sudden disarming caress, awakening the awareness that she was accustomed to suppressing whenever he was in her radius. In severe discomfiture she shifted off one foot onto the other, but she still recognised the fullness of her breasts and the pinch as her nipples tightened followed by the dragging ache of longing between her legs. It was lust, just good old-fashioned lust, a natural and normal human prompting and not worth getting upset about, she told herself urgently. But that reassuring thought did not have quite the soothing effect she hoped it would because Cesario di Silvestri was the only man who had ever affected her that way. One look the first time she met him and she had burned, and the knowledge still infuriated her and intimidated her in his presence.
In a desperate effort to throw off the effect he was having on her Jess struggled to continue the conversation without giving ground. ‘I’ll think over what you’ve said.’
‘And make a decision…’
‘And you really want that decision right now, don’t you?’ Jess blasted back at him before she could stamp down her temper again. ‘You’re so ridiculously impatient!’
Cesario looked levelly back at her, his eyes very dark and uninformative below the shade of his lush lashes. ‘We have a great deal to accomplish in a short space of time. I need your co-operation to do this.’
Mortified by her imperfect grip on her anger when he was as much in control as he had ever been, Jess nodded stiffly.
‘You will obviously move your animal rescue operation to Halston as well.’
As Jess parted her lips in shock at that supposition, which she had not even considered, Cesario dealt her a silencing appraisal. ‘Nothing else would make sense. I assumed you would wish to retain that interest and I have already spoken to my estate manager.’
‘Have you indeed?’ Jess cut in before she could swallow back the hot, hasty words.
‘Naturally. You could scarcely continue your work at a property several miles away and why should you want so inconvenient an arrangement? Land here will be put at your disposal and you may of course order custom-made buildings to house your charges. Naturally I will cover all the costs. I would also suggest the hire of at least one full-time employee.’
A choky little sound of incredulity escaped Jess and she viewed him with enraged silvery eyes. ‘Anything else?’
‘We will be staying in Italy for around six weeks after the wedding. You will need a trustworthy staff member to take care of your animals.’
Jess folded her arms with a defensive jerk because it was preferable to throwing something or walking out in what he had earlier clearly seen as a childish tantrum. He thought of everything. No corner of her life was to be safe from his interference and he was laying that on the line. He was in the driver’s seat now, not her.
Cesario searched her taut face. The vibrations in the atmosphere were explosive. He wanted to skim his fingers through that wonderful hair, run a soothing hand across those rigid little shoulders and tell her that if she pleased him the sky was the limit, because there was virtually nothing he would not do for her, nothing he would not give. But that was not possible in the circumstances and might well have given her dangerous ideas. His inherent caution kept those spontaneous urges under control.
‘Come and meet Stefano and his wife, Alice. They’re my oldest friends,’ Cesario murmured, a light hand at her spine guiding her across the hall towards the drawing room.
For an instant he paused and she looked questioningly up at his lean dark face, sexual awareness rolling in around her in an almost suffocating flood of impressions. The scent of his expensive cologne drifted into her nostrils. She loved the smell of it, had only to catch a whiff of that citrus-based aroma to think of him. His strong jaw line was slightly rough with dark stubble and her fingers tingled with the need to touch him. Her body hummed in readiness as though he had thrown a switch. Every time he got close her reaction was stronger and more unnerving. She wanted him to kiss her; she wanted him to kiss her so badly that not being kissed hurt.
‘I know, piccola mia,’ Cesario purred soft and low, brilliant eyes bronze with sensual appreciation, a slight catch in his low-pitched voice. ‘But we have company for lunch.’
Jess wasn’t quite sure she had actually heard that assurance, for it implied that he had known exactly how she was feeling and the suspicion appalled her. Her face was flushed when she entered the drawing room to find a stockily built, balding man in his thirties with lively brown eyes advancing on her. His wife was a tall, slender blonde, so eye-catchingly lovely that Jess found that she was staring.
‘I’ve been really looking forward to meeting you,’ Alice di Silvestri confided with a warm friendly smile, these first words revealing that she was American.
And Cesario curved an entire arm round Jess, who stiffened before appreciating that her role of happy bride-to-be had acquired its first audience and found that she was smiling back. She cast off the weight of anger, anxiety and stress that had until that instant been weighing her down and crushing her spirits. She had come through and survived far worse than a convenient marriage, she reminded herself with stubborn resolution. Nothing that Cesario could throw at her was likely to trip her up…
CHAPTER FIVE
‘YOU look as pretty as a picture,’ Robert Martin pronounced, a betraying brightness to his eyes as he admired Jess in her wedding gown from the lounge doorway.
Restive in her unusually feminine finery, Jess peered at her reflection in the hall mirror, noting that the make-up artist had done a heck of a job in giving her a youthful, dewy look, while the hairstylist had worked a miracle transforming her teeming curls into soft shiny ringlets that fell round her bare shoulders. A splendid diamond tiara worthy of a princess glittered against the dark backdrop of her hair, courtesy of Cesario, who had sent it with the information that it was a family heirloom. She smiled wryly at the memory, wondering if he had been afraid she might think it was a personal gift, because she cherished no such illusions about her bridegroom.
Cesario di Silvestri had no plans to bring anything personal into their relationship.
Her bridegroom was ruthless, ferociously self-disciplined and clever. When it came to his track record with women, he might have a very well-documented and volatile libido but in spirit Jess believed he was essentially cold. He might want a child. But that child, she was convinced, would have to look to her for the warmth of human kindness and affection. Cesario planned his every move, foreseeing every difficulty and then judging how best to deal with it. He was a control freak, a demanding personality with very high standards and expectations. Nothing less than the best would satisfy him in any field, which begged the question, why was a man who could have married any number of rich, beautiful, society women settling for a country veterinary surgeon from a much more ordinary background?
Was her winning factor her sex appeal? Her cheeks warmed. Or was it because she had once said no and refused to see him again? Could any guy be that petty? She could not see herself as a femme fatale, but what else but her looks could have sustained his ongoing interest? Was it offensive to be that desirable to a man? She found it hard to think of sexual desirability as an accolade. After all, being a man’s object of desire had once long ago almost cost Jess her life and she shivered, suddenly chilled by traumatic memories that she very rarely allowed herself to recall.
Her niece and nephew, Emma and Harry, four and five years old respectively, looked adorable and were the perfect antidote to her briefly dark thoughts. Emma wore a floral-print bridesmaid’s dress, while Harry was smartly dressed as a pageboy. Their mother, Leondra, who had married Jess’s youngest brother when she fell pregnant at eighteen, had agreed to act as a matron of honour, although she had complained bitterly over the lack of a hen night to mark the end of Jess’s life as a single woman. Jess had not had the nerve to tell her sister-in-law that she was expecting to be single again sooner than anyone other than her clued-up mother might expect.
‘If only he could see you now,’ her father proclaimed in a fond undertone while Leondra was talking to her children. ‘He would immediately regret never having known you.’