by Lynne Graham
‘Che cosa hai…what’s the matter with you?’ Cesario chided, pulling her resistant body to him with firm hands. ‘Does falling pregnant make a woman shockingly cross, bellezza mia?’
‘No, of course, it doesn’t!’ she rebutted tightly, gazing up into his breathtakingly handsome features with bewildered eyes. ‘It’s the way you’re behaving that’s making me feel like this. You’ve changed your mind, haven’t you? You don’t want a baby any more! ‘
Cesario closed his larger hands firmly over hers. ‘I have never heard such nonsense. If you are having my baby—’
‘I am,’ Jess slotted in truculently.
‘Then naturally I am overjoyed, piccola mia,’ Cesario insisted, his beautiful dark eyes intent on her troubled face as if he was willing her to believe what he was telling her. ‘But I am very concerned that I should hear this wonderful news and then have to tell you that, owing to a business emergency, I have to fly to Milan this afternoon and leave you alone here.’
Although her heart sank at the prospect of him leaving and she could barely credit that he should already be returning to Italy when they had only left the country the day before, she was relieved by his clarification. Her cherished announcement had clearly suffered from bad timing when he was already preoccupied with business problems and his imminent departure.
‘I’ll be absolutely fine here. My family are within reach if I need company. But, to be frank, I have a good number of hours to catch up at work and I’ll be very busy as well.’
His hold on her hands tightened. ‘Now that you’re carrying a baby you’ll have to rest more.’
‘I’ll be sensible. I am only contracted to work part-time now,’ she reminded him. ‘I also need to get the accommodation here and staffing sorted out for my rescue animals. I’ve got plenty to do while you’re away.’
And she maintained that upbeat outlook until he took his leave a couple of hours later. The last impression she wanted him to leave with was that of her being irritable and difficult. But even as she set off for work wearing sensible clothing and driving her opulent new car with her dogs confined behind a special screen in the boot area, she was conscious that, no matter how she looked at it, Cesario’s response to the news of their baby had still fallen very far short of her fondest hopes.
Jess was convinced that Cesario had not been pleased. Something had altered since their marriage. Had he changed his mind about having a child with her? Admittedly she had conceived more easily and quickly than either of them had expected and he had been unprepared for her announcement. But could that simple fact have caused him to have second thoughts about fatherhood? She kept on picturing his expression at the instant she had given him her news. He had looked bleak, disturbed…guilty? Her brow furrowed. From where had she received the impression that he felt guilty? That had to be her imagination because why on earth would he feel guilty about her having fallen pregnant just as he had planned?
Over the next four days Jess was exceptionally busy both at work and at the sanctuary. She received an influx of unwanted dogs from the council dog pound. People often surrendered pets because they weren’t allowed to keep them in rental accommodation and, these days, more and more because they couldn’t afford to feed them or cover veterinary care. Cesario rang her twice, brief, uninformative calls that might have come from an acquaintance rather than a husband. Jess tormented herself with recollections of the reality that theirs was not a real marriage and never had been and maybe only now was she seeing proper evidence of the fact. Possibly the passionate nature of their relationship had blurred the boundaries and confused them both, only Cesario did not appear confused any more, she acknowledged unhappily. Cesario now seemed to be putting more than physical distance between them because he was treating her with detached and impersonal formality. She felt as if she was losing him and it unnerved her, for intelligence warned her that she had never had a normal claim to him. He had never loved her and lust was not an advantage now that she was carrying his baby.
On the sixth day after his departure, the estate manager called up to the hall to ask her to get in touch with Cesario on his behalf as he was having trouble reaching him. Jess could not get an answer on Cesario’s mobile phone, which went automatically to his messaging service, and finally she rang his head office in London, only to be told by his PA that he had taken a few days off and would not be back at work until the start of the following week.
‘Is he still in Milan?’ Jess pressed.
‘Mr di Silvestri is in London, signora,’ the woman responded in audible surprise. ‘I’ll let him know that you want to speak to him.’
Jess was shaken. Cesario had allowed her to believe that he was in Italy when he was actually in London? Her heart sank at that awareness because she could not think of an innocent explanation for such behaviour on his part.
‘There’s no need for you to contact Cesario now. I’ll see my husband before he receives any message you could give him.’ Frowning, Jess replaced the receiver and then she used her mobile to try and contact Alice. The other woman’s phone also went straight to voice-mail and when she called the landline at Stefano and Alice’s Italian home she was told that Alice was visiting friends in England.
For the second time in the space of two weeks, Jess was eaten alive by cruel and wounding suspicions. Fear flung her mind wide open to the worst possibilities. Was Cesario having an affair with Alice? Were her husband and his former girlfriend together in London? The sheer gut-wrenching pain of that apprehension ripped through Jess and suddenly she could not bear not knowing the truth. Blinking back tears she couldn’t hold back, she decided that she would go to London immediately, visit Cesario’s apartment and confront whatever she found there head-on. Would she find him there with Alice? She had to know what was going on. How could she live otherwise? How could she even get out of bed tomorrow if she didn’t know whether or not their marriage was still alive?
Although Jess was aware that Cesario owned an apartment in London, she had not previously had a reason to visit it. She drove to the local station and caught the city-bound train, thinking it was ironic that she felt nauseous for the very first time during that journey. Her emotional state of mind seemed to be seeking a physical outlet. She took a taxi to an ultra-modern apartment building and travelled up in the lift, squinting at herself in the reflective steel walls, wondering if she could possibly be as pale and miserable as she looked.
Rigo Castello let her into the apartment and there was no sign of reluctance or discomfiture on his part, which warned Jess straight off that she was not about to surprise Cesario in flagrante delicto. Straightening her spine and throwing back her stiff shoulders, she told herself that she had every right to ask awkward questions of the father of her unborn child before she walked into the airy reception room with splendid views over the city.
Cesario was outside on the rooftop terrace, striding towards the sliding doors that were wide open at the far end of the room. His black hair was blowing back from his lean, darkly handsome face. Unusually he was not wearing a business suit, but jeans and a black T-shirt that enhanced the sculpted lines of his lean, muscular body. He did not seem surprised by her sudden appearance, a reality that led her to assume that his PA had given him prior knowledge of her phone call.
‘Jessica…’ he murmured, his rich accented drawl rather flat in tone and delivery, brilliant dark eyes shrewd and distinctly wary.
‘I guess the phrase, “Fancy seeing you here” really belongs to me!’ Jess quipped loudly, determined not to show her distress either through tears or temper. ‘After all, I was still under the impression that you were working eighteen hour days in Milan!’
Cesario surveyed her levelly. ‘I’m sorry that I lied to you—’
‘But why did you lie? That’s what I want to know.’
‘I don’t think you will want to know once I explain,’ Cesario countered. ‘And that’s the main reason why I kept you out of the situation.’
Re
fusing to engage with that baffling forecast and assurance, Jess snatched in a steadying breath and then asked bluntly, ‘Were you ever in Milan?’
‘No. I’ve been in London throughout the week.’
‘With Alice?’ she prompted jerkily.
Cesario regarded her with frowning force and a tangible air of bewilderment. ‘Why would Alice be here?’
‘I thought perhaps you were having an affair with her,’ Jess advanced rather reluctantly, because it was so patently obvious from his pained expression that sexual shenanigans with his cousin’s wife had played no part in his pretence about his whereabouts.
‘No,’ he proclaimed in blunt dissent. ‘You thought wrong.’
‘Maybe not with Alice, but possibly with someone else?’ Jess persisted, unable to quite let go of her suspicions regarding his fidelity.
‘Dio mio, sex with anyone other than you has to be the last thing on my mind right now,’ Cesario responded with an impatience that dispelled her concerns in that field better than any heated denial would have done.
‘Well, I don’t know what goes on in your mind, do I?’ In reaction to the sudden release of her tension, because the spectre of Alice and that past affair had loomed like a very large threat in her mind, Jess threw up her hands in an unusually dramatic gesture and stalked over to the window. Ebony curls danced on her slim shoulders as she swivelled back to look at him, her profile taut and pale. ‘You told me you were in Milan and you were lying!’ she reminded him fiercely.
‘I have to confess that since we met I have kept a lot from you, piccola mia,’ Cesario declared.
‘Stop hinting and start telling!’ Jess flung in direct challenge, angry grey eyes bright as silver stars above her flushed cheekbones.
‘I really thought we could do this without anyone getting hurt,’ Cesario breathed in a raw undertone. ‘But with hindsight I can see now that I was depressed when I asked you to marry me. I was looking for a way out and a means of distraction—’
‘Just get to the point, Cesario!’ Jess cut in furiously, wondering what on earth he could have been depressed about, while bristling at the suggestion that marrying her had been a means of distraction. That made her sound insultingly like an entertainment act he had hired for his amusement.
‘Eight months ago, I had a series of medical tests and, with the diagnosis, life as I knew it came to a sudden end,’ Cesario revealed in a driven undertone, his strong facial bones taut beneath his bronzed skin. ‘I had been suffering from intermittent problems with my balance and vision and also severe headaches. A scan revealed that I had a brain tumour.’
Totally unprepared for the startling turn that the dialogue had taken, Jess simply stared at him and parroted weakly, ‘A brain tumour?’
‘Although the tumour is benign, I learned that surgery could leave me seriously disabled and that was a risk I was not prepared to take. I decided that I valued the quality of the life I had left more than the quantity, and I refused further treatment,’ Cesario revealed quietly.
Shock had drained the blood from Jess’s face and made her tummy flip a somersault. She was struggling to absorb what he had told her and it was so far removed from what she had expected that she was utterly stunned. ‘Your migraines…your fall last week…’
‘Caused by the tumour,’ he confirmed, his jaw line clenching at the reminder. ‘My condition has been worsening faster than I had expected and becoming unpredictable, which is why I came to London to undergo more tests this past week—’
‘You’re telling me that you knew you were dying when you asked me to marry you,’ Jess almost whispered as she finally put that scenario together for her own benefit and reeled from the ramifications of it. ‘When you asked me to have a baby with you, you must have known that you wouldn’t be here for that child while it was growing up. How could you deceive me like that?’
Beneath her hail of accusing words, Cesario had lost colour. ‘I only appreciated how selfish I was being last week when you told me that you had conceived.’
‘Selfish and irresponsible!’ Jess slammed back loudly at him, outraged and bitterly hurt that he could have kept her in ignorance of such a crucial if unpalatable fact from the outset of their relationship. ‘I knew you weren’t planning to stay married to me for ever, but I did believe that you would be available to act as father to our child…you allowed me to believe that!’
In addition, Jess was already working out that while Cesario had kept secrets from her she had been in a minority. Clearly Stefano and Alice had known that Cesario had a brain tumour. Now she understood the often anxious looks she had seen Stefano angling at his cousin. Now she knew exactly what Alice had been getting at when Jess had overheard the other woman arguing with Cesario. Alice, bless her heart, had been trying to persuade Cesario that day that he ought to tell his wife about his condition, Jess registered belatedly. Of course, she was fairly sure that Alice had no idea that Cesario’s was a marriage of convenience built on practicality rather than love and trust. And Cesario’s revelations had just blown Jess and all her misconceptions about him and their relationship right out of the water and left her floundering in alien territory.
‘Tell me everything,’ Jess urged grittily.
‘It was not a complete lie when I said I needed a child to inherit Collina Verde,’ Cesario continued grimly. ‘My grandfather did leave a complex will and to inherit I did have to name Stefano and his son as my heirs because I didn’t have a child of my own. But I used that inheritance claim as an excuse when all I really wanted was a child to leave my wealth to—without a child, everything I had worked for all my life suddenly seemed so shallow and pointless.’
And with a shrug of a broad shoulder on that grudging admission, Cesario half turned away from her. He spread expressive lean brown hands in a gesture of frustration that appealed for her understanding. ‘I thought I was seeing clearly, but my rationale was warped and short-sighted. I believed I was doing something good, something worthwhile…’
‘How could it possibly have been worthwhile?’ Jess couldn’t think straight. She had come to London to find out where she stood with the man she loved and he had thrown everything she thought she knew about him and their marriage on its head. Her heart thudding fast behind her breastbone, she studied him in growing disbelief as he unwound the tangle of falsehoods he had spread to lay the truth bare for her.
‘I saw a child as a worthwhile investment for the future I didn’t have,’ Cesario extended heavily. ‘But I was kidding myself—I was really only thinking about what I wanted, not about what truly mattered. And I wanted you from the first moment I saw you.’
But Jess was not prepared to listen to that line of argument. In concert with what he was telling her, she felt as though her own life were shattering and falling down around her in broken irreparable pieces. Nothing was as she had thought, nothing was as it had seemed. The fabulous honeymoon in Italy had been a mere passage out of time—a means of distraction—and essentially meaningless. Cesario had cruelly deceived her from the start. He wasn’t going to be there for her as a husband, or as a father for their child, or even as a former partner in another country, she registered sickly. He wasn’t going to be there for her at all.
‘Everything you told me was a lie,’ she began in condemnation.
‘And honesty is very important to you…I know,’ Cesario returned with a sardonic edge to his voice. ‘I’m not trying to minimise the effect of what I did to you. It was wrong.’
Jess settled embittered eyes on him. ‘But it’s too late for regret now. I’m married to you and pregnant!’
Cesario stared at her with deep, dark bronzed eyes and it was as if she was seeing him clearly for the first time. He was so handsome and so sexy, but he was also unfathomable, with depths that she had not even come close to plumbing, she acknowledged unhappily, feeling her ignorance bite to the very foot of her soul.
‘We can separate right now if you like. It’s not a problem,’ Cesario informed her qu
ietly. ‘I’m prepared for that.’
Jess flinched as if he had jabbed a red-hot branding iron near bare skin. She wanted to shout and scream back at him like a fishwife in response to that offhand statement, which set such a low and casual value on their marriage. It was a direct reminder of the practical agreement on which their union was based. Only fierce pride kept the tide of her rising emotions taped down and under control. He was offering her her freedom back as though their marriage had indeed only been a temporary diversion for a man whose future would be taken from him when he least expected it. He was showing her the door. He was politely letting her know that, although he had lied to her and kept her in the dark, it didn’t ultimately matter because he didn’t care enough even to try to hang onto her.
‘The baby,’ she mumbled sickly.
‘I’m sorry, I’m very sorry that I got you involved in this,’ Cesario muttered roughly. ‘I know that’s not good enough but, apart from money, it’s all I’ve got to give you right now.’
Jess lifted what shreds of dignity remained to her and dealt him a scornful smile of dismissal. ‘I don’t need your money!’
‘I’m signing the Halston Hall estate over to you this week.’
Jess was trembling; appalled by the way he was concentrating on financial arrangements for their separation when her heart was breaking up inside her and her sense of loss was dragging her down so deep and so fast she felt as if she were drowning. ‘Oh, goody, I’ll own the Dunn-Montgomery ancestral home—how fitting!’ she exclaimed with a brittle laugh, desperate to hide her pain and spinning around in an unchoreographed half circle to conceal her emotion from his keen appraisal. ‘What are you talking about?’ ‘I never got around to telling you but I’m actually an illegitimate Dunn-Montgomery,’ Jess told him in an artificially bright voice. ‘Robert Martin married my mother when I was ten months old but I wasn’t his child. My father is the member of parliament, William Dunn-Montgomery, although he will never admit the fact. He was a student when he got my mother pregnant—’