The Platinum Collection: Claiming His Innocent: Jess's Promise / A Rich Man's Whim / The Billionaire's Bridal Bargain

‘It won’t look like a normal marriage otherwise,’ he pointed out.

‘Oh, my goodness, what am I going to tell my family?’ she suddenly gasped in an appalled undertone.

‘Not the truth, for that is only for you and I to know,’ Cesario spelt out in a tone of warning.

He had just given her an impossible embargo, but Jess was already reaching the conclusion that it was better not to blurt out unwary comments around Cesario. She knew even then that she would tell her mother the truth, but that she would present it in an edited version to satisfy her father’s curiosity without making the older man feel responsible for her predicament. She breathed in deep and slow, reminding herself firmly of the positive aspects to her situation and repeating them over and over to herself in a soothing mantra. Her father would not pay the price for his stupidity and her family circle would stay intact. She would hopefully end up with the baby she had long dreamt of having and she would even have that all important wedding ring on her finger first, since her mother set great store on a woman being married in advance of the arrival of children.

So what if it was a project rather than a wedding? She could cope with that. She was very realistic and, if he was as good at everything else as he was at kissing, given time she would surely come to terms with the more intimate aspects of their relationship. Women didn’t always marry just for love, she reminded herself doggedly, and neither did men, as Cesario was about to prove. If such a marriage was good enough for him when she was convinced that he could have so many more exciting options, it should be good enough for her as well.

‘Why did you choose me for this?’ she heard herself ask without warning.

His dense lashes swooped low over his brilliant dark gaze. ‘Ask me on our wedding night,’ he advised, a piece of advice that not unnaturally silenced her.

CHAPTER FOUR (#ulink_8704141d-2a34-5739-a63e-a2d0f1fbb3fe)

‘I LIKE the dress with the full skirt best,’ Jess repeated doggedly, ignoring the raised brows of Melanie, the hip fashion stylist Cesario had hired to work with her in what bore all the hallmarks of a tip-to-toe makeover.

Jess, however, was determined to at least choose her own wedding gown. ‘It suits me,’ she added.

‘It’s very, very pretty,’ Sharon Martin agreed with unconcealed delight at her daughter’s choice.

‘Well, if you like bling,’ Melanie said drily, encouraging the saleswoman to display the dress so that the pearl-beaded bodice and the scattered crystals on the skirt sparkled in the light, her lack of enthusiasm palpable. ‘It has certainly got buckets of bling.’

Jess had surprised herself with her choice. Although her taste generally ran to the plain, she had fallen head over heels in love with the unashamedly romantic wedding gown. Melanie’s efforts to persuade her client to pick a restrained satin column style instead had fallen on stony ground.

On that score, though, it had to be admitted that Jess had enjoyed a rare victory. She had already had to accept an entire trousseau of new garments for her up-and-coming role as the wife of an international tycoon and her preferences had often been politely ignored. Cesario was a perfectionist who dotted every i and crossed every t, while Jess was someone who never ever sweated the small stuff if she could help it. And arguing on the phone about something as unimportant as clothes with a male as single-minded and accustomed to getting his own way as Cesario was, she had learned, exhausting and ultimately pointless.

It was a fact that Jess had taken virtually no interest in clothes and cosmetics since that traumatic episode in her late teens when she had decided that it was safer and much more comfortable not to dress to attract male attention. Now willing to admit that she was out of date with regard to fashion and the art of self-presentation, she had agreed to accept advice and grooming. As a result, her uncontrollable black waterfall of curls had been shaped and tamed and her brows plucked. While she could see that her appearance had improved and her hair was much more manageable, she was appalled that the time she had already had to spend in the beauty salon was now being extended into the territories of waxing, facials, manicure and pedicure sessions. Was there no end to the vanity sessions she was expected to endure? Her colleagues at the veterinary practice had pulled her leg unmercifully as the ugly duckling—as she saw herself as—was ruthlessly repackaged into a would-be swan.

Although only three weeks had passed since Jess had agreed to marry Cesario di Silvestri, the comfortable groove of her life was fast being erased. The wedding was set for a date only ten days away and Cesario had been abroad on business almost from the day they had agreed to marry. A giant diamond cluster, delivered by special courier, now adorned her ring finger and an announcement about their engagement had appeared in an upscale broadsheet newspaper that nobody Jess knew read. In response to that first public reference to her new position, a photographer had just the day before popped up from behind a hedge to take a ghastly picture of her returning to the surgery after a difficult calving, bedraggled and dirty with her hair like a bird’s nest. The subsequent picture, comically entitled Jet-Set Bride?, had appeared that very morning in a downmarket tabloid. Jess had merely pulled a face when a colleague showed it to her, because getting messed up in her field of work was an occupational hazard. Cesario, however, had requested that she meet him for lunch to discuss the matter.

‘Don’t go falling in love with Cesario,’ Sharon advised her daughter as she was being driven home, shooting Jess a troubled glance. ‘It worries me that you will and then you’ll get hurt…’

‘As it won’t be a real marriage I’m not going to fall for him,’ Jess fielded with a sound of dismissive amusement, wondering if she had made a mistake in telling her mother the truth about Cesario’s proposal of marriage.

‘Don’t you fool yourself. If you have a baby with the man, it’ll be just as real as any other marriage,’ her mother forecast ruefully. ‘And I know you. You have a softer heart than you like to show.’

‘I’m also almost thirty-one years old and I’ve never been in love in my life,’ her daughter reminded her crisply.

‘Only because you let that creep at university put you off men!’ Sharon Martin retorted with an expressive grimace that recognised her daughter’s sudden pallor and tension. ‘Cesario is a very handsome guy and I think it would be easier for you than you think to lose your head over him. You’ll be living together, sharing your lives, for goodness’ sake!’

‘But we won’t be sharing anything but a desire to have a child,’ Jess pronounced flatly, her cheekbones colouring as she made that point. She had told her mother everything and sworn her to silence for her father’s sake. Robert Martin had swallowed the contrived story that Jess had been seeing Cesario on the quiet without telling anyone and he saw no reason why even a billionaire should not be bowled over by his beautiful daughter. ‘Cesario made that quite clear, Mum. He likes his own space. He wants a child but that’s the extent of it. He certainly doesn’t want a wife who might get too comfortable in the role.’

‘I know…it’s a marriage of convenience, just like your dad and I made…’

‘Not at all like you and Dad,’ Jess protested firmly. ‘Dad was in love with you, even if you didn’t feel the same way at the time. That made a big difference. Cesario and I have already agreed to a divorce before we even get married.’

‘It’s not as easy to keep emotions out of things as you think it will be,’ Sharon retorted, unconvinced by her daughter’s arguments.

Jess watched her mother walk into her terraced house in the centre of the village before reversing her old Land Rover to drive over to Halston Hall and meet Cesario for lunch. Once Sharon Martin had adjusted to the shock of her daughter’s confidences, which Jess had presented in a very positive way, she had gotten excited by the prospect of the wedding and the very fact that her beloved daughter was about to marry a very wealthy and influential man.

Jess drove past the public entrance to the extensive parkland that Cesario had thrown open to the public. It contained a lake, a playground he had had built at great expense, wooded walks and picnic spots. His tenants, employees and neighbours were free to stage events with permission in the grounds as well. It was ironic that a foreigner like Cesario di Silvestri had already done more for the community than the Dunn-Montgomery family had done in several centuries of having owned the great house. The man she was about to marry for the most practical of reasons had an admirably public-spirited side to his nature, she acknowledged reluctantly.

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.’