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

‘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 (#ulink_da613891-56c8-54a9-ae92-35eb85779b2c)

‘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.’

‘I don’t think so.’ Unhappily reminded of a rejection that had cut her in two when she was only nineteen years old, Jess stiffened defensively. The identity crisis she had undergone during that troubled period in her life had taught her not to build fantasy castles in the air. Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t, she chanted inwardly, because she had learned to be grateful for the years of love and care she had received from the father she had once taken for granted. She would have hugged the older man had she not been afraid of spoiling her make-up. Just for once, she wanted to look perfect. There was nothing wrong with her self-esteem, she reflected impatiently, she was simply determined to grace her beautiful gown at the altar. For her own benefit, not for Cesario’s.

After all, some day she would be showing the photos that would be taken of the occasion to her child. She had to believe in that, had to keep her thoughts firmly fixed on that ultimate all-important goal of having a baby. At the end of the day, a child would be what really mattered. Only it would not quite cover the wedding night and how she felt about sharing that kind of intimacy with a man who didn’t love her.

Her tummy flipped when she thought about Cesario seeing her scars for the first time. In her opinion they weren’t that bad. There was the chance that given enough darkness he mightn’t even notice them. On the other hand, this was a guy accustomed to some of the world’s most beautiful women and in every other way he was very much a perfectionist. And she was, by no stretch of the imagination, perfect any more. Stifling the kernel of panic deep down inside her, she struggled to overcome the sudden fear that he might be repelled by her flawed body. Some people were repelled by scarring and they probably couldn’t even help reacting that way. As the car arrived to take her to the church she suppressed the rolling tide of insecure thoughts threatening to engulf her. Instead she scolded herself and acknowledged the futility of looking for trouble in advance.

Her heart was beating like thunder when she looked at the packed pews of the little flower-bedecked church of Charlbury St Helens, which lay only a hundred yards away from her parents’ home. Lack of space in the nave had meant restricting the number of guests able to see the ceremony. When she caught a glimpse of Cesario standing so tall, dark and straight at the altar, she found it hard to get oxygen into her lungs. And then suddenly and without any warning at all, and in a spirit of sharp regret, she found that she was wishing that her wedding were for real, an occasion where two people in love shared their vows for a shared and productive future. The unemotional exchange of needs that she had agreed with Cesario was on another plane entirely and just then she felt incredibly lonely. A surge of over-emotional tears stung the backs of her eyes.