‘All right, tell me. How could I help you?’

‘I would like to have a child, but not in the conventional way,’ Cesario explained wryly, his lean aquiline profile taut as she gazed back at him, fine brows rising in surprise. ‘I’ve never been convinced that I can meet one woman and spend the rest of my life with her. On the other hand I believe I could handle a marriage that had a more practical foundation.’

Jess was now frowning more than ever as she struggled to follow what he was telling her. ‘How can a marriage be practical?’ she asked him uncertainly, convinced that in some way she had misunderstood, because she found it hard to believe that he could possibly be discussing the subject of marriage with her.

‘When it’s a straightforward contract, freed from flowery ideals and expectations like love, romance and permanence,’ Cesario outlined with unconcealed enthusiasm. ‘If you will agree to have a child with me I will marry you, give you your freedom back within a couple of years, and ensure that you need never worry about money again.’

SECRETLY PREGNANT

With this ring, I claim my baby!

The amazing trilogy

by best-selling Modern™ author

Lynne Graham

The charming and pretty English village of

Charlbury St Helens is home to three young women

whose Cinderella lives are about to be turned upside

down…by three of the wealthiest, most handsome and

impossibly arrogant men in Europe!

Jemima, Flora and Jess aren’t looking for love,

but all have babies very much in mind.

Jemima already has a young son,

Flora is hoping to adopt her late half-sister’s

little daughter, and Jess just longs to be a mum.

But whether they have or want a baby,

all the girls must marry ultimate alpha males

to keep their dreams…and Alejandro,

Angelo and Cesario are not about to be tamed!

SECRETLY PREGNANT

NAÏVE BRIDE, DEFIANT WIFE:

Jemima and Alejandro’s story

FLORA’S DEFIANCE:

Flora and Angelo’s story

JESS’S PROMISE:

Jess and Cesario’s story

JESS’S PROMISE

LYNNE GRAHAM

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CHAPTER ONE

CESARIO DI SILVESTRI could not sleep.

Events in recent months had brought him to a personal crossroads, at which he had acted with innate decisiveness: he had stripped the chaff from his life in order to focus his energy on what really mattered, only to appreciate that, while he had worked tirelessly to become an extraordinarily wealthy tycoon, he had put next to no work at all into his private life. The only close friend he fully trusted still was Stefano, the cousin he had grown up with. He’d had many women in his bed, but only one whom he’d loved—and he had treated her so carelessly that she had fallen in love with someone else. He was thirty-three years old and he had never even come close to marrying. What did that say about him?

Was he a natural loner or simply a commitmentphobe? He groaned out loud, exasperated by the constant flow of philosophical thoughts that had recently dogged him, because all his life, to date, he had been a doer rather than a thinker: a great sportsman, a dynamic and cold-blooded businessman. Giving up on sleep, Cesario pulled on some shorts and strode through his magnificent Moroccan villa, impervious to the opulent trappings of the billionaire’s lifestyle that had lately come to mean so little to him. He filled a tumbler with ice cold water and drank it down thirstily.

As he had admitted to Stefano, by this age he would have liked to have had a child, only not with the kind of woman who cared more about money than anything else. For such a woman would only raise her child with the same shallow self-seeking values.

‘But it’s not too late for you to start a family,’ Stefano had declared with conviction. ‘Nothing is set in stone, Cesario. Do what you want, not as you think you should.’

Hearing the shrill of his cell phone, Cesario headed back upstairs, wondering which of his staff thought it necessary to call him in the middle of the night. But there was nothing frivolous about that call from Rigo Castello, his security chief. Rigo was phoning to tell him that he’d just been robbed: a painting, a recent acquisition worth a cool half-million pounds, had been stolen from Halston Hall, his English country home, and apparently the theft had been an inside job. Cold outrage swept Cesario at that concluding fact. He didn’t get mad, he got even. He paid his employees handsomely and treated them well and in return he expected loyalty. When the guilty party was finally identified, Cesario would ensure that the full weight of the law was brought to bear on him…

But, within a few minutes, his outrage and annoyance subsided to a bearable level and a grim smile began to tug at his handsome mouth as he contemplated his now inevitable visit to his beautiful Elizabethan home in England. There he would undoubtedly run into his very beautiful Madonna of the stable yard again, as his horses required her regular attention. And unlike the many women he had known and deemed to be almost interchangeable, his English Madonna did rejoice in one unique quality: she was the only woman who had ever said no to Cesario di Silvestri…and utterly infuriated and frustrated him. One dinner date and he’d been history, rejected out of hand by a woman for the first time in his life and he still had no idea why. For Cesario, who was by nature fiercely competitive, she would always be a mystery and a challenge…

A small, slightly built brunette with her long dark curly hair caught up in a practical ponytail, Jess kept up a constant stream of soothing chatter while she wielded the shears over the cowering dog’s matted coat.

The job had to be done. As the sheepdog’s painfully emaciated body was revealed Jess’s soft full mouth hardened; the suffering of animals always upset her and she had trained as a veterinary surgeon in an effort to do what she could to help in the way of welfare.

Her volunteer helper at weekends, a pretty blonde schoolgirl, helped to keep the dog steady. ‘How is he?’ Kylie asked with concern.

Jess sent the teenager a wry look. ‘Not bad for his age. He’s an old dog. He’ll be fine once I’ve seen to his sores and fed him up a bit.’

‘But the older ones are very hard to rehome.’ Kylie sighed.

‘You never know,’ Jess said with determined optimism, though actually she did know very well. The little tribe of dogs she had personally rescued in recent years were a motley group, each of which was either older, maimed or suffering from behavioural problems. Few people were willing to take a chance on such dogs.

When Jess had embarked on her first job in the village of Charlbury St Helens, she had lived above the vet’s surgery where she worked. But she’d had to find other accommodation when the practice’s senior partner had decided to expand the business and turned the small flat into an office suite instead. Jess had been lucky enough to find a run-down cottage with a collection of old sheds to rent just outside the village. Although her home was not much to look at and offered only basic comforts, it came with two fields and the landlord had agreed to her opening a small animal sanctuary there. Even though she earned a good salary she was always broke, because every penny she could spare went towards animal feed and medical supplies. Even so, in doing what she loved, she was happier than she had ever been in her life. But then she would be the first to admit that she had long preferred animals to people. Shy, socially awkward and uneasy with men after a traumatic experience at university that had left her with both physical and mental scars, Jess struggled to fit in with human beings but was totally at home with four-legged beasts.

The sound of a car pulling up outside sent Kylie to the door of the shed. ‘It’s your dad, Jess.’

Jess glanced up in surprise; Robert Martin rarely called in on her at weekends. Recently, in fact, she had seen less than usual of her father and, when she had, he had seemed abnormally preoccupied with work. As a rule, though, he was a regular visitor, who often helped out by repairing the animal housing and the fences. A quiet man in his fifties, he was a good husband and an even better dad, for, while other family members had believed that Jess had been aiming too high in dreaming of becoming a veterinary surgeon, Robert had encouraged his daughter’s dream every step of the way. His love and support meant all the more to Jess when she reflected that while Robert was the only father she had ever known he had had nothing whatsoever to do with her conception. That, however, was a secret known to few outside the family circle.

‘I’ll get on with the feeding,’ Kylie proffered, as the stocky grey-haired older man nodded to her and entered the shed.

‘I’ll be with you in a minute, Dad,’ Jess promised, bending over the prone dog to attend to his wounds with antiseptic ointment. ‘It’s not like you to call in on a Sunday morning…’

‘I need to talk to you. You’ll be at church later and you’re often on duty in the evening at weekends,’ he said gruffly, and something odd in his voice made her lift her head, her unusually light grey eyes questioning.

She frowned because the older man looked pale and strained and every year of his age and more. ‘What’s happened?’ she prompted in dismay. She had not seen him look that frightened since her mother’s diagnosis of cancer the previous year.

‘Finish up with your patient first.’

With difficulty Jess mastered the spasm of fear that had immediately rippled through her. Goodness, had her mother’s cancer returned? That was her first panicky thought and her hands shook slightly as she finished her task. As far as she was aware, though, her mother had not had a check-up scheduled and she told herself off for being so quick to expect bad news. ‘Go into the house and wait for me. I won’t be long,’ she told him briskly, suppressing her apprehension.

She put the dog into a pen where food was already waiting for him and briefly watched the animal tuck into what was obviously his first proper meal in weeks. After pausing in the bathroom to scrub her hands clean, she hurried on into the house and then the kitchen where Robert Martin had already seated himself at the worn pine table.

‘What’s wrong?’ she prompted tautly, too anxious where her mother was concerned even to put her fear into words.

Her father looked up, his brown eyes full of guilt and anxiety. ‘I’ve done something stupid, really really stupid. I’m sorry to bring it to your doorstep but I can’t face telling your mother yet,’ he confided tightly. ‘She’s been through so much lately but I’m afraid that this business will break her…’

‘Just spit it out…tell me what’s happened,’ Jess pressed gently, sitting down opposite him, convinced he had to be innocently exaggerating his predicament because she just could not imagine him doing anything seriously wrong. He was a plain-spoken man of moderate habits, well liked and respected in the neighbourhood. ‘What did you do that was so stupid?’

Robert Martin shook his greying head heavily. ‘Well, to start with, I borrowed a lot of money and from the wrong people…’

His daughter’s eyes opened very wide, for his explanation had taken her aback. ‘Money is the problem? You’ve got into debt?’

The older man gave a weary sigh. ‘That was only the beginning. Do you remember that holiday I took your mother on after her treatment? ‘

Jess nodded slowly. Her father had swept her mother off on a cruise that had been the holiday of a lifetime for a couple who had never earned enough to take such breaks away from home before. ‘I was surprised that you could afford it, but you said that the money came from your savings.’

Shamed by that reminder, Robert shook his head dully ‘I lied. There were never any savings. I never managed to put any money aside in the way I’d hoped when I was younger. Things have always been tight for us as a family.’

‘So you must have borrowed the money for that cruise—who did you borrow from?’

‘Your mother’s brother, Sam Welch,’ Robert admitted reluctantly, watching his daughter’s face tighten in consternation.

‘But Sam’s a loan shark—you know he is! Mum’s family are a bad lot and I’ve even heard you warn other people not to get mixed up with them,’ Jess reminded him feelingly. ‘Knowing what you do about Sam, how on earth could you have borrowed from him?’

‘The bank turned me down flat when I approached them. Your uncle Sam was my only option and, because he was sorry your mother had been ill, he said he’d wait for the loan to be repaid. He was very nice, very reasonable. But now his sons have taken over his business, and Jason and Mark have a very different attitude to the people who owe them money.’

Jess groaned out loud and she was already wondering frantically how she could possibly help when she had no savings of her own. That realisation made her feel very guilty, since she earned more than either her parents or her two younger brothers, yet she was still not in a position to offer assistance. But, perhaps, she thought frantically, she might be able to take out a loan.

‘The original amount I borrowed has grown and grown with the interest charges. And Jason and Mark have been at me almost every day for months now,’ the older man told her heavily. ‘Coming after me in the car when I was out working, phoning me at all times of the day and night, constantly reminding me how much I owe them. It’s been a nightmare keeping this wretched business from your mother. Jason and Mark wore me down—I was desperate to get them off my back! I had no hope of paying that money back any time soon, so when they offered me a deal—’

Jess gave him a bewildered look and cut in, ‘A deal? What kind of a deal?’

‘I was a bloody fool, but they said they’d write off what I owed if I helped them out.’

The look of overwhelming fear and regret in her father’s face was making Jess so tense that she felt nauseous. ‘What on earth did you help them to do?’

‘They told me they wanted to take pictures of the inside of Halston Hall and sell them to one of those celebrity magazines…you know, the sort of thing your mother reads,’ Robert extended with all the vagueness of a man who had never even bothered to look through such a publication. ‘You know how Jason has always boasted that he’s a really good photographer and Mark said the photos would be worth a small fortune. I didn’t see any real harm in it.’

‘You didn’t see any harm in it?’ Jess repeated incredulously. ‘Letting strangers go into your employer’s home?’

‘I won’t pretend that I didn’t know that Mr di Silvestri wouldn’t like it. I know how he is about his privacy. Of course I do,’ her father admitted unhappily. ‘But I also thought—wrongly—that there was no way anyone would ever find out that I’d been responsible for letting Jason and Mark into the house, or even that it was them who had got in.’

True comprehension finally slotted into place and Jess was impelled up out of her chair, a look of horror stamping her finely moulded features. ‘Oh, my goodness, the break-in at the hall…the painting that was stolen! Were you involved in the robbery?’ she demanded in ringing disbelief. ‘Was it your fault it happened?’

‘That same evening I gave Jason and Mark my security access codes and key card for the house,’ Robert admitted shakily, his complexion the colour of grey clay as he stared pleadingly at her. ‘I honestly believed that it was only photos they wanted, Jess. I had no idea they were going to steal anything, but I suspect now that it was all planned and I was an idiot to swallow the story they fed me.’

‘You have to go to the police right now and tell them what you know!’ Jess exclaimed.

‘I won’t need to…the police will be coming for me very soon,’ Robert countered in a bleak rejoinder. ‘I found out last night that Mr di Silvestri’s security system is so sophisticated that the IT consultant he’s bringing in will be able to tell which employee’s access code was used to gain entry to the hall and switch off the alarm. Apparently we all have individual codes, so the boss will know soon enough that it was me.’

Chilled to the bone by that news, Jess suppressed a shiver. She was appalled; there was no point pretending otherwise. Her cousins, Jason and Mark Welch, had undoubtedly set her father up to gain access to the hall. They had deliberately subjected him to continual threatening visitations about the debt he could not repay, before finally approaching him with their seemingly simple little proposition. The older man had been naïve indeed to swallow their story of only wanting to take photographs. But then he was naïve, Jess conceded painfully; an uneducated handyman on the Halston estate, who until that cruise had never travelled more than fifty miles from his birthplace or worked in any other environment.

‘Did the Welchs steal the painting?’

‘I know nothing about what happened that night. I just handed over the codes and the key card, which was put back through the letterbox before I even got up the next morning,’ he admitted heavily. ‘The week after, Jason and Mark warned me to keep my mouth shut. Later, when I spoke to them about the robbery, they insisted that they had had nothing to do with it and that they have an alibi for that evening. I’m not sure I can see them as international art thieves. I wonder if they gave the codes and card to someone else to use. But I really haven’t a clue.’

Jess was thinking sickly about Cesario di Silvestri, the billionaire Italian industrialist, the theft of whose painting her father would ultimately be held responsible for. Not a man to take such a crime lying down, not the forgiving sort either. How many people would even credit her father’s version of events? Or that he had not willingly conspired with his wife’s cousins? The fact that he had worked for almost forty years for the Halston estate would cut no ice, any more than his current lack of a criminal record and his good reputation. The bottom line was that a very serious offence had been committed.

As the older man took his leave and urged her not to mention the matter to her mother yet Jess frowned in disagreement. ‘You need to tell Mum about this and quickly,’ she objected. ‘It’ll be a much bigger shock for her if the police turn up and she doesn’t know.’

‘Stress could make her ill again,’ Robert argued worriedly.

‘You don’t know that. Whatever happens, there are no guarantees,’ Jess reminded her father of the oncologist’s wise words following her mother’s treatment programme the previous year. ‘We just have to pray and hope for the best.’

‘I’ve let her down…’ Robert shook his head slowly, his dark eyes filmed with tears. ‘She doesn’t deserve this.’

Jess said nothing, as she had no words of comfort to offer; the future did indeed look bleak. Should she approach Cesario di Silvestri and speak up on her father’s behalf? Unfortunately, when she thought about the background to her own distinctly awkward relationship with Cesario di Silvestri, that did not seem quite such a bright idea. She had gone out to dinner with Cesario once. When he had invited her, she’d had no choice but to accept out of courtesy, because of her father’s employment with him, and also because he was their most important client at the practice. Her face still burned though whenever she thought back to that disastrous evening when everything that could have gone wrong had done so. Now, she hated visiting the Halston Hall stud while Cesario was in residence. He always made her feel horribly self-conscious and her professional confidence took a nosedive around him.

Not that he was rude to her; in fact, she had never met anyone with more polished manners. She could not accuse the smoothly spoken Italian of harassment either, because he had never made the smallest attempt to ask her out again since. But there was always an ironic edge to his attitude that made her feel uncomfortable, as though she was a figure of fun in his eyes. She had never understood why he’d invited her out in the first place. After all, she bore no resemblance to the extremely decorative and flirtatious party girls, socialites and starlets who usually entertained him.

Cesario di Silvestri had a downright notorious reputation with the female sex, and Jess was very well aware of the fact. After all, her parents lived next door to his former housekeeper, Dot Smithers. The stories Dot had told of wild house parties and loose women flown in for the benefit of the rich male guests were the staples of village legend and had provided the fodder for several sleazy tabloid spreads in the years since the Italian billionaire had bought the Halston Hall estate. More than once Jess had personally seen Cesario di Silvestri with two or more women vying for his attention and she had no reason to doubt the rumour that he did, on occasion, enjoy more than one woman at a time in his bed.

So, in the light of that information, there had never been any question of Jess wanting an invitation to dine out or in with Cesario. Even without all the attendant scandal of his raunchy lifestyle, she remained convinced that he was way out of her league, both in looks and status, and she very firmly believed that nothing good could develop from a relationship based on such obvious inequality. In her opinion, people from different walks of life should respect the boundaries that kept them separate. Her own mother, after all, had paid a high price when she’d chosen to flout those boundaries as a teenager.

And Jess’s belief in that social division had only been underlined by that catastrophic dinner date. Cesario had taken her to an exclusive little restaurant and she had quickly realised she was seriously underdressed in comparison with the other female diners. He’d had to translate the stupid pretentious menu written in a foreign language for her benefit. During the meal she had struggled in sinking mortification to understand which pieces of cutlery went with which course and was still covered in blushes at the recollection that she had eaten her dessert with a spoon rather than the fork Cesario had used.

But the highlight of the evening had to have been his invitation for her to spend the night with him after just one kiss. Cesario di Silvestri wasn’t just fast with women, he was supersonic. But his move on her had outraged her pride and hurt her self-image. Had she struck him as being so cheap and easy that she would fall into bed with a man she barely knew?

All right, so the kiss had been spectacular. But the dizzy sexuality he had engulfed her in with his practised technique had unnerved her and had only made her all the more determined not to repeat such a dangerous experience. She had far too much self-respect and common sense to plunge into an affair with an impossibly wealthy womaniser. Such an imbalanced relationship could lead to nothing but grief, the results of which she had already seen within her own family circle. In all likelihood, if she had slept with Cesario that night he would have ticked some obnoxious male mental score-sheet and never have asked her out again.

In any case, in recent years Jess had pretty much given up dating in favour of a quiet uncomplicated existence. Her sole regret on that issue was that she adored children and, from her teenage years, had dreamt of one day becoming a mother and having a child of her own. Now, with her thirty-first birthday only months away, she was afraid that she might never have a baby and she made the most of enjoying her brother’s two young children. She also recognised that in many ways her pets took the place of offspring in her affections. Once or twice she had considered the option of conceiving and raising a child alone, only to shrink from the stressful challenge of becoming a single parent who already worked long unsocial hours. Children were also supposed to do best with a father figure in their lives and in such a scenario she would not be able to offer that possibility; she did not think it would be fair to burden her own father with such an expectation.

The following morning, after a disturbed night of sleep, Jess went into the surgery, where she checked on the sole resident patient, a cat with liver disease. After carrying out routine tasks, she took care of the emergency clinic, which encompassed everything from a goldfish in a bowl that was as dead as a doornail, to a dog she had to muzzle to treat and a moulting but healthy parrot.

That night she lay awake worrying about her father until almost dawn. Her mother, Sharon, had not phoned, which she knew meant that Robert had not yet summoned up the courage to tell his wife that he was in trouble. Jess’s heart bled at the prospect of her mother’s pain and anxiety once she understood the situation. Mother and daughter had always been very close.

Jess had little hope that a personal appeal to Cesario di Silvestri would help her father’s cause. After all, why would anything she had to say carry any influence with him? On the other hand, if there was even the smallest chance that she could make a difference she knew she owed it to her family to at least try. Already painfully aware that Cesario had arrived the previous evening in the UK, she accepted that she needed to make her approach to him as soon as possible.

On Tuesday she was scheduled to make a regular check on the brood mares at the Halston stud and she planned to make her move then. With her travelled half of her little tribe of dogs, for she routinely divided them into two groups and took one out with her on alternate days. Today there was Johnson, a collie with three legs and one eye after a nasty accident with farm machinery, Dozy, a former racing greyhound who suffered from narcolepsy and fell sleep everywhere she went, and Hugs, a giant wolfhound, who became excessively anxious when Jess vanished from his view.

Cesario knew Jessica Martin was on his land the instant he saw the three scruffy dogs outside the archway that led into the big stable yard. He smiled at the familiar sight, while idly wondering why she burdened herself with other people’s rejects; a less appealing collection of misfits would have been hard to find. The tatty hound was whining and fussing like an overgrown, fractious toddler, the greyhound was fast asleep in a puddle, while the collie was plastered fearfully against the wall, shrinking in terror from the noise of a car that was nowhere near him.

As his head groom, Perkins, hurried to greet him, Cesario glanced straight past the middle aged man to rest his dark, deep-set gaze intently on the slight figure of the woman engaged in rifling her veterinary bag for a vaccination shot. A glimpse of the sheer classic purity of Jessica Martin’s profile gave Cesario as much pleasure as the image of a Madonna in a fine Renaissance painting. Blessed with skin as rich and fine in texture as whipped cream, she had delicate but strong features and a luscious Cupid’s-bow mouth worthy of a starring role in any red-blooded male’s fantasies. And the footnote to that list of attributes was amazing eyes that were a luminous pale grey, as bright as silver in certain lights, and a foaming torrent of long black curly hair that she always kept tied back. She never used cosmetics or indeed wore anything the slightest bit feminine if she could help it, yet no matter how she dressed her diminutive height, beautiful bone structure and slender and subtle curves gave her an exceptionally arresting appearance.

Clad in faded riding breeches, workmanlike boots and a waxed jacket that should have been thrown out years ago, she was the living, breathing antithesis of Cesario’s usual taste in women. Cesario had always been a perfectionist and great wealth and success had only increased that natural inclination. He liked his women sophisticated, exquisitely groomed and clothed. Every time he saw Jess Martin he reminded himself of those facts and questioned the depth of her apparent appeal for him. Was it simply because she had once said no and sentenced him to a cold shower rather than the pleasure of slaking their mutual attraction? For, although she denied it and did what she could to hide the fact, the attraction was mutual. He had known it when she looked at him over the dinner table and, since then, every time she went out of her way to avoid his eyes or keep him at arm’s length. Either some man had done a very good job of souring her attitude to his sex or she had a problem with intimacy.

But his suspicions about her had not the smallest cooling effect on him while those breeches clung to every line of her slender toned thighs and the gloriously pert swell of her behind. Strip off the clothes and she would be pure perfection. As the familiar stirring heaviness at his groin afflicted him, Cesario’s perfect white teeth gritted behind his firmly modelled mouth. Per l’amor di Dio! He went from enjoying the view to exasperation because he had never been a guy happy to look without the right to touch. Lust from afar was not his style. She was not at all his type, he reminded himself brutally, recalling the dinner engagement from hell when she had turned up wearing a black tent dress and had barely talked. She didn’t even know how to speak to him. Look at her now, pretending that she hadn’t yet noticed him to put off the moment of having to acknowledge him for as long as she possibly could!

Jess felt almost paralysed by the awareness that Cesario di Silvestri was nearby. Prior to his arrival she had noted the frantic activities of the stable staff, keen to ensure that everything looked good for the boss’s visit, and she could scarcely have missed the throaty roar of his Ferrari, for, while other men might have chosen a four-wheel drive to negotiate the rough estate roads, Cesario travelled everywhere in a jaw-droppingly expensive sports car. Slowly she turned her head and looked at him while he spoke to Donald Perkins and, in that split second of freedom, she took in her fill and more.

Cesario was so gorgeous that, even after a couple of years’ exposure to him, his charismatic good looks still exercised a weird kind of fascination over Jess. With the exception of a tiny scar on his temple he was without flaw, an acknowledgement that only reminded her of her own physical scars, and which chilled her. Cesario stood comfortably over six feet tall and enjoyed the long, lean, powerful build of an athlete. Even in country casuals he looked as elegant as though he had just stepped off a fashion catwalk, as his garments were tailored to a perfect fit, enhancing his broad shoulders, narrow hips and long muscular thighs. He wore his black hair short and cropped and his skin carried the golden hue of the Mediterranean sun. His narrow-bridged arrogant nose, sleek, proud cheekbones and sardonic, sensual mouth were arranged in such a way that you looked at him and then immediately had to look back again. Turning back to her task, she wondered frantically what she was going to say to him about her father. The fact that Robert was still walking around free meant that the older man’s role in the robbery had yet to be identified.

‘Jessica…’ Cesario murmured smoothly, refusing to accept being ignored.

Flustered, her cheeks warming with colour, for he was the only person alive who ignored the diminutive by which she was known and continually employed her baptismal name, Jess twisted back to him. ‘Mr di Silvestri…’

Cesario was reluctantly impressed that she had finally pronounced his name correctly without stumbling over the syllables like a drunk. She’d simply ignored repeated invitations to call him by his first name, keeping him at a distance with her cool reserve. Then Perkins asked her advice about a stallion with a tendon injury that was not responding well to ice packs and bandaging and she accompanied him into the stables to examine the horse. Soldier was a valuable animal and the head groom should have called her in sooner to administer anti-inflammatory drugs, but Jess could not bring herself to criticise his decision to hold fire in front of his employer.

‘Jessica should have been consulted the day the injury occurred,’ Cesario commented, picking up on the oversight with ease.

Jess finished her tasks and moved slowly towards the arch that led out of the courtyard. Sadly when, for once, she would have welcomed an attempt, Cesario made no move to keep her longer by striking up a conversation. Finally steeling herself, with her backbone rigid, she turned back and said without any expression at all and a tightness in the foot of her throat that gave her voice a husky edge, ‘I’d appreciate a word with you, Cesario…’

Cesario settled brilliant dark eyes on her, making no attempt to hide his surprise at her use of his first name. Colour crept into her cheeks again as she gripped her bag between clenched fingers, fiercely uncomfortable below his intent scrutiny. Of course he was staring, one satiric ebony brow slightly quirked like a question mark because he could not imagine what she wanted. After all, she rarely spoke to him if she could help it.

‘I’ll be with you in a moment,’ he responded in his rich, dark, accented drawl.

And no moment had ever stretched longer for Jess as she hovered with her dogs beyond the archway waiting for him. Worst of all she still had no idea at all of what she was planning to say to him.

CHAPTER TWO

‘PERHAPS we could conduct this dialogue over dinner this evening,’ Cesario suggested with rich satisfaction.

The suggestion that she might be fishing for the chance to go out with him again inflamed Jess and stung her pride. She flipped round to face him, light grey eyes bright as silver with antagonism. ‘No, I’m sorry, that wouldn’t be appropriate. I need to talk to you about something relating to my family.’

‘Your…family?’ Lean dark features stamped with a bemused frown, Cesario dealt her an enquiring glance, contriving without effort to look so breathtakingly handsome that he momentarily made it virtually impossible for her to concentrate.

A prickling shimmy of sensation pinched her nipples to tautness and made her spine stiffen defensively, for she recognised that physical response for what it was and loathed it. He was a devastatingly handsome man and she was convinced that no healthy woman with hormones could be fully indifferent to that level of masculine magnetism. Her body was literally programmed to react in what she had long since mentally labelled a ‘knee-jerk response’ to Cesario’s chemical appeal. It was Mother Nature, whose sexual conditioning she could not totally suppress, having the last laugh on her.

Her colour fluctuating in response to her rattled composure, Jess sent her eyes in a meaningful sweep in the direction of the stable staff still within hearing. ‘I’d prefer not to discuss the matter out here.’

His attention locked onto her taut facial muscles and the nervous pulse flickering in a hollow at the base of her slender throat, Cesario was even more curious to find out what she could possibly be so wired up about. He was also noting in a haze of innate sensuality that her skin was so fine that he could see the faint blue tracery of her veins beneath it. That fast he wanted to see her naked, all that creamy skin bare and unadorned for his benefit. Naked and willing, he thought hungrily. ‘Follow me up to the house, then,’ he instructed, irritably shaking free of the sexual spell she could cast to swing into his low-slung sports car.

In the driving mirror he watched her coax the sleeping greyhound from the puddle up into her arms, without worrying about the mess the bedraggled animal would make of her clothes. As she settled the dog into the rear of the old Land Rover she drove her other pets fawned on her as if she had been absent a day rather than an hour. Aware she took in the local homeless animals, he had always been grudgingly impressed by her compassionate nature, even if he could not approve of her indifference to her appearance. Although she was beautiful she did not behave as if she was, and that could only intrigue a man accustomed to finding women superficial and predictable. Somewhere along the line something had happened to Jess Martin that had prevented her from developing the narcissistic outlook of a beauty and the expectation that she should always be the centre of attention.

Jess parked beside the Ferrari at the front of the magnificent rambling Elizabethan house. Built of mellow brick and ornamented by tall elaborate chimneys and rows of symmetrical mullioned windows that reflected the sunshine, Halston Hall had considerable charm and antiquity. Although Dot Smithers had on one memorable occasion entertained Jess and her mother in the kitchen quarters there, Jess had never set foot in the main house. The Dunn-Montgomery family, who had owned the hall for several centuries, and whose male heirs had been often prominent in government, had not held open days at their ancestral home. Dwindling cash resources had forced the family to sell up six years earlier. To the great relief of the staff, who had feared that the property would be broken up and that they would lose their jobs, Cesario di Silvestri had bought the estate in its entirety. He had renovated the house, rescued the failing land with modern farming methods and set up a very successful stud farm.

Dot’s male replacement, following her early retirement, a middle-aged and rotund Italian known as Tommaso, ushered Jess indoors. The splendid hall was dominated by a massive Tudor chimney piece with a seventeenth-century date swirled in the plaster above it. Her nervous tension at an all-time high in the face of such grandeur, Jess defied the urge to satisfy her curiosity and gape at her surroundings. She was shown into a room fitted out like a modern office, in surrealistic contrast to the linen fold panelling on the walls and the picturesque view of an ornate box-bush-edged knot garden beyond the windows.

‘Your family?’ Cesario prompted with a slight warning hint of impatience. Propped up against the edge of what appeared to be his desk in an attitude of relaxation, he was the very epitome of English country-casual style with a twist of elegant designer Italian in his tailored open-necked shirt and beautifully cut trousers.

‘They’re tenants of yours in the village, and my father and my brothers work for you here on the estate,’ Jess volunteered.

‘I was aware of those facts,’ Cesario countered with a wry smile. ‘My estate manager made the connection for me the first time I met you.’

Jess lifted her chin and straightened her slight shoulders, wondering if that information had originally been given to emphasise that she hailed from working-class country stock, rather than the snobbish county set. If so, the news of her humble beginnings and lower social standing must have failed to dim his initial interest, for the dinner invitation had followed soon afterwards. Stubbornly refusing to meet those gorgeous dark eyes in a head-on collision and blocking her awareness to him as she had learnt to do to maintain her composure and show of indifference, she breathed in deep. ‘I have something to tell you and it relates to the robbery here…’

With a sudden flashing frown, Cesario leant forward, any hint of relaxation instantly banished by her opening words. ‘The theft of my painting?’

Beneath that daunting stare, the colour in her cheeks steadily drained away. ‘I’m afraid so.’

‘If you have information relating to the robbery, why haven’t you gone to the police with it?’

Jess could feel her ever-rising tension turning her skin clammy with nervous perspiration. Suddenly aware that she was way too warm, she shrugged free of the heavy jacket she wore over her shirt and draped it clumsily over the seat of the chair beside her. ‘Because my father’s involved and I was keen to get the chance to speak to you first.’

Cesario was not slow to grasp essential facts and his keen gaze glimmered as he instantly added two and two. As the estate handyman, who also acted as caretaker when the hall was unoccupied, Robert Martin had long been entrusted with the right to enter the hall at any time to perform maintenance checks and carry out repairs. ‘If your father helped the thieves, you’re wasting your time looking to me for sympathy—’

‘Let me explain what happened first. I only found out about this matter yesterday. Last year my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer and it was a very stressful time for my family,’ Jess told him tightly.

‘While I am naturally sympathetic to anyone in your mother’s situation, I fail to see what her ill health has to do with me or the loss of my painting,’ Cesario asserted drily.

‘If you listen, I’ll tell you—’

‘No. I think I am much more inclined in this scenario to call in the police and leave them to ask the questions. It’s their job, not mine,’ Cesario cut across her to declare with derision, his lean, darkly handsome features forbidding as he straightened and began to reach for the phone with a lean, shapely hand. ‘I am not comfortable with this conversation.’

‘Please don’t phone the police yet!’ Jess exclaimed, grey eyes wide with urgency as she moved forward suddenly, appearing as if she was trying to physically impose her slight body between him and the telephone. ‘Please give me the chance to explain things first.’

‘Get on with the explanation, then,’ Cesario advised curtly, leaving the phone untouched, while surveying her with dark eyes flaming bronze with suspicion and anger. Even so, on a primitive masculine level he was already starting to get a kick out of her pleading with him. The tables had been turned with a vengeance, he savoured with satisfaction. She was no longer treating him to frozen silence or looking down that superior little nose of hers at him.

‘Dad was worried sick about Mum and he wanted to take her away for a holiday after she finished her treatment, but he had to borrow the money to do so. Unfortunately he borrowed it from my uncle at an extortionate rate of interest.’ Stumbling in her eagerness to tell the whole story, Jess outlined her father’s efforts to deal with being pressed for his debt, followed by the approach and the offer made by her cousins.

‘This is your family you’re talking about,’ Cesario reminded her dulcetly, marvelling at what she was willing to tell him about her less than scrupulous relations. For the first time it genuinely struck him that, for all her educational achievements, she truly was, unlike him, from the other side of the tracks.

‘My mother’s brother was in and out of prison for much of his life. He doesn’t much care how he makes his money as long as he makes it. But his sons have never been in serious trouble with the police.’ Her cheeks burned red with embarrassment as she filled in the disagreeable facts. ‘My father believed what he was told—that Jason and Mark only wanted to get into this house to take photos which they could sell.’

Cesario dealt her a withering appraisal. ‘This property is full of valuable antiques and art works. Are you seriously expecting me to believe that any man could be that stupid?’

‘I don’t think my father’s stupid, I think he was simply desperate to do what they asked and be free of that debt. He was frantically trying to protect Mum from the distress of finding out how foolish he had been,’ Jess confided ruefully. ‘I don’t believe he thought beyond that and what he did was very wrong. I’m not trying to excuse his behaviour. He’s had access to this house for many years because he was a trusted employee and in acting as he did he betrayed your trust, but I’m convinced that my cousins intentionally targeted him.’

His handsome mouth taut with angry constraint, Cesario studied her grimly. ‘It is immaterial to me whether your father was deliberately set-up or otherwise. Your mother’s illness, the debt that ensued…those are not my concerns. My sole interest is in the loss of my painting and unless you have information to offer about how it might be recovered and from whom…’

‘I’m afraid that I don’t know anything about that and nor, unfortunately, does my father. His only function that evening was handing over his key card and the codes for the alarm.’

‘Which makes him as guilty as any man who conspires with thieves and provides them with the means of entry to private property,’ Cesario pronounced without hesitation.

‘He honestly didn’t know that anything was going to be stolen! He’s an honest man, not a thief.’

‘An honest man would not have allowed the men you described into my home to do as they liked,’ Cesario derided. ‘Why did you make this approach to me? What response did you expect from me?’

‘I hoped that you would accept that Dad was entirely innocent of the knowledge that a crime was being planned.’

His sardonic mouth curled. ‘I have only your word for that. After all, there was a robbery and it would not have happened had your father proved worthy of the responsibility he’d been given.’

‘Look, please listen to me,’ she urged with passionate vehemence, her pale grey eyes insistent. ‘He’s not a bad man, he’s not dishonest either, and he’s devastated by the loss that his foolishness caused you—’

‘Foolishness is far too kind a description of what I regard as a gross betrayal of trust,’ Cesario interrupted in flat dismissal of her argument and the terms she used. ‘I ask you again: what did you hope to achieve by coming to see me like this?’

Jess settled deeply troubled eyes on him. ‘I wanted to be sure you heard the full facts of the case as they happened.’

Regarding her with hard cynical eyes, Cesario loosed a harsh laugh. ‘And exactly what were you hoping to gain from this meeting? A full pardon for your father just because I find you attractive? Is that what this encounter is all about?’

Her oval face flamed as though he had slapped her, colour running like a live flame below her skin as he made that statement. It had not even crossed her mind that, with the very many options he had, he might still find her attractive. ‘Of course, it’s not—’

Cesario’s handsome mouth curled with scornful disbelief at that claim. ‘Maiala della miseria…at least tell it like it is! While I may lust after your shapely little body, I don’t do it to the extent that I would forgive a crime against me or write off a painting worth more than half a million pounds. You would need to be offering me a great deal more in reparation.’

Jess was gazing back at him in shock, her soft pink lower lip protruding. ‘What sort of a man are you? I wasn’t offering you sex!’ She gasped in horror as she grasped the portent of his words. ‘Of course, I wasn’t!’

‘That’s good, because in spite of the scurrilous rumours the British tabloids like to print about me I don’t pay for sexual favours or associate with the kind of woman who puts a price on her body,’ Cesario declared with an outrageous cool that mocked her seething embarrassment.

‘I really wasn’t offering you sex,’ Jess muttered in repeated rebuttal, shattered by that demeaning suggestion.

A well-shaped ebony brow lifted above heavily lashed dark-as-night eyes that remained resolutely unimpressed. ‘So, I was just supposed to let your father off the hook for nothing? Does that strike you as a likely deal in such a serious situation?’

‘Deal? What deal? You’re talking like my cousins now. You have a sordid mind,’ Jess condemned chokily, her mortification extreme as she snatched up her jacket and began to fight her way into its all-concealing folds. The remainder of her speech emerged in breathless spurts of smarting pride and resentment. ‘For your information, I don’t sleep around and sex isn’t something I would treat like a currency or…or a takeaway meal. In fact…’

Unexpectedly amused by her bristling, blushing fury and the discovery that she was much more of a prude than he had had previous cause to suspect, Cesario was striving not to picture her creamy, curvy little body writhing in ecstasy on his silk sheets because he was well aware that that was most probably a fantasy designed to go unfulfilled. ‘I’m delighted to hear it.’

‘I’m a virgin!’ That admission just leapt off Jess’s heated tongue and she froze, appalled that she had let that little-known fact slip. ‘Not that that has any relevance when I wasn’t offering you sex anyway,’ she continued, striving to bury her too intimate confession in a concealing flood of words. ‘But I admit that I would have offered you virtually anything else to get my father off the hook. I am desperate…’

She lifted her dark head to find Cesario staring back at her with raw incredulity. ‘A virgin—you can’t be at your age!’

Jess dug hands clenched into fists deep into her pockets and tilted up her chin in defiance of his disbelieving scrutiny. ‘I’m not ashamed of it. Why would I be? I didn’t meet the right person, it just never happened, and I can live with that.’

But Cesario was not sure he could live with the new and tantalising knowledge that she had given him. Suddenly he believed he had finally discovered the source of her discomfort in his radius. Naturally he had assumed she was much more experienced with men and he had treated her accordingly that one evening they had shared. He had probably come on too strong, frightened her off…or very probably his notorious reputation with her sex had done it for him, he reflected in sudden exasperation. Jessica Martin was untouched and, although he had never had a virgin in his bed before, he knew there and then that he would still very much like to be the male who introduced her to that essential missing element in her life. Feeling the taut, charged heaviness of sexual response at his groin in answer to that beckoning tide of erotic imagery, he suppressed a curse and straightened, willing his too enthusiastic body back under firm control again.

‘Look, there must be something I can say to you…something I can do to change your mind about Dad’s role in this horrible business,’ Jess reasoned frantically, literally feeling him disengage from her in the remote set of his shielded eyes and the harsh lines of his lean bronzed features. She was on the edge of panicking. He had asked her what she expected from him and she honestly didn’t know. He had not responded with the understanding that she had hoped to ignite with her explanation about her mother’s illness and her father’s deeply troubled state of mind. He had not responded in the slightest: it had been like crashing into a stone wall at a hundred miles an hour. She had crashed and burned, her persuasive abilities clearly not up to so steep a challenge.

Tears had pooled in her eyes and turned them to liquid silver. Cesario was not a man who responded to tears, but he was unprepared for that feminine softness in her. He had always viewed her as a tough little cookie, assured as she was working in what was so often a man’s field, confidently handling his most temperamental stallions while freezing out his every attempt to get closer to her. Yet seeing those tears he still bit back cutting words.

‘Promise you’ll think over what I’ve told you,’ she urged him in desperation. ‘My father is a decent man and he’s made a really appalling mistake that you have suffered for. I’m not trying to minimise the loss and distress that you have undergone, but please don’t wreck his life over it.’

‘I don’t let wrongdoers go unpunished. I’m much more in the eye-for-an-eye, tooth-for-a-tooth category,’ Cesario delivered, wondering why she was persisting when he had given her so little encouragement. Had she gone on his reputation alone, she would have been expecting him to build a gallows for her father out on the front lawn to stage a public execution. A hard-hitting businessman, he had never had a name for compassion.

‘Please…’ Jess repeated doggedly, standing by the door as he stopped her advance with one assured hand and reached in front of her to open the door for her with the easy display of effortless courtesy that came so naturally to him. Of course, such smooth civility was totally unfamiliar to her. Her brothers would have broken their necks to get through the door ahead of her and her father had never been taught any such refinements.

‘I’m not going to change my mind, but I won’t call in the police to tell them what you’ve told me until tomorrow morning,’ Cesario intoned, questioning why he was even willing to cede that breathing space.

From the front hall he watched her drive off in her noisy ancient four-wheel drive. There must be…something I can do to change your mind…I’m desperate…I would have offered you virtually anything else to get my father off the hook. And finally he thought about the only thing he really wanted that he couldn’t buy and he wondered if he was crazy to even consider her in that light. Was there even enough time left in which he might fulfil that ambition?

He could have her and…Infierno, in spite of the other women he had sought out to take the edge off his frustration he still wanted Jessica Martin! Given some luck he might also be able to gain what he longed for most from her and on the most fair of terms. In a life that was fast threatening to become shadowed by a bitterness he despised, Cesario was in dire need of a distraction. A woman, the very thought of whom could keep him awake at night with sexual frustration, struck him as the perfect solution.

Of course, it wasn’t just desire that motivated him, he reasoned with native shrewdness. She had traits he admired, traits that set her indisputably above most of the women he had known in the past. She was a hard worker who was extremely loyal to her family and she had just willingly sacrificed her pride on their behalf. She devoted all her free time and cash to taking care of animals other people didn’t want. Even his wealth, such a magnetic draw to others of her sex, had failed to tempt her into his bed. She was not, by any stretch of the imagination, a gold-digger. Indeed she had good strong standards and he liked that about her. But would those same standards come between her and her family’s salvation? A ruthless calculating smile starting to play around the corners of his hard mouth, Cesario decided to go for the challenge and give her one last chance.

Jess was on duty until nine that evening and she was very tired and low in spirits by the time she drove home with her dogs fast asleep in a huddle in the back of her car. She kept on expecting her mobile phone to ring and for her to hear her distraught mother tell her that her father had been arrested. Cesario di Silvestri had promised to wait until the next day but she didn’t believe she could afford to have faith in that proviso because, when she thought about their fruitless exchange, she reluctantly appreciated that she had been guilty of asking him for the impossible.

Even if he didn’t personally report her father to the police, Jason and Mark certainly would if they were questioned and implicated in the crime. Her cousins would be eager to spread the blame. The painting had been stolen and there was little hope of retrieving it without the whole sorry tale of its theft being told in detail. There would also be the matter of the insurance claim that would surely be made. Wouldn’t the insurers demand assurance that every possible step had been taken to apprehend the perpetrators? So how could Cesario protect her father from being held responsible for his actions?

Letting her other, waiting three dogs out of their fenced run, Jess headed indoors. The cottage was cold and untidy. The old coal-fired kitchen stove had gone out and she sighed, hurrying off to change into clean clothes. She would grab something quick to eat and go out and tend to the animals’ needs first. Magic, her deaf Scottish black terrier, bounced round the room as though he were on springs, full of pent-up energy. In between getting changed and washed she repeatedly threw his ball down the hall for him to retrieve. Weed, a skinny grey lurcher, hovered ingratiatingly by the door. Years of loving care had failed to persuade Weed that he could afford to take his happy home for granted. Harley, a diabetic Labrador with a greying muzzle, lay quietly on the floor by the bed, just content to be with her again.

Standing by the kitchen window, Jess ate a sandwich and drank a glass of milk before heading out into the fading light of a late spring evening to take care of the usual evening routine of cleaning, feeding and watering her charges. When she finished and went back indoors, she still had to relight the stove, which always took more than one attempt. Gritting her teeth, she got on with the task.

The phone call came when she was getting ready for bed and so bone-weary that she had all the animation of a zombie.

‘It’s Cesario…’ He reeled off his name in that dark deep rich drawl of his as naturally as if he were in the habit of phoning her, when in actuality it was the very first time he had made a personal call to her.

‘Yes?’ she queried, cautious in tone as she swallowed back an instinctive urge to ask him angrily who had given him her mobile number.

‘Can you come back up to the house at nine tomorrow morning? I have a proposition to put to you.’

‘A proposition?’ Jess repeated, intense curiosity leaping high inside her to release a tide of speculative thoughts. ‘What kind of a proposition?’

‘Not the sort that can be discussed over the phone,’ he murmured crushingly. ‘May I expect you?’

‘Yes, tomorrow’s my day off.’

Jess came off the phone, her face pale and still, and then she let out an explosive whoop that startled her pets and jumped up and down on the spot in a helpless release of the tension that had held her fast all day. Evidently, Cesario di Silvestri had listened to her! That phone call had to mean that he had listened to her and mulled over what she had told him. Now, in response, he had come up with a ‘proposition’, which was really just another label for that other word ‘deal’, which she abhorred.

Acknowledging that truth, her ready sense of optimism and relief began swiftly to recede in the face of less comforting thoughts. After all, an eye-for-an-eye guy would be very unlikely to pardon her imprudent father in return for nothing. Hadn’t he said so himself? What would be in it for him? Was sex likely to be involved? With his reputation and the interest he had previously shown in her, it was difficult to believe it would not be. She winced in the cosy cocoon of her sensible pyjamas, thinking of the scars on her abdomen and back, shivering. It was little wonder that she had never been keen to strip to reveal those blemishes to a man or relive the horror of explaining what had caused them. Sex was out of the question. In any case, bearing in mind what she had read in the sleazier newspapers’ ‘kiss ‘n’ tell’ accounts made by his former lovers, she would never be able to measure up to Cesario’s exotic and adventurous habits in the bedroom.

CHAPTER THREE

CESARIO had a clear view of Jess climbing out of her old Land Rover with several dogs leaping out in her wake.

She had said it was her day off and he had naturally assumed she would dress up for the occasion. Smarten up for their meeting even a little? Surely that was a normal expectation? But she was wearing jeans and a T-shirt roomy enough to fit him below a tweedy woollen cardigan that would not have shamed a scarecrow. Nothing she wore fitted or flattered. He clenched his even white teeth, acknowledging that if, against all the odds, they contrived to reach an agreement, there was definitely going to have to be a lot of compromise on both sides of the fence. She might not do couture, but he definitely didn’t do dog hairs.

Tommaso beamed at Jess as if they were old friends and showed her into an imposingly large reception room decked out with almost rock-star glamour in dramatic shades of black and purple. Sumptuous velvet sofas, glass tables and defiantly modern art set the tone. A few minutes later, the older man reappeared with a tray of coffee and biscuits and assured her that his employer would be with her very shortly.

‘Business…always business,’ he lamented, mimicking a phone to his ear with one hand and rolling his eyes with speaking disapproval.

So jumpy that she couldn’t sit still, Jess lifted her cup of coffee and wandered over to examine a colourful painting, struggling to work out if what looked vaguely like a weird face really was meant to be a face. Her taste in art was strictly traditional and very much confined to country landscapes and animal portraits. She would not have given houseroom to Cesario’s valuable collection of contemporary art. Her mobile phone trilled and she dug it out one-handed, hastening over to a side table to set down her coffee once she realised that it was her mother, Sharon, calling.

Sharon was in floods of tears, which made it hard to distinguish what she was saying, but Jess soon picked up the gist. Her father had bared his soul over breakfast and had then beat a very fast masculine retreat from the questions and reproaches hurled at him in the aftermath of his confession. Her mother was in emotional bits, convinced her husband was on the brink of being dragged off to prison for his part in the robbery at the hall.

‘That stupid holiday…all this over that stupid holiday I could very well have done without!’ Sharon sobbed heartbrokenly. ‘And we’ll lose the house into the bargain…’

Jess’s brows pleated. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘Well, Mr sodding di Silvestri is not going to let us stay in one of his properties after what your father’s done to him, is he?’ Sharon wailed. ‘I’ve lived here since I was eighteen and I couldn’t bear to lose my home too. And what about your brothers’ jobs on the estate? Mark my words, Martin faces won’t fit at Halston Hall any more and some way will be found to get rid of us all!’

Jess said what she could to calm her down but Sharon was an emotional woman and a natural pessimist. In Sharon’s mind the worst that could happen had happened, and she and her family were already homeless, jobless and broke. Having promised that she would call in later that morning, Jess finally got off the phone and found Cesario watching her from the doorway.

For a split second, she just stared, totally unnerved to find herself the target of that silent scrutiny. Formally clad in a dark business suit and vibrant silk tie, Cesario was effortlessly elegant and intimidating, only the shadow of dark stubble around his strong jaw line making it clear that his morning had commenced at a much earlier hour. She had always thought he was very good-looking but at that moment he looked stunningly handsome, his need for a shave adding a sexy rough edge to his usual immaculate appearance.

‘My mother…my father finally worked up the courage to tell her what he had done,’ Jess explained awkwardly as she put away her phone, her cheeks pink from her thoughts. ‘She’s very upset.’

‘I’m sure she must be.’ Cesario noted the level of stress etched in the tightness of her delicate features. It was an immediate source of satisfaction to him that it was within his power to banish that anxiety from her life. He had lain awake half of the night working out exactly what he wanted and what would work best: a simple straightforward arrangement free of demanding emotions and unrealistic hopes. In the most essential way they would each retain their independence.

‘You mentioned a proposition…’ she muttered nervously, digging her hands into her pockets, unable to conceal her tension from him

‘Hear me out before you give me an answer,’ he advised her quietly, registering that, in spite of her unprepossessing clothing, when she looked directly at him she looked so amazingly young and lovely that it was an effort for him to recall what he had planned to say to her. ‘And remember that by the time our agreement would come to an end you would be in a most advantageous position.’

She was mystified by that assurance and reference to an agreement, her smooth brow indented, her confusion palpable. But, keen to hear what he had to say, she nodded slowly.

Cesario viewed her with hooded eyes. ‘At its most basic, I have come up with a way in which you could help me and in return I would not prosecute your father.’

Eyes wide and hopeful, Jess snatched in an audible breath. ‘All right, tell me. How could I help you?’

‘I would like to have a child but not in the conventional way,’ Cesario explained wryly, his lean aquiline profile taut as she gazed back at him, fine brows rising in surprise. ‘I’ve never been convinced that I can meet one woman and spend the rest of my life with her. On the other hand I believe I could handle a marriage that had a more practical foundation.’

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