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‘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
MILLS & BOON
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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