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

      ‘Because an audit revealed that she was helping herself to the household cash and selling off wine on the sly,’ Cesario chipped in drily. ‘That’s why she was put out to grass and Tommaso was brought in.’

      Jess was shocked by that explanation. ‘But you didn’t prosecute her?’

      ‘She’s quite an age and had worked for the Dunn-Montgomery family all her life. Rather than make an example of her in my role as the new owner of the Halston estate, I thought it best to just write it off to experience and replace her.’

      They walked hand in hand back to the little hotel. Three quarters of the way across the moonlit piazza he paused and kissed her with a slow, deep hunger that made her heart crash against her breastbone.

      ‘I misjudged you,’ she confided in a guilty rush. ‘I believed all the bad stuff. I thought the very worst of you from the moment we met.’

      Cesario looked down at her in the moonlight, dark eyes gleaming above classic high cheekbones. ‘But you don’t now.’

      ‘Are you a love cheat like the tabloids say?’ Jess asked abruptly, allowing her need to know free access to her deepest insecurities.

      Cesario groaned out loud in dismay at that blunt query. ‘Is my answer going to be held against me?’

      ‘Probably,’ Jess declared.

      ‘I did cheat sometimes when I was younger and sex was still a game, but even then I didn’t lie about it or make promises I couldn’t keep,’ Cesario answered. ‘Growing up with my father, who always had more than one woman on the go, I saw the cost of that kind of deception time and time again. I’ve never wanted to live my life the same way. Screaming rows, jealous scenes and bitter break-ups are better avoided.’

      ‘Deception is the one thing I couldn’t forgive,’ Jess confessed. ‘Honesty is incredibly important to me.’

      Cesario screened his gaze, his lean, strong face hollowed by unmistakeable tension. Glancing up at him in the small hotel foyer, she surmised that she had got too serious and made him feel uncomfortable. Were her standards of behaviour too high for him? It was an unsettling suspicion. Perhaps he even suspected that she was trying to get him to make her promises and the notion brought colour to her cheeks, for she wanted nothing from him that he did not choose to give her of his own accord.

      Long after Cesario went to sleep that night, Jess lay awake by his side and wondered what their future held. Or even how far that fragile future might extend in front of her.

CHAPTER EIGHT

      A DAY and a half later, on the eve of her return to England, Jess stared down in consternation at a pregnancy test wand and its indisputable result.

      There it was, ironically, the outcome she had secretly come to fear most. Seemingly it had taken hardly any time at all for Cesario to get her pregnant and it was a discovery that ripped Jess into emotional shreds and plunged her into violent conflict with herself. She hadn’t expected to conceive so quickly and had simply assumed that it would take at least a year. One half of Jess wanted to get up and dance round the room and tell everyone and anyone who was willing to listen that she was expecting her first child. For so long she had dreamt of becoming a mother and now the opportunity had finally come her way and she knew that she ought to be feeling ecstatic.

      But the other half of Jess was cast into complete turmoil by the positive result. Would this result mean that her marriage to Cesario was now effectively over? Confronted by that threatening fear, it was impossible for her to be ecstatic or even accepting. She loved Cesario, she was not yet ready to lose him, could not see when she would ever be ready to. Would she now be returning to Halston Hall alone, there to wait out the course of her pregnancy with nothing more than occasional phone calls from the man who had fathered her child? In the circumstances, how much more involved could she expect Cesario to be in her life? The whole point of their marriage had been to conceive a child, she reminded herself bleakly. He would not have married her otherwise. Now that the baby had become reality Cesario would be free to return to his former lifestyle of wine, women and song, a possibility that made Jess feel quite sick with apprehension.

      Of course, it was perfectly feasible that the result was wrong, Jess began to reason frantically, surveying the discarded packaging and deciding all of a sudden that it looked like a cheap and unreliable testing kit. Her bowed shoulders began to rise again. She just knew that Cesario wouldn’t be overly impressed by the news that she had run her own test. She really would need to see a doctor to get a proper diagnosis and it would be much simpler just to wait until she got back to England where she could easily make an appointment at the village surgery. Her frown of worry ebbed. It would be crazy to burn all her boats at once, so she would keep the unconfirmed result of the test to herself until she had irreproachable proof of her condition, she decided, her spirits recovering from their temporary dive into the doldrums. She really couldn’t be too cautious. Wouldn’t it be dreadful to tell Cesario that she was pregnant and then discover that she had made a ghastly mistake?