expected to endure? Her colleagues at the veterinary practice had pulled her leg unmercifully as the ugly duckling—as she saw herself as—was ruthlessly repackaged into a would-be swan.
Although only three weeks had passed since Jess had agreed to marry Cesario di Silvestri, the comfortable groove of her life was fast being erased. The wedding was set for a date only ten days away and Cesario had been abroad on business almost from the day they had agreed to marry. A giant diamond cluster, delivered by special courier, now adorned her ring finger and an announcement about their engagement had appeared in an upscale broadsheet newspaper that nobody Jess knew read. In response to that first public reference to her new position, a photographer had just the day before popped up from behind a hedge to take a ghastly picture of her returning to the surgery after a difficult calving, bedraggled and dirty with her hair like a bird’s nest. The subsequent picture, comically entitled Jet-Set Bride?, had appeared that very morning in a downmarket tabloid. Jess had merely pulled a face when a colleague showed it to her, because getting messed up in her field of work was an occupational hazard. Cesario, however, had requested that she meet him for lunch to discuss the matter.
‘Don’t go falling in love with Cesario,’ Sharon advised her daughter as she was being driven home, shooting Jess a troubled glance. ‘It worries me that you will and then you’ll get hurt…’
‘As it won’t be a real marriage I’m not going to fall for him,’ Jess fielded with a sound of dismissive amusement, wondering if she had made a mistake in telling her mother the truth about Cesario’s proposal of marriage.
‘Don’t you fool yourself. If you have a baby with the man, it’ll be just as real as any other marriage,’ her mother forecast ruefully. ‘And I know you. You have a softer heart than you like to show.’
‘I’m also almost thirty-one years old and I’ve never been in love in my life,’ her daughter reminded her crisply.
‘Only because you let that creep at university put you off men!’ Sharon Martin retorted with an expressive grimace that recognised her daughter’s sudden pallor and tension. ‘Cesario is a very handsome guy and I think it would be easier for you than you think to lose your head over him. You’ll be living together, sharing your lives, for goodness’ sake!’
‘But we won’t be sharing anything but a desire to have a child,’ Jess pronounced flatly, her cheekbones colouring as she made that point. She had told her mother everything and sworn her to silence for her father’s sake. Robert Martin had swallowed the contrived story that Jess had been seeing Cesario on the quiet without telling anyone and he saw no reason why even a billionaire should not be bowled over by his beautiful daughter. ‘Cesario made that quite clear, Mum. He likes his own space. He wants a child but that’s the extent of it. He certainly doesn’t want a wife who might get too comfortable in the role.’
‘I know…it’s a marriage of convenience, just like your dad and I made…’
‘Not at all like you and Dad,’ Jess protested firmly. ‘Dad was in love with you, even if you didn’t feel the same way at the time. That made a big difference. Cesario and I have already agreed to a divorce before we even get married.’
‘It’s not as easy to keep emotions out of things as you think it will be,’ Sharon retorted, unconvinced by her daughter’s arguments.
Jess watched her mother walk into her terraced house in the centre of the village before reversing her old Land Rover to drive over to Halston Hall and meet Cesario for lunch. Once Sharon Martin had adjusted to the shock of her daughter’s confidences, which Jess had presented in a very positive way, she had gotten excited by the prospect of the wedding and the very fact that her beloved daughter was about to marry a very wealthy and influential man.
Jess drove past the public entrance to the extensive parkland that Cesario had thrown open to the public. It contained a lake, a playground he had had built at great expense, wooded walks and picnic spots. His tenants, employees and neighbours were free to stage events with permission in the grounds as well. It was ironic that a foreigner like Cesario di Silvestri had already done more for the community than the Dunn-Montgomery family had done in several centuries of having owned the great house. The man she was about to marry for the most practical of reasons had an admirably public-spirited side to his nature, she acknowledged reluctantly.
Aware that her heart was thumping so fast it left her breathless, Jess climbed out of her car and headed for the arched front doors of the hall. She was already running through a mental checklist. The engagement ring was in place, her hair tidy and she was dressed in an elegant pair of trousers teamed with a lace-edged grey cashmere twinset. All she lacked was a set of ladylike pearls and the thought made her grin. That morning she had barely recognised her reflection in the mirror. Being married to Cesario was going to be like taking on a new and taxing job with different rules from those she was accustomed to following.
Tommaso greeted her with his usual enthusiasm and swept her through to a reception room a little less opulent than the drawing room.
‘Jessica…’ Cesario strolled towards her with the pure predatory grace that always contrived to draw her attention to the lean, well-balanced flow of his powerful body.
The instant her gaze found his lean, darkly handsome features she remembered the heat and taste of that wide sensual mouth on hers and hot pink warmed her cheekbones. He was too good-looking, way too good-looking, she thought in vexation, meeting dark deep-set golden eyes fringed by ebony lashes longer than her own. She felt as if a stream of liquid fire were slowly travelling from the tautening tips of her breasts down into her pelvis to create a pool of wicked waiting warmth there. It was an unnerving sensation and it overpowered her earlier sense of being in control.
Cesario ran his intent scrutiny over her petite figure, now enhanced by garments that actually fitted her delicate proportions; he was entranced by the beauty of her fine-boned face and the lush heaviness of the ebony curls now falling round her cheekbones. ‘You look amazing…’
‘I think that’s a major exaggeration,’ Jess told him awkwardly, hugely uncomfortable with the compliment.
‘Not when you compare it to this,’ Cesario remarked drily, lifting the newspaper lying on the coffee table to display the photo of her in muddy bespattered clothing and wellington boots. ‘How can you let yourself be seen out and about looking like that?’
That question hit Jess like a slap in the face and she bridled, tipping her head back to stare at him. ‘I had just spent three hours at a calving. The calf was dead but the mother just survived. I was filthy and exhausted—that’s what my working day is like sometimes.’
‘In your role as my future wife I will expect you to consider your image,’ Cesario drawled as smoothly as though she had not spoken up in her own defence.
Jess’s chin took on a defiant angle. ‘I can’t help it if a photographer lies in wait to catch me looking my worst. I couldn’t care less about that sort of silly stuff.’
‘We do not need to discuss this. The bottom line is that I will not accept you appearing in public looking like a tramp,’ Cesario informed her in a tone of cold finality.
‘Then we’ve got a big problem,’ Jess countered, refusing to yield an inch of ground in the face of his unjust censure. ‘My job is often dirty and I often have to work outdoors. I have no intention of giving my job up just so that I can always look like a perfect doll for your benefit.’
‘I’m not asking you to look like a doll,’ Cesario fielded in exasperation, marvelling that she could be so indifferent to appearing in print in such a state.
‘Then how is it that after only three weeks of being engaged to you, I already feel like a dress-up doll? You seem to think I have nothing better to do with my time than shop or sit in a beauty salon enduring endless time-wasting treatments,’ Jess condemned thinly, her grey eyes darkening with anger to the colour of steel, because she felt he was being most unfair when she had already obediently jumped through so many hoops to smarten up.
‘Until I intervened you made no