Cesario strode back to her side, beautiful dark eyes lustrous, rousing a tiny scream of pain and fear inside her. How could he look so well and yet be so very far from well? Suppressing that negative thought, she sensed his uncertainty and she reached for his hand in an instinctive gesture of unity.
‘Let’s go upstairs where we’ll get some peace,’ he urged in the midst of the bustle around them, and he directed her towards the magnificent staircase.
‘There are things I have to say to you, mia bella,’ Cesario said very seriously before they reached the bedroom they invariably shared. ‘Things that I wanted to say weeks ago in Italy but which I felt then were better left unspoken.’
‘So, get them out of the way now,’ Jess urged, wondering in some apprehension what he had held back from saying to her. ‘We shouldn’t have any more secrets from each other.’
Cesario studied her intently. ‘I blackmailed you into marrying me, moglie mia,’ he intoned with regret. ‘I wanted you and I didn’t care how I got you. But no matter how you feel about it now, it was incredibly selfish of me to plunge you into this situation.’
‘You’d be surprised how resilient I am.’ Jess lifted her head high, her grey gaze soft and strong as it rested on him. ‘And, yes, you blackmailed me, but I was attracted to you as well and without the pressure you put on me I would never have done anything about it. Never mind what happens in the future; I’ll always be glad we did get together,’ she completed gruffly.
‘But I feel like I’ve trapped you now. You’re way too nice to put yourself first and walk away from a dying partner,’ Cesario derided in a frustrated undertone.
‘You may not die. You must look at the more positive angle,’ Jess breathed feelingly. ‘And I’m not too nice. If I didn’t want to be with you, I wouldn’t be here now because I couldn’t fake it, I couldn’t pretend…’
He touched her damp cheek with a gentle forefinger and looked down into her open gaze. ‘No. I don’t think you could fake what you feel either and it’s one of the things that I love most about you. What you see is what you get, but I’m still taking advantage of your good nature and loyalty—’
Jess was so tense that she might as well have been poised on a cliff edge. ‘Did you just say that you loved me?’
‘I am hopelessly in love with you—didn’t you guess?’ Cesario vented a rueful laugh. ‘I thought I was kind of obvious.’
Jess was trembling. ‘I can be a bit slow on the uptake sometimes,’ she said shakily. ‘When did you realise you felt that way?’
‘In Italy when it was a challenge just to be away from you for a couple of hours,’ Cesario confided huskily. ‘I’ve never felt like that before.’
‘Not even about Alice?’ Jess heard herself ask, and then she winced, wishing she had not let that petty jealous question escape her lips.
‘Jess, you have never had any reason to worry about the relationship I once had with Alice. I like and respect Alice a great deal but we were a mismatch. When I was with her, I was too young to want to settle down and even though I was unfaithful she never stood up to me.’ Cesario shared those uncomfortable truths and grimaced. ‘I’m not proud of the way I treated her. I only realised that I did care about her when she was gone from my life. But I never loved her the way Stefano loves her and I wouldn’t have married her because my feelings didn’t go deep enough for that.’
‘I’m sorry to keep on going on about Alice,’ Jess said ruefully as she linked her arms round his broad shoulders, her fears about the other woman finally laid to rest by his candour. ‘But when I overheard you and Alice talking the night before we left Italy it did make me wary of your friendship with her.’
Cesario frowned. ‘What did you overhear? ‘
And once Jess had explained, he heaved a groan of comprehension. ‘Alice and Stefano have known about my condition from the start, and Alice was correct when she said that I wasn’t being fair to you in not telling you. But those weeks we shared in Italy were some of the happiest of my life…and I didn’t want to sacrifice a day of that to the reality of my condition.’
That declaration made her eyes prickle with tears. But she swiftly blinked the betraying moisture back because she knew he would take the wrong message from it and return to believing that he was the worst thing that had ever happened to her when in fact he was the best. ‘I fell in love with you in Italy as well.’
‘I was ahead of you there,’ Cesario claimed, tipping up her chin with his fingers to look down into her silvery grey eyes. ‘I probably fell for you at the moment I saw you in your wedding gown at the church—you looked like my every dream come true. And that’s from a guy who never thought he was romantic.’
Jess had never felt that, for a thousand and one little and large romantic gestures had made their honeymoon special. But she smiled up at him with her heart in her eyes. ‘I love you so much…’
‘I’m never going to stop wanting you, amata mia,’ Cesario pronounced with driven sincerity, brilliant dark eyes pinned to her with adoring intensity. ‘But I didn’t want to do this to you. I wanted to make you happy, not sad.’
‘And whatever happens you will make me happy,’ Jess told him with confidence. ‘Every day we have together now is a day we wouldn’t have had, if you had succeeded in scaring me off yesterday.’
‘But it’s not fair to put you through this with me,’ Cesario groaned, unable to hide his guilty look of concern.
Jess smoothed gentle fingertips across the taut line of one high masculine cheekbone. ‘How would you feel if it was me that had the tumour? Could you just walk away?’
‘Infierno! Are you joking?’ Cesario demanded incredulously.
‘Well, then, don’t expect me to be any different. I love you too,’ she reminded him. ‘I want to be with you, whatever happens.’
And in a flood of passionate appreciation that he could not hide from her, Cesario covered her mouth with his and kissed her breathless. She trailed his jacket off in the midst of it, embarked on undoing his shirt buttons and spread loving hands over the warmth of his hair-roughened torso. His lean, strong body was urgent and aroused against hers and she shut out the negative thoughts that lurked ready to threaten her happiness.
The man she loved loved her back with the same heat and passion and, for now, that was enough for her. She would take happiness where she could find it and make the most of every moment with him.
Rio, named Cesario at birth after his father, kicked the ball and it hit a window with a loud thump followed by the noise of shattering glass.
‘Mamma!’ he yelled in dismay.
Jess, who had been sitting in the shade of the loggia, rose to her feet and hurried along the terrace to ensure that her son stayed well away from the broken glass while shooing away the dogs at the same time. She checked his clothing for tiny shards, moved him well clear of the debris and then smiled at Tommaso. Having returned the ball, the older man, a long look of calm resignation on his face, was already advancing with a brush and shovel to clear up the mess. It was expected that a lively little boy would practise his football moves and, at five years old, boys didn’t come much livelier than Rio.
He was blessed with his father’s lustrous dark eyes and his mother’s black curls; his decided appeal made it very likely that some day he would be a heartbreaker as well. Born a week after his due date in a straightforward delivery, Rio had delighted his mother from the first moment he’d drawn breath and motherhood had more than lived up to all her expectations, though been rather more tiring than she had appreciated. Although Rio had been a very good-natured baby he had also required little sleep and after more interrupted nights than she still cared to recall Jess had been glad to have the support of a good nanny. Having inherited his parents’ stubborn streak, determination and intelligence, Rio could be a handful.
Her