The Platinum Collection. Maisey Yates

American.

      And Cesario curved an entire arm round Jess, who stiffened before appreciating that her role of happy bride-to-be had acquired its first audience and found that she was smiling back. She cast off the weight of anger, anxiety and stress that had until that instant been weighing her down and crushing her spirits. She had come through and survived far worse than a convenient marriage, she reminded herself with stubborn resolution. Nothing that Cesario could throw at her was likely to trip her up…

CHAPTER FIVE

      ‘YOU look as pretty as a picture,’ Robert Martin pronounced, a betraying brightness to his eyes as he admired Jess in her wedding gown from the lounge doorway.

      Restive in her unusually feminine finery, Jess peered at her reflection in the hall mirror, noting that the make-up artist had done a heck of a job in giving her a youthful, dewy look, while the hairstylist had worked a miracle transforming her teeming curls into soft shiny ringlets that fell round her bare shoulders. A splendid diamond tiara worthy of a princess glittered against the dark backdrop of her hair, courtesy of Cesario, who had sent it with the information that it was a family heirloom. She smiled wryly at the memory, wondering if he had been afraid she might think it was a personal gift, because she cherished no such illusions about her bridegroom.

      Cesario di Silvestri had no plans to bring anything personal into their relationship. Her bridegroom was ruthless, ferociously self-disciplined and clever. When it came to his track record with women, he might have a very well-documented and volatile libido but in spirit Jess believed he was essentially cold. He might want a child. But that child, she was convinced, would have to look to her for the warmth of human kindness and affection. Cesario planned his every move, foreseeing every difficulty and then judging how best to deal with it. He was a control freak, a demanding personality with very high standards and expectations. Nothing less than the best would satisfy him in any field, which begged the question, why was a man who could have married any number of rich, beautiful, society women settling for a country veterinary surgeon from a much more ordinary background?

      Was her winning factor her sex appeal? Her cheeks warmed. Or was it because she had once said no and refused to see him again? Could any guy be that petty? She could not see herself as a femme fatale, but what else but her looks could have sustained his ongoing interest? Was it offensive to be that desirable to a man? She found it hard to think of sexual desirability as an accolade. After all, being a man’s object of desire had once long ago almost cost Jess her life and she shivered, suddenly chilled by traumatic memories that she very rarely allowed herself to recall.

      Her niece and nephew, Emma and Harry, four and five years old respectively, looked adorable and were the perfect antidote to her briefly dark thoughts. Emma wore a floral-print bridesmaid’s dress, while Harry was smartly dressed as a pageboy. Their mother, Leondra, who had married Jess’s youngest brother when she fell pregnant at eighteen, had agreed to act as a matron of honour, although she had complained bitterly over the lack of a hen night to mark the end of Jess’s life as a single woman. Jess had not had the nerve to tell her sister-in-law that she was expecting to be single again sooner than anyone other than her clued-up mother might expect.

      ‘If only he could see you now,’ her father proclaimed in a fond undertone while Leondra was talking to her children. ‘He would immediately regret never having known you.’

      ‘I don’t think so.’ Unhappily reminded of a rejection that had cut her in two when she was only nineteen years old, Jess stiffened defensively. The identity crisis she had undergone during that troubled period in her life had taught her not to build fantasy castles in the air. Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t, she chanted inwardly, because she had learned to be grateful for the years of love and care she had received from the father she had once taken for granted. She would have hugged the older man had she not been afraid of spoiling her make-up. Just for once, she wanted to look perfect. There was nothing wrong with her self-esteem, she reflected impatiently, she was simply determined to grace her beautiful gown at the altar. For her own benefit, not for Cesario’s.

      After all, some day she would be showing the photos that would be taken of the occasion to her child. She had to believe in that, had to keep her thoughts firmly fixed on that ultimate all-important goal of having a baby. At the end of the day, a child would be what really mattered. Only it would not quite cover the wedding night and how she felt about sharing that kind of intimacy with a man who didn’t love her.

      Her tummy flipped when she thought about Cesario seeing her scars for the first time. In her opinion they weren’t that bad. There was the chance that given enough darkness he mightn’t even notice them. On the other hand, this was a guy accustomed to some of the world’s most beautiful women and in every other way he was very much a perfectionist. And she was, by no stretch of the imagination, perfect any more. Stifling the kernel of panic deep down inside her, she struggled to overcome the sudden fear that he might be repelled by her flawed body. Some people were repelled by scarring and they probably couldn’t even help reacting that way. As the car arrived to take her to the church she suppressed the rolling tide of insecure thoughts threatening to engulf her. Instead she scolded herself and acknowledged the futility of looking for trouble in advance.

      Her heart was beating like thunder when she looked at the packed pews of the little flower-bedecked church of Charlbury St Helens, which lay only a hundred yards away from her parents’ home. Lack of space in the nave had meant restricting the number of guests able to see the ceremony. When she caught a glimpse of Cesario standing so tall, dark and straight at the altar, she found it hard to get oxygen into her lungs. And then suddenly and without any warning at all, and in a spirit of sharp regret, she found that she was wishing that her wedding were for real, an occasion where two people in love shared their vows for a shared and productive future. The unemotional exchange of needs that she had agreed with Cesario was on another plane entirely and just then she felt incredibly lonely. A surge of over-emotional tears stung the backs of her eyes.

      ‘Your bride looks gorgeous,’ Stefano remarked admiringly at his cousin’s elbow.

      And Cesario stopped playing it cool and turned to get his own view. He felt the word didn’t stretch anywhere far enough to do justice to the vision of Jessica in the full-skirted sparkling gown with a corset bodice that moulded her slim curves and defined her tiny waist. So stunning was she with her light grey eyes shining, her soft mouth unusually tremulous and full and her heavy mass of hair falling below the tiara that he barely registered the aggravation of her arriving at the altar on the arm of the man who had let thieves into his house.

      Jess met Cesario’s brilliant dark eyes and experienced a sizzling sensation in her pelvis that was unnervingly similar to an electric shock. Breathing rapidly, she averted her attention from him and concentrated studiously on the middle-aged priest’s opening preamble. The ceremony was short and familiar, similar to a number of friends’ weddings she’d attended in recent years, but she still could not quite accept that this time she was the bride. Her hand shook a little when Cesario first grasped it and she stopped breathing altogether when he slid the slim band of gold onto her wedding finger. His handsome mouth brushed her cheek in a light salutation and then they walked down the aisle, guests beaming at them as though they had done something terribly clever. She remembered to smile for the benefit of the congregation, which, aside of her mother, had no idea that she was not a normal, happy bride.

      ‘You look amazing in that dress, mia bella,’ Cesario commented during the drive back to Halston Hall where the reception was being held.

      ‘And I picked it all by myself.’ Jess could not resist letting him know. ‘The stylist wanted me to wear something plainer and more formal.’

      ‘You made the right choice.’

      Relaxing a little, Jess sighed. ‘With all this fuss going on around us, it’s hard to remember that it’s all fake.’

      Cesario frowned. ‘It is not fake,’ he contradicted.

      Fake, fake, fake! she wanted