‘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 effort with your appearance at all. A woman with healthy self-esteem wants to look her best,’ Cesario contended grimly. ‘What’s wrong with yours?’
‘The level of my self-esteem is none of your business!’ Jess fielded flatly, her temper rising, as she was annoyed that he had noticed that she did not like her looks to attract attention. ‘I’m just an ordinary working woman.’
‘You work so many hours that you haven’t got time to be a woman,’ Cesario delivered, dark eyes gleaming gold with displeasure because she was refusing to accept his point of view. ‘I had no idea how long a day you worked until I began phoning you. You’re hardly ever at home and when you are you’re chasing after those animals you keep. It’s ridiculous.’
A flush of indignant disbelief slowly washing up over her face at that summary criticism, Jess shot him a furious look of resentment. ‘You said you wanted an intelligent, independent woman but obviously you lied. My career is the most important thing in my life.’
‘I thought your family was.’
The reminder sobered her but it also felt as though he were cracking a whip over her head to remind her of the terms of their agreement. Aggravated, she compressed her soft full lips. ‘If you try to interfere with my job, this arrangement isn’t going to work for either of us,’ she warned him tautly. ‘For goodness’ sake, you said you’d want a divorce in a couple of years, so why should you try to hinder my career?’
‘I also want a wife I see occasionally and you are rarely available in the evening or at weekends.’
‘Do you know what the real problem here is? You want a little wifey-slave who focuses only on her appearance and on you, a domestic goddess with nothing better to do with her time.’
‘A boudoir goddess would be more my style, piccola mia, Cesario derided with a sardonic smile. ‘You’re not being practical. At the very least, you’ll have to reduce your hours of employment to a more acceptable level.’
‘That’s out of the question!’
‘Perhaps while you remain a comparatively junior employee, but if you were to buy into the veterinary practice as a partner, you would have more control over the hours you work.’
At that unexpected suggestion, Jess rested stunned eyes on him. ‘What on earth are you talking about?’
‘I will buy you a partnership.’
‘No…no, you will not!’ Jess decreed in a shaking voice, so angry she barely trusted herself to speak. ‘Stay away from the surgery and don’t you dare meddle. My goodness, you’re unbelievable! If you can’t immediately have what you want you try to buy it!’
‘When I see a problem I come up with a solution,’ Cesario contradicted in a tone of ice-cased steel. ‘And, right now, it is obvious that you have three options.’
‘Three…options?’ Jess parroted with wrathful emphasis.
‘You allow me to purchase you a partnership, or you ask to work part-time hours or you quit altogether,’ Cesario enumerated, watching her flinch in disbelief with an impassive countenance. ‘Something has to give in your current schedule. At present there isn’t room in it for a marriage, a husband and the conception of a child.’
‘I agreed to marry you, not let you take over my entire life!’ Jess snapped back at him in raw rampant incredulity. ‘Or tell me what to do and what not to do!’
‘Madre di Dio…take a deep breath, calm down and think about what I’m saying,’ Cesario urged, stunned by the force of her fury. ‘You will have to make changes.’
‘No, I’m not about to listen to another bloody word of this nonsense!’ Jess lashed back at him, more angry than she had ever been in her life and unable to tolerate his evident conviction that he now had the right to mess about with her career. Swivelling on her heel, she headed back to the door, prompted by some sixth-sense caution that warned her to get out before she lost her temper entirely.
‘If you walk out in a tantrum, you needn’t bother coming back,’ Cesario pronounced with a chilling hauteur that hurt and stung as much as an ice burn. ‘My cousin, Stefano, and his wife are waiting in the next room to meet you at lunch.’
Jess froze and gritted her teeth like a feral cat ready to hiss and snarl in attack. He had a knack no other man had ever equalled—he filled her to overflowing with pure rage. She knotted her hands
into fists by her side, shocked by the tempest of fury gripping her and barely able to credit that she had been the most laid-back of personalities.
‘I like to deal with potential pitfalls in advance,’ Cesario asserted in soft and low continuance.
Just at that moment Jess imagined pushing him off the edge of a cliff and had the funniest suspicion that if he went over he would take her with him. She wondered in genuine horror how on earth she would ever live with him. Her narrow spine still turned to him, she breathed in slow and deep, praying for calm and composure while she reminded herself doggedly of all she stood to lose. And, embarrassingly, it was not her father’s plight that came first to mind, it was the baby she had been trying to picture at dawn that morning. A little boy, a little girl; she didn’t care as long as her baby was healthy. Her breathing began slowing in speed.
‘Obviously I’ve taken you by surprise with this.’
Grey eyes still openly alight with hostility, Jess spun back to him. ‘I live alone, I do as I like. I’m not used to anyone trying to limit me.’
A drumbeat of tension and reluctant arousal assailing him like an erotic pulse, Cesario studied her vivid and mutinous little face and marvelled that even those spiky defences of hers and the mud had contrived to keep her single and unattached for so long. For a few moments there, he had genuinely thought she would stalk out like a tigress breaking free of her cage. Her temperament was much more emotional and passionate than he had appreciated. It was a discovery that should have worried him but in reality it turned him on. Cesario was already beginning to learn the hard lesson that what he needed was not always what he wanted.