Читать книгу The Platinum Collection: Claiming His Innocent: Jess's Promise / A Rich Man's Whim / The Billionaire's Bridal Bargain - Линн Грэхем, LYNNE GRAHAM - Страница 14

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?