by Lynne Graham
‘But you still look at me like a starving kid in a candy shop. That hasn’t changed.’
A shaken surge of outrage swept over Frankie.
‘What has changed,’ Santino murmured with velvetsmooth emphasis, ‘is that I no longer feel that I will be taking unfair advantage of an innocence which I now assume to be long gone...’
As his imperious dark head turned slightly, as if in question on that point, Frankie snarled, ‘What do you think? Do you fondly imagine that the sight of you snogging the life out of that brassy blonde tart put me off sex for ever?’
Santino froze.
Frankie straightened her shoulders like a bristling cat, all danger of tears now banished. ‘Yes, I expect you did think that. I suppose you think you broke my heart too...well, you didn’t! I got over my crush on you in one second flat and, believe me, I didn’t waste any time in finding a man who did want me—’
‘Let’s skip the gory details of your deflowering,’ Santino interposed glacially.
Frankie flushed and dropped her head, ashamed of that outburst, particularly when it was all lies. Santino’s rejection of her love had savaged her ego and made her extremely wary of trusting any man again. She had had boyfriends, of course she had, but physical intimacy had featured in none of those brief relationships. She had never met anyone she wanted as much as she had once wanted Santino and, quite frankly, she had been in no hurry to make herself that vulnerable again.
‘Your family believe that you have been pursuing your education in the UK.’
Frankie was startled. ‘You kept in touch with them?’
‘Naturally. As far as they’re concerned, I’m still your husband; I’m family too,’ Santino extended gently.
Her husband. The designation and the awareness of the devastating choice he had forced on her earlier tensed every muscle in Frankie’s body. Three weeks in Sardinia with Santino. Her brain went into stunned suspension. She swallowed hard. She just could not imagine going to bed with Santino. She could not even imagine Santino wanting to go to bed with her. This was, after all, the same male who had held her at arm’s length and treated her like a kid sister during the six months they had lived under the same roof as man and wife.
Frankie had been tormented by the awareness that they were not properly married until the legal bond was consummated in the flesh. From the outset, Santino had slept in the bedroom next door. She hadn’t been able to understand his extraordinary reluctance to do what Teresa had once sourly warned her all men were all too willing to do given the opportunity. And she had been too ashamed of her own obvious lack of attraction to share the humiliating secret of their separate sleeping arrangements with anyone else.
But in her innocence it had still not occurred to her that Santino might simply be satisfying his sexual appetite elsewhere. Her trust had been absolute. And she would never have found out that he had another woman in his life had she not decided to surprise him by showing up to visit him mid-week in Cagliari.
A neighbour had given her a lift to the railway station and she had caught the train the rest of the way. But she had been too intimidated by the bank to go in and actually ask for Santino. It had been lunchtime, and while she had hung around outside, trying to pluck up the courage to go inside, Santino had emerged, laughing and talking with a beautiful blonde woman. He hadn’t even noticed Frankie and, disconcerted by the presence of his companion, Frankie had let them walk past. Then, scolding herself for her hesitation, naively assuming that he was merely chatting to a colleague, she had set out after them and followed them across the street. They had vanished into an elegant apartment block.
Intercepted by the security guard who asked her to explain her business, Frankie had watched in frustration as Santino and his companion strolled into the lift. And then she had watched in sick, disbelieving shock as their two bodies had merged and they’d kissed with the passionate impatience of lovers eager to be alone and out of sight of prying eyes. A split second before the doors had glided shut, Santino had lifted his beautiful dark head and seen Frankie. She would never forget the look of angry, guilty regret that had flashed across his savagely handsome features...
Dear heaven, she reflected now, five years older and wiser, and cringing from the memory of her own stupidity. Until that moment in the lift, she had sincerely believed that their marriage was a real one and that Santino had made a genuine commitment to her. But from the start Santino had naturally been planning on an annulment to regain his freedom. ‘A child-bride stashed away in the mountains’, he had called her. An embarrassing secret and, without doubt, an often exasperating and much resented responsibility...
Afternoon was fading into evening as they passed through the sleepy hill villages with their olive groves and vineyards enclosed by prickly pear hedges. As the mountain road climbed higher, the tree cover grew steadily more sparse. The pasture land took on a wild and desolate grandeur enlivened only by wandering sheep and the shepherds’ rough brushwood pens. They finally reached the bare plateau and then slanted off the road onto the long, rough, steeply descending track which eventually led down into Sienta.
Stiff as a broom handle, Frankie stared out at the familiar sights all around her. Apple orchards and mature chestnut and oak trees ringed the village in its sheltered valley setting. Tiny terraced houses, their walls covered with vines, lined the sloping, twisting single street. Santino parked outside Gino Caparelli’s home in the centre of the village and turned to look at her expectantly.
‘Well, what are you waiting for?’ he asked.
Frankie climbed out with the slowness of extreme reluctance. Then she saw her great-aunt Maddalena peering anxiously from the open doorway. Momentarily unsure of herself, she stilled, and then, without warning, a surge of overwhelming emotion engulfed her. Within seconds she was enfolded tearfully in the little woman’s arms, crying and struggling to converse in a language which she had believed she had forgotten but which returned surprisingly easily to her lips.
‘Come in...come in out of the street,’ Teresa urged from behind her tiny sister. ‘You will have all our neighbours watching us.’
And then her grandfather was before her, greeting her with a more formal embrace, pressing a salutation to her brow and then setting her back from him, frowning dark eyes below beetling white brows inspecting her. ‘I would not have received you back into this house without your husband.’ Gino Caparelli admitted he knew the truth behind her long absence without apology. ‘But now you are back where you belong, by his side.’
Frankie’s days of arguing with her grandfather’s lofty pronouncements were far behind her. She coloured and said nothing, overwhelmed by the warm acceptance of her welcome after five years of silence. Right at that moment it felt like more than she deserved and she was humbled by the experience.
Furthermore, she was seeing things she hadn’t seen in her teens, when her every thought had been exclusively centred on Santino and escape from Sienta. She saw the suspicious brightness and satisfaction in the older man’s eyes and then the hurt look of rejection stiffening Teresa’s thin face. Darting over, she wrapped her other great-aunt in a belated and guilty hug.
‘Bring Santino a glass of wine,’ Teresa instructed Maddalena with a rare smile as she detached herself again. ‘I will show Francesca round the house.’
Frankie frowned, not comprehending why that should be necessary until she saw Santino and her grandfather walk out to the little courtyard beyond the parlour. She moved to the doorway, looking out in surprise at the table and chairs and the decorative climbing plants which now beautified the once unlovely space reserved for housing Gino’s fierce old sheepdog.
‘When the Festrinis sold up next door, your grandfather bought their house and joined it to ours,’ Teresa announced with pride. ‘We have four bedrooms now.’
‘But where on earth did Nonno get the money to do that?’ Frankie prompted in astonishment.
‘Gino manages all Santino’s land round the village and w
e look after your house,’ Maddalena chipped in cheerfully. ‘We live very comfortably now.’
In a daze, Frankie let herself be carried through to the enlarged kitchen, with its smart new stove, and on up the stairs to inspect the pristine little bathroom which was clearly Teresa’s pride and joy. The tour then took in the bedrooms, all of which were small and very simply furnished.
‘This is where you and Santino will sleep tonight,’ Maddalena informed her shyly, opening a door on a room mostly filled with a bed.
Prodded over the threshold to admire the pretty flower arrangement on the windowsill and the fresh white cotton spread on an old-fashioned wrought-iron bed that was definitely no more than four feet wide, Frankie found it a challenge to come up with the proper appreciative comments. The prospect of sharing that undersized bed with Santino deprived Frankie of all composure and strangled her usually ready tongue.
‘You blush like a bride,’ Teresa remarked with a wry shake of her head. ‘And so you should. Isn’t it time you gave that husband of yours a son?’
‘Santino wanted Francesca to finish her education,’ Maddalena reminded her sister gently. ‘Gino thinks Santino’s family must all be very educated people.’
Inwardly Francesca shrank, thinking of her humble quota of three GCSEs, until she appreciated that her lack of impressive academic qualifications scarcely mattered, for she would never meet the Vitale family in Rome. In three weeks’ time, possibly even sooner, she would fly back to London and she would never see Santino again. She could not comprehend why that fact should suddenly fill her with the most peculiar sense of panic.
‘When Francesca went to school here, her only interest was Santino. Had he written? Was there a letter for her...a parcel? When would he be visiting again?’ Teresa was recalling with unconcealed disapproval. ‘And when Santino was visiting with his uncle you needed eyes in the back of your head to watch her or she’d be wandering round alone with him like a shameless hussy. Oh, the gossip you gave our neighbours, Francesca! We were very lucky that Santino took you... What other man would have after all the talk there had been?’
Frankie’s face burned hotter than ever. Suddenly she was all of fourteen again, being sat down in a comer by an outraged Teresa and lectured about how improper it was for her to still chase after Santino now that she was growing up.
‘They’re safely married now,’ Maddalena piped up soothingly.
Safe, Frankie thought sickly. There had been nothing safe about a marriage forced on a reluctant bridegroom.
Downstairs again, she was drawn into preparations for an elaborate evening meal. The men stayed out in the courtyard drinking aged Nero wine. By then it had sunk in on her that her great-aunts believed that Santino had followed her back to the UK five years ago and healed the breach between them. They thought she had been living in London with her mother solely so that she could complete her education. But then Santino had believed that too, Frankie reminded herself uncomfortably.
And, thanks to his generosity and support, her family had prospered as never before. That acknowledgement shamed Frankie. Santino hadn’t even sold the farmhouse. He had persuaded her grandfather that his services were needed as a farm manager while his sisters acted as caretakers for the house. Without hurting their pride by offering direct financial help, Santino had given her once desperately poor family the opportunity to improve their lot in life.
From the doorway she found herself watching Santino with compulsive intensity. His luxuriant black hair gleamed in the sunshine. His chiselled profile was hard and hawkish and there was a certain restive edge to his lounging stance by the courtyard wall. Spectacular, sexy, all male. Her husband...?
His dark, imperious head turned, brilliant eyes narrowing and closing in on her like piercing golden arrows. Shock shrilled through Frankie. It was like being thrown on an electric fence. Jolted, her breath caught in her throat. Helplessly she stared back at him. It was Santino who broke that connection first. With a casual word to her grandfather, he straightened and strode forward.
‘I’ll get your case out of the car,’ he murmured huskily.
Frankie’s fingers knotted together. ‘Can’t we go back to the farmhouse for the night?’ she whispered urgently.
‘And refuse your family’s hospitality?’ Santino surveyed her hot face and evasive eyes. He laughed softly, as if he understood exactly what was going through her mind. ‘I think you know very well that that is out of the question.’
‘Santino, please—’
He lifted a lean brown hand and let his fingertips trace the taut angle of her delicate jawbone in a fleeting gesture that made her skin tighten and her tense body jerk. ‘I’ll get your case,’ he repeated softly, and walked away again.
Teresa planted a tablecloth and a basket of cutlery into Frankie’s dazed hold and shooed her out into the courtyard.
‘You have a strong man there,’ Gino Caparelli mused, openly amused dark eyes resting on Frankie’s tense and flushed profile. ‘A strong man for a strong woman makes a good marriage.’
Her wide, full mouth tightened. ‘Possibly.’
‘You have learnt self-discipline. But then Santino would not tolerate tantrums.’
Frankie’s lips compressed even more. When Santino made his mind up about something, he was as unyielding as bars of solid steel. She had come up against that side of Santino the first month they were married, when she had announced that she wanted to spend weekdays in Cagliari with him and he had asserted that he preferred her to stay in Sienta, close to her family. And nothing, not tears, not arguments, not sulks, not even pleas, had moved Santino one inch.
‘You don’t behave like a married couple of more than five years’ standing,’ Gino commented with an unexpected chuckle. ‘That tale may content my sisters, who have never left this village in their lives...but don’t worry, I am so relieved to see you with your husband again that I shall content myself with it too.’
Startled, Frankie had stilled in the act of spreading the tablecloth. Glancing up, she encountered her grandfather’s alarmingly shrewd gaze. ‘I—’
‘You are Santino’s responsibility now, and Santino could always manage you very well. With cunning, not a big stick.’ Gino nodded to himself with unconcealed satisfaction and pride. ‘What a match I made for you, Francesca...I saw his potential as a husband before he saw it himself!’
No truer word had her grandfather ever spoken. Frankie tried not to wince. Five and a half years ago Santino had been entrapped as much by Gino’s expectations and her dependency on him as by his own sense of honour. And that same trait had made Santino assume responsibility not only for her security but for that of her Sard relatives as well. Facing up to those hard facts and setting them beside her mother’s greedy self-interest, Frankie felt as though she was facing a debt that she could never repay.
‘Of course I’m going to help to clear up,’ Frankie protested a second time, an edge of desperation roughening her voice.
Piling up dishes with speedy efficiency, Teresa waved her hands in irritation. ‘What is the matter with you? You always liked to cook, but when did you ever like cleaning up? Bring your husband more wine...attend to his needs,’ she urged in reproof.
The candles were burning low on the table outside and the shadows had drawn in. Tight-mouthed, Frankie hovered with the wine bottle. Santino lounged back, listening to Gino talk but contemplating Frankie with hooded but mercilessly intent dark golden eyes. With a lean hand he covered his wine glass when she would’ve reached for it.
‘You look tired. Go to bed, cara. I’ll be up soon,’ Santino murmured with the most incredible casualness, his deep, dark drawl as smooth as oiled silk.
Frankie set down the bottle and brushed her perspiring palms down over her hips. She went into reluctant retreat, tracked every step of the way by Santino’s predatory gaze. He tipped his arrogant dark head back and a dangerous smile of a very masculine tenor slanted his sensual mouth. Her heart jumped as though he had squeezed
it and her hands clenched into furious fists of frustration by her side.
Five minutes in that bedroom upstairs and Frankie was convinced that she was looking at the smallest bed for two people she had ever seen in her life. It would barely take Santino, never mind her! Indeed, avoiding Santino in that bed would be an absolute impossibility. She pictured the sheer, frivolous nightwear in her case and almost curled up and died on the spot. Beautiful lingerie was her one secret extravagance, but she recoiled from the prospect of surprising Santino with an inviting display of scantily clad female flesh.
Creeping down the narrow passage into Teresa’s bedroom, she extracted a voluminous high-necked cotton nightdress from the comer closet. Only the most ruthlessly determined and lustful male would try to make it past all those billowing folds in a four-foot-wide bed and with the equivalent of in-laws sleeping in the rooms on either side of them. Hugging that comforting conviction to herself, Frankie finally climbed into bed.
About half an hour later, the door opened and the bedside lamp went on. She heard Santino unzip his overnight bag. She breathed in deeply. She opened her eyes just in time to see Santino peel off his shirt. Taut as a bowstring, she studied the long golden sweep of his back, watched the ripple of tightly corded muscles as he stretched. Leaving the door ajar, he strolled barefoot across the passage into the bathroom, and only when she heard the running of water and realised that he was intending to have a bath did she breathe again.
The minutes ticked away, each of them like a saw cutting at her fast-fraying nerves. Frankie lay there getting madder and madder, responding to her own tension with growing rage. Finally the bathroom door opened again. Santino strolled back in and leant lithely against the bedroom door to close it. Frankie studied him like a bristling cat surveying a fully grown tiger invading her patch. Bare-chested, with the button on the waistband of his close-fitting jeans carelessly undone, he lounged there as if he didn’t have a care in the world, long straight legs braced slightly apart.