The Reluctant Husband

by Lynne Graham

  ‘I’m with Santino, Mum,’ Frankie framed shakily, because she was beginning to feel pretty emotional herself. ‘You shouldn’t have got the police involved...for heaven’s sake...’

  ‘If you’re with Santino, then you’ll know everything,’ Della gathered in a strained undertone, and then she went off the line to plead audibly for some privacy. ‘Frankie?’ she began afresh.

  ‘I was shocked enough to find out that Santino and I were still legally married, but I was devastated when I found out about his financial stake in our lives,’ Frankie admitted tautly. ‘Della, how could you?’

  ‘I couldn’t just stand back and allow you to have your marriage annulled. It would’ve been like encouraging you to throw solid gold back down the mineshaft! I did it all for your sake—’

  ‘Della, please,’ Frankie breathed painfully. ‘Just be honest.’

  ‘How much more honest can I get? Santino broke your heart and then landed me with a seriously depressed teenager! He deserved to foot the bill for hurting you that much—’

  ‘Mum, I—’

  But Della was unstoppable. ‘Didn’t I do my best for you, Frankie? Didn’t I use his money to buy you beautiful clothes and ensure that you lived in luxury? Didn’t I throw lots of parties so that you could meet the right sort of people? Is it my fault that none of those things mattered to you and you still moved out as soon as you could?’

  ‘No, but—’ Frankie tried to interrupt again, but her mother was now in full angry and defensive flow.

  ‘As for all that rubbish you talked about Santino never having slept with you...do you think I ever believed that?’ Della vented a sharp laugh of cynical disbelief. ‘That was just your pride talking—you trying to cover up the fact that he’d just used you and dumped you again. And Santino thought he could get away with doing precisely that, didn’t he? Shove some hush money at me and hang onto his reputation—because he certainly didn’t want it coming out that a Vitale had a cute little jailbait bride he’d got bored with!’

  Della’s stark bitterness on her behalf stunned Frankie. ‘But it wasn’t like that...’

  ‘You were suicidal, Frankie. He deserved to be punished—and I just hope Santino and his filthy rich, snobbish family are cringing at the publicity they’re getting now!’

  ‘What p-publicity?’ Frankie stammered, with a sick, sinking sensation in her stomach, only vaguely registering the faint click on the line that suggested that someone else had picked up an extension somewhere.

  ‘Look, when you disappeared, I was frantic with worry!’ her mother told her. ‘Your father told me loads of horror stories about Sard vendettas. For all I knew, Santino had found out where his money was really going and had decided to get rid of you, saving himself the need to get a very public and expensive divorce from a wife nobody even knew he had.’

  ‘Mum...this is all so totally insane...’ Frankie’s head was banging fit to burst.

  ‘You’re very naive, Frankie. The Vitales are a very powerful and ruthless family, and you can only be an embarrassment to them. That’s why I spiked Santino’s guns for you. Bringing the whole sorry story out into the open meant you were safe. Right at this minute this house is being besieged by journalists, and quite a few of them are Italian... What sort of angle do you want me to take when I speak to them again?’

  Perspiration beading her short upper lip, Frankie groaned out loud.

  Unconcerned, indeed her voice now betraying her excitement, for Della loved to be the centre of attention, her mother continued inquisitively, ‘I mean...how with Santino, are you, darling? Do you want me to say his family forced the two of you to separate five years ago...or do you want me to badmouth him as a shameless seducer of teenage girls? It might make a difference to your divorce settlement—’

  Shaking her head in mute disbelief, Frankie muttered weakly, ‘Let me worry about my divorce settlement—’

  ‘Della...’ Another voice sliced in with icy precision on the line, making Frankie’s eyes shoot wide in sheer shock. ‘This is Santino. If you speak to one more journalist, or indeed anyone else who might talk to the paparazzi, I will have you thrown out of that house by the end of the day. And then I might just take you to court for fraud.’

  Appalled silence seethed on the line as both women realised that Santino had been listening in on their dialogue.

  ‘But you’re my son-in-law!’ Della squawked in aghast protest.

  ‘In this case blood is definitely not thicker than water. Be warned,’ Santino breathed with chilling exactitude, and the line went dead as Frankie’s mother put the phone down without saying another word.

  Frankie wheeled round in dizzy confusion as Santino strode into the lounge. Removing the receiver from her damp and loosened grasp, he rammed it back down on the cradle and then, as if that wasn’t enough to satisfy him, he yanked the phone cord out of the wall as well. He swung round to face her then.

  Uncharacteristically, Frankie shrank. Santino was white with rage beneath his golden skin, his spectacular bone structure hard as iron, shimmering golden eyes slamming into her with ferocious anger.

  ‘That was a most educational call.’ Santino’s derisive distaste was unconcealed. ‘You and your mother have to be the best double act since Bonnie and Clyde. She went to the press for you and now you are happily contemplating your divorce settlement. You conniving little vixen... I should’ve known you would concentrate on the prospect of eventual profit!’

  Pale as milk, Frankie backed off a step. ‘Santino...this is all a really ghastly misunderstanding. Mum has wildly overreacted, but I think that she honestly believed that she needed to try and protect me—’

  ‘From whom? From me? Why should Della need to protect you from me in any way?’ Santino demanded with seething bite.

  ‘I never realised that Mum didn’t believe me five years ago...about us,’ Frankie muttered abstractedly. ‘She doesn’t even date because she distrusts all men, so I suppose I should have guessed that what happened to me would only make her more bitter. She always used to say that my father and Giles between them wrecked her life, and she thinks you did the same thing to me... Of course, in a way, you did—’

  ‘Ensuring that you could live like a princess and attaching no strings to my generosity was...wrecking your life?’ Santino thrust splayed brown fingers through his luxuriant black hair, his lean dark visage set in lines of outrage. Frankie flinched nervously as he growled something raw under his breath. He fixed burning golden eyes to her transfixed face. ‘Si, perhaps in this instance the truth does lie where I least want to find it. I did wreck your life in the sense that you are now a twisted version of the woman you might have become.’

  ‘I’m not twisted—’

  Santino loosed a harsh laugh of disagreement. ‘I gave you into the care of a greedy, selfish woman with her own agenda. If I’d kept you at least you would’ve hung onto a few morals!’

  ‘I’m not suffering from any shortage in that department, I assure you!’ Frankie thrust her chin up, angry colour starting to fire over her cheekbones.

  Santino treated her to a slow, insolent sexual appraisal that froze her to the spot. Contemptuous eyes roamed over the deep valley of her breasts, now visible between the parting edges of the robe, to rest on the tantalising twin ripe curves that had been partially revealed. ‘Even your lover doesn’t ascribe to that belief...’

  Frantically twitching the garment back into place and tightening the sash, Frankie said angrily, ‘Matt is not and has never been my lover.’

  Santino’s expressive mouth twisted. ‘He is certainly no gentleman if he shares your bed and then chooses to tell me how promiscuous you are.’

  Struggling to swallow that insult, Frankie snatched in a deep shuddering breath and then, without warning, it was as though a bright light exploded inside her head. She was sick and tired of being blamed for everyone else’s mistakes, and his attack on her morals was the absolute last straw.

  ‘So what if there have been loa
ds and loads of men in my life?’ Frankie flared with angry defiance, well aware that Matt had only made that crack because she had never dated any man for long and her short attention span had offended him, a man who saw that kind of behaviour as a peculiarly male requisite. ‘That’s none of your business, is it?’

  A dark flush slowly rose to accentuate the rigid slant of Santino’s slashing cheekbones. For the longest moment he stared at her, eyes as dangerous and cold as black ice. He said nothing.

  Frankie broke the screaming silence with a jerky laugh of discomfiture. ‘Right, so I’m a tart...big deal!’

  But she was no longer able to meet Santino’s unsettling gaze. Too late she saw that she had thrown down a gauntlet that he had refused to pick up. Childishly she had tried to shock and she had failed. ‘Well, now that we’ve got that thorny question out of the way,’ she continued stiffly, ‘don’t you think that we ought to be informing the police that I’m here and that there’s been the most insane storm in a teacup over nothing?’

  ‘I’ve already done that. The local police are on their way to confirm your presence...and very soon after that the paparazzi will arrive in their wake,’ Santino breathed with grim assurance, already striding out of the room. ‘We need to clear out of here fast!’

  Unfreezing, Frankie trailed after him and hovered in the doorway of his office, listening to him rap out instructions at speed to someone on the other end of his mobile phone. ‘This whole ridiculous mess is your fault,’ she accused helplessly as he set the phone aside again. ‘If you hadn’t lured me out here and set me up with those villas, none of this would ever have happened. And when I go home, how am I supposed to explain all this and you to anybody? You saw how Matt reacted...he thinks this is a truly weird set-up—’

  ‘Weird without sex, boringly conventional with it,’ Santino slotted in with glancing savagery. ‘I do believe it’s time I did what I came here to do.’

  He strode across to her and, without giving her the slightest hint of his intentions, bent and swept her lithely off her feet and up into his powerful arms.

  ‘Santino... what on earth—?’ Frankie gasped.

  ‘I brought you here to put you in the marital bed and enjoy that exquisite body,’ Santino reminded her as he started up the stairs with raw determination. ‘And I’m still going to achieve that feat before we leave.’

  ‘But the police are coming!’ Frankie reminded him incredulously, too taken aback by his behaviour even to struggle.

  ‘I think it’ll take them quite a while to get here...and if it doesn’t they’ll have to wait.’

  ‘Wait...while we...?’ Frankie parroted.

  ‘Why not?’ Santino countered, kicking the bedroom door shut behind him and dropping her unceremoniously down on the bed in which she had slept alone yet again the previous night.

  Frankie sat up, feverishly pushing flying strands of hair out of her eyes. ‘Why not?’ she repeated in a voice that shook with disbelief. ‘Are you out of your mind?’

  ‘No...if I told the typical Sard male that I have waited five years to take physical possession of my beautiful bride, they would probably drive back down the mountain and stay there for at least a month,’ Santino breathed with sardonic bite. ‘Aside from that, assuming you ultimately intend to be as vocal with the paparazzi as your mother, I wouldn’t dream of depriving you of your juiciest source of revelation. No doubt you will be eager to flog every minute detail of the coming encounter to some sleazy tabloid when you get home again!’

  ‘You’ve got absolutely the wrong idea about me...I wouldn’t dream of talking about you to the press!’

  ‘Just the way you swore at the castello that you wouldn’t dream of taking my money?’ Santino enquired with splintering and savage condemnation as he ripped off his shirt and dropped it on the floor. ‘You continued to lie like a pro about your innocence all through the day. You came up with quite impressive explanations for almost every charge. You pleaded such complete ignorance and then, when I was on the very brink of awarding you a second hearing, you announced that you were in on the fraud from the very first day!’

  The sight of Santino’s bare brown hair-roughened chest drew Frankie’s startled eyes like a magnet to iron filings. Turning pink, she looked away again and wet her taut lips with a snaking flick of her tongue. She was appalled by that masterly summing-up of her credibility in his eyes. Santino didn’t trust a word she said, which wasn’t surprising when she recalled the number of times she had changed her tune that day, before she’d finally shouldered Della’s guilt in an effort to protect the older woman from the full onslaught of Santino’s cold and deadly fury.

  It felt like the worst possible moment to be suddenly wishing that she could now tell him the truth. Santino had to despise Della even more since he had heard her talking on the phone in that coy, calculating way. And, where once Frankie had lied to save her parent out of knee-jerk loyalty, now, ironically, she had a stronger motivation. Della might not be the ideal parent she had once longed to have, but today Frankie had learnt something that touched that sore place in her heart.

  Evidently her mother had strongly sympathised with her daughter’s misery five years ago, and would probably have done so more vocally had Frankie been prepared to confide more fully in her. Had that happened, their relationship might never have become so detached. In that one field alone, perhaps they had something in common.

  ‘I am really not the person you think I am,’ Frankie said shakily, tilting back her head again to look at Santino as she sat on the bed. ‘I wish I could tell you something more than that, but just at this moment—’

  ‘Just at this moment you would tell me anything it suited you to tell me.’

  Breathless, and abruptly shorn of the ability to vocalise, Frankie focused on Santino as he stripped off a pair of silk boxer shorts and stood there magnificently nude and dauntingly uninhibited. The involuntary victim of a scorching attack of shyness, she removed her attention from the most eye-catching male attribute on display, struggling to swallow on shock and failing dismally. She had always wondered, and now she was receiving the opportunity to forever satisfy all female curiosity, and yet she found that she just couldn’t look again because she was gripped by such intense selfconsciousness.

  ‘Santino...’ she croaked.

  ‘Forget it... I won’t believe you have a shy or modest bone in your entire body,’ Santino delivered fiercely, coming down on the bed and curving strong hands round her forearms to pull her towards him. ‘Not a woman who boasts about the number of men she’s had and offers me anything I want in bed without even pausing to consider the risk that I might want something she wouldn’t be prepared to give—’

  ‘Might you?’ Frankie slotted in helplessly, bare inches away from shimmering golden eyes that seemed to burn over every inch of her exposed skin.

  ‘What do you think?’ Santino traded with silken scorn. ‘I think possibly you could teach me a thing or two.’

  ‘I’m not in the mood right now—’

  ‘I’ll put you in the mood, cara. I also think I should have tipped you head-first into the horse trough to sober up last night! You suck up sympathy like a vacuum cleaner, you always did, and you don’t deserve my care and consideration.’

  Releasing her arms, Santino tugged free the sash at her slender waist in one smooth movement.

  The robe fell open. Frankie froze, breath feathering in her convulsive throat, heart racing so fast she felt light-headed.

  Santino ran burnished and unashamedly hungry eyes over the enticing feminine curves he had revealed. He reached an assured hand up into her tumbling bright mane of hair and slowly, sensually drew her down onto the pillows. She arrived there with a stifled gasp, just in time to see him close one beautifully shaped hand over the pale swell of one full breast. She trembled, wide-eyed, shaken by both sight and sensation. The heat of his rawly masculine body against her cooler, slighter frame, even the fairness of her skin against his lean, sun darkened length, wa
s as instinctively enthralling as the expert fingers which rose to caress the pouting pink nipple.

  A low, jerky sigh escaped her, her head falling back as the sweet ache of her sensitive flesh made her clench her teeth, blanking out her mind to everything but the power of sensation he possessed, and when he bent his dark head and delicately employed his teeth and his tongue on the same straining rosy bud she moaned out loud.

  ‘What a temptress you are, Francesca,’ Santino breathed in a tone of roughened discovery. ‘You surrender yourself so completely to pleasure.’

  The fog in her brain was pierced by sudden shame. Her lashes lifted again just as Santino pushed a supporting arm beneath her and eased her free of her robe, to cast it carelessly aside. He thrust the bedding back, tumbling her onto a crisp white cotton sheet scented with the faint evocative aroma of crushed rosemary.

  Santino focused on her intently, his strong dark features taut. ‘Rosemary for fertility—not a concern that I assume I need to consider with you...?’

  Frankie’s gaze was blank, inward-looking. A tide of burning colour washed over her skin because she wasn’t listening; she was picturing herself just seconds earlier, a willing, wanton captive to what he could make her feel. And yet wasn’t this what she wanted too? This driving hunger of the flesh satisfied so that she could be free again, free as she had never been in five long years? Inwardly she repeated the comforting mantra that had strengthened her only the day before. Making love with Santino would close this chapter in her life and then she would move on.

  ‘And you still blush...a charming if deceptive consequence of that superb English-rose skin,’ Santino contended, brushing away the top sheet she had automatically drawn over herself so that he could feast his attention upon her again.

  Frankie stared up at him, as entrapped as if he had her in chains, shyness overpowered by her incredibly deep and strong craving for his admiration. It made her feel so good about herself, so happy. Breasts that had seemed too full for her slender stature, hips that had seemed too angular no longer mattered. Her own new and wondrous sense of perfection was born in that instant in Santino’s deeply appreciative appraisal.