by Lynne Graham
His thumb grazed the comer of her full, tremulous lips and then almost lazily slid to probe within. Involuntarily her languorous eyes slid shut, her lips converging hungrily on that intrusive digit, the lancing bitter-sweet pain of that hunger shrilling through her slender frame, making every muscle fiercely taut with anticipation.
‘And with the smallest encouragement... such a natural-born temptress,’ Santino completed, his accent thickening as he closed one impatient hand over her hip to yank her closer.
The knocker on the front door sounded with thunderous urgency. Frankie almost leapt out of her skin. As her shaken eyes slowly opened, Santino was already striding out to the hall to answer the door. A powerfully built man in a dark suit, whom Santino addressed as Nardo, swept up the cases at the foot of the stairs. Of course, Frankie registered, like someone surfacing from a heavily drugged slumber, the helicopter had landed and it was time for them to leave.
She pressed moist palms to her hot cheeks. She had not meant to give Santino such power over her, had never dreamt that her surrender might weaken her defences even more. And he was wrong when he still called her innocent because she was no longer the optimistic fool who had fondly imagined that going to bed with Santino would magically exorcise her emotional turmoil.
‘You’ll visit again soon?’ Maddalena pressed anxiously, as her great-aunts and grandfather stood waiting to see them off.
‘Francesca’s place is with her husband and Santino is a very busy man,’ Teresa scolded her sister. ‘Who else do you know who has to call for a helicopter because he can’t spare the time to drive down the mountain?’
Her grandfather took her aside and treated her to a troubled and questioning look. ‘Santino usually says his goodbyes personally.’
And the cruel weight of reality almost crushed Frankie then. Santino would not be returning to the village again. And the next time she visited she would come alone, bearing news which would hit her far from liberalminded family hard. A broken marriage and a divorce in the offing. That would shame and distress her great-aunts and outrage and disappoint her grandfather, who had grown infinitely more fond and proud of Santino than he had ever been of his own unreliable and selfish son. And they would all blame her because she simply could not imagine them blaming Santino for anything...
Frankie fell asleep during the flight. When Santino woke her up, she glanced out through the window beside her and was thoroughly disorientated by the view, for they were certainly not at Rome’s Fiumicino airport; the helicopter appeared to be surrounded by a boundless expanse of lush green grass.
‘You look as messy as a child returning from a day on the beach,’ Santino censured as he lifted her down onto solid ground again. He looked unusually tense. As he scanned the drowsy blankness of her face, his beautiful mouth tightened even more. He paused to brush straying strands of bright hair off her brow and make a somewhat pointless attempt to smooth down her badly creased cotton dress.
Smothering a yawn, Frankie let herself be walked at a smart pace across the lawn. Yes, it was a lawn, definitely a lawn—well, possibly more of a stretch of parkland really, she finally decided an instant before she fell to an abrupt halt to gape at the quite spectacular building basking in the late-afternoon heat about a hundred yards ahead of them.
‘My home,’ Santino advanced, a firm hand on her elbow urging her on.
‘Your home? Where on earth are we?’ she mumbled in a daze.
‘About thirty miles from Rome. The paparazzi will not disturb us here. The estate boundaries are constantly patrolled and the surveillance technology which supports the security presence is of the highest calibre. A leaf doesn’t drop from a tree at the Villa Fontana without someone knowing about it.’
Fascinated, Frankie absorbed the breathtaking beauty of the centuries-old country mansion before her. A two-storey central block with an elaborate but very pretty facade was flanked on either side by curved wings creating an inviting sunlit piazza to the front. At the great domed and arched entrance beyond, the longest limousine Frankie had ever seen sat with blacked-out windows.
‘You’re about to meet my parents,’ Santino imparted without a flicker of expression, but his strong profile was taut. ‘You should feel honoured. Evidently they have dragged themselves all the way from Switzerland to make their shock, horror and disapproval known.’
Catapulted with a vengeance back into full awareness, Frankie gulped. ‘Your...parents?’
‘Once you dreamt of meeting them,’ Santino reminded her lethally. ‘You imagined how you would exchange recipes and knitting patterns with my mother. You wondered if you should write to them to reassure them that I was being wonderfully well looked after. And how heartbroken you assumed my poor mother must be because she lived too far away to even attend her own son’s wedding—’
‘Don’t remind me!’ Frankie exclaimed, her lovely face burning with chagrin as they mounted the steps to pass under the entrance arch.
Through the open doors beyond they entered a magnificent long hallway adorned with marble pillars and statues in alcoves. Thoroughly intimidated by the grandeur, Frankie dropped her volume to that of a frantic whisper. ‘All right, so I had about as much idea of your background then as a little green man landing from Mars, but I can’t meet your parents now, looking like this!’ She glanced down at herself to wonder in fierce frustration why she hadn’t long since binned a dress that resembled a crumpled dishcloth after a few hours of wear.
‘Francesca...it really wouldn’t matter if you were a saint of stunning perfection and poise. They would find your very existence no more palatable,’ Santino admitted with a wry twist of his mouth.
‘Why didn’t you warn me that your parents might be here waiting?’
‘They rarely visit me. But scurrilous publicity involving the family name would appear to have a very enlivening effect upon them.’
‘Look, you should deal with your parents on your own,’ Frankie muttered. ‘Not much point in getting them all worked up when I’m not staying around, is there?’
‘That’s my business, not theirs,’ Santino decreed with harsh emphasis, and he curved an imprisoning arm against her spine.
An anxious-looking little woman in a smart black dress was stationed outside the last door to the left at the end of the hall. She burst into frantic, low-pitched Italian. Santino made smooth, soothing responses.
‘My housekeeper, Lina. I’ll introduce you later. Visitors who refuse all refreshment unnerve her, and my mother can be rather intimidating,’ Santino confided in exasperation as he spread open the door on a very grand drawing room.
Her mouth dry as a bone, Frankie focused on the small, dark, exquisitely dressed older woman seated in a stiff-backed chair. ‘Intimidating’ was the word. The ice-blue of her suit matched her eyes, and Frankie finally saw the source of Santino’s superb bone structure. A tall distinguished man with white hair turned from the windows. He held himself with the same unbending reserve and formality as his wife.
‘Francesca...’ Santino murmured flatly. ‘Allow me to introduce you to my parents... Sonia and Alvaro.’
‘I will accept no introduction,’ Sonia Vitale asserted glacially. ‘Explain yourself, Santino! How could you disgrace us by allowing your outrageous association with this woman to be exposed by the press?’
‘We understood that this unfortunate affair had been buried some years ago,’ Alvaro Vitale advanced.
‘I made no such promise,’ Santino countered levelly. ‘Francesca is my wife and I expect you to treat her with all due respect and civility.’
Sonia Vitale ran coldly outraged eyes over Frankie. Her lip curling, she turned her imperious head away again in a gesture of lofty dismissal. ‘I will never receive that woman into my home as my daughter-in-law.’
‘Then you will not receive me either,’ Santino responded harshly. ‘And I shouldn’t think that would be too great a sacrifice. After all, you only see me once a year at Christmas as it is.’
F
rankie sent Santino an astonished glance and then focused on his mother again, shocked by the bitter hostility the older woman could not conceal when she looked at her son.
‘You must see that this is an inappropriate marriage,’ Alvaro Vitale intervened afresh. ‘I intend no disrespect towards your wife, but on one count your mother must surely be excused her frank speech. Francesca’s background scarcely equips her to take her place in our family—’
‘We are not royalty, Papà,’ Santino incised grimly.
‘It is a waste of time to try to reason with you, Santino. You could never be anything other than a disappointment to me,’ his mother condemned cruelly. ‘But you betray your brother’s memory with this insult of a marriage—’
Beside her, Frankie felt Santino’s big, powerful frame tense like a cat about to spring, but a split second earlier she had felt him recoil from his mother’s attack. She stiffened, fighting the most extraordinary urge to speak up in his defence.
His mother continued to survey him with cold condemnation. ‘I would remind you that you will always walk in Rico’s shadow, Santino. All that was once his has come to you. Honour should demand that you make sacrifices in his memory. And Rico would never have married a social inferior. Rico never once brought shame on the Vitale name. He was too proud of our ancestry.’
‘I am not and I can never be Rico, Mamma,’ Santino countered wearily, the long fingers resting on Frankie’s slim hip biting painfully into her flesh.
Sonia Vitale rose from her chair. ‘How you do love to state the obvious,’ she responded cuttingly. ‘You knew it was our dearest wish that you should marry Melina. Instead you have made a mockery of us all. When you can bring Melina to me as your bride, I will see you again...not before.’
Her husband moved forward, his strain now palpable in spite of his efforts to retain his impassivity. ‘Santino...may I have a word with you in private?’ he enquired. ‘You will excuse us, Francesca?’
‘I will wait in the car, Alvaro,’ Sonia announced, and she swept past them all with her regal head held high.
Without even considering what she was about to do, her sole driving purpose one of furious incomprehension, Frankie pulled free of Santino’s loosened grip and sped in his mother’s wake, pausing only to jerk shut the drawing-room door behind her.
‘Why don’t you love him?’ Frankie demanded fiercely of the older woman in the echoing hallway.
Sonia Vitale came to a startled halt and gazed back at Frankie over her shoulder in complete shock. ‘I beg your p-pardon?’ she murmured with an incredulous shake in her well-modulated voice as she turned. ‘Santino is my son. Of course I love my—’
‘No, you don’t!’ Frankie contradicted her, her eyes bright with condemnation. ‘You look at him like you hate and resent him...you deliberately try to hurt him... All I want to know is why. Why? Santino is pretty damned wonderful in an awful lot of ways. He’s clever and caring and honest. Most mothers would be really proud to have a son like that...’
Every scrap of colour draining from her still beautiful features, the older woman backed slowly away from her. A stunned and appalled look of confusion had blossomed in her eyes. ‘How dare you attack me...how dare you say such things?’
Suddenly equally shattered by her own behaviour, Frankie froze and flushed a hot self-conscious pink. She could not even understand what had driven her into forcing such a confrontation. Out of nowhere had come this ferocious sense of angry protectiveness and it had sent her hurtling into pursuit like a guided missile, for certainly she hadn’t stopped and thought about what she was about to do...no, not even for a sensible second. And what had she done now but pointlessly enrage Santino’s mother more and make an already bad situation worse?
‘So my son has married a real little fishwife who fights for him...like a vixen protecting her cub. But Santino wouldn’t thank you for abusing me.’ Sonia drew on her gloves in a series of jerky little movements that betrayed her distress and her eyes never once met Frankie’s again. ‘In fact he would devour you alive because naturally he loves and reveres his mother. And I see, not without some surprise after reading your mother’s highly unladylike revelations in print, that you genuinely do love my son...but you are only a brief aberration in Santino’s life and will fortunately soon be gone.’
Frankie flinched as if the smaller woman had slyly slid a knife between her ribs, but Sonia had already spun away from her again.
‘You should have been his mistress, not his wife. Melina would have accepted that. We would all have accepted that,’ Sonia imparted curtly. ‘But it is too late for that resolution now. You have lost the anonymity so necessary to that position. When Santino tires of you, as he inevitably will, and turns back to Melina, you will see then that I am right, for you will lose him altogether.’
As the older woman walked away, Frankie reeled clumsily round behind one of the pillars and pressed her hot, damp forehead to the cold marble. She felt as if she had gone ten rounds with a champion boxer and her very flesh had been pummelled from her bones. No, she did not love Santino...no, no, she did not! She was a whole lot brighter than the teenager she had once been. Yes, maybe she was—maybe she was more worldly-wise, an inner voice conceded, but there was no denying that at the age of sixteen sheer gut instinct had prompted her to fix her affections on one hell of a guy.
Because Santino was one hell of a guy, although not in the mood he had been in since she had successfully convinced him that she was the lowest, greediest and most ungrateful female in existence. But as he could be, as he had once been, and as he had promised to be that very first day they met again in La Rocca, before everything had gone wrong, he was still so incredibly special and important to her.
Dear heaven, I do still love Santino, Frankie registered in horror. I have no hope of getting him out of my system. He’s just in there...inside my heart...inside my head, as much a part of me as my own flesh.
In the midst of that unwelcome flood of self revelation, Alvaro Vitale emerged from the drawing room and strode past, mercifully without seeing her lurking behind the pillar.
Looking very pale and feeling unusually uncertain of herself, indeed almost crushingly shy, Frankie finally moved back into the room the older man had vacated. Santino didn’t notice her hesitant entry and hovering stance about twenty feet from him. He was pouring himself what looked like a pretty stiff drink. Cradling the whisky tumbler in one lean brown hand, he strode restlessly over to the windows and stood there, wide shoulders rigid with livewire tension, long legs braced slightly apart.
Her dazed eyes roamed over his arrogant dark head and that bold, strong profile silhouetted against the light. How could she love a male capable of ruthlessly using her body to satisfy lust alone? How could she love a man who could separate all emotion from sex and without conscience play on her inexperience, susceptibility and, cruellest of all, her deep fear of being out of control?
Oh, so easily, she answered for herself. For this was the dark side of Santino’s powerful personality and forceful temperament, a side he had never shown her before but which she should always have known existed. He could not have borne to let her go unpunished and he could not forgive greed or deception. Strong men had strong principles. And without those principles she would have found Santino infinitely less attractive.
She cleared her throat gruffly and asked the first question which came to mind. ‘Who is Melina?’
Santino glanced almost unseeingly at her and then away again, his preoccupation patent. ‘A friend...as dear as a daughter to my mother.’
The worst of Frankie’s tension evaporated. Not an explanation couched in terms likely to drive her mad with jealousy, she thought with a sensation of powerful relief. ‘And Rico...? He was your brother?’ she prompted tautly as Santino’s dark head whipped instantaneously back to her, his beautiful dark eyes filled with a deep, tormented sadness and defensive bitterness.
‘You know, you never, ever mentioned having had a brother,’ Franki
e remarked, choosing her words very carefully but wholly focused on a need to know what could bring such an expression to Santino’s face.
‘Rico died the year before I met you. He was ten years older than me,’ Santino admitted grudgingly.
‘What happened?’
For several thunderously tense seconds Santino fixed his attention on the window again. Then he shrugged with something less than his usual fluidity. ‘Rico took me climbing in the Alps. The climb should have been abandoned on the second day. Conditions were poor and the weather was changing. But Rico—’ He breathed stiltedly. ‘Rico was a daredevil determined not to be beaten by the elements. An avalanche hit us. He saved my life at the cost of his own.’
‘Oh, God...’ Frankie framed sickly, out of her depth with words. What she most needed was the freedom to rush across the room and wrap comforting arms around him, but she was utterly terrified of the rejection she was convinced she would receive. ‘That...that must have devastated your family—’
‘Sí...the wrong son came back down the mountain—’
‘Don’t say things like that,’ Frankie begged with a superstitious shiver. ‘If your parents somehow left you with the idea that you were more expendable than your older brother, that could only have been an accidental result of their grief and—’
Santino dealt her a winging look of contempt. ‘Tell me, were you or were you not present when Sonia was delivering her opinion of my worth in comparison to my late brother’s?’
Frankie couldn’t meet his gaze. She shifted awkwardly.
‘And Rico was a wonderful man. My mother worshipped the ground he walked on. Hell, so did I!’ Santino gritted. ‘He was an unparalleled success at being all things to all people. When he died he left a great yawning hole in our lives and family unity vanished. I found myself being treated like the living dead. My mother could not forgive me for surviving at Rico’s expense.’