The Reluctant Husband

by Lynne Graham

  Spiky black lashes fanned low on lustrous dark eyes and his shapely mouth slanted into a sudden wolfish smile. ‘Horribly two-faced,’ Santino agreed obediently.

  Frankie belatedly registered that she had completely forgotten that she herself had confessed to having spent five years ripping off Santino for every penny she could get. Her fair skin burned and she didn’t know where to put herself or where to look.

  Santino stretched a casual hand across the table and briefly enclosed her rigidly knotted fingers. ‘Let’s talk about something more entertaining,’ he suggested lightly. ‘How would you like to spend the next few weeks?’

  She was intensely relieved by the change of subject. Extraordinary as it seemed to her, Santino didn’t appear to have twinned her apparent dishonesty with Matt’s.

  ‘How?’ A look of dreamy abstraction slowly covered her face. ‘I’d love to do Rome...ancient Rome, I mean... The Forum, the Colosseum, the Basilica, the Pantheon...all the places I read about when I took ancient history classes.’ Then she frowned, thinking about all the publicity the news of their marriage had received. ‘Will we be able to go out and about freely?’

  ‘The paparazzi still think we’re in Sardinia, and there are many other ways of avoiding them,’ Santino informed her with wry amusement. ‘In this instance, I think the wisest move would be to simply release a photograph of us together. That’s really what they all want. Once that is released, it won’t be worth their while to chase after us with the same fervour.’

  That afternoon, Santino showed her round the estate. Since it was very large, and Santino demonstrated a surprising eagerness to introduce her to every member of staff and every tenant who crossed their path, they didn’t actually get back to the villa until dinnertime. After their evening meal, he treated her to a tour of the house. Starting at the present day and working backwards in history, he entertained her with fascinating stories about the lives and loves of the previous occupants.

  The Villa Fontana had been built to house the flamboyant but much loved mistress of a rich aristocrat.

  ‘They had seven children together... those soulful little cherubs have their faces.’ Santino indicated the beautiful frescos on the walls. ‘He married her after the birth of their first child. He was an aristocrat and she was a peasant’s daughter—’

  ‘That sounds like the opening to a sleazy joke,’ Frankie could not resist saying. After exposure to his mother’s snobbery, she was supersensitive to any reference either to the existence of a class divide or that word ‘mistress’.

  Santino’s dark eyes stabbed into her with unexpected force. ‘Whatever they didn’t appear to have in common kept them together for well over thirty years!’

  ‘If that voluptuous blonde is a faithful representation of the lady, we know very well what kept her lover hooked. She looks like a raving sexpot,’ Frankie opined thinly, blondes being a no more welcome subject. ‘And she paid for it, didn’t she? Seven kids in the days when women often died giving birth and there was no pain relief...he was a selfish pig!’

  ‘I don’t believe I have ever regarded their lifelong love in that light before,’ Santino confessed with sudden intense amusement.

  ‘Probably not...but then you’re a man, aren’t you? She traded sex for security. If a woman was poor she didn’t have much else to trade in those days, and I bet her family practically sold her to him... although I have to admit that he’s not bad-looking,’ Frankie conceded, studying the gentleman in question. ‘He was a good bit older, though, wasn’t he?’

  ‘About ten years older,’ Santino supplied, his amusement ebbing.

  ‘So she had the generation gap to deal with as well.’

  Santino tensed. ‘Is that how you feel with me?’

  Taken aback by his personal reaction to her facetious comment, Frankie wriggled like a guppy being reeled in. ‘You’re only twenty-nine, Santino—’

  ‘Take your foot out of your mouth and tell me truthfully,’ Santino gritted, suddenly demonstrating his recent extreme volatility for a usually even-tempered male by backing her up against a pillar. ‘Do you feel a generation gap with me?’

  Shaken and confused, she sighed, ‘Santino...to me, you’re just you.’

  A surprisingly understanding smile drove the tension from his lean face. ‘Not like anyone else?’

  Urgently she nodded in agreement. ‘Unique,’ she added, and then, feeling inexplicably exposed beneath the onslaught of those shrewd golden eyes, she lowered her head. I’m really tired,’ she muttered. ‘I think it’s time I went to bed.’

  There was a stark little silence and then Santino withdrew a step.

  Naturally they wouldn’t be sharing a bed any more, and she wanted to clear her stuff out of his room before he went up to bed later. The less she reminded him of their brief intimacy, the more he would relax with her, wouldn’t he? And she wanted him to relax; she really did. If this next couple of weeks was all the time they were ever to spend together, she wanted to make the most of it.

  Frankie had just got into bed in a room across the landing when Santino strode in. With a start, she sat up again. Santino wore only a bathtowel, anchored precariously round his lean brown hips, and he looked really mad. Without a word, he plucked her out of bed and carried her back to his room.

  ‘What are you doing?’ she gasped. ‘Now that we’re being friends again, we can’t sleep together!’

  ‘I don’t want another friend. I’ve got plenty of friends. I want you in my bed, where you belong.’ Santino punctuated that announcement by settling her between the sheets, casting aside his towel and sliding in beside her. ‘For the moment, that will suffice. Buona notte, cara.’

  Shellshocked, Frankie lay there in the darkness. ‘But we’re on the brink of a divorce; why?’

  ‘If you’re really lucky these old bones of mine might give out first and you’ll find yourself a very merry and extremely rich widow instead,’ Santino countered sardonically from the far side of the bed. ‘Madre di Dio...is it wise for me to put ideas of that nature into your head?’

  ‘Don’t you dare say things like that even as a joke!’ It was an appalled and superstitious wail of censure. ‘I’d die if anything happened to you!’

  And as soon as those words escaped Frankie she clamped a horrified hand to her open mouth.

  ‘That sounds just a little extreme to me,’ Santino countered with an incredulous derision that was hugely painful for her to hear. ‘And completely unbelievable coming from a woman who lies, cheats and steals from me for five long years without once succumbing to an attack of conscience—’

  ‘But I didn’t...it was—’

  ‘Della, the mother-in-law from hell,’ Santino slotted in, his deep, dark drawl ringing with sizzling selfsatisfaction.

  Sitting up, he turned the bedside lamps back on and surveyed her with wry amusement. ‘Don’t you feel better having got that off your chest? I’m sorry I had to get nasty...well, so theatrical, but I know the right imaginative buttons to push with you, cara. Death and disloyalty, an unbeatable combination.’

  ‘Oh, no...’ Frankie moaned in horror at what she had let slip, aghast on her mother’s behalf.

  ‘You told me yourself over lunch,’ Santino informed her gently. ‘While you were wittering on with such enormous hurt about Finlay’s dishonest intentions, it finally sunk in on me that there was no way in this lifetime that you would behave in a similiar fashion. And when were you ever able to keep secrets from me? You look so shifty and guilty when you’re lying, a child could find you out. If I hadn’t been in such a rage that day, I’d have seen that for myself.’

  ‘Mum?’ Frankie muttered shakily, barely able to absorb what he was telling her because he sounded so disorientatingly light-hearted.

  ‘You should’ve known that there wasn’t the slightest chance that I would prosecute her. Put Della in an open court to star in a sensational trial?’ Santino chided incredulously. ‘I would not expose you or my family to that experience merel
y to punish her.’

  Still welded to the mattress by shock, Frankie whispered weakly, ‘You mean, you never planned to—’

  ‘Never.’

  ‘But I believed you...you scared me out of my wits!’

  Santino shot her a languorous smile, rather like a big predatory cat receiving a very welcome stroking of the ego. ‘Didn’t I just?’

  Frankie shot across the big bed like an electric eel. ‘How could you do that to me?’ she raked at him furiously.

  ‘At the time, with pleasure,’ Santino admitted. ‘After all, while you were industriously protecting a woman who could single-handedly gut a shoal of piranha fish and emerge unscathed from the bloodbath, it never once occurred to you to consider me—’

  ‘You?’ Frankie echoed in a tone that shook with rage after that highly offensive reference to her mother.

  Santino snaked out his arms and entrapped her as she leant over him. ‘Think hard,’ he advised with mocking dark eyes that flared gold as they roamed over her lovely face. ‘It would help me along tremendously. Poor, unfortunate Santino, evidently saddled with a wife who is an unashamed criminal... and who is also potentially pregnant. Nightmare street.’

  ‘But I’m not an unashamed criminal,’ she mumbled rather unsteadily as he drew her down, crushing her breasts intimately into the hard wall of his hair-roughened chest.

  ‘Hmm...’ Santino sighed throatily, angling his powerful hips up into thrusting contact with her slight, trembling length and introducing her to the hungry, aroused thrust of his manhood.

  ‘No, Santino...the divorce,’ Frankie reminded him breathlessly.

  Santino rested his arrogant dark head back on the pillows and studied her with deceptively sleepy golden eyes. ‘This intense preoccupation with divorce is beginning to worry me. I am only three days into the three weeks you signed up for. What’s an extra fun encounter here and there...between friends?’ he enquired with husky persuasion.

  ‘No...’ Hot in places she was too ashamed to acknowledge, Frankie gave him a look of pleading reproach even as her slender thighs somehow drifted slightly apart and she found herself inexplicably rubbing her quivering body with helpless enticement against his.

  ‘Once again...louder and with real commitment,’ Santino encouraged raggedly.

  ‘Santino...please...’ Frankie moaned.

  ‘No, I’m completely impartial on this,’ Santino insisted stubbornly, his palms pressing her hips down on him in the most tormentingly exciting way and lingering to ease up the nightdress inch by suggestive inch and then stop dead. ‘Friendship means that you have to ask to be ravished within an inch of your life. I wouldn’t want to risk overstepping my boundaries. Only a husband would be confident enough of his reception to proceed without a clear invitation.’

  ‘Santino...you are my husband!’ Frankie practically sobbed in her frustration.

  Instantaneously Santino arched up and let the tip of his tongue sensually trace the tremulous line of her generous mouth. ‘You are such a fast learner, signora...you take my breath away...’

  ‘Just think...’ Frankie breathed headily two weeks later. ‘This was the place to be buried in 28 BC.’

  ‘Just think.’ Santino surveyed the Mausoleum of Augustus, a rather undistinguished mound covered with weeds. He wore the look of a male striving against all the odds to rise above prosaic first impressions.

  ‘You’ve got to use your imagination,’ Frankie scolded.

  ‘You’ve got enough for both of us, piccola mia.’ Santino sent her a winging smile full of megawatt charm and appreciation. ‘You have taught me to view this city of mine through new eyes.’

  Frankie swiftly looked away from him, heart banging fit to burst with suppressed excitement, but as he moved fluidly closer she wandered away, pretending to be absorbed in her guidebook. By being elusive during daylight she protected herself. Everything that went on at night in bed she kept in a separate compartment. Wonderful entertaining days, endless erotic nights. It was almost like a honeymoon, she reflected with a stark pang of pain, but in her heart of hearts she knew that Santino was merely engaged in hedging all his bets.

  What else could he be up to? He had been so certain she would be pregnant. Admittedly, he hadn’t once mentioned that subject again, but his behaviour had helped her to work out for herself that if she did turn out to be carrying his baby there would be no divorce. Now that he knew she hadn’t stolen from him, if she did prove to be pregnant, Santino would make the best of things. After all, he was fond of her. But suppose she wasn’t pregnant? It was ironic that what she had once feared she now badly wanted to happen.

  A top society photographer, who was a personal friend of Santino’s, had come to the Villa Fontana to record their togetherness for posterity, and one picture had been released to a very gushy glossy international magazine without any accompanying interview. In advance of that event, Frankie had been surprised to find herself presented with a new wedding ring and a gorgeous emerald engagement ring.

  ‘I guess I need those or we wouldn’t look convincing,’ she had sighed.

  ‘I am giving you these because you are my wife,’ Santino had countered levelly.

  Sinking back to the present, Frankie was deeply conscious of Santino’s scrutiny while she continued to finger frantically through her guidebook in search of a fresh ruin to visit.

  ‘I think we’ve run out of sites,’ Santino commented without a shade of irony, indeed contriving to sound deeply regretful. ‘I didn’t think that could be done in Rome but we have done it. Deprived of the need to tramp about like tourists from dawn to dusk, what will we do with ourselves?’

  ‘If you’ve been bored, you only had to say so.’

  ‘I don’t get bored with you.’

  ‘You’ve got so flattering recently...’

  ‘But you’re not listening,’ Santino breathed with a slightly raw edge to his intonation.

  During the drive back to the villa, Frankie tensed in dismay. A tiny little twinge had cramped low in her stomach. Instantly she knew what that sensation meant. She turned away from Santino, eyes anguished, face draining of colour. Well, now she had her answer. She wasn’t pregnant. She ought to tell him right now, let him off the hook, but right then she hated him for hanging himself on that hook.

  But she was no better, was she? Hoping to hang onto him and their marriage on the strength of a baby? That wouldn’t have been right either, and she had the lesson of her own parents’ marriage behind her, so she didn’t even have the excuse of optimistic ignorance. Physical attraction had brought her parents together but it hadn’t been enough to keep them together.

  A muffled choking sound escaped her as she clambered out of the car.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Santino demanded.

  ‘Nothing!’ she cried, and ran into the villa and didn’t stop running until she reached the bathroom off their bedroom and locked the door behind her.

  ‘Francesca!’ Santino rapped impatiently on the door.

  ‘I’ll be out in a minute!’ she promised, struggling to face courageously up to the destruction of all her hopes.

  She finally shuffled out, tear-stained and looking tragic. As yet there was no actual proof that her period had arrived, but she just knew there very soon would be. In her view that one tiny twinge was utterly foolproof confirmation.

  ‘You’re not feeling well, are you? Do you think we should do a pregnancy test?’ Santino asked, with an award-winning lack of tact and what she interpreted as a vastly unconvincing look of excitement and anticipation.

  Reacting to that unfortunate question as if it had been a cruel and deliberate taunt, Frankie burst into great gulping sobs. ‘I hate you...go away!’

  Disobliging to the last in his innate belief that he always knew what was best for her, Santino lifted her up as if she were a very fragile glass ornament and laid her carefully down on the bed, slipping off her shoes. She rolled over and bawled her eyes out. ‘Leave me alone!’ she sobbed in between times, b
ecause he kept on trying to put his arms round her and smooth her hair and do sympathetic things that only made her feel more wretchedly guilty than ever.

  Never had Frankie been more deeply ashamed of herself. She couldn’t even meet his eyes now. That she had been prepared to use a baby to keep Santino made her feel like a shockingly selfish and wicked woman. It would’ve been so desperately unfair to him when he didn’t love her. And all the love she could give him could never compensate him for being denied the opportunity to find a woman he could love.

  ‘You really...seriously...genuinely...want me to leave you alone?’ Santino prompted with astonishing persistence, crouching athletically down by the side of the bed in an effort to get a look at her tear-swollen face. ‘You usually don’t mean it...in fact, if I do go, I’m the worst in the world. You taught me that a long time ago.’

  Tell him, her conscience urged, and the very words of admission formed on her lips, but unfortunately another great wail of misery forced an exit and somehow took over and she thrust her face weakly into the pillows. ‘I n-need a breathing space,’ she gasped in stricken defeat, borrowing heavily from his terminology.

  Vaulting upright again, Santino made no response. He seemed to take a terribly long time walking to the door, but Frankie kept her head down until the door thudded softly shut on his departure.

  She had to pull herself together before she could face discussing the end of their marriage. And what was Santino likely to think after she had treated him to such a hysterical display? Could she plead an episode of howling premenstrual tension? Dear heaven, she would tell any lie sooner than let him suspect the true source of her distress. She had worked so hard at being bright, breezy and casual. She had behaved as if they were engaged in a brief affair. Pride demanded that when she left Santino this time she would leave with her chin up high and her shoulders square.

  She had known why he continued to sleep with her. He could hardly have suggested that they live in suspended animation while they waited to learn whether or not she was pregnant. Indeed every tender, caring thing Santino had done recently had simply been part of his pretence that their marriage was and could be normal. He had been fatalistically convinced that she would conceive... and he had been wrong.