The Reluctant Husband

by Lynne Graham

  Exhausted by her emotions, she decided to skip dinner. Falling into an uneasy doze, she was awakened by the phone beside the bed ringing. Still half-asleep, she snatched it up. ‘I’m in Milan,’ Santino’s dark drawl informed her coldly.

  ‘What are you doing there?’ Frankie demanded at full incredulous volume. She had asked him for a breathing space. She had expected him to go downstairs, not transport himself to the far end of the country!

  ‘I sense a certain contrariness in that question. What you are really saying is...how could you leave me?’ Santino translated huskily.

  ‘No, I just wondered...that’s all,’ Frankie breathed shakily, waking up enough to recall that there wasn’t much point in missing him when soon she was going to be missing him every day for the rest of her life.

  ‘I’m attending an EC banking conference.’

  ‘That must be exciting.’

  ‘I’ll be here for two days,’ Santino informed her punitively.

  ‘Two d—?’ Frankie bit her tongue and swallowed hard. ‘Oh, how lovely for you,’ she completed limply.

  ‘I’m getting very mixed signals here. I was about to suggest that you join—’

  ‘Have a really good time,’ Frankie cut in chokily, before he could voice that invitation and tempt her into what would be an insane act. She snatched in a shuddering breath, despising herself for stalling on giving him the good news. Santino had every right to know that she wasn’t carrying his child just as soon as it was within her power to tell him. ‘Oh, y-yes, by the way,’ she added flatly, ‘I’m not pregnant.’

  The answering silence pounded as noisily as her heartbeat in her eardrums.

  ‘Isn’t that just wonderful news?’ Frankie gushed with tears running down her cheeks. ‘I know you must be as relieved as I am. Look, we’ll talk when you get back.’

  She set down the cordless phone. There, it was done and she felt better for it. And telling Santino on the phone had been the best way. It had allowed them both the privacy to conceal their personal reactions. She could not have borne to see Santino’s relief, not when she herself still felt so gutted by disappointment.

  She now had two days to sort herself out. And it would probably take two days for her swollen face to shrink back to normal proportions. She would find out exactly when he was returning and meet him at the airport. She would be cheerful, friendly and calm. There would be no drama and no tears when they returned to the villa to discuss their divorce and the next morning she would fly back to London.

  By dawn the following day, Frankie was becoming increasingly perplexed about what was going on inside her own confusing body. Her period had still not arrived. In addition, she had not experienced a single further twinge but, most unusually, her breasts were now feeling the tiniest bit tender. What if...? What if she had been premature in giving Santino that reassurance?

  By noon of the same day, having still received no confirmation of her condition, Frankie was panicking. Santino’s chauffeur, Mario, drove her into the pretty medieval town of Anguillara. Too enervated even to appreciate her lovely surroundings, Frankie purchased a pregnancy test. When the kit provided her with incontrovertible proof that she had conceived, she went into shock. Joy and dismay then tore at her simultaneously as she appreciated how very foolish she had been to rush into disabusing Santino of the idea that she might be pregnant. How on earth was she supposed to tell him now that she had made a mistake?

  The following morning, the very day of Santino’s return, Frankie began worrying that that one little cramp she had felt might be the warning of an approaching miscarriage. Appalled by the idea, already having developed powerful feelings of protectiveness towards her unborn child, she visited a busy medical practice in Bracciano. A brief examination confirmed the test results.

  Then she sat feeling rather like a toddler being taught the basics while the woman doctor gently explained to her that her experience had not been unusual, nor indeed was it anything to worry about. During the earliest stages of pregnancy it was apparently quite common for a woman to misinterpret the signs that her body was giving her because it was a time of tremendous hormonal upheaval. Leaving the surgery, Frankie went shopping in a very expensive shop. She bought an elegant daffodil-yellow dress and toning shoes, her version of armour.

  At three in the afternoon, Frankie arrived in the limousine at Fiumicino to meet Santino off his private jet. Of course, she could have waited until he came home, but the truth was that she just couldn’t wait to see him again and gauge his reaction to the mistaken news she had given him on the phone. If he was happier than a sandboy, it would be a challenge to disenchant him.

  But one thing she did know: she could not keep such news from Santino, nor could she even consider any suggestion that they should remain married for the baby’s sake. It wouldn’t be fair. It just would not be fair to either of them.

  As Frankie watched from the VIP lounge, the jet taxied in and the steps were run up. A slim blonde woman clad in an eye-catching fuchsia-pink suit appeared first. The stewardess? No, the stewardess was still at the exit door. Santino emerged next, luxuriant black hair ruffling in the slight breeze, vibrantly handsome dark features unreadable at that distance. In odd visual conflict with his stunning, elegant appearance, he had something large and awkwardly shaped stuffed under one powerful arm.

  The blonde waited at the foot of the steps for him. A bank executive? His secretary? But as Santino and the woman crossed the tarmac, drawing ever closer, their heads bent in animated conversation, Frankie began to stiffen and stare fixedly because she could not immediately accept the powerful stirrings of recognition firing danger signals from her memory banks. Her stomach gave a sick, fearful lurch, perspiration breaking out on her brow.

  ‘Who is that woman?’ she asked the chauffeur, who was standing several feet away.

  The older man looked surprised by her need to ask that question. ‘Melina Bucelli, signora.’

  Frankie froze in disbelief. Simultaneously three men, seemingly springing up out of nowhere, ran across the tarmac to target Santino with their cameras. Instantly Santino’s security men went into action, holding back the shouting paparazzi. Their steps quickening, Santino and his companion lifted their heads.

  Frankie recognised the blonde at the same instant as Santino saw Frankie standing by the window waiting. A brilliant smile began forming on his lips and then, with the speed of light, he appeared to register what a deep, dark hole he was in and, ditching the smile for an appalled look, dropped his briefcase and the funny furry thing he was carrying and broke into a most uncool sprint, his startled security men charging in his wake.

  But Santino was already too late. Breaking free of her paralysis, Frankie had raced across the VIP lounge and headed like a homing pigeon out into the mercifully crowded anonymity of the main airport building.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  FRANKIE sat staring down into her untouched cappuccino. After being forced to cope with a debilitating bout of physical sickness in a cloakroom at Fiumicino, she had finally got into a taxi and directed the driver to the city centre. She had walked the streets for what felt like miles before her trembling lower limbs had forced her to sit down at a pavement café.

  Now, registering her familiar surroundings, she was ashamed to find herself in the Piazza Navona. Only last week she had been here with Santino, and undoubtedly the memory of that happy day had unerringly brought her back. Insisting that ancient sites alone were too restricting, Santino had suggested that on alternate days he would choose their destinations.

  In the church of Santa Maria della Pace, he had shown her the wonderful frescos by Raphael and had linked his fingers lightly with hers. Hand in hand, like lovers, they had strolled down the Via del Governo Vecchio to admire the superb Renaissance buildings and they had lunched in a trattoria overlooking three spectacular Baroque fountains. By that stage Santino had been flirtatiously kissing her fingers one by one, mowing down her daytime defences with burnished, dark, kno
wing eyes that made her heart race dizzily with longing and love and need.

  Frankie blinked, her mind going blank, unable to hold onto images which now filled her with such unbearable pain. She was still in deep shock. Nothing could have prepared her for the devastating discovery that the blonde kissing Santino in Cagliari five years ago and Melina Bucelli, reputedly dear as a daughter to Sonia Vitale, were in fact one and the same woman.

  Frankie had never asked Santino about the woman he had betrayed her with. She had never really wanted to know any more. In those days their marriage had been a charade. She had left that episode in the past, where it seemed to belong, never dreaming that Santino might have some ongoing relationship with the woman. Indeed she had preferred to think of that gorgeous blonde as some casual pick-up, some immoral trollop...

  Yet paradoxically she could not imagine Santino choosing to become intimate with that kind of woman. And he hadn’t, had he? Possessed of his aristocratic mother’s stamp of approval, Melina Bucelli had to be from the same rich and privileged background. That Melina should also be exquisitely beautiful was almost too much to bear. But what continually drew Frankie to a halt in her shellshocked ruminations was a complete inability to understand the sort of relationship Santino had with the other woman.

  Five years ago Santino had been Melina’s lover, but he hadn’t had his marriage to Frankie annulled so that he could marry the other woman. That threw up another question that Frankie could barely credit that she had never yet asked him. Why had Santino allowed their marriage to continue in existence for so long? Challenged, she could not come up with a single adequate explanation of why Santino had been content to remain a married man.

  But then what did that matter now? Frankie asked herself dully. The night before last she had told Santino that she wasn’t pregnant. She had let him off the hook and he had fairly leapt off that hook of responsibility into celebration. From that moment he had evidently considered himself free of all obligation towards Frankie. Knowing that he was now free to go ahead with a divorce, he had probably invited Melina to join him in Milan. Naturally he wouldn’t have expected Frankie to turn up to meet him at the airport. After all, in the circumstances, why should she have done such a very wifely thing?

  Having stranded herself in Rome with little cash left in her purse and not the slightest idea of how to get back to the Villa Fontana by public transport, Frankie finally surrendered to hard necessity. However she felt, she had to go back to the villa to pack and she had to face Santino. After purchasing a phone card in a newspaper kiosk, she queued up to use a public phone.

  She wasn’t expecting Santino to answer the phone personally, and the instant he heard her hesitant voice he burst into explosive Italian, speaking too fast for her to follow. It was Santino and yet he didn’t sound like himself. He sounded frantic, distressed, out of control.

  ‘I want you to send a car for me...but I don’t want you to be in that car,’ Frankie told him in a deadened voice of exhaustion.

  ‘Where are you?’ Santino demanded raggedly. ‘Per amor di Dio...I’ve been out of my mind with worry!’

  ‘You’re really not very good at adultery, Santino...I think your life will be easier after we’re divorced,’ Frankie murmured flatly.

  ‘Please tell me where you are,’ Santino pressed fiercely.

  She told him and added, ‘If you’re in the car, I won’t get in,’ because she couldn’t face the prospect of their confrontation taking place in a confined space.

  A limousine drew up in front of her less than ten minutes later. Santino’s chief security man, Nardo, got out, looking very grave, and was relieved to usher her into the rear seat.

  ‘We searched the airport over and over again,’ he sighed. ‘Signor Vitale was distraught at your disappearance. I was only able to persuade him to return to the villa an hour ago.’

  As the door closed on her and she slumped, Frankie was surprised to find herself sharing the seat with a very large teddy bear, wearing a frilly tartan dress and, horror of horrors, carrying a miniature teddy in its arms. The teddy looked as forlorn as she felt. Her goodbye present from Milan, fully advertising Santino’s apparent belief that she had no taste whatsoever and hadn’t matured in the slightest. And why did the teddy have a distinctly mother-and-baby look about it? Was that supposed to be a joke he expected her to appreciate?

  Obviously she was a complete fool where men were concerned. She just could not comprehend how Santino could have made passionate love to her only three nights earlier and then turned to Melina. He hadn’t even paused for breath. And now she could not imagine telling him that she carried his child either...

  She dozed in the car but it was like a waking dream, full of haunting slices of memory. She surfaced to find herself inside the Villa Fontana, being carried upstairs in Santino’s arms. ‘Put me down—’

  ‘I thought I had lost you...I have never been so scared in my life,’ Santino groaned, powerful arms tightening round her. ‘Don’t you ever, ever do this to me again.’

  ‘I won’t be here to do it,’ she reminded him dully.

  Santino settled her down in a comfortable armchair in their bedroom. Frankie studied him. He looked devastated. She had never seen a few hours make such a difference to anybody. His tie was at half-mast, half the buttons on his silk shirt were undone to reveal a brown slice of hair-roughened chest and he badly needed a shave. Beneath the stubble he was pale as death, and his eyes were haunted and dark with strain.

  ‘You lied to me...I never thought you would do that,’ Frankie confided with a jerky little laugh.

  Santino frowned. ‘When did I lie?’

  ‘When I asked you who Melina was, you didn’t tell me the truth.’

  Santino drove long fingers roughly through his already tousled hair. ‘I was thinking about Rico that day...it slipped my mind that Melina was the woman you saw me with in Cagliari five years ago—’

  ‘Slipped your mind?’ Frankie repeated in helpless disbelief.

  ‘I didn’t expect you to remember her... All right, I wasn’t breaking my neck to raise that subject too soon. Which of us is eager to recall our more embarrassing mistakes?’ Santino demanded in charged appeal. ‘What you saw happen between Melina and me that day was the consequence of a moment of temptation, of weakness... and when you surprised us that was it. Nothing more happened between us, either then or since.’

  ‘Do you seriously expect me to believe that?’ Frankie whispered in despair.

  ‘Perhaps I should have begun at the beginning. When she was eighteen, Melina was my brother’s girlfriend... or his cover story, if you like,’ Santino shared ruefully. ‘Because Rico was gay.’

  ‘Gay?’ Taken by surprise, Frankie stared back at him.

  ‘My parents could not accept him as he was. They were desperate for him to marry. They adored Melina and she adored Rico. But he never had the slightest intention of marrying her. When he died, she joined my mother in making a shrine of his memory,’ Santino explained grimly. ‘After a while, my mother decided that Melina would make me the perfect wife, but I wasn’t interested. She was...perhaps because I look very like my late brother.’

  ‘And that day I saw you with her in Cagliari?’

  Santino tautened. ‘Melina flew over to Sardinia, ostensibly to visit friends. She came to see me at the bank and I decided to take her back to my apartment for lunch. It was quite innocent until she threw herself at me in the lift...but I was not unresponsive to that invitation,’ he admitted bluntly, shooting Frankie a driven look of fierce emotion. ‘Had you not interrupted us, I would have gone to bed with her... after six months of our marriage, I was so tortured by my unsated desire for you, I would have done anything to try to kill that craving!’

  Frankie was sharply disconcerted by that admission. She had never really understood, even when he had told her at the farmhouse, how hard it must have been for him to withstand the temptation to consummate their marriage. Heaven knew, she had been willing, but he had
been wise to keep his distance. Then she could never have been his equal and he would swiftly have grown bored with her immature adoration.

  ‘I would’ve used Melina and she deserved better. I chased after you and left her standing in the lobby that day without any explanation. It was a long time before she could forgive me for that. These days we meet solely as distant and very polite friends—’

  ‘“Friends”...that’s such an elastic term with you—’

  ‘Melina and I met at the conference,’ Santino interrupted drily. ‘She has just become engaged to another banker. She flew back to Rome with me to make arrangements for a family party to announce her engagement.’

  Frankie was shaken. His explanation made better sense than any other. Her suspicions vanquished, she was left feeling rather foolish and uncomfortable. ‘That’s going to break your mother’s heart,’ was all she could think to say.

  ‘Few men marry women chosen by their mothers, cara.’ Santino’s mouth quirked. ‘I should also mention that I received a rather astonishing phone call from mine this morning.’

  ‘Oh?’ Frankie had tensed.

  ‘Surprisingly, my mother wanted to tell me how much she loved me.’ Santino rested keen eyes on Frankie’s betraying flush. ‘She may not have shown that affection in ten years, but she was not telling me anything I didn’t already know.’

  ‘Wasn’t she?’ Frankie was disconcerted by that assurance.

  ‘She has never come to terms with my brother’s death, but today all of a sudden she experienced a need to contact me and say that she appreciated how very fortunate she was to have a surviving son.’

  ‘Gosh!’ Frankie exclaimed, glancing away, not wanting him to suspect her interference.

  ‘Mamma also received the news of Melina’s engagement with nothing more than a regretful sigh, and she implied that she might have been slightly hasty in saying that she would never accept you as a daughter-in-law. It was an amazing rapprochement.’