The Reluctant Husband

‘Look at me...’ A lean brown forefinger skated a teasing path across her clenched knuckles. ‘Please, Francesca...’ he urged gently.

It was like being prodded by a hot wire. Her sensitive flesh scorched and she yanked her hand back out of reach, shaken by a sudden excruciating awareness of every skin-cell in her humming body. Oh, dear heaven, no, she thought as she recognised the wanton source of that overpowering physical response. In horror, she lifted her lashes to collide with glittering gold eyes. Her breath tripped in her throat. Her heart hammered wildly against her ribs.

‘What do you want?’ she demanded starkly.

‘Three weeks out of time,’ Santino admitted softly. ‘I want us to spend that time together.’

‘I’m not spending any time with you!’ Frankie jerked upright, wide green eyes alight with disbelief.

Santino rose at his leisure, grim amusement curling his eloquent mouth. In a single fluid step he reached her. Lean hands confidently tugged her out from behind the table into the circle of his arms. Frankie was so taken aback she just stood there and looked up at him in open bewilderment. She could not credit that Santino would make any form of sexual advance towards her and uneasily assumed that he was trying to be fraternally reassuring.

‘Relax,’ Santino urged lazily, brushing a straying strand of bright hair back from her indented brow.

At that careless touch her heartbeat lurched violently, her throat tightening. Suddenly she was struggling to get air into her lungs. He angled his dark head down and she came in conflict with shimmering dark golden eyes. Another wanton frisson of raw excitement arrowed through her. Her head swam. Her knees wobbled. And then, before she could catch her breath again, Santino brought his mouth down on hers with ruthless precision, expertly parting her soft lips to let his tongue hungrily probe the moist, tender interior within.

That single kiss was the most electrifyingly erotic experience Frankie had ever had. Heat flared between her thighs, making her quiver and moan in shattered response. Instinctively she pushed into the hard heat of his abrasively masculine body. He crushed her to him with satisfying strength. Then he lifted his arrogant dark head and gazed down at her, his brilliant gaze raking over her stunned face as he slowly, calmly set her back from him again. ‘All this time I wondered...now I know,’ he stressed with husky satisfaction.

Frankie turned scarlet. Appalled green eyes fixed to him, she backed away fast. ‘You know nothing about me!’ she gasped, stricken.

In a tempest of angry distress, her only desire to escape from the scene of her own humiliation, Frankie stalked out into the fading daylight. There she blinked in bemusement before she raced across the square. It was empty...empty of her car!

‘And now, thanks to you, my car’s been stolen!’ Frankie shrilled back at Santino where he now lounged with infuriating indolence in the doorway of the bar.

He straightened fluidly and strolled towards her. ‘I stole it,’ he informed her, seemingly becoming cooler and ever more dauntingly assured with every second that made her angrier.

‘You did what?’ Frankie enunciated with extreme difficulty.

‘I am responsible for the disappearance of your car.’

The sort of blinding rage Frankie had honestly believed she had left behind in her teens swept over her. That cool, utterly self-possessed tone affected her like paraffin thrown on a bonfire. ‘Well, you just bloody well get it back, then!’ She launched at him, both of her hands closing into fists of fury. ‘I don’t know what kind of a game you think you’re playing here—’

‘I don’t feel remotely playful,’ Santino slotted in smoothly.

Frankie took a seething stride forward and grabbed him by the lapels of his jacket. ‘I want my car back now!’

‘The Caparelli Curse,’ Santino remarked softly, reflectively, quite unmoved by the spitting frenzy of her fury. ‘To think I thought rumour exaggerated. No longer does it surprise me that your grandfather was so desperate to marry you off.’

And that was it. At the mention of the hated nickname she had acquired in her grandfather’s village Frankie shuddered, and when Santino went on to remind her that he had been virtually forced into marrying her her last shred of control went. ‘You swine!’ she hissed, and drew back a step the better to take a swing at him.

But Santino was faster on his feet than she had anticipated, and as he sidestepped her the heel of her shoe caught on the lining of the long raincoat still hanging from her shoulders. She lost her balance and went down with a cry of alarm, striking her head. There was pain...then darkness, then nothing as she slid into unconsciousness.

CHAPTER TWO

FRANKIE had a headache when she drifted back to wakefulness with a frown. But worse was to come. She lifted her heavy eyelids and focused not on her familiar bedroom but on a completely strange room. It was the most disorientating experience of her life.

Stone walls...stone walls? Massive antique furniture with more than an air of gothic splendour. Her mouth fell wide as she took in the narrow casement windows, for all the world like the windows of a castle. It was a vast room and the bed was of equally heroic proportions.

And only then did splinters of disconnected imagery return to her. She recalled a nun... nun? She remembered feeling horribly sick, and being so. She remembered being told firmly that she had to stay awake when all that she wanted to do was sleep because her head ached unbearably. All the pieces were confused but one particular image, which had strayed in and out of her hazy impressions, struck her afresh with stunning effect... Santino!

A flicker of movement at the corner of her vision jerked her head around. A lithe, dark male figure stepped out of the shadows into the soft pool of light by the bed. Everything came back at once in a rush. Planting two hands on the mattress beneath her, Frankie reeled up into a sitting position, a tangle of multicoloured hair flying round her flushed and taut face. ‘You!’ she exclaimed accusingly.

‘I’ll call the doctor,’ Santino responded, reaching forward to tug the tapestry bell-rope hanging beside the bed.

‘Don’t bother!’ Frankie asserted between clenched teeth, throwing back the sheet with the intention of getting up and then swaying as a sick wave of dizziness assailed her.

As she pressed her fingers to her swimming head, a pair of strong arms enclosed her and she was pushed firmly back down again on the pillows.

‘Get your hands off me!’ Frankie bit out, refusing to surrender to her own bodily weakness.

‘Shut up,’ Santino said succinctly, bending over her with a shockingly menacing expression stamped on his vibrantly handsome features. ‘Bad temper put you in that bed and it might have killed you!’

Frozen by outrage, Frankie gaped at him, emeraldgreen eyes almost out on shocked stalks that he should dare to speak to her like that ‘Your crazy games put me in this bed!’

‘Your injuries could have been far more serious,’ Santino told her with a most offensive edge of condemnation. ‘Had I not managed to break your fall, you might have suffered more than a sore head and concussion. You were unconscious for many hours!’

‘It’s your fault that I got hurt!’

‘My fault?’ Santino repeated incredulously. ‘You took a swing at me!’

“The next time, I won’t miss! Where the heck am I?’ Frankie flared back furiously. ‘I want to go home!’

‘But you are home. You are with me,’ Santino drawled in a soft tone of finality.

‘You’re nuts...you are absolutely stark, staring mad!’ Frankie exclaimed helplessly, huge, bewildered eyes pinned to him. ‘What did you do with my car?’

‘As you were no longer in need of it, I had it returned to the hire firm.’

The door opened, breaking the thrumming silence. A tall, distinguished man in his fifties entered the room. ‘I am Dr Orsini, Signora Vitale.’ He set a medical bag on the cabinet by the bed. ‘How are you feeling now that you have had some sleep?’

‘I am not Signora Vitale,’ Frankie said shakily, beginning to feel like somebody playing a leading role in a farce.

The doctor looked at Santino. Santino smiled, raised his lustrous dark eyes heavenward and shifted a broad shoulder in a small shrug.

‘What are you looking at him like that—for?’ Frankie launched suspiciously. ‘I am not this man’s wife, Dr Orsini. In fact I have never seen him before in my life!’ she concluded with impressive conviction.

The doctor studied her with narrowed eyes and a frown. Frankie looked with expectant triumph at Santino, but Santino was already lifting something off the enormous dressing table and extending it to the older man.

‘What’s that? What are you showing him?’ Frankie demanded jerkily, falling fast into the grip of nervous paranoia.

‘One of our wedding photographs, cara mia.’ Santino shot her rigid stillness a gleaming glance from beneath luxuriant black lashes and tossed the silver-framed photo onto the bed for her perusal.

Without reaching for it—indeed her fingers chose to clutch defensively into the bedspread instead—Frankie stared down fulminatingly at that photograph. Her throat closed over, the strangest lump forming round her vocal cords. There she was in all her old-fashioned wedding finery, sweet sixteen and so sickeningly infatuated that she glowed like a torch for all to see, her face turned up to Santino’s adoringly. Shame she hadn’t had the wit to notice that Santino’s smile had more than a suggestion of stoically gritted teeth about it than a similiar romantic fervour!

Quite irrationally, her eyes smarted with tears. Suddenly she appreciated that whether it was fair or not she really did hate Santino! He hadn’t had to go through with the wedding. When he had realised the gravity of the situation they were in, surely he could have smuggled her back out of the village again and sent her home to her mother in London? She refused to believe that he could not have found some other way out of their predicament, rather than simply knuckling down to her grandfather’s outrageous demand that he marry her!

The doctor was opening his bag when she lifted her head again. Throwing Santino an embittered glance, Frankie cleared her throat. ‘This man may once have been my husband but he is not any more. In fact—’

‘Cara...’ Santino chided in a hideously indulgent tone.

‘He stole my car!’ Frankie completed fiercely.

Carefully not looking at her, Dr Orsini said something in a low, concerned undertone to Santino. Santino sighed, contriving to appear more long-suffering than ever.

‘Did you hear what I said?’ Frankie’s voice shook.

The older man was too busy shaking his head in wonderment.

Santino strolled to the foot of the bed. ‘Francesca...’ he murmured. ‘I know I am not your favourite person right now, but these wild stories are beginning to sound a little weird.’

Her jaw dropped. She flushed scarlet and experienced such a spasm of frustrated fury that she was dimly surprised that she did not levitate off the bed. She slung Santino a blazing look that would have felled a charging rhino. It washed over him. For the very first time she recalled Santino’s wicked sense of humour. His sensual mouth spread into a teeth-clenchingly forgiving smile, white teeth flashing against his sun-bronzed skin. ‘Grazie, cara...’

‘You will be relieved to learn that the X-rays were completely clear,’ Dr Orsini told her in a bracing voice. He didn’t believe her; the man did not believe a word she had said!

‘X-rays...what X-rays?’ she mumbled.

‘You were X-rayed last night while you were still unconscious,’ Santino informed her.

‘Last night...?’ she stressed in confusion.

Santino nodded in grim confirmation. ‘You didn’t regain consciousness until the early hours of this morning.’

‘Where was I X-rayed?’ she pressed.

‘In the infirmary wing of the Convent of Santa Maria.’

Am I in a convent? Frankie wondered dazedly, her energy level seriously depleted by both injury and shock upon succeeding shock. In a room kept for the use of well-heeled private patients?

‘Your husband was most concerned that every precaution should be exercised,’ the older man explained quietly. ‘Try to keep more calm, signora.’

‘There’s nothing the matter with my nerves,’ Frankie muttered, but she couldn’t help noticing that nobody rushed to agree with her.

Her head was aching and her brain revolving in circles. While she endured a brief examination, and even answered questions with positive meekness, on one level she was actually wondering if she was still unconscious. All this—the strange environment, the peculiar behaviour of her companions—might simply be a dream. It was a most enticing conviction. But there was something horrendously realistic about Santino’s easy conversation with the doctor as he saw him to the door, apologising for keeping him out so late and wishing him a safe journey home. Her Italian was just about good enough to translate that brief dialogue.

As Santino strode back to the foot of the bed, Frankie reluctantly abandoned the idea that she was dreaming. With an unsteady hand, she reached for the glass of water by the bed and slowly sipped.

‘Are you hungry?’ Santino enquired calmly.

Frankie shook her head uneasily. Her stomach felt rather queasy. She snatched in a deep, quivering breath. ‘I want you to tell me what’s going on.’

Santino surveyed her with glittering golden eyes, his eloquent mouth taking on a sardonic curve. ‘I decided that it was time to remind you that you had a husband.’

Frankie froze. ‘For the last time...you are not my husband!’

‘Our marriage was not annulled, nor was it dissolved by divorce. Therefore,’ Santino spelt out levelly, ‘we are still married.’

‘No way!’ Frankie threw back. ‘The marriage was annulled!’

“Is that really your belief?’ Santino subjected her to an intent appraisal that made her pale skin flush.

‘It’s not just a belief,’ Frankie argued vehemently. ‘It’s what I know to be the truth!’

‘And the name of the legal firm employed on the task...it was Sweetberry and Hutchins?’ Santino queried.

Frankie blinked uncertainly. She had only once visited the solicitor, and that had been almost five years earlier. ‘Yes, that was the name... and the very fact that you know it,’ she suddenly grasped, ‘means that you know very well that we haven’t been married for years!’

‘Does it?’ Santino strolled over to the windows and gracefully swung back to face her again. ‘A marriage that is annulled is set aside as though it has never been in existence. So would you agree that if our marriage had been annulled so long ago I would have no financial obligation towards you?’

Confused as to what he could possibly be driving at, Frankie nodded, a tiny frown puckering her brows. ‘Of course.’

‘Then perhaps you would care to explain why I have been supporting you ever since you left Sardinia.’ Santino regarded her with cool, questioning expectancy.

‘Supporting...me?’ Frankie repeated in a tone of complete amazement. ‘You?’

‘I was expecting Diamond Lil to show up at the La Rocca hotel. The little Fiat was a surprise. A chauffeur-driven limo would have been more appropriate,’ Santino mused silkily.

Frankie released a shaken laugh. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’ve been working for the past three years. I support myself. I have never received any money from you.’

Santino spread fluently expressive lean brown hands. ‘If that is true, it would appear that someone has committed fraud on an extensive scale since we last met.’

Her lashes fluttering in bemusement, Frankie studied him closely. He didn’t look as angry as he should have done, she thought dazedly. ‘Fraud?’ she repeated jerkily, the very seriousness of such a crime striking her. ‘But who...? I mean, how was the money paid?’

‘Through your solicitor.’

‘Gosh, he must be a real crook,’ Frankie mumbled, feeling suddenly weaker than ever, her limbs almost literally weighted to the bed. Santino had been paying money towards her support all these years? Even though she hadn’t received a penny of it, she was shattered by the news. Feeling as she did about him, she would never have accepted his money. He owed her nothing. In fact she felt really humiliated by the idea that he had thought he did have some sort of obligation towards her.

‘Forse...perhaps, but let us not leap to conclusions,’ Santino murmured, strangely detached from the news that someone had been ripping him off for years.

Frankie was thinking back to that one meeting she had had with ancient old Mr Sweetberry in his cluttered, dingy office. He had looked like a character out of a Charles Dickens novel, only lacking a pair of fingerless gloves. When he had realised that her marriage had taken place in a foreign country, he had looked very confused, as if it hadn’t previously occurred to him that people could get married outside the UK. In fact he had reacted with a blankness which hadn’t impressed Frankie at all. Her mother had then pointed out that Mr Sweetberry didn’t charge much for his services and that they could not afford to be too choosy.

‘Possibly,’ Santino remarked, ‘the guilty party might have been someone rather closer than your solicitor...’

Someone in Sardinia, someone on his side of the fence, she gathered he meant. Enormous relief swept over her, her own sense of responsibility eased by the idea. She felt incredibly tired but she still felt that she had to say it again. ‘I really wouldn’t have taken your money, Santino.’

Santino sent her a winging smile, alive with so much natural charisma that her heartbeat skidded into acceleration. ‘I believe you,’ he said quietly. ‘But the culprit must be apprehended, do you not think?’

‘Of course,’ Frankie eagerly agreed, grateful that he had accepted that she was telling the truth but still highly embarrassed by the situation he had outlined.

Without warning a sinking sensation then afflicted her stomach. All of a sudden she understood why Santino had been so determined to see her. He had obviously needed to talk about this money thing! She was mortified. She might pretty much loathe her ex-husband, but the knowledge that he had been shelling out for years in the belief that he was maintaining her could only make her feel guilty as hell. Had he found it difficult to keep up the payments? The quip about Diamond Lil suggested Santino had found it a burden. Frankie wanted to cringe.

‘And this greedy, dishonest individual—you...er... think this person should be pursued by the full weight of the law?’

Frankie groaned. ‘What’s the matter with you? I never thought you’d be such a wimp! Whoever’s responsible should be charged, prosecuted and imprisoned. In fact I won’t be at peace until I know he’s been punished, because this fraud has been committed in my name...and I feel awful about it!’

‘Not like hitting me any more?’

‘Well, not right now,’ Frankie muttered grudgingly.

Santino straightened the lace-edged sheet and smoothed her pillows. She didn’t notice.

‘If only you had explained right at the beginning,’ she sighed, feeling suddenly very low in spirits. ‘I suppose this is why you invited me to stay. You needed to talk about the money—’

‘I am ashamed to admit that I believed that you might have been party to the fraud.’

‘I understand,’ she allowed, scrupulously fair on the issue, and then, just as she was on the very edge of sleep, another more immediate anxiety occurred to her. ‘You’d better have me moved to another room, Santino...’

‘Why?’

‘My insurance won’t pay out for this kind of luxury—’

‘Don’t worry about it. You will not have to make a claim.’

Santino had such a wonderfully soothing voice, she reflected, smothering a rueful yawn. ‘I don’t want you paying the bill either.’

‘There won’t be one...at least...not in terms of cash,’ Santino mused softly.

‘Sorry?’

‘Go to sleep, cara.’

Abstractedly, just before she passed over the brink into sleep, she wondered how on earth Santino had produced that wedding photograph in a convent infirmary wing, but it didn’t seem terribly important, and doubtless there was a perfectly reasonable explanation. After all, she now knew exactly why Santino believed that they were still married. The perpetrator of the financial fraud had naturally decided to keep him in the dark about the annulment so that he would continue to pay.

The sun was high in the sky when Frankie woke up again. She slid out of bed. Apart from a dull ache still lingering at the base of her skull, she now felt fine. She explored the adjoining bathroom with admiring eyes. The fitments were quite sinfully luxurious. This was definitely not a convent infirmary wing. She was amused by her own foolish misapprehension of before. She was so obviously staying in a top-flight hotel! She reached for the wrapped toothbrush awaiting her and then stilled again.

Had this been Santino’s room? Had he given it up for her benefit? Was that why the photo had been sitting out? Why would Santino be carrying a framed photograph of their wedding around with him this long after the event? She frowned, her mouth tightening. She could think of only one good reason. And her mouth compressed so hard and flat, it went numb. Masquerading as a safely married man might well prevent his lovers from getting the wrong idea about the level of his commitment, she conceded in disgust. But then if Santino had genuinely believed that he was still a married man...?

That odd sense of depression still seemed to be hanging over her. She couldn’t understand it. Naturally she was upset that Santino should’ve assumed that she was happily living high off the fat of the land on his money, but she knew that she was not personally responsible for the fraud he had suffered. And he had believed her, hadn’t he? He also had to be greatly relieved to know that he wouldn’t have to pay another penny.

Diamond Lil... Just how much cash had he consigned into the black hole of someone else’s clever little fraud? Weren’t people despicable? All of a sudden she felt very sorry for Santino but ever so slightly superior. Evidently he wasn’t half as sharp as he looked or he would have put some check on his method of payment.

Her suitcase was sitting in the comer of the bedroom. As she dressed, she sighed. Santino must have been desperate to sort out this money business to go to the lengths of pretending that he wanted her to come and stay with him. Why would he have been staying in a hotel, though, if his home was nearby? And this was some hotel. How could he possibly afford a room like this? Unless this wasn’t a hotel but was, in fact, Santino’s home...

Frankie laughed out loud at that ridiculous idea even though her grandfather, Gino, had told her smugly that Santino was rich and a very good catch. In her eyes too, then, Santino had seemed rich. He had bought the largest house in Sienta for their occupation—an old farmhouse on the outskirts of the village. He had even carted a fancy washing machine home to her one weekend. Not that she had done much with it. She hadn’t understood the instructions and, after flooding the kitchen several times, she had merely pretended that she was using it. Of course, Santino had not seemed rich simply because he could afford a house and a car! He had just been considerably better off than anyone else in Sienta.

So therefore this had to be a hotel. Without further waste of time, Frankie pulled on loden-green cotton trousers and a toning waistcoat-style top with half-sleeves before she plaited her fiery hair. She discovered two new freckles on the bridge of her classic nose and scowled as she closed her case again, ready for her departure. A knock sounded on the door. A uniformed chambermaid entered with a breakfast tray and then shyly removed herself again. There was no hovering for a tip either.

While she ate with appetite, Frankie found her eyes returning again and again to that silver-framed photo sitting on the dressing table. Finally she leapt up and placed it face-down. Why had Santino kissed her yesterday? she suddenly asked herself. Curiosity now that she had grown up? Or had he actually started fancying her five years too late? Had her cold and businesslike attitude to him stung that all-male ego of his? Had he expected her still to blush and simper and gush over him the way she had as a teenager?