The Reluctant Husband

‘Are you afraid of me now?’

Frankie stopped dead, nervous tension screaming through her rigidity as a rush of daunting confusion gripped her. For an instant she felt like an adolescent again, the teenager who had once slavishly obeyed Santino’s every instruction. She had been so terrified of losing his friendship, she would have done anything he told her to do. But no, Santino had not taught her to be afraid of him...she had had to learn for herself to be afraid of the frighteningly strong feelings he aroused inside her.

Was it his fault that she hated him now? She didn’t want to think about whether or not she was being fair. Instead she found herself turning to look back at him again, somehow answering a need within herself that she could not withstand. And inexplicably it was like emerging from the dark into the light, heat and energy warming her, quelling that sudden spurt of fear and making her bite back her bitterness. Slowly, stiffly, she walked back and sank into the seat.

‘What are you doing here?’ she asked baldly.

‘Signor Megras won’t be coming. The villas belong to me.’

As the silence pulsed, Frankie stared back at him incredulously. ‘I don’t believe you.’

A slashing smile curved Santino’s wide, sensual mouth. ‘It is the truth. I brought you up here. I wanted to see you again.’

‘Why?’ Her head was spinning.

‘You are my wife. It may be a long time since I have chosen to remind you of that fact, but you are still my wife,’ Santino imparted with measured emphasis.

A jerky laugh of disbelief fell from Frankie’s dry lips. ‘Our marriage was annulled as soon as I went back to the UK,’ she scorned, tilting her chin. ‘Didn’t you get the papers?’

Santino merely smiled again. ‘Did you?’

Her brow furrowed, her mouth tightening. ‘Mum has them. Since I was under-age, she dealt with the formalities—’

‘Is that what you were told?’

‘Look, I know that that ceremony was set aside as null and void!’

‘You’ve been had,’ Santino drawled with lazy amusement.

An angry flush washed over her cheeks. His persistence infuriated her. ‘When I get home, I’ll ensure that you’re sent confirmation of the fact. I can assure you that we are no longer married.’

‘But then we never were...in the adult sense,’ Santino conceded.

Attacked without warning by a cruel Technicolor replay of her last sight of Santino, Frankie paled, her stomach giving a violent lurch. Santino with another woman, locked together in the throes of a very adult passion. A beautiful blonde, her peach-tinted nails spearing into his luxuriant black hair as he kissed her, melding every line of her curvaceous body to the lean, muscular strength of his. Frankie had been ripped apart by that glimpse of Santino as she herself had never seen him, and in that same instant she had been forced to see that they had never had a future together. In leaving, she had set them both free.

Dark golden eyes rested intently on her. ‘I deeply regret the manner of our parting. You were very distressed.’

Shattered that he should have guessed what was on her mind, Frankie went rigid. In self-defence, she focused on the table. She couldn’t think straight. Her emotions, usually so wonderfully well-disciplined, were in wild turmoil. She could barely accept that she was actually with Santino again, but even that bewildering awareness was pounded out of existence by the tremendous pain he had cruelly dredged back up out of her subconscious. With fierce determination, she blocked those memories out.

‘Perhaps it was a mistake to mention that so soon but I can feel it standing between us like a wall,’ Santino incised very quietly.

The assurance sent Frankie’s head flying up again, a fixed smile of derision pasted to her lips. ‘And I think you’re imagining things. So I discovered that my saint had feet of clay.’ She shifted a slim shoulder dismissively. ‘All part of growing up, and irrelevant after this length of time. Now, if those villas really are yours, can we get down to business?’

‘You have indeed been away a long while.’ Santino signalled to the proprietor with a fluid gesture. ‘That’s not how we do business here. We share a drink, we talk, maybe I invite you to my home for dinner and then, possibly after dinner, we get down to business.’

Frankie’s expressive eyes flashed. ‘I won’t be coming to your home for dinner, I assure you—’

‘Strive to wait until you’re invited,’ Santino traded gently.

Her cheeks reddened, her teeth gritting as wine arrived. ‘I find this whole stupid charade juvenile!’

‘As I remember it, you love the unexpected.’ Santino lounged back indolently in his seat, unconcerned by her growing anger and frustration.

‘I was a child then—’

‘Yet at the time you kept on telling me that you were all woman,’ Santino reminded her in a black velvet purr of wry amusement.

The worst tide of colour yet crimsoned Frankie’s throat. ‘So tell me,’ she said sharply, absolutely desperate for a change of subject, ‘are you in the tourist trade now?’