The Reluctant Husband

‘This and that.’ Hooded night-dark eyes resting on her, Santino lifted a broad shoulder in an infinitesimal shrug and a half-smile played maddeningly about his mobile mouth.

It was ridiculous that she shouldn’t know what business he was in, ridiculous that she should know so very little about this male to whom she had once been married! But years ago all she had known about Santino was that the elderly village priest was his great-uncle and that during the week he worked in a bank in Cagliari, where he also had the use of an apartment.

But, whatever Santino was doing now, he appeared to be doing very well. That magnificent suit simply shrieked expensive tailoring. But then he was a Latin male, and the Latin male liked to look good and was quite capable of spending a disproportionate amount of his income on his wardrobe. Even so, Frankie wasn’t used to seeing Santino in such formal attire. When he had come home to her at weekends, he had worn jeans and casual shirts. He looked so different now, like some big city business tycoon, stunningly sophisticated and smooth. The acknowledgement sharply disconcerted her.

Santino was surveying her with veiled eyes. ‘I had a good reason for arranging this discreet meeting.’

‘April Fool off-season?’ Frankie derided brittly.

‘I understand that you’re on vacation and I would like to offer you the hospitality of my home,’ Santino contradicted her evenly.

Frankie stared back at him wide-eyed and then a choked laugh escaped her. ‘You’re kidding me, right?’

Santino pressed her untouched glass of wine towards her. ‘Why should I be?’

‘I’m leaving for Italy immediately,’ she told him, incredulous that he should advance such an invitation. ‘So I’m afraid we do business now or not at all.’

‘I don’t give a damn about the villas,’ Santino countered very drily.

‘It’s my job to give a damn.’ Her sense of unreality was spreading by the minute. Santino here...with her. It felt so fantastically unreal. Why should Santino want to see her again after so long? Simple curiosity? Clearly he had found out where she worked in London. Was that why the villas had been offered to Finlay Travel? But how had Santino discovered where she worked?

From below her lashes she watched him as she drank, easing her parched vocal cords. He was so cool, so controlled... so calculating? Her spine tingled, some sixth sense spooking her. She scanned his gypsy-dark features, absorbing the stunning symmetry of each. The wide forehead, the thin, arrogant blade of a nose, the blunt high cheekbones and the chiselled curve of his sensual mouth. Her attention roved to his thick black hair, the curls ruthlessly suppressed by an expert cut, and the lustrous, very dark eyes which flared gold in emotion, and yet still a nagging sense of disorientation plagued her.

Santino both looked and felt like a stranger, she acknowledged dazedly, more than that even...a disturbingly intimidating stranger, who wore a cloak of natural authority and command as though he had been born to it. He was not Santino Vitale as she remembered him. Or was it that she now saw more clearly without adoration blinding her perception? Adoration? Inwardly she shrank, but there was no denying that that single word most accurately described the emotions which Santino had once inspired in her.

‘Francesca...’

‘Nobody calls me that any more,’ Frankie muttered waspishly, striving to rise above an ever-increasing sense of crawling mortification.

This encounter was a nightmare, she conceded, stricken. At sixteen, she had been so agonisingly, desperately in love with Santino. She had thrown herself at his head and done and said things that no woman in her right mind would want to recall once she reached the age of maturity! She must have seemed pathetic in his eyes, forever swearing undying love and resisting his every move to sidestep the intimacy which she had craved and which he had never wanted. It hadn’t been Frankie who had locked her bedroom door at night... it had been Santino who’d locked his. That particular recollection made her feel seriously unwell.

‘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 behin

d 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.