The Reluctant Husband

Frankie tensed. ‘What do you mean?’

‘She will be served with an eviction notice by the end of the day.’

Frankie surveyed him in horror. Santino indolently drew the car to a slow halt and climbed out. Frankie leapt out at speed. ‘You can’t do that to her!’

‘Give me one good reason why not.’

Frankie hovered on the edge of the dusty road, thinking hard, but her mind was a complete blank. Sheer shock was resounding through her in dizzy waves.

Santino slung her a grimly amused look from veiled golden eyes and calmly removed a basket and a rug from the back of the car. ‘It’s a challenge, isn’t it?’ he agreed.

‘It’s not that... I just can’t believe you could be that cruel!’ Frankie admitted helplessly.

‘But then you’ve never met with this side of me before. Only with you was I ever a pussycat and, sadly for you, those days are past,’ Santino delivered with hard dark eyes that glittered like golden ice in the sunlight. ‘I’m lethally unforgiving in business, Francesca...and I’m sorry to say that both you and your unlovely mother fall very much into the category of business now.’

The tip of her tongue snaked out to moisten her dry lower lip in a flicking motion. She just couldn’t believe that this was Santino. He was correct about that all right. She didn’t recognise the warm, teasing, tolerant male she remembered in this tall dark man with his savagely hard and unfeeling eyes. Her attention fell on the basket he held and total bewilderment seized her. ‘What are you doing with that?’

‘It’s for our picnic,’ Santino divulged gently.

Her generous mouth opened and shut. As yet it hadn’t even occurred to her to wonder why he had stopped the car and got out.

‘Our... picnic?’ she questioned unevenly. ‘Let me get this straight... Just after you announce that you’re having my mother served with an eviction notice, you expect me to join you for a picnic?’

‘And the thought of that eviction notice has whetted my appetite,’ Santino confided without remorse as he swung fluidly on his heel.

In stunned disbelief Frankie watched him stride down the grassy, rutted track on the far side of the car. It led down the sloping ground into the thick cover of trees. Within a minute, that dark, imperious head was out of sight. Gritting her teeth, Frankie abandoned her pride and chased after him. She passed by the tumbledown shell of a little stone house, long since given over to the weeds and the undergrowth, and just beyond it, beneath the dappled shade of an ancient gnarled tree, she saw that the rug and the basket had been abandoned.

Santino was poised on the brow of the sun-drenched hillside, looking down at the village which straggled untidily over the slopes below them. As she drew level with him, he turned his head.

‘Santino,’ she began tautly, ‘my—’

‘That’s La Rocca down there,’ he cut in informatively. ‘My grandmother was born in the bar where we met yesterd

ay. It was called a hotel in those days too. Her father had aspirations which were never fulfilled.’

Frankie frowned uncertainly. ‘I—’

‘Keep quiet and listen.’ Brilliant dark eyes lanced into hers, his sensual mouth hardening. ‘What else can you see from here?’

She swallowed hard and looked around herself with blank, uncomprehending eyes, wondering what on earth he was driving at.

‘My grandfather was born in that ruin,’ he supplied with studied patience. ‘One of eleven children, only six of whom survived to adulthood. He brought me here when I was eight years old and he told me that this is where the Vitale family has its roots. Humble beginnings but, believe it or not, I’m very proud of them.’

‘Yes, I can see that,’ Frankie muttered abstractedly. ‘But—’

‘No, you do not see at all!’ Santino grated with driving derision, and strode away from her.

Frankie just couldn’t concentrate; she was too shaken up by all that had burst upon her. Her temples were pounding with tension. But she seemed to be suffering alone, for Santino was uncorking a bottle of wine, his hands deft and sure, stray arrows of light skimming over his chiselled golden profile and the lean, fluid sweep of his lithe masculine body as he knelt on the rug.

‘She’s got visitors staying right now...Mum, I mean,’ she began helplessly, unable even to organise her thoughts, never mind her speech. ‘And I’m not trying to excuse what’s been done, but she hasn’t had it easy—’

‘Until I came along—’

Frankie flushed and stepped off one foot onto the other. ‘She could have been a top model if she hadn’t been saddled with me. And then Dad took me and she couldn’t find me, and she ended up marrying Giles and he—’

‘Was bankrupted by her extravagance.’

Frankie stiffened. ‘That’s not the way I heard it.’