The Reluctant Husband

‘So be warned,’ Santino murmured chillingly. ‘I have never liked games, Francesca.’

Her lashes lowered, her appetite ebbing. When she glanced up again, Santino was uncorking a dusty bottle of champagne. ‘Where did that come from?’

‘It was in the cellar,’ he revealed. ‘Waiting for just such an opportunity.’

Frankie played restively with her food and just watched him eat. Whenever she looked at him her mouth ran dry. In her mind’s eye she was trying to picture them in that bed upstairs. Anxiety at the challenge she had set herself and the tingling heat of undeniable anticipation warred like mutual enemies inside her. Every time she went out to the kitchen she drank more wine. As she sank deeper into abstraction, Santino’s polished attempts to make conversation earned only monosyllabic responses.

Over the dessert course, she surveyed him and breathed in an abrupt tone of discovery, ‘You secretly wanted me to be a virgin, didn’t you?’

Santino’s superb bone structure tensed, lush black lashes narrowing on fiercely intent but uncommunicative eyes. ‘Now why would you think that?’

Frankie propped her chin on the heel of one hand, knowing she had startled him almost as much as she had startled herself with that sudden suspicion. A rather malicious smile formed on her generous mouth. ‘I can’t explain it, but somehow I know it’s the truth. You must be very disappointed.’

‘Hardly.’ His beautiful mouth curled as he met that provocative smile head-on. ‘I can think of no more tedious a start to a brief affair than the need to initiate a nervous amateur.’

The silence stretched. Frankie had paled.

‘I was just self-conscious last night,’ she informed him even more abruptly. ‘Usually I’m very confident in the bedroom.’

‘Good...I’m feeling unusually shy tonight,’ Santino imparted silkily.

Involuntarily, Frankie studied him, her heart banging frantically fast against her ribs. Those incredible magnetic eyes of his. She wanted to drown in them. Maybe that was why her head was swimming and it was taking such appalling effort to concentrate. ‘Coffee?’ she asked jerkily.

Santino watched the tip of her pink tongue snake out to moisten her dry lower lip. He tensed, and then rose in one fluid sweep from behind the table. Deftly depriving her of her glass, he drew her up into his arms. ‘Not for me,’ he breathed huskily.

A ripple of quite tormented excitement ran through Frankie. Long fingers curved against her spine and pressed her closer. Her pent-up breath escaped in a shaken hiss as she registered the swollen fullness of her breasts and the urgent sensitivity of her nipples, but the power of those sensations was somewhat diminished by the disorientating dizziness assailing her.

‘Let’s go to bed,’ Santino suggested, his deep, dark drawl fracturing to send a responsive frisson through her trembling length.

Frankie closed her eyes to block him out and resist the overpowering pull of his dominance. This wasn’t how she had planned it. He was taking control. ‘No...you go up...you wait for me tonight,’ she urged, wondering why her words were slurring.

‘OK.’ She lifted her lashes and caught his faint frown and then watched him stride towards the stairs.

Swaying slightly, she steadied herself on the chairback, dismay gripping her. Rather too late she was appreciating that she had had too much to drink and far too little to eat. She was furious with herself for being so stupid. Pouring herself a cup of black coffee, she forced it down and then crept outside to breathe in great gulps of the night air in the hope of sobering herself up again.

Her head a little clearer, she nonetheless plotted a far from straight path up the stairs. She could still do it. She could, she could. Santino was waiting for her just the way she had planned it, so she wouldn’t risk embarrassing herself with potentially clumsy attempts to undress him. And there he was in the marital bed for the very first time in his life...

At that enervating sight something akin to pure anguish seized Frankie. Santino was a gorgeous vision of raw masculine appeal against the white bedlinen. All tousled and golden and breathtakingly sexy...and she was feeling...she was suddenly feeling so horribly sick, and the room was revolving round her in the most nauseating way.

‘What’s the matter with you?’ Santino demanded as he thrust the sheet back with startling abruptness. ‘Dio...I thought it was my imagination downstairs, but you’re—’

Frankie made a most undignified dive for the bathroom across the landing. Her worst apprehensions were fully fulfilled. Afterwards she just wanted to be left alone to die, but no such mercy awaited her.

‘You’ll feel a lot better after you eat,’ Santino asserted drily.

Unconvinced, Frankie stared down at the rather charred toast on the breakfast tray. It was safer than looking at Santino. Severe embarrassment clawed at her, for she recalled almost every awful moment of the previous night. Santino initially incredulous at the state she was in, then impatient, exasperated, but ultimately kind. And why had he been kind? It was bred into Santino’s privileged bones to be kind towards those weaker or less able than he was. She squirmed, pride choking on a generosity which had only increased her sense of humiliation.

‘Thank you,’ she contrived between clenched teeth, pushing up the sliding strap of the slinky nightdress she had woken up in, shamed as only a woman could be by the knowledge that she had no recollection of donning the garment.

‘There has to be a reason why you got that drunk.’

‘I wasn’t drunk...I was only a bit tipsy,’ she countered, so desperate to escape a post mortem, she even bit into a piece of that unappetising toast while wondering if she ought to preserve it for posterity. Unless she was very much mistaken, this toast was the closest Santino had ever come to cooking.

‘Are you in love with Matt Finlay?’

Frankie almost choked on the toast. ‘Of course I’m not...he’s just a friend!’ she spluttered in frustration.

Santino contemplated her with galling cool. ‘Then you over-indulged because you were nervous—’