‘That’s ridiculous! Why do you have to make such heavy weather out of something that was purely accidental?’
Santino’s beautiful mouth clenched hard. ‘Possibly because the idea of you endangering yourself with such reckless behaviour in the company of a less scrupulous male angers me. You should know better.’
‘The days when I looked to you to tell me how to behave are far behind me.’
Santino dealt her a derisive glance from the doorway. ‘It shows.’
Head lowering, cheeks burning, Frankie swallowed convulsively.
Having believed Santino had left the room, she was startled when the tray was lifted away and he sank down instead on the edge of the bed. Unprepared for that proximity, her pained eyes unguarded, she stiffened defensively as he threaded long, sure fingers through her wildly tumbled hair in a disturbingly comforting gesture.
And then, without warning, Santino smiled, one of those blinding, sudden, charismatic smiles that shook her up and made her treacherous heart race. ‘That wasn’t a very generous comment when you spent so much time apologising last night,’ he conceded huskily.
He was so close she could smell the hot, sun-warmed scent of him, intrinsically male and powerfully familiar. Her nostrils flared, her breath catching in her throat as she raised an involuntary hand and let her fingers rest on one broad shoulder to steady herself, her gaze welded to the shimmering gold of his. She shivered as he eased her forward and bent his dark head. A warm, drugging anticipation trapped her in submissive stillness.
He kissed her very gently, his tenderness a soothing balm to her smarting sensitivities. And it made her want him even more. In fact it made her want to cling. He tasted her lips in tiny hungry forays that sent her arms snaking round him in desperation to pull him closer. Her whole body felt as if it was reaching up and out, craving what only he could give. An explosive charge of hunger burned up inside her, and when his tongue penetrated between her readily parted lips her heart lurched so violently she could barely breathe in the seething excitement that controlled her.
Santino lifted his imperious dark head and absorbed her dazed expression. His strong face impassive, he sprang lithely upright. A tiny pulse flickered at the corner of his compressed mouth but in every other way he looked utterly relaxed and in control. ‘I haven’t had breakfast yet,’ he murmured, and strode gracefully out of the room.
Chilled by that abrupt withdrawal, Frankie flopped back against the pillows, stunned by the passion he had fired and then abandoned. Had he regretted that terrifyingly seductive instant of tenderness at the outset? No matter...he had still cut through her prickly defences as easily as a child knocking down a wobbly tower of building blocks—and, worst of all, he was well aware of the fact.
Her hands trembled as she reached for the tray again. Physical hunger, that was all it was, she told herself, and maybe she was more susceptible than he was in her inexperience. Only that didn’t explain why she had suffered a great suffocating attack of fear and insecurity as she’d watched him detach himself from her and walk away.
She was emerging from the shower when she thought she heard the knocker sounding on the front door. Snatching up Santino’s towelling robe, she pulled it on hurriedly and walked out onto the landing.
‘Francesca?’ Santino called softly. ‘Come downstairs.’
With a frown she moved to the head of the staircase. In amazement she gazed down at Matt where he stood in the hall, equally welded to the spot by the sight of her.
’M-Matt?’ she stammered in amazement.
‘Yes...Matt,’ her business partner confirmed thinly as he ran indignant eyes over her flustered and damp appearance in the oversized male garment she wore. ‘Would you like to tell me what’s going on here?’
CHAPTER SEVEN
THE tension in the hall was so thick it sent a shocking trickle of apprehension down Frankie’s spine as she descended the stairs. Matt’s fair face was flushed and he looked, to her, incomprehensibly furious and accusing. Her attention skimmed to Santino, who stood with impenetrable eyes and a curiously threatening quality of absolute stillness.
‘What on earth are you doing here, Matt?’ Frankie began uncertainly. ‘How did you even find out where I was?’
‘This was the only place left to look,’ Matt returned. ‘I remembered the name of this village and I knew you had family here... But why the blazes didn’t you tell someone where you were going?’
‘I left a message on the apartment answering machine yesterday...’ Frankie continued to stare at him in astonishment for she could imagine no good reason for Matt to leave the agency and come racing over to Sardinia in search of her. ‘I know I was a little tardy with that call, but what made you think you needed to fly over here to track me down?’
‘Your mother—’
‘My...mother?’ Frankie interrupted incredulously.
Matt swore, only half under his breath. ‘I wasn’t unduly concerned about your silence until I called your mother to ask if you’d been in touch with her. The minute she realised that you were in Sardinia and that I hadn’t heard from you, she went off into blasted hysterics.’
‘Hysterics?’ Frankie echoed in a wobbly voice, unable to imagine Della in such an emotional state.
‘So naturally that panicked me, and when I found out that your hire car had been returned it did look very suspicious. Nobody about to go on a touring holiday dispenses with their only means of transport. It seemed like you had disappeared off the face of this earth!’
Frankie was horribly embarrassed by her own thoughtlessness. ‘It honestly never occurred to me that anyone would worry... nobody ever has before—’
‘You’ve never staged a vanishing act before. Your mother’s called in the police—’
‘The police?’ Frankie blinked, appalled. ‘I’m sorry...I just don’t understand what’s got into everybody—’