The Reluctant Husband

Struggling to swallow that insult, Frankie snatched in a deep shuddering breath and then, without warning, it was as though a bright light exploded inside her head. She was sick and tired of being blamed for everyone else’s mistakes, and his attack on her morals was the absolute last straw.

‘So what if there have been loa

ds and loads of men in my life?’ Frankie flared with angry defiance, well aware that Matt had only made that crack because she had never dated any man for long and her short attention span had offended him, a man who saw that kind of behaviour as a peculiarly male requisite. ‘That’s none of your business, is it?’

A dark flush slowly rose to accentuate the rigid slant of Santino’s slashing cheekbones. For the longest moment he stared at her, eyes as dangerous and cold as black ice. He said nothing.

Frankie broke the screaming silence with a jerky laugh of discomfiture. ‘Right, so I’m a tart...big deal!’

But she was no longer able to meet Santino’s unsettling gaze. Too late she saw that she had thrown down a gauntlet that he had refused to pick up. Childishly she had tried to shock and she had failed. ‘Well, now that we’ve got that thorny question out of the way,’ she continued stiffly, ‘don’t you think that we ought to be informing the police that I’m here and that there’s been the most insane storm in a teacup over nothing?’

‘I’ve already done that. The local police are on their way to confirm your presence...and very soon after that the paparazzi will arrive in their wake,’ Santino breathed with grim assurance, already striding out of the room. ‘We need to clear out of here fast!’

Unfreezing, Frankie trailed after him and hovered in the doorway of his office, listening to him rap out instructions at speed to someone on the other end of his mobile phone. ‘This whole ridiculous mess is your fault,’ she accused helplessly as he set the phone aside again. ‘If you hadn’t lured me out here and set me up with those villas, none of this would ever have happened. And when I go home, how am I supposed to explain all this and you to anybody? You saw how Matt reacted...he thinks this is a truly weird set-up—’

‘Weird without sex, boringly conventional with it,’ Santino slotted in with glancing savagery. ‘I do believe it’s time I did what I came here to do.’

He strode across to her and, without giving her the slightest hint of his intentions, bent and swept her lithely off her feet and up into his powerful arms.

‘Santino... what on earth—?’ Frankie gasped.

‘I brought you here to put you in the marital bed and enjoy that exquisite body,’ Santino reminded her as he started up the stairs with raw determination. ‘And I’m still going to achieve that feat before we leave.’

‘But the police are coming!’ Frankie reminded him incredulously, too taken aback by his behaviour even to struggle.

‘I think it’ll take them quite a while to get here...and if it doesn’t they’ll have to wait.’

‘Wait...while we...?’ Frankie parroted.

‘Why not?’ Santino countered, kicking the bedroom door shut behind him and dropping her unceremoniously down on the bed in which she had slept alone yet again the previous night.

Frankie sat up, feverishly pushing flying strands of hair out of her eyes. ‘Why not?’ she repeated in a voice that shook with disbelief. ‘Are you out of your mind?’

‘No...if I told the typical Sard male that I have waited five years to take physical possession of my beautiful bride, they would probably drive back down the mountain and stay there for at least a month,’ Santino breathed with sardonic bite. ‘Aside from that, assuming you ultimately intend to be as vocal with the paparazzi as your mother, I wouldn’t dream of depriving you of your juiciest source of revelation. No doubt you will be eager to flog every minute detail of the coming encounter to some sleazy tabloid when you get home again!’

‘You’ve got absolutely the wrong idea about me...I wouldn’t dream of talking about you to the press!’

‘Just the way you swore at the castello that you wouldn’t dream of taking my money?’ Santino enquired with splintering and savage condemnation as he ripped off his shirt and dropped it on the floor. ‘You continued to lie like a pro about your innocence all through the day. You came up with quite impressive explanations for almost every charge. You pleaded such complete ignorance and then, when I was on the very brink of awarding you a second hearing, you announced that you were in on the fraud from the very first day!’

The sight of Santino’s bare brown hair-roughened chest drew Frankie’s startled eyes like a magnet to iron filings. Turning pink, she looked away again and wet her taut lips with a snaking flick of her tongue. She was appalled by that masterly summing-up of her credibility in his eyes. Santino didn’t trust a word she said, which wasn’t surprising when she recalled the number of times she had changed her tune that day, before she’d finally shouldered Della’s guilt in an effort to protect the older woman from the full onslaught of Santino’s cold and deadly fury.

It felt like the worst possible moment to be suddenly wishing that she could now tell him the truth. Santino had to despise Della even more since he had heard her talking on the phone in that coy, calculating way. And, where once Frankie had lied to save her parent out of knee-jerk loyalty, now, ironically, she had a stronger motivation. Della might not be the ideal parent she had once longed to have, but today Frankie had learnt something that touched that sore place in her heart.

Evidently her mother had strongly sympathised with her daughter’s misery five years ago, and would probably have done so more vocally had Frankie been prepared to confide more fully in her. Had that happened, their relationship might never have become so detached. In that one field alone, perhaps they had something in common.

‘I am really not the person you think I am,’ Frankie said shakily, tilting back her head again to look at Santino as she sat on the bed. ‘I wish I could tell you something more than that, but just at this moment—’

‘Just at this moment you would tell me anything it suited you to tell me.’

Breathless, and abruptly shorn of the ability to vocalise, Frankie focused on Santino as he stripped off a pair of silk boxer shorts and stood there magnificently nude and dauntingly uninhibited. The involuntary victim of a scorching attack of shyness, she removed her attention from the most eye-catching male attribute on display, struggling to swallow on shock and failing dismally. She had always wondered, and now she was receiving the opportunity to forever satisfy all female curiosity, and yet she found that she just couldn’t look again because she was gripped by such intense selfconsciousness.

‘Santino...’ she croaked.

‘Forget it... I won’t believe you have a shy or modest bone in your entire body,’ Santino delivered fiercely, coming down on the bed and curving strong hands round her forearms to pull her towards him. ‘Not a woman who boasts about the number of men she’s had and offers me anything I want in bed without even pausing to consider the risk that I might want something she wouldn’t be prepared to give—’

‘Might you?’ Frankie slotted in helplessly, bare inches away from shimmering golden eyes that seemed to burn over every inch of her exposed skin.

‘What do you think?’ Santino traded with silken scorn. ‘I think possibly you could teach me a thing or two.’