The Reluctant Husband

‘Even if you prove to be pregnant, I will still divorce you,’ Santino gritted with ferocious bite as he strode into the shower. ‘Three weeks and you’re out, bag and baggage... no matter what!’

‘Santino...’ Frankie breathed, and then she stopped because she heard the betrayingly emotional wobble affecting her diction. Reluctant to probe the complex and painfully confusing storm of emotions attacking her, she chose only to voice her impatience with his fatalistic conviction that one little oversight would unerringly lead to conception.

‘I’m quite sure that any egg of mine would have more taste than even to consider an approach from anything with the Vitale signature on it...’ Frankie countered curtly. ‘In fact, I’m utterly convinced that right now your reproductive cells are fighting a pitched and losing battle in hostile territory and wishing very much that they had stayed home!’

‘I can only hope...for both our sakes...that you’re right,’ Santino delivered rawly, ramming shut the doors on the comer cubicle with a suppressed violence that fully illustrated his mood.

As she clambered out of the bath, dashing tears from her eyes, Frankie scolded herself furiously for her own over-sensitivity. It was stupid to feel so totally gutted by Santino’s appalled reaction to the risk that she might conceive. After all, how likely was it that they might be unlucky? And why should his attitude hurt and wound her? Why should it feel like the ultimate rejection? Goodness knew, she would be climbing the walls too if that misunderstanding of theirs led to such a consequence!

CHAPTER EIGHT

‘BUT your passport is in the name of Caparelli, signora,’ the portly little local police inspector remarked with a frown of surprise. ‘Indeed it still carries the designation of a single woman.’

‘Francesca applied for a British passport in her maiden name shortly before our marriage.’ As Santino spoke, Frankie studied him covertly. He was sheathed in a stupendously well-cut pearl-grey suit that framed his broad shoulders, lean hips and long, long legs to quite spectacular effect, and she was finding it a really horrendous challenge to look anywhere else.

‘Perhaps the continued use of Caparelli was intended as a security precaution?’ the older man hazarded uncertainly, evidently aware of the kidnapping that had once occurred in the Vitale family. He returned the item to Frankie with a wry shrug of acceptance. ‘It should be brought up to date now. Your face has been splashed all over the newspapers and the television screen. It is sadly ironic, signor...your illustrious family are famed for their zealous protection of their privacy but your wife couldn’t walk down a street anywhere in Italy today without being instantly recognised as a Vitale.’

Santino tensed, his strong face darkening at the assurance. Frankie was certain he had to be appalled by that information. Discretion, yes, he had mentioned the necessity of discretion at their very first meeting in La Rocca, only then she had not grasped his true meaning because she hadn’t had a clue that Santino belonged to one of the wealthiest and most newsworthy families in Europe. Nor could she even believe as yet that she was really to fly to Rome with him.

‘It’s crazy to force me to accompany you back to Rome,’ Frankie contended half under her breath as she watched the policeman climb back into his car, his subordinate, who had played no part in the interview, taking the wheel.

‘When you steal a ride on someone else’s rollercoaster, Francesca, you can’t expect it to stop just because you find it scary that events are moving out of your control.’

Frankie lost colour at that perceptive stab, her stomach twisting. The tension between them nagged like toothache at her raw nerve-endings. The racket of a helicopter coming in low over the valley broke the silence and she turned towards the lounge window, eager to make use of any distraction. But long brown fingers closed with ruthless precision over one slim, taut shoulder and prevented her retreat.

Her head whipped round, tilting back to look up

at Santino. ‘I am in control!’ she informed him doggedly, digging her unsteady hands deep into the pockets of her loose ankle-length summer dress. ‘And I am not scared—’

‘But you should be,’ Santino emphasised, his rich, dark drawl feathering down her rigid spine like a dangerous storm warning that ironically both threatened and thrilled. Stunning dark eyes raked over her defensive face. ‘For there is one weakness we do not share...unlike you, I will never be passion’s slave. When it is time for us to part, what will you do if you find yourself possessed by a devastatingly strong need for our affair to continue?’

Imprisoned within inches of his lean, muscular body and painfully, newly aware of his erotic masculine power in a way that lacerated her pride and filled her with foreboding, Frankie stared up at him, appalled to feel a deep inner trembling begin and spread a terrifying woolly weakness through her lower limbs. ‘I think I’d cut my throat!’ she countered with fiery disdain.

Santino’s mesmeric eyes glittered, his shapely, sensual mouth slashing into a reluctant smile of appreciation. ‘Kill or cure, all or nothing...how little you have changed, cara. But unfortunately life rarely makes one’s choices so simple.’

‘It’s always simple if you want it to be,’ Frankie told him between gritted teeth as she fought the onslaught of that shattering sexual awareness. Her pulses were racing so fast she felt dizzy and her hands were balled into fists inside her pockets for fear that she might reach for him. Like a mindless addict she wanted to move closer and drink in the hot, achingly seductive scent of him, seek contact, actual physical contact to satisfy the treacherous craving that made her breath catch in her throat and her sensitive breasts tingle and swell.

A long forefinger stroked down the side of her face and her green eyes darkened and centred with compulsive intensity on the lean dark features above hers. ‘Sexual hunger is never simple because we are not animals, mating without thought or feeling at nature’s behest... how innocent you are in spite of your avarice. You can’t even admit your own ignorance. But the higher you climb on that ladder of self-deception, the harder you will fall.’

His thumb grazed the comer of her full, tremulous lips and then almost lazily slid to probe within. Involuntarily her languorous eyes slid shut, her lips converging hungrily on that intrusive digit, the lancing bitter-sweet pain of that hunger shrilling through her slender frame, making every muscle fiercely taut with anticipation.

‘And with the smallest encouragement... such a natural-born temptress,’ Santino completed, his accent thickening as he closed one impatient hand over her hip to yank her closer.

The knocker on the front door sounded with thunderous urgency. Frankie almost leapt out of her skin. As her shaken eyes slowly opened, Santino was already striding out to the hall to answer the door. A powerfully built man in a dark suit, whom Santino addressed as Nardo, swept up the cases at the foot of the stairs. Of course, Frankie registered, like someone surfacing from a heavily drugged slumber, the helicopter had landed and it was time for them to leave.

She pressed moist palms to her hot cheeks. She had not meant to give Santino such power over her, had never dreamt that her surrender might weaken her defences even more. And he was wrong when he still called her innocent because she was no longer the optimistic fool who had fondly imagined that going to bed with Santino would magically exorcise her emotional turmoil.

‘You’ll visit again soon?’ Maddalena pressed anxiously, as her great-aunts and grandfather stood waiting to see them off.

‘Francesca’s place is with her husband and Santino is a very busy man,’ Teresa scolded her sister. ‘Who else do you know who has to call for a helicopter because he can’t spare the time to drive down the mountain?’

Her grandfather took her aside and treated her to a troubled and questioning look. ‘Santino usually says his goodbyes personally.’

And the cruel weight of reality almost crushed Frankie then. Santino would not be returning to the village again. And the next time she visited she would come alone, bearing news which would hit her far from liberalminded family hard. A broken marriage and a divorce in the offing. That would shame and distress her great-aunts and outrage and disappoint her grandfather, who had grown infinitely more fond and proud of Santino than he had ever been of his own unreliable and selfish son. And they would all blame her because she simply could not imagine them blaming Santino for anything...

Frankie fell asleep during the flight. When Santino woke her up, she glanced out through the window beside her and was thoroughly disorientated by the view, for they were certainly not at Rome’s Fiumicino airport; the helicopter appeared to be surrounded by a boundless expanse of lush green grass.

‘You look as messy as a child returning from a day on the beach,’ Santino censured as he lifted her down onto solid ground again. He looked unusually tense. As he scanned the drowsy blankness of her face, his beautiful mouth tightened even more. He paused to brush straying strands of bright hair off her brow and make a somewhat pointless attempt to smooth down her badly creased cotton dress.