The Reluctant Husband

‘You lied to me...I never thought you would do that,’ Frankie confided with a jerky little laugh.

Santino frowned. ‘When did I lie?’

‘When I asked you who Melina was, you didn’t tell me the truth.’

Santino drove long fingers roughly through his already tousled hair. ‘I was thinking about Rico that day...it slipped my mind that Melina was the woman you saw me with in Cagliari five years ago—’

‘Slipped your mind?’ Frankie repeated in helpless disbelief.

‘I didn’t expect you to remember her... All right, I wasn’t breaking my neck to raise that subject too soon. Which of us is eager to recall our more embarrassing mistakes?’ Santino demanded in charged appeal. ‘What you saw happen between Melina and me that day was the consequence of a moment of temptation, of weakness... and when you surprised us that was it. Nothing more happened between us, either then or since.’

‘Do you seriously expect me to believe that?’ Frankie whispered in despair.

‘Perhaps I should have begun at the beginning. When she was eighteen, Melina was my brother’s girlfriend... or his cover story, if you like,’ Santino shared ruefully. ‘Because Rico was gay.’

‘Gay?’ Taken by surprise, Frankie stared back at him.

‘My parents could not accept him as he was. They were desperate for him to marry. They adored Melina and she adored Rico. But he never had the slightest intention of marrying her. When he died, she joined my mother in making a shrine of his memory,’ Santino explained grimly. ‘After a while, my mother decided that Melina would make me the perfect wife, but I wasn’t interested. She was...perhaps because I look very like my late brother.’

‘And that day I saw you with her in Cagliari?’

Santino tautened. ‘Melina flew over to Sardinia, ostensibly to visit friends. She came to see me at the bank and I decided to take her back to my apartment for lunch. It was quite innocent until she threw herself at me in the lift...but I was not unresponsive to that invitation,’ he admitted bluntly, shooting Frankie a driven look of fierce emotion. ‘Had you not interrupted us, I would have gone to bed with her... after six months of our marriage, I was so tortured by my unsated desire for you, I would have done anything to try to kill that craving!’

Frankie was sharply disconcerted by that admission. She had never really understood, even when he had told her at the farmhouse, how hard it must have been for him to withstand the temptation to consummate their marriage. Heaven knew, she had been willing, but he had

been wise to keep his distance. Then she could never have been his equal and he would swiftly have grown bored with her immature adoration.

‘I would’ve used Melina and she deserved better. I chased after you and left her standing in the lobby that day without any explanation. It was a long time before she could forgive me for that. These days we meet solely as distant and very polite friends—’

‘“Friends”...that’s such an elastic term with you—’

‘Melina and I met at the conference,’ Santino interrupted drily. ‘She has just become engaged to another banker. She flew back to Rome with me to make arrangements for a family party to announce her engagement.’

Frankie was shaken. His explanation made better sense than any other. Her suspicions vanquished, she was left feeling rather foolish and uncomfortable. ‘That’s going to break your mother’s heart,’ was all she could think to say.

‘Few men marry women chosen by their mothers, cara.’ Santino’s mouth quirked. ‘I should also mention that I received a rather astonishing phone call from mine this morning.’

‘Oh?’ Frankie had tensed.

‘Surprisingly, my mother wanted to tell me how much she loved me.’ Santino rested keen eyes on Frankie’s betraying flush. ‘She may not have shown that affection in ten years, but she was not telling me anything I didn’t already know.’

‘Wasn’t she?’ Frankie was disconcerted by that assurance.

‘She has never come to terms with my brother’s death, but today all of a sudden she experienced a need to contact me and say that she appreciated how very fortunate she was to have a surviving son.’

‘Gosh!’ Frankie exclaimed, glancing away, not wanting him to suspect her interference.

‘Mamma also received the news of Melina’s engagement with nothing more than a regretful sigh, and she implied that she might have been slightly hasty in saying that she would never accept you as a daughter-in-law. It was an amazing rapprochement.’

Silence lingered. Frankie collided tensely with clear dark golden eyes. Melina wasn’t his lover, never had been his lover, or his intended wife or indeed anything else, but he hadn’t even considered it important to tell her those facts. ‘Why didn’t you explain about Melina five years ago... why did you allow me to go on believing that you’d been unfaithful?’

‘We had to part. You had to grow up and you couldn’t do that with me,’ Santino informed her tautly, watching her spin her head defensively away from him. ‘To the best of my ability, I put you and our marriage to the back of my mind and got on with my life.’

‘Yet you made no attempt to have our marriage annulled...’

‘I didn’t meet anyone else I wanted to marry. And you were a sweet memory... the woman I believed you might become figured in my mind as an ideal.’

Frankie’s head swivelled instantly back to him. ‘An ideal?’