The Reluctant Husband

‘What would you have done if I had taken all that money?’ Frankie asked reflectively.

‘I would’ve concentrated on rehabilitating you. I couldn’t possibly have let you go at the end of the three weeks. I love you too much, piccola mia.’ Shrewdly assessing the faintly troubled look still tensing her face, Santino added, ‘I can afford to look after your mother, but this time I’ll ensure she is kept within reasonable bounds—’

‘No...it wouldn’t be right for you to support her again,’ Frankie protested, strongly convinced that Della was young and able enough to support herself through her own efforts, and that any other arrangement would be akin to rewarding her for her dishonesty.

‘Allow me to know what is right just this once,’ Santino murmured, strongly amused by the steely glint in Frankie’s gaze. ‘I promise you that I will wreak the revenge of a lifetime when I see Della’s reaction to the news that we are about to make her a grandmother!’

Since he chose that exact same moment to extract another feverishly hungry kiss, Frankie’s ability to argue was severely diminished. Her quivering body strained up into the hard heat of his virile frame and she caught fire, driven by a primal need to seal their love in the most physical way possible.

‘Hal is very fond of children,’ Della confided rather unnecessarily as her third husband, a rock-solid middleaged Texan rancher, cradled her grandchild with deft hands and made chortling sounds to amuse him. ‘In fact...he would like us to try for one.’

At that unexpected news, Frankie’s eyes opened very wide.

Her attractive mother reddened and gave her an uncertain glance. ‘I know I was pretty hopeless with you, but Hal thinks that I’d cope much better now because I’d have his support and I’m more mature.’

Nothing came so readily to Della’s lips these days as ‘Hal thinks...’ Hal Billings, burly, blunt-spoken and bossy, had rescued Della from her job on a department store beauty counter. While she was trying to sell him perfume Hal had fallen in love, and Della, who hadn’t had the sli

ghtest intention of ever falling in love again, had fallen hardest of all.

Hal was comfortably off, but he considered idleness a vice and was fond of what he called ‘plain living’. Della had had to make sacrifices to meet Hal’s high standards, but she had done so with surprising eagerness. Frankie had finally appreciated that her mother had been a deeply unhappy woman, who had tried to use material things to fill the emptiness inside her. Now a new love and a challenging lifestyle with a man she could rely on had given her the chance to make a fresh start.

Having reclaimed their son, Marco, Santino strode across the room with him, his lean, strong face concerned. ‘I think Marco should bow out of his big day now...what do you think?’

Frankie stretched out her arms to receive her baby, gazing down at his sleepy little face, the dark silk fans of his lashes sinking over eyes as green as her own. ‘Yes... he deserves some peace and quiet.’

But it still took another half-hour for them to work through the crush of their combined relatives and make an escape. Gino Caparelli and Alvaro Vitale were in close conversation in a comer. Frankie’s great-aunts, initially as nervous as they were excited about leaving the village to come all the way to the castello, where Santino and Frankie had decided to hold the christening, were now happily chatting with two elderly ladies from Santino’s side of the family.

‘He is a little darling... a precious child,’ Sonia Vitale sighed, her face softening as she delicately smoothed the soft black hair lying on her sleeping grandson’s brow.

Frankie smiled. Her mother-in-law’s unconcealed delight in her grandchild had done much to bring down the barriers between the two women. After a decade of living in near seclusion, nourishing her grief for the son she had lost, Sonia was returning to the business of living again.

With amusement, Santino was watching Della rush to fetch a cold drink for Hal. ‘When you insisted that your mother give up the house and find a job, it was you I was worried about, cara. I thought she would never forgive you for being so tough, but you did her a favour. She’s a changed woman.’

‘She’s even considering motherhood again,’ Frankie confided.

After an arrested pause, Santino burst out laughing. ‘There’s method in her madness,’ he pointed out. ‘If she has a baby, Hal might let her off some of the chores round the ranch!’

Together, Santino and Frankie put their son down for a nap in his cosy crib. In perfect concert, they moved into each other’s arms.

Frankie thought back on the first blissful year of their marriage. Matt had found another partner for the travel agency. She had had an easy pregnancy and Marco had been born with very little fuss. The joy of becoming parents had brought her and Santino even closer together. Santino adored his son. They spent quite a lot of weekends in Sardinia. Some day Marco was destined to hear about his family’s humble beginnings on that hillside above La Rocca, just as Santino had learned his from his late grandfather.

‘Have I made you happy?’ Santino murmured huskily as they walked down the corridor.

Frankie gazed up into those lethally dark and sexy eyes and went weak at the knees, and gloried in the sensation. ‘Head-over-heels happy. When I picked you out at sixteen, I knew what I was doing.’

‘And I didn’t know what had hit me,’ Santino confided, dark head bending with the suggestion of a male yielding to an irresistible force. ‘But I’m incredibly glad I was picked.’ With that ragged confession, their lips met in hungry rediscovery, and it took the couple a suspiciously long time to make it back to the family celebration.