The Reluctant Husband

His mother continued to survey him with cold condemnation. ‘I would remind you that you will always walk in Rico’s shadow, Santino. All that was once his has come to you. Honour should demand that you make sacrifices in his memory. And Rico would never have married a social inferior. Rico never once brought shame on the Vitale name. He was too proud of our ancestry.’

‘I am not and I can never be Rico, Mamma,’ Santino countered wearily, the long fingers resting on Frankie’s slim hip biting painfully into her flesh.

Sonia Vitale rose from her chair. ‘How you do love to state the obvious,’ she responded cuttingly. ‘You knew it was our dearest wish that you should marry Melina. Instead you have made a mockery of us all. When you can bring Melina to me as your bride, I will see you again...not before.’

Her husband moved forward, his strain now palpable in spite of his efforts to retain his impassivity. ‘Santino...may I have a word with you in private?’ he enquired. ‘You will excuse us, Francesca?’

‘I will wait in the car, Alvaro,’ Sonia announced, and she swept past them all with her regal head held high.

Without even considering what she was about to do, her sole driving purpose one of furious incomprehension, Frankie pulled free of Santino’s loosened grip and sped in his mother’s wake, pausing only to jerk shut the drawing-room door behind her.

‘Why don’t you love him?’ Frankie demanded fiercely of the older woman in the echoing hallway.

Sonia Vitale came to a startled halt and gazed back at Frankie over her shoulder in complete shock. ‘I beg your p-pardon?’ she murmured with an incredulous shake in her well-modulated voice as she turned. ‘Santino is my son. Of course I love my—’

‘No, you don’t!’ Frankie contradicted her, her eyes bright with condemnation. ‘You look at him like you hate and resent him...you deliberately try to hurt him... All I want to know is why. Why? Santino is pretty damned wonderful in an awful lot of ways. He’s clever and caring and honest. Most mothers would be really proud to have a son like that...’

Every scrap of colour draining from her still beautiful features, the older woman backed slowly away from her. A stunned and appalled look of confusion had blossomed in her eyes. ‘How dare you attack me...how dare you say such things?’

Suddenly equally shattered by her own behaviour, Frankie froze and flushed a hot self-conscious pink. She could not even understand what had driven her into forcing such a confrontation. Out of nowhere had come this ferocious sense of angry protectiveness and it had sent her hurtling into pursuit like a guided missile, for certainly she hadn’t stopped and thought about what she was about to do...no, not even for a sensible second. And what had she done now but pointlessly enrage Santino’s mother more and make an already bad situation worse?

‘So my son has married a real little fishwife who fights for him...like a vixen protecting her cub. But Santino wouldn’t thank you for abusing me.’ Sonia drew on her gloves in a series of jerky little movements that betrayed her distress and her eyes never once met Frankie’s again. ‘In fact he would devour you alive because naturally he loves and reveres his mother. And I see, not without some surprise after reading your mother’s highly unladylike revelations in print, that you genuinely do love my son...but you are only a brief aberration in Santino’s life and will fortunately soon be gone.’

Frankie flinched as if the smaller woman had slyly slid a knife between her ribs, but Sonia had already spun away from her again.

‘You should have been his mistress, not his wife. Melina would have accepted that. We would all have accepted that,’ Sonia imparted curtly. ‘But it is too late for that resolution now. You have lost the anonymity so necessary to that position. When Santino tires of you, as he inevitably will, and turns back to Melina, you will see then that I am right, for you will lose him altogether.’

As the older woman walked away, Frankie reeled clumsily round behind one of the pillars and pressed her hot, damp forehead to the cold marble. She felt as if she had gone ten rounds with a champion boxer and her very flesh had been pummelled from her bones. No, she did not love Santino...no, no, she did not! She was a whole lot brighter than the teenager she had once been. Yes, maybe she was—maybe she was more worldly-wise, an inner voice conceded, but there was no denying that at the age of sixteen sheer gut instinct had prompted her to fix her affections on one hell of a guy.

Because Santino was one hell of a guy, although not in the mood he had been in since she had successfully convinced him that she was the lowest, greediest and most ungrateful female in existence. But as he could be, as he had once been, and as he had promised to be that very first day they met again in La Rocca, before everything had gone wrong, he was still so incredibly special and important to her.

Dear heaven, I do still love Santino, Frankie registered in horror. I have no hope of getting him out of my system. He’s just in there...inside my heart...inside my head, as much a part of me as my own flesh.

In the midst of that unwelcome flood of self revelation, Alvaro Vitale emerged from the drawing room and strode past, mercifully without seeing her lurking behind the pillar.

Looking very pale and feeling unusually uncertain of herself, indeed almost crushingly shy, Frankie finally moved back into the room the older man had vacated. Santino didn’t notice her hesitant entry and hovering stance about twenty feet from him. He was pouring himself what looked like a pretty stiff drink. Cradling the whisky tumbler in one lean brown hand, he strode restlessly over to the windows and stood there, wide shoulders rigid with livewire tension, long legs braced slightly apart.

Her dazed eyes roamed over his arrogant dark head and that bold, strong profile silhouetted against the light. How could she love a male capable of ruthlessly using her body to satisfy lust alone? How could she love a man who could separate all emotion from sex and without conscience play on her inexperience, susceptibility and, cruellest of all, her deep fear of being out of control?

Oh, so easily, she answered for herself. For this was the dark side of Santino’s powerful personality and forceful temperament, a side he had never shown her before but which she should always have known existed. He could not have borne to let her go unpunished and he could not forgive greed or deception. Strong men had strong principles. And without those principles she would have found Santino infinitely less attractive.

She cleared her throat gruffly and asked the first question which came to mind. ‘Who is Melina?’

Santino glanced almost unseeingly at her and then away again, his preoccupation patent. ‘A friend...as dear as a daughter to my mother.’

The worst of Frankie’s tension evaporated. Not an explanation couched in terms likely to drive her mad with jealousy, she thought with a sensation of powerful relief. ‘And Rico...? He was your brother?’ she prompted tautly as Santino’s dark head whipped instantaneously back to her, his beautiful dark eyes filled with a deep, tormented sadness and defensive bitterness.

‘You know, you never, ever mentioned having had a brother,’ Franki

e remarked, choosing her words very carefully but wholly focused on a need to know what could bring such an expression to Santino’s face.

‘Rico died the year before I met you. He was ten years older than me,’ Santino admitted grudgingly.

‘What happened?’

For several thunderously tense seconds Santino fixed his attention on the window again. Then he shrugged with something less than his usual fluidity. ‘Rico took me climbing in the Alps. The climb should have been abandoned on the second day. Conditions were poor and the weather was changing. But Rico—’ He breathed stiltedly. ‘Rico was a daredevil determined not to be beaten by the elements. An avalanche hit us. He saved my life at the cost of his own.’

‘Oh, God...’ Frankie framed sickly, out of her depth with words. What she most needed was the freedom to rush across the room and wrap comforting arms around him, but she was utterly terrified of the rejection she was convinced she would receive. ‘That...that must have devastated your family—’