The Reluctant Husband

Frankie yanked herself free of his hold and stalked away from him. ‘Stop treating me like some overgrown helpless child. I may be much more emotional than you are but I am an adult!’

‘You don’t always behave like one.’

Frankie spun in outrage and found Santino still far too close for comfort. Planting her hands on his broad chest, she gave him an aggressive shove away from her. As the backs of his legs collided with the low rim of the tub, he uttered a startled growl and overbalanced. He fell backwards into the water with a huge splash.

Stunned, Frankie simply stared, and then hysterical giggles clogged up her throat. Santino flung her a look of seething black fury, planted two powerful hands on the ceramic edge and launched himself back onto the tiled floor. ‘If you were a man, I would knock you through that wall for that!’ he roared at her full blast.

Frankie covered her convulsing mouth. His suit was plastered to him like a second skin and the floor was flooded. In hauling himself out with such force he appeared to have brought half the bathwater with him. ‘It was an accident,’ she breathed shakily. ‘It really was. I didn’t mean for you to fall in—’

‘I am out of here!’ Santino raked with the slashing emphasis of one forceful brown hand. ‘And I will not be back until you convince me that you can behave like a grown-up!’

The grown-up without the sense of humour stalked dripping from the bathroom, slammed the door on her, slammed the door on the bedroom... And Frankie? Frankie soaked all the towels mopping up the water and dully appreciated that Santino wasn’t perfect after all. He hadn’t been joking about that temper. And, sitting there on the floor in lonely silence, she was too shell shocked by that old, horribly familiar sense of agonised rejection to even begin to move beyond that stage.

CHAPTER TEN

FRANKIE reached several conclusions within the following thirty-six hours. She paced the floor and cried and slept in frenetic bouts without once leaving Santino’s spacious bedroom suite.

Infuriatingly, she was constantly interrupted by the almost continuous proffering of healthy meals, regular snacks and drinks brought by the household staff. Acquainted with her habit of holing up to brood, and doubtless cruelly aware that it might be difficult to grieve with proper passion when one had to keep on opening the door to face other people, Santino had evidently left instructions that she was to be fed and watered on the hour, every hour. She was wholly unappreciative of being physically deserted but having her ‘well-being’ controlled from a convenient distance.

She had found Hamish, her childhood teddy, seated on an open shelf in Santino’s dressing room. He was sadly tatty but he still wore his tartan scarf. She hugged the old toy to her as if he was her best friend. She acquainted herself with every single item of clothing Santino kept at the Villa Fontana and was not once tempted to slash anything to shreds.

Santino was gone. She was miserable, bereft, tormented by loss and loneliness. The light had gone out of her life. She knew it was melodramatic to feel like that, but that was how she felt and there wasn’t much she could do about it. In the grip of her emotional high she was wretchedly aware that she had made some very foolish assumptions. Santino had offered her three weeks and it looked as if one shattering day had been more than enough to satisfy him. Her swansong, she thought painfully, and an insultingly brief one.

His sole reason for wanting her to remain here in Italy for the present appeared to relate to his fear that he might have fathered a child on her. Presumably, when she was able to reassure him on that point, he would be happy for her to leave. She refused to think of the possibility that she might not be able to give him that reassurance. She was wretched enough without subjecting herself to the imagined horrors of finding herself pregnant by a male who didn’t want to be her husband and who certainly didn’t want to be saddled with the burden of an inconveniently fertile wife he was keen to divorce.

No, Santino didn’t love her and obviously he never, ever would, because, heaven knew, if he’d been even slightly susceptible he should’ve fallen in love with her a long time ago. Clearly he saw her as obsessive and excessive. He was her opposite in every way. Intellectual, self-disciplined, coldly logical when challenged and emotionally reserved...at least in the love department... but he could just about cope with ‘fond’, she conceded grudgingly.

When Santino did marry again, it would probably be to someone like that blonde she had seen him with in Cagliari five years ago. A classically lovely woman, elegant and poised, around his age and therefore well past the stage of immature urges and inappropriate behaviour.

Someone who would smile sweetly when he got patronising, controlling or domineering. Someone who would let him have the last word. Someone who would never dream of laughing when he fell in the bath in the middle of an argument. Someone equipped with the blue-blooded background necessary to become an acceptable member of the Vitale family. Santino might have told his father that the Vitales were not royalty,

but for all that he lived like a king.

The first package arrived with her breakfast tray on the second day. She pulled off the giftwrap and found herself looking at a framed cartoon of a man who had fallen into a bath. He was the very picture of injured dignity. And along the bottom, in Santino’s forceful black scrawl, it said, ‘As well as the temper, I confess to a tendency to take myself rather too seriously...’

For a stunned moment Frankie gaped at it. It had been a very long time since Santino had used his artistic talent to amuse her. Then she started to laugh and she got out of bed to have a shower and wash her hair.

The second package arrived mid-morning. Another cartoon featuring a bath scene, but this time with a figure that was recognisably herself starring as the victim of an accidental drenching, and she was screeching blue murder about getting her hair and her clothes soaked. Frankie wasn’t quite so quick to laugh at that scenario because it forced her to admit that, had their roles been reversed, she would’ve been every bit as furious as he had been.

Typical Santino; he gave with one hand and slapped you down with the other. She groaned but then she smiled. After that she got dressed in a light green shift dress that she usually wore only for dressy occasions. When she heard the helicopter, she was already expecting it and planning to greet him with her brightest smile. Santino, ever the polished diplomatist, had smoothed over raw feelings with innate charm. Even at a distance he manipulated her, but possibly on this occasion, when she did feel out of her depth, it was for the best. All she had left now was her pride and the inner prayer that she could now be as casual and cool as he would be.

She was waiting in the hall when Santino strode into the villa. Clad in a lightweight beige suit of sensational cut, complemented by a white shirt and a burgundy silk tie, he stole the very breath from her lungs. It was as if thirty-six hours without Santino had dimmed her memory and, seeing him again in the flesh, she was simply bowled over by his dramatic dark good looks, his commanding height and fantastic build. She just stared, utterly appalled by the huge, unstoppable wave of love and lust that washed over her.

‘I missed you,’ Santino admitted, running brilliant dark-shadowed eyes over her stiff, defensive face. ‘I really missed you.’

Even though it was a little late for the greeting speech she had planned, because he had got in first, Frankie’s mind was now so blank she still seized on that speech in desperation. ‘I bet your heart sank when you saw me standing here waiting like some pantomime wife hovering eagerly for hubby’s return,’ she reeled off at accelerated speed and with a frantically wide smile. ‘But I thought, in the circumstances, it would be kind of funny—’

‘Funny?’ Santino’s initial smile was beginning to freeze slightly round the edges.

‘Like black joke funny?’ Frankie pressed brightly. ‘Because I don’t know about you but I’m so relieved we’re back to being just friends again. You have to admit that we really couldn’t connect on any other level because we’ve got nothing in common...except the bed thing—and that was really only mutual curiosity that sparked a couple of fun encounters. You know... not something anybody adult would take seriously.’

Santino strolled round behind her and her brows pleated as she began to turn to see what he was doing. ‘What are you—?’

‘I was just looking to see if there was a key in your back,’ Santino confided drily. ‘And then possibly I could switch you off because you are thumping with great tactless hobnailed boots over some very sensitive areas and I’ve only been home for thirty seconds.’

Frankie swallowed convulsively.

‘Maybe if I walk outside again and we run this scene afresh you could do the pantomime wife thing,’ Santino suggested flatly.