The Reluctant Husband

‘Who is that woman?’ she asked the chauffeur, who was standing several feet away.

The older man looked surprised by her need to ask that question. ‘Melina Bucelli, signora.’

Frankie froze in disbelief. Simultaneously three men, seemingly springing up out of nowhere, ran across the tarmac to target Santino with their cameras. Instantly Santino’s security men went into action, holding back the shouting paparazzi. Their steps quickening, Santino and his companion lifted their heads.

Frankie recognised the blonde at the same instant as Santino saw Frankie standing by the window waiting. A brilliant smile began forming on his lips and then, with the speed of light, he appeared to register what a deep, dark hole he was in and, ditching the smile for an appalled look, dropped his briefcase and the funny furry thing he was carrying and broke into a most uncool sprint, his startled security men charging in his wake.

But Santino was already too late. Breaking free of her paralysis, Frankie had raced across the VIP lounge and headed like a homing pigeon out into the mercifully crowded anonymity of the main airport building.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

FRANKIE sat staring down into her untouched cappuccino. After being forced to cope with a debilitating bout of physical sickness in a cloakroom at Fiumicino, she had finally got into a taxi and directed the driver to the city centre. She had walked the streets for what felt like miles before her trembling lower limbs had forced her to sit down at a pavement café.

Now, registering her familiar surroundings, she was ashamed to find herself in the Piazza Navona. Only last week she had been here with Santino, and undoubtedly the memory of that happy day had unerringly brought her back. Insisting that ancient sites alone were too restricting, Santino had suggested that on alternate days he would choose their destinations.

In the church of Santa Maria della Pace, he had shown her the wonderful frescos by Raphael and had linked his fingers lightly with hers. Hand in hand, like lovers, they had strolled down the Via del Governo Vecchio to admire the superb Renaissance buildings and they had lunched in a trattoria overlooking three spectacular Baroque fountains. By that stage Santino had been flirtatiously kissing her fingers one by one, mowing down her daytime defences with burnished, dark, kno

wing eyes that made her heart race dizzily with longing and love and need.

Frankie blinked, her mind going blank, unable to hold onto images which now filled her with such unbearable pain. She was still in deep shock. Nothing could have prepared her for the devastating discovery that the blonde kissing Santino in Cagliari five years ago and Melina Bucelli, reputedly dear as a daughter to Sonia Vitale, were in fact one and the same woman.

Frankie had never asked Santino about the woman he had betrayed her with. She had never really wanted to know any more. In those days their marriage had been a charade. She had left that episode in the past, where it seemed to belong, never dreaming that Santino might have some ongoing relationship with the woman. Indeed she had preferred to think of that gorgeous blonde as some casual pick-up, some immoral trollop...

Yet paradoxically she could not imagine Santino choosing to become intimate with that kind of woman. And he hadn’t, had he? Possessed of his aristocratic mother’s stamp of approval, Melina Bucelli had to be from the same rich and privileged background. That Melina should also be exquisitely beautiful was almost too much to bear. But what continually drew Frankie to a halt in her shellshocked ruminations was a complete inability to understand the sort of relationship Santino had with the other woman.

Five years ago Santino had been Melina’s lover, but he hadn’t had his marriage to Frankie annulled so that he could marry the other woman. That threw up another question that Frankie could barely credit that she had never yet asked him. Why had Santino allowed their marriage to continue in existence for so long? Challenged, she could not come up with a single adequate explanation of why Santino had been content to remain a married man.

But then what did that matter now? Frankie asked herself dully. The night before last she had told Santino that she wasn’t pregnant. She had let him off the hook and he had fairly leapt off that hook of responsibility into celebration. From that moment he had evidently considered himself free of all obligation towards Frankie. Knowing that he was now free to go ahead with a divorce, he had probably invited Melina to join him in Milan. Naturally he wouldn’t have expected Frankie to turn up to meet him at the airport. After all, in the circumstances, why should she have done such a very wifely thing?

Having stranded herself in Rome with little cash left in her purse and not the slightest idea of how to get back to the Villa Fontana by public transport, Frankie finally surrendered to hard necessity. However she felt, she had to go back to the villa to pack and she had to face Santino. After purchasing a phone card in a newspaper kiosk, she queued up to use a public phone.

She wasn’t expecting Santino to answer the phone personally, and the instant he heard her hesitant voice he burst into explosive Italian, speaking too fast for her to follow. It was Santino and yet he didn’t sound like himself. He sounded frantic, distressed, out of control.

‘I want you to send a car for me...but I don’t want you to be in that car,’ Frankie told him in a deadened voice of exhaustion.

‘Where are you?’ Santino demanded raggedly. ‘Per amor di Dio...I’ve been out of my mind with worry!’

‘You’re really not very good at adultery, Santino...I think your life will be easier after we’re divorced,’ Frankie murmured flatly.

‘Please tell me where you are,’ Santino pressed fiercely.

She told him and added, ‘If you’re in the car, I won’t get in,’ because she couldn’t face the prospect of their confrontation taking place in a confined space.

A limousine drew up in front of her less than ten minutes later. Santino’s chief security man, Nardo, got out, looking very grave, and was relieved to usher her into the rear seat.

‘We searched the airport over and over again,’ he sighed. ‘Signor Vitale was distraught at your disappearance. I was only able to persuade him to return to the villa an hour ago.’

As the door closed on her and she slumped, Frankie was surprised to find herself sharing the seat with a very large teddy bear, wearing a frilly tartan dress and, horror of horrors, carrying a miniature teddy in its arms. The teddy looked as forlorn as she felt. Her goodbye present from Milan, fully advertising Santino’s apparent belief that she had no taste whatsoever and hadn’t matured in the slightest. And why did the teddy have a distinctly mother-and-baby look about it? Was that supposed to be a joke he expected her to appreciate?

Obviously she was a complete fool where men were concerned. She just could not comprehend how Santino could have made passionate love to her only three nights earlier and then turned to Melina. He hadn’t even paused for breath. And now she could not imagine telling him that she carried his child either...

She dozed in the car but it was like a waking dream, full of haunting slices of memory. She surfaced to find herself inside the Villa Fontana, being carried upstairs in Santino’s arms. ‘Put me down—’

‘I thought I had lost you...I have never been so scared in my life,’ Santino groaned, powerful arms tightening round her. ‘Don’t you ever, ever do this to me again.’

‘I won’t be here to do it,’ she reminded him dully.

Santino settled her down in a comfortable armchair in their bedroom. Frankie studied him. He looked devastated. She had never seen a few hours make such a difference to anybody. His tie was at half-mast, half the buttons on his silk shirt were undone to reveal a brown slice of hair-roughened chest and he badly needed a shave. Beneath the stubble he was pale as death, and his eyes were haunted and dark with strain.