Lynne GRAHAM

is one of Mills & Boon’s most popular and bestselling novelists. Her writing was an instant success with readers worldwide. Since her first book, Bittersweet Passion, was published in 1987, she has gone from strength to strength and now has over ninety titles, which have sold more than thirty-five million copies, to her name.

In this special collection, we offer readers a chance to revisit favourite books or enjoy that rare treasure—a book by a favourite writer—they may have missed. In every case, seduction and passion with a gorgeous, irresistible man are guaranteed!

LYNNE GRAHAM was born in Northern Ireland and has been a keen romance reader since her teens. She is very happily married, with an understanding husband who has learned to cook since she started to write! Her five children, four of whom are adopted, keep her on her toes. She has a very large wolfhound, who knocks over everything with her tail, and an even more adored crossbreed, who rules everybody. When time allows, Lynne is a keen gardener and loves experimenting with Italian cookery.

The Reluctant Husband

Lynne Graham

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Table of Contents

About the Author Title Page CHAPTER ONE CHAPTER TWO CHAPTER THREE CHAPTER FOUR CHAPTER FIVE CHAPTER SIX CHAPTER SEVEN CHAPTER EIGHT CHAPTER NINE CHAPTER TEN CHAPTER ELEVEN Copyright

CHAPTER ONE

MATT FINLAY scanned Frankie’s shocked face and gave her a bracing smile. ‘I happen to think that Sardinia could be a very therapeutic trip for you. You could confront your memories of the love of your life and get it all out of your system—’

‘Santino was hardly the love of my life!’ Frankie countered between gritted teeth, her whole body tense as a drawn bow.

Matt frowned with pretended concentration. ‘I seem to recall that every time you saw the bloke you went weak at the knees and your little teenybopper heart turned cartwheels!’

The evils of alcohol on a loose tongue at the office party, Frankie reflected painfully. One of those times when she had tried a little too hard to be accepted as one of the boys. She should have known Matt would throw that confession back in her face one day when it suited him. ‘I spent five of the worst years of my life in Sardinia. You can’t blame me for not wanting to go back.’

‘You could be off the island again within forty-eight hours and go on to Italy. It wouldn’t need to interfere with your holiday plans. Who else is there? Dan’s still in France and Marty’s wife is due to give birth any day now...’

Frankie wanted to appeal to him again but her sense of fairness would not allow it. Their travel agency, of which she herself owned a sizeable share, specialised in self-catering accommodation abroad, and business had not been that good in recent months. They had lost more than the usual’ number of properties to competitors. Times were tough in the holiday market.

She squared her shoulders, a tall young woman with the sleek, graceful lines of a thoroughbred, dressed in a sharply tailored black trouser suit, quite deliberately chosen to play down her femininity. She had a fine bone structure, with clear green eyes fringed by ebony lashes and set below equally dark brows. Her burnished hair, a fiery combination of red, copper and gold, was worn in a French plait, embellished by a velvet bow clip. That clip was her one concession to being female.

‘And you’re a native,’ Matt mused with satisfaction. ‘That has to be to our advantage.’

‘I’m British,’ Frankie reminded him flatly.

‘Six villas on the Costa Smeralda. You check them out, sign up the owner, go on to Italy and we’re in business. And who knows...? By the time you come home from your holiday, you might even be in the mood to celebrate with me over a romantic dinner for two,’ Matt suggested with a slow, suggestive smile.

Discomfited by that look, Frankie tensed and coloured. They were friends, but Matt had recently strained their friendship by trying to persuade her into a more intimate relationship. She had already told him as tactfully as she could that she wasn’t interested and his persistence was making her increasingly uncomfortable. After all, not only did they work together, they also had to live under the same roof.

‘No chance,’ she told him with a rather forced grin as she walked to the door.

‘Sometimes I hate your brother,’ Frankie informed the smiling blonde manning the counter outside.

Leigh just laughed. ‘Sardinia?’

‘You knew?’ Frankie felt betrayed and knew she was being oversensitive. Neither of her friends could be expected to understand how threatened she felt by the thought of setting foot on the island again. After all, she hadn’t told either of them the full truth of what had happened to her there. ‘Why didn’t you warn me?’

‘Matt thought you’d take it better coming from him, and you’ll only arrive for your holiday in Italy sooner,’ Leigh pointed out cheerfully as she turned away to answer the phone.

Frankie’s long legs made short work of the stairs up to the spacious two-bedroom apartment which she had shared alone with Matt since Leigh had got married. She had moved in with the Finlay siblings three years earlier. Using the proceeds of an insurance policy which had matured when she was eighteen, she had bought into the business. The agency was on the ground floor of the same building. Since Frankie now spent most of her time travelling, spot-checking the standards of current properties and negotiating for new ones, she found the location very convenient.

Or at least she had until Matt had begun acting up, she conceded ruefully. His recent innuendos and familiarities hadn’t gone unnoticed by their employees either. The office tongues were already wagging and gossip upset Frankie. A long time ago she had learnt to her cost that careless talk could wreck lives. It had, after all, very nearly destroyed hers once. She shook off that memory with an inner shudder. Did Matt see her as some sort of a challenge? She wasn’t even his type. Why were men so infuriatingly contrary? The sooner Matt went back to chasing his trademark tiny blondes, the happier she would be.

She rang her mother’s home. The maid answered and put her through.

‘Mum? I’m going away earlier than expected,’ she said apologetically.

‘Frankie...don’t you think you’re getting rather too long in the tooth to be calling me Mum?’ Della snapped in petulant reproof. ‘It makes me feel as if I should be collecting my pension!’

‘Sorry.’ Frankie bit her lip uneasily, a shard of pain that was all too familiar piercing her as Della brushed off the news of her coming absence without comment or indeed any perceptible interest. ‘I have to go to—’

‘I have an appointment with my manicurist in an hour,’ Della interrupted impatiently. ‘I’ll call you some time next month.’

Frankie replaced the receiver, her hand not quite steady. No matter how many times it happened, it still hurt. All the old excuses came flooding back. Her mother had a very busy social life. She was not a demonstrative person. Those years of separation when Frankie had been in Sardinia had damaged their relationship. But at the back of her mind always lurked the insecure fear that her mother would really not have noticed if her daughter had never come home again. And then she felt deeply ashamed of herself for even thinking such a thing.

Frankie’s eyes flashed with growing exasperation. It was early evening and she was thoroughly fed up. Today she had expected to be on a ferry to Genoa, in Italy, and what was she doing instead? She was cooped up in a hideously noisy little Fiat, travelling along narrow, steep Sardinian roads that forced her to drive at a snail’s pace. Why? Signor Megras, the owner of the villas, had not condescended to meet her at his properties.

She had been given the grand tour by an employee and now she had to travel deep into the mountainous interior of the island to negotiate with the owner at his hotel. The drive had already taken far longer than she had anticipated. Of course, she could have taken advantage of the lift she had been offered by the employee, Pietro—he of the sexually voracious dark eyes and the overly eager-to-touch hands. In remembrance, Frankie grimaced. Welcome back to Sardinia, Frankie, home of the macho male and the child-bride...

As swiftly as that designation slunk into her thoughts, she suppressed it again. She knew what was wrong with her. It was these mountains, the same mountains that had imprisoned her for five unforgettable years. Her flesh chilled at the memories, so why should she let them out? That was the past and it was behind her. She was twenty-one now, and fully in control of her own life again.

But still the memories persisted. The culture shock of being eleven years old, one moment living a civilised life in London and the next being suddenly thrust unprepared into the midst of an almost illiterate peasant family, who didn’t even want her. The horror of being told that she would never see London or her mother again. The desertion of her father within days. The loneliness, the fear, the terrifying isolation. All those feelings were still trapped inside Frankie and she knew she would never be free of them.

Her mother had been an eighteen-year-old model when she became pregnant by a handsome Sard photographer called Marco Caparelli. The resulting marriage had been stormy. Her parents had finally separated when Frankie was eight. Her father had stayed in touch but on a very irregular basis, generally showing up when he was least expected and rarely appearing when he was. Once or twice he had even contrived to talk his way back beneath the marital roof again. Frankie’s desperate hope that her parents would reconcile had seemed like a real possibility to her on those occasions.

So, perhaps understandably, she had been upset when her mother met another man and finally decided that she wanted a divorce. Della’s plans had outraged her estranged husband as well. There had been a terrible argument. One day, shortly after that, Marco had picked Frankie up from school. They were going on a little holiday, he had told her and no, she didn’t need to go home to pack, he had laughed, displaying the small case which he’d explained contained everything that she might need for the wonderful trip he was taking her on.

‘Does Mum know?’ She had frowned.

And then he had let her into the even more wonderful secret. Mum and Dad were getting back together again. It might seem a big surprise to her, but while she had been at school Mum and Dad had made up. Wasn’t she pleased that she wasn’t going to have a stepfather after all? And wouldn’t it be fantastic when Mum joined them in Sardinia at the end of the week?

Bitterly rejecting the memory of that most cruel lie of all, Frankie rounded another corkscrew bend on the tortuous road and saw the sign at the head of a tumbledown bridge. ‘La Rocca’, it said. At last, she thought, accelerating up the hill into the village, braking first to avoid a goat and then two pigs. Her surroundings gave her a bad case of the chills. A clutch of scrawny hens scattered as she climbed out of the car in the dusty square.

The village was so poor you could taste it, and the taste of that poverty made Frankie shiver. She was reminded of another village even more remote from civilisation. Sienta, that particular cluster of hovels had been called. Birthplace of her paternal grandfather. Sienta had been a dot on the map of another world.

The silence grated on her nerves. Where was the hotel? She hoped it was reasonable, since she was probably going to be forced to spend the night there. Twenty yards away, through an open doorway, she saw a café. Her nose wrinkled fastidiously as she peered into the dim interior. The thick-set man behind the bar stared stonily back at her.

‘Could you tell me where Hotel La Rocca is?’ she asked in stilted Italian.

‘Francesca...?’

Gooseflesh broke out on her arms, her every muscle jerking painfully tight. That name she never used, that voice...the soft, mellow syllables as smooth and fluid as honey yet as energising for Frankie as the siren on a police car riding her bumper. There was a whirring in her eardrums. Slowly, very slowly, her feet began to turn, her slender body unnaturally stiff as she fought her disorientation, refusing to accept her instantaneous recognition of that voice.

Santino Vitale fluidly uncoiled his long, lean length from behind the table in the far comer and moved silently out of the shadows. Her tongue welded to the dry roof of her mouth. Her skin felt damp and clammy. For a moment she seriously doubted her sanity and the evidence of her own eyes. In an exquisitely cut silver-grey suit, an off-white raincoat negligently draped across his shoulders, Santino looked shockingly alien and exotic against the shabby backdrop of scarred tables and grimy walls.

‘Would you like to join me for a drink?’ Dark eyes as stunningly lustrous as black jet whipped over her stilled figure. Smoothly he captured her hand, warmth engulfing her fingertips. ‘Ah...you’re cold,’ Santino sighed, shrugging off his coat to drape it slowly and carefully round her rigid shoulders.

Frankie stood there like a wax dummy, so overpowered by his appearance, she could not react. Shattered, she couldn’t drag her gaze from him either. At six feet four, he towered over her in spite of her own not inconsiderable height. Devastatingly handsome, he had the hard classic features of a dark angel and the deeply disturbing sexual charisma of a very virile male. Without warning a tide of remembered humiliation engulfed her, draining every scrap of colour from her cheeks. Everything that Frankie had struggled so hard to forget over the past five years began to flood back.

‘This is the La Rocca hotel,’ Santino murmured.

‘This place?’ Complete bewilderment and the sense of foolishness that uncertainty always brought made Frankie sound shrill.

‘And you are here to meet a Signor Megras?’

‘How do you know that?’ Frankie demanded shakily. ‘Just how do you know that? And what are you doing here?’

‘Why don’t you sit down?’

‘Sit down?’ she echoed, dazed green eyes scanning him as if he might disappear in a puff of smoke at any moment.

‘Why not? I see no Signor Megras.’ Santino spun out a chair in silent invitation. The proprietor hurried over to polish the ashtray and then retreated again. ‘Won’t you join me?’

A faint shaft of sunlight pierced the gloom, highlighting the tattered posters on the wall and the worn stone floor. Every natural instinct spurred Frankie to flight. She reached the door again without the awareness that she had even moved her feet.

‘Are you afraid of me now?’

Frankie stopped dead, nervous tension screaming through her rigidity as a rush of daunting confusion gripped her. For an instant she felt like an adolescent again, the teenager who had once slavishly obeyed Santino’s every instruction. She had been so terrified of losing his friendship, she would have done anything he told her to do. But no, Santino had not taught her to be afraid of him...she had had to learn for herself to be afraid of the frighteningly strong feelings he aroused inside her.

Was it his fault that she hated him now? She didn’t want to think about whether or not she was being fair. Instead she found herself turning to look back at him again, somehow answering a need within herself that she could not withstand. And inexplicably it was like emerging from the dark into the light, heat and energy warming her, quelling that sudden spurt of fear and making her bite back her bitterness. Slowly, stiffly, she walked back and sank into the seat.

‘What are you doing here?’ she asked baldly.

‘Signor Megras won’t be coming. The villas belong to me.’

As the silence pulsed, Frankie stared back at him incredulously. ‘I don’t believe you.’

A slashing smile curved Santino’s wide, sensual mouth. ‘It is the truth. I brought you up here. I wanted to see you again.’

‘Why?’ Her head was spinning.

‘You are my wife. It may be a long time since I have chosen to remind you of that fact, but you are still my wife,’ Santino imparted with measured emphasis.

A jerky laugh of disbelief fell from Frankie’s dry lips. ‘Our marriage was annulled as soon as I went back to the UK,’ she scorned, tilting her chin. ‘Didn’t you get the papers?’

Santino merely smiled again. ‘Did you?’

Her brow furrowed, her mouth tightening. ‘Mum has them. Since I was under-age, she dealt with the formalities—’

‘Is that what you were told?’

‘Look, I know that that ceremony was set aside as null and void!’

‘You’ve been had,’ Santino drawled with lazy amusement.

An angry flush washed over her cheeks. His persistence infuriated her. ‘When I get home, I’ll ensure that you’re sent confirmation of the fact. I can assure you that we are no longer married.’

‘But then we never were...in the adult sense,’ Santino conceded.

Attacked without warning by a cruel Technicolor replay of her last sight of Santino, Frankie paled, her stomach giving a violent lurch. Santino with another woman, locked together in the throes of a very adult passion. A beautiful blonde, her peach-tinted nails spearing into his luxuriant black hair as he kissed her, melding every line of her curvaceous body to the lean, muscular strength of his. Frankie had been ripped apart by that glimpse of Santino as she herself had never seen him, and in that same instant she had been forced to see that they had never had a future together. In leaving, she had set them both free.

Dark golden eyes rested intently on her. ‘I deeply regret the manner of our parting. You were very distressed.’

Shattered that he should have guessed what was on her mind, Frankie went rigid. In self-defence, she focused on the table. She couldn’t think straight. Her emotions, usually so wonderfully well-disciplined, were in wild turmoil. She could barely accept that she was actually with Santino again, but even that bewildering awareness was pounded out of existence by the tremendous pain he had cruelly dredged back up out of her subconscious. With fierce determination, she blocked those memories out.

‘Perhaps it was a mistake to mention that so soon but I can feel it standing between us like a wall,’ Santino incised very quietly.

The assurance sent Frankie’s head flying up again, a fixed smile of derision pasted to her lips. ‘And I think you’re imagining things. So I discovered that my saint had feet of clay.’ She shifted a slim shoulder dismissively. ‘All part of growing up, and irrelevant after this length of time. Now, if those villas really are yours, can we get down to business?’

‘You have indeed been away a long while.’ Santino signalled to the proprietor with a fluid gesture. ‘That’s not how we do business here. We share a drink, we talk, maybe I invite you to my home for dinner and then, possibly after dinner, we get down to business.’

Frankie’s expressive eyes flashed. ‘I won’t be coming to your home for dinner, I assure you—’

‘Strive to wait until you’re invited,’ Santino traded gently.

Her cheeks reddened, her teeth gritting as wine arrived. ‘I find this whole stupid charade juvenile!’

‘As I remember it, you love the unexpected.’ Santino lounged back indolently in his seat, unconcerned by her growing anger and frustration.

‘I was a child then—’

‘Yet at the time you kept on telling me that you were all woman,’ Santino reminded her in a black velvet purr of wry amusement.

The worst tide of colour yet crimsoned Frankie’s throat. ‘So tell me,’ she said sharply, absolutely desperate for a change of subject, ‘are you in the tourist trade now?’

‘This and that.’ Hooded night-dark eyes resting on her, Santino lifted a broad shoulder in an infinitesimal shrug and a half-smile played maddeningly about his mobile mouth.

It was ridiculous that she shouldn’t know what business he was in, ridiculous that she should know so very little about this male to whom she had once been married! But years ago all she had known about Santino was that the elderly village priest was his great-uncle and that during the week he worked in a bank in Cagliari, where he also had the use of an apartment.

But, whatever Santino was doing now, he appeared to be doing very well. That magnificent suit simply shrieked expensive tailoring. But then he was a Latin male, and the Latin male liked to look good and was quite capable of spending a disproportionate amount of his income on his wardrobe. Even so, Frankie wasn’t used to seeing Santino in such formal attire. When he had come home to her at weekends, he had worn jeans and casual shirts. He looked so different now, like some big city business tycoon, stunningly sophisticated and smooth. The acknowledgement sharply disconcerted her.

Santino was surveying her with veiled eyes. ‘I had a good reason for arranging this discreet meeting.’

‘April Fool off-season?’ Frankie derided brittly.

‘I understand that you’re on vacation and I would like to offer you the hospitality of my home,’ Santino contradicted her evenly.

Frankie stared back at him wide-eyed and then a choked laugh escaped her. ‘You’re kidding me, right?’

Santino pressed her untouched glass of wine towards her. ‘Why should I be?’

‘I’m leaving for Italy immediately,’ she told him, incredulous that he should advance such an invitation. ‘So I’m afraid we do business now or not at all.’

‘I don’t give a damn about the villas,’ Santino countered very drily.

‘It’s my job to give a damn.’ Her sense of unreality was spreading by the minute. Santino here...with her. It felt so fantastically unreal. Why should Santino want to see her again after so long? Simple curiosity? Clearly he had found out where she worked in London. Was that why the villas had been offered to Finlay Travel? But how had Santino discovered where she worked?

From below her lashes she watched him as she drank, easing her parched vocal cords. He was so cool, so controlled... so calculating? Her spine tingled, some sixth sense spooking her. She scanned his gypsy-dark features, absorbing the stunning symmetry of each. The wide forehead, the thin, arrogant blade of a nose, the blunt high cheekbones and the chiselled curve of his sensual mouth. Her attention roved to his thick black hair, the curls ruthlessly suppressed by an expert cut, and the lustrous, very dark eyes which flared gold in emotion, and yet still a nagging sense of disorientation plagued her.

Santino both looked and felt like a stranger, she acknowledged dazedly, more than that even...a disturbingly intimidating stranger, who wore a cloak of natural authority and command as though he had been born to it. He was not Santino Vitale as she remembered him. Or was it that she now saw more clearly without adoration blinding her perception? Adoration? Inwardly she shrank, but there was no denying that that single word most accurately described the emotions which Santino had once inspired in her.

‘Francesca...’

‘Nobody calls me that any more,’ Frankie muttered waspishly, striving to rise above an ever-increasing sense of crawling mortification.

This encounter was a nightmare, she conceded, stricken. At sixteen, she had been so agonisingly, desperately in love with Santino. She had thrown herself at his head and done and said things that no woman in her right mind would want to recall once she reached the age of maturity! She must have seemed pathetic in his eyes, forever swearing undying love and resisting his every move to sidestep the intimacy which she had craved and which he had never wanted. It hadn’t been Frankie who had locked her bedroom door at night... it had been Santino who’d locked his. That particular recollection made her feel seriously unwell.

‘Look at me...’ A lean brown forefinger skated a teasing path across her clenched knuckles. ‘Please, Francesca...’ he urged gently.

It was like being prodded by a hot wire. Her sensitive flesh scorched and she yanked her hand back out of reach, shaken by a sudden excruciating awareness of every skin-cell in her humming body. Oh, dear heaven, no, she thought as she recognised the wanton source of that overpowering physical response. In horror, she lifted her lashes to collide with glittering gold eyes. Her breath tripped in her throat. Her heart hammered wildly against her ribs.

‘What do you want?’ she demanded starkly.

‘Three weeks out of time,’ Santino admitted softly. ‘I want us to spend that time together.’

‘I’m not spending any time with you!’ Frankie jerked upright, wide green eyes alight with disbelief.

Santino rose at his leisure, grim amusement curling his eloquent mouth. In a single fluid step he reached her. Lean hands confidently tugged her out from behind the table into the circle of his arms. Frankie was so taken aback she just stood there and looked up at him in open bewilderment. She could not credit that Santino would make any form of sexual advance towards her and uneasily assumed that he was trying to be fraternally reassuring.

‘Relax,’ Santino urged lazily, brushing a straying strand of bright hair back from her indented brow.

At that careless touch her heartbeat lurched violently, her throat tightening. Suddenly she was struggling to get air into her lungs. He angled his dark head down and she came in conflict with shimmering dark golden eyes. Another wanton frisson of raw excitement arrowed through her. Her head swam. Her knees wobbled. And then, before she could catch her breath again, Santino brought his mouth down on hers with ruthless precision, expertly parting her soft lips to let his tongue hungrily probe the moist, tender interior within.

That single kiss was the most electrifyingly erotic experience Frankie had ever had. Heat flared between her thighs, making her quiver and moan in shattered response. Instinctively she pushed into the hard heat of his abrasively masculine body. He crushed her to him with satisfying strength. Then he lifted his arrogant dark head and gazed down at her, his brilliant gaze raking over her stunned face as he slowly, calmly set her back from him again. ‘All this time I wondered...now I know,’ he stressed with husky satisfaction.

Frankie turned scarlet. Appalled green eyes fixed to him, she backed away fast. ‘You know nothing about me!’ she gasped, stricken.

In a tempest of angry distress, her only desire to escape from the scene of her own humiliation, Frankie stalked out into the fading daylight. There she blinked in bemusement before she raced across the square. It was empty...empty of her car!

‘And now, thanks to you, my car’s been stolen!’ Frankie shrilled back at Santino where he now lounged with infuriating indolence in the doorway of the bar.

He straightened fluidly and strolled towards her. ‘I stole it,’ he informed her, seemingly becoming cooler and ever more dauntingly assured with every second that made her angrier.

‘You did what?’ Frankie enunciated with extreme difficulty.

‘I am responsible for the disappearance of your car.’

The sort of blinding rage Frankie had honestly believed she had left behind in her teens swept over her. That cool, utterly self-possessed tone affected her like paraffin thrown on a bonfire. ‘Well, you just bloody well get it back, then!’ She launched at him, both of her hands closing into fists of fury. ‘I don’t know what kind of a game you think you’re playing here—’

‘I don’t feel remotely playful,’ Santino slotted in smoothly.

Frankie took a seething stride forward and grabbed him by the lapels of his jacket. ‘I want my car back now!’

‘The Caparelli Curse,’ Santino remarked softly, reflectively, quite unmoved by the spitting frenzy of her fury. ‘To think I thought rumour exaggerated. No longer does it surprise me that your grandfather was so desperate to marry you off.’

And that was it. At the mention of the hated nickname she had acquired in her grandfather’s village Frankie shuddered, and when Santino went on to remind her that he had been virtually forced into marrying her her last shred of control went. ‘You swine!’ she hissed, and drew back a step the better to take a swing at him.

But Santino was faster on his feet than she had anticipated, and as he sidestepped her the heel of her shoe caught on the lining of the long raincoat still hanging from her shoulders. She lost her balance and went down with a cry of alarm, striking her head. There was pain...then darkness, then nothing as she slid into unconsciousness.

CHAPTER TWO

FRANKIE had a headache when she drifted back to wakefulness with a frown. But worse was to come. She lifted her heavy eyelids and focused not on her familiar bedroom but on a completely strange room. It was the most disorientating experience of her life.

Stone walls...stone walls? Massive antique furniture with more than an air of gothic splendour. Her mouth fell wide as she took in the narrow casement windows, for all the world like the windows of a castle. It was a vast room and the bed was of equally heroic proportions.

And only then did splinters of disconnected imagery return to her. She recalled a nun... nun? She remembered feeling horribly sick, and being so. She remembered being told firmly that she had to stay awake when all that she wanted to do was sleep because her head ached unbearably. All the pieces were confused but one particular image, which had strayed in and out of her hazy impressions, struck her afresh with stunning effect... Santino!

A flicker of movement at the corner of her vision jerked her head around. A lithe, dark male figure stepped out of the shadows into the soft pool of light by the bed. Everything came back at once in a rush. Planting two hands on the mattress beneath her, Frankie reeled up into a sitting position, a tangle of multicoloured hair flying round her flushed and taut face. ‘You!’ she exclaimed accusingly.

‘I’ll call the doctor,’ Santino responded, reaching forward to tug the tapestry bell-rope hanging beside the bed.

‘Don’t bother!’ Frankie asserted between clenched teeth, throwing back the sheet with the intention of getting up and then swaying as a sick wave of dizziness assailed her.

As she pressed her fingers to her swimming head, a pair of strong arms enclosed her and she was pushed firmly back down again on the pillows.

‘Get your hands off me!’ Frankie bit out, refusing to surrender to her own bodily weakness.

‘Shut up,’ Santino said succinctly, bending over her with a shockingly menacing expression stamped on his vibrantly handsome features. ‘Bad temper put you in that bed and it might have killed you!’

Frozen by outrage, Frankie gaped at him, emeraldgreen eyes almost out on shocked stalks that he should dare to speak to her like that ‘Your crazy games put me in this bed!’

‘Your injuries could have been far more serious,’ Santino told her with a most offensive edge of condemnation. ‘Had I not managed to break your fall, you might have suffered more than a sore head and concussion. You were unconscious for many hours!’

‘It’s your fault that I got hurt!’

‘My fault?’ Santino repeated incredulously. ‘You took a swing at me!’

“The next time, I won’t miss! Where the heck am I?’ Frankie flared back furiously. ‘I want to go home!’

‘But you are home. You are with me,’ Santino drawled in a soft tone of finality.

‘You’re nuts...you are absolutely stark, staring mad!’ Frankie exclaimed helplessly, huge, bewildered eyes pinned to him. ‘What did you do with my car?’

‘As you were no longer in need of it, I had it returned to the hire firm.’

The door opened, breaking the thrumming silence. A tall, distinguished man in his fifties entered the room. ‘I am Dr Orsini, Signora Vitale.’ He set a medical bag on the cabinet by the bed. ‘How are you feeling now that you have had some sleep?’

‘I am not Signora Vitale,’ Frankie said shakily, beginning to feel like somebody playing a leading role in a farce.

The doctor looked at Santino. Santino smiled, raised his lustrous dark eyes heavenward and shifted a broad shoulder in a small shrug.

‘What are you looking at him like that—for?’ Frankie launched suspiciously. ‘I am not this man’s wife, Dr Orsini. In fact I have never seen him before in my life!’ she concluded with impressive conviction.

The doctor studied her with narrowed eyes and a frown. Frankie looked with expectant triumph at Santino, but Santino was already lifting something off the enormous dressing table and extending it to the older man.

‘What’s that? What are you showing him?’ Frankie demanded jerkily, falling fast into the grip of nervous paranoia.

‘One of our wedding photographs, cara mia.’ Santino shot her rigid stillness a gleaming glance from beneath luxuriant black lashes and tossed the silver-framed photo onto the bed for her perusal.

Without reaching for it—indeed her fingers chose to clutch defensively into the bedspread instead—Frankie stared down fulminatingly at that photograph. Her throat closed over, the strangest lump forming round her vocal cords. There she was in all her old-fashioned wedding finery, sweet sixteen and so sickeningly infatuated that she glowed like a torch for all to see, her face turned up to Santino’s adoringly. Shame she hadn’t had the wit to notice that Santino’s smile had more than a suggestion of stoically gritted teeth about it than a similiar romantic fervour!

Quite irrationally, her eyes smarted with tears. Suddenly she appreciated that whether it was fair or not she really did hate Santino! He hadn’t had to go through with the wedding. When he had realised the gravity of the situation they were in, surely he could have smuggled her back out of the village again and sent her home to her mother in London? She refused to believe that he could not have found some other way out of their predicament, rather than simply knuckling down to her grandfather’s outrageous demand that he marry her!

The doctor was opening his bag when she lifted her head again. Throwing Santino an embittered glance, Frankie cleared her throat. ‘This man may once have been my husband but he is not any more. In fact—’

‘Cara...’ Santino chided in a hideously indulgent tone.

‘He stole my car!’ Frankie completed fiercely.

Carefully not looking at her, Dr Orsini said something in a low, concerned undertone to Santino. Santino sighed, contriving to appear more long-suffering than ever.

‘Did you hear what I said?’ Frankie’s voice shook.

The older man was too busy shaking his head in wonderment.

Santino strolled to the foot of the bed. ‘Francesca...’ he murmured. ‘I know I am not your favourite person right now, but these wild stories are beginning to sound a little weird.’

Her jaw dropped. She flushed scarlet and experienced such a spasm of frustrated fury that she was dimly surprised that she did not levitate off the bed. She slung Santino a blazing look that would have felled a charging rhino. It washed over him. For the very first time she recalled Santino’s wicked sense of humour. His sensual mouth spread into a teeth-clenchingly forgiving smile, white teeth flashing against his sun-bronzed skin. ‘Grazie, cara...’

‘You will be relieved to learn that the X-rays were completely clear,’ Dr Orsini told her in a bracing voice. He didn’t believe her; the man did not believe a word she had said!

‘X-rays...what X-rays?’ she mumbled.

‘You were X-rayed last night while you were still unconscious,’ Santino informed her.

‘Last night...?’ she stressed in confusion.

Santino nodded in grim confirmation. ‘You didn’t regain consciousness until the early hours of this morning.’

‘Where was I X-rayed?’ she pressed.

‘In the infirmary wing of the Convent of Santa Maria.’

Am I in a convent? Frankie wondered dazedly, her energy level seriously depleted by both injury and shock upon succeeding shock. In a room kept for the use of well-heeled private patients?

‘Your husband was most concerned that every precaution should be exercised,’ the older man explained quietly. ‘Try to keep more calm, signora.’

‘There’s nothing the matter with my nerves,’ Frankie muttered, but she couldn’t help noticing that nobody rushed to agree with her.

Her head was aching and her brain revolving in circles. While she endured a brief examination, and even answered questions with positive meekness, on one level she was actually wondering if she was still unconscious. All this—the strange environment, the peculiar behaviour of her companions—might simply be a dream. It was a most enticing conviction. But there was something horrendously realistic about Santino’s easy conversation with the doctor as he saw him to the door, apologising for keeping him out so late and wishing him a safe journey home. Her Italian was just about good enough to translate that brief dialogue.

As Santino strode back to the foot of the bed, Frankie reluctantly abandoned the idea that she was dreaming. With an unsteady hand, she reached for the glass of water by the bed and slowly sipped.

‘Are you hungry?’ Santino enquired calmly.

Frankie shook her head uneasily. Her stomach felt rather queasy. She snatched in a deep, quivering breath. ‘I want you to tell me what’s going on.’

Santino surveyed her with glittering golden eyes, his eloquent mouth taking on a sardonic curve. ‘I decided that it was time to remind you that you had a husband.’

Frankie froze. ‘For the last time...you are not my husband!’

‘Our marriage was not annulled, nor was it dissolved by divorce. Therefore,’ Santino spelt out levelly, ‘we are still married.’

‘No way!’ Frankie threw back. ‘The marriage was annulled!’

“Is that really your belief?’ Santino subjected her to an intent appraisal that made her pale skin flush.

‘It’s not just a belief,’ Frankie argued vehemently. ‘It’s what I know to be the truth!’

‘And the name of the legal firm employed on the task...it was Sweetberry and Hutchins?’ Santino queried.

Frankie blinked uncertainly. She had only once visited the solicitor, and that had been almost five years earlier. ‘Yes, that was the name... and the very fact that you know it,’ she suddenly grasped, ‘means that you know very well that we haven’t been married for years!’

‘Does it?’ Santino strolled over to the windows and gracefully swung back to face her again. ‘A marriage that is annulled is set aside as though it has never been in existence. So would you agree that if our marriage had been annulled so long ago I would have no financial obligation towards you?’

Confused as to what he could possibly be driving at, Frankie nodded, a tiny frown puckering her brows. ‘Of course.’

‘Then perhaps you would care to explain why I have been supporting you ever since you left Sardinia.’ Santino regarded her with cool, questioning expectancy.

‘Supporting...me?’ Frankie repeated in a tone of complete amazement. ‘You?’

‘I was expecting Diamond Lil to show up at the La Rocca hotel. The little Fiat was a surprise. A chauffeur-driven limo would have been more appropriate,’ Santino mused silkily.

Frankie released a shaken laugh. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’ve been working for the past three years. I support myself. I have never received any money from you.’

Santino spread fluently expressive lean brown hands. ‘If that is true, it would appear that someone has committed fraud on an extensive scale since we last met.’

Her lashes fluttering in bemusement, Frankie studied him closely. He didn’t look as angry as he should have done, she thought dazedly. ‘Fraud?’ she repeated jerkily, the very seriousness of such a crime striking her. ‘But who...? I mean, how was the money paid?’

‘Through your solicitor.’

‘Gosh, he must be a real crook,’ Frankie mumbled, feeling suddenly weaker than ever, her limbs almost literally weighted to the bed. Santino had been paying money towards her support all these years? Even though she hadn’t received a penny of it, she was shattered by the news. Feeling as she did about him, she would never have accepted his money. He owed her nothing. In fact she felt really humiliated by the idea that he had thought he did have some sort of obligation towards her.

‘Forse...perhaps, but let us not leap to conclusions,’ Santino murmured, strangely detached from the news that someone had been ripping him off for years.

Frankie was thinking back to that one meeting she had had with ancient old Mr Sweetberry in his cluttered, dingy office. He had looked like a character out of a Charles Dickens novel, only lacking a pair of fingerless gloves. When he had realised that her marriage had taken place in a foreign country, he had looked very confused, as if it hadn’t previously occurred to him that people could get married outside the UK. In fact he had reacted with a blankness which hadn’t impressed Frankie at all. Her mother had then pointed out that Mr Sweetberry didn’t charge much for his services and that they could not afford to be too choosy.

‘Possibly,’ Santino remarked, ‘the guilty party might have been someone rather closer than your solicitor...’

Someone in Sardinia, someone on his side of the fence, she gathered he meant. Enormous relief swept over her, her own sense of responsibility eased by the idea. She felt incredibly tired but she still felt that she had to say it again. ‘I really wouldn’t have taken your money, Santino.’

Santino sent her a winging smile, alive with so much natural charisma that her heartbeat skidded into acceleration. ‘I believe you,’ he said quietly. ‘But the culprit must be apprehended, do you not think?’

‘Of course,’ Frankie eagerly agreed, grateful that he had accepted that she was telling the truth but still highly embarrassed by the situation he had outlined.

Without warning a sinking sensation then afflicted her stomach. All of a sudden she understood why Santino had been so determined to see her. He had obviously needed to talk about this money thing! She was mortified. She might pretty much loathe her ex-husband, but the knowledge that he had been shelling out for years in the belief that he was maintaining her could only make her feel guilty as hell. Had he found it difficult to keep up the payments? The quip about Diamond Lil suggested Santino had found it a burden. Frankie wanted to cringe.

‘And this greedy, dishonest individual—you...er... think this person should be pursued by the full weight of the law?’

Frankie groaned. ‘What’s the matter with you? I never thought you’d be such a wimp! Whoever’s responsible should be charged, prosecuted and imprisoned. In fact I won’t be at peace until I know he’s been punished, because this fraud has been committed in my name...and I feel awful about it!’

‘Not like hitting me any more?’

‘Well, not right now,’ Frankie muttered grudgingly.

Santino straightened the lace-edged sheet and smoothed her pillows. She didn’t notice.

‘If only you had explained right at the beginning,’ she sighed, feeling suddenly very low in spirits. ‘I suppose this is why you invited me to stay. You needed to talk about the money—’

‘I am ashamed to admit that I believed that you might have been party to the fraud.’

‘I understand,’ she allowed, scrupulously fair on the issue, and then, just as she was on the very edge of sleep, another more immediate anxiety occurred to her. ‘You’d better have me moved to another room, Santino...’

‘Why?’

‘My insurance won’t pay out for this kind of luxury—’

‘Don’t worry about it. You will not have to make a claim.’

Santino had such a wonderfully soothing voice, she reflected, smothering a rueful yawn. ‘I don’t want you paying the bill either.’

‘There won’t be one...at least...not in terms of cash,’ Santino mused softly.

‘Sorry?’

‘Go to sleep, cara.’

Abstractedly, just before she passed over the brink into sleep, she wondered how on earth Santino had produced that wedding photograph in a convent infirmary wing, but it didn’t seem terribly important, and doubtless there was a perfectly reasonable explanation. After all, she now knew exactly why Santino believed that they were still married. The perpetrator of the financial fraud had naturally decided to keep him in the dark about the annulment so that he would continue to pay.

The sun was high in the sky when Frankie woke up again. She slid out of bed. Apart from a dull ache still lingering at the base of her skull, she now felt fine. She explored the adjoining bathroom with admiring eyes. The fitments were quite sinfully luxurious. This was definitely not a convent infirmary wing. She was amused by her own foolish misapprehension of before. She was so obviously staying in a top-flight hotel! She reached for the wrapped toothbrush awaiting her and then stilled again.

Had this been Santino’s room? Had he given it up for her benefit? Was that why the photo had been sitting out? Why would Santino be carrying a framed photograph of their wedding around with him this long after the event? She frowned, her mouth tightening. She could think of only one good reason. And her mouth compressed so hard and flat, it went numb. Masquerading as a safely married man might well prevent his lovers from getting the wrong idea about the level of his commitment, she conceded in disgust. But then if Santino had genuinely believed that he was still a married man...?

That odd sense of depression still seemed to be hanging over her. She couldn’t understand it. Naturally she was upset that Santino should’ve assumed that she was happily living high off the fat of the land on his money, but she knew that she was not personally responsible for the fraud he had suffered. And he had believed her, hadn’t he? He also had to be greatly relieved to know that he wouldn’t have to pay another penny.

Diamond Lil... Just how much cash had he consigned into the black hole of someone else’s clever little fraud? Weren’t people despicable? All of a sudden she felt very sorry for Santino but ever so slightly superior. Evidently he wasn’t half as sharp as he looked or he would have put some check on his method of payment.

Her suitcase was sitting in the comer of the bedroom. As she dressed, she sighed. Santino must have been desperate to sort out this money business to go to the lengths of pretending that he wanted her to come and stay with him. Why would he have been staying in a hotel, though, if his home was nearby? And this was some hotel. How could he possibly afford a room like this? Unless this wasn’t a hotel but was, in fact, Santino’s home...

Frankie laughed out loud at that ridiculous idea even though her grandfather, Gino, had told her smugly that Santino was rich and a very good catch. In her eyes too, then, Santino had seemed rich. He had bought the largest house in Sienta for their occupation—an old farmhouse on the outskirts of the village. He had even carted a fancy washing machine home to her one weekend. Not that she had done much with it. She hadn’t understood the instructions and, after flooding the kitchen several times, she had merely pretended that she was using it. Of course, Santino had not seemed rich simply because he could afford a house and a car! He had just been considerably better off than anyone else in Sienta.

So therefore this had to be a hotel. Without further waste of time, Frankie pulled on loden-green cotton trousers and a toning waistcoat-style top with half-sleeves before she plaited her fiery hair. She discovered two new freckles on the bridge of her classic nose and scowled as she closed her case again, ready for her departure. A knock sounded on the door. A uniformed chambermaid entered with a breakfast tray and then shyly removed herself again. There was no hovering for a tip either.

While she ate with appetite, Frankie found her eyes returning again and again to that silver-framed photo sitting on the dressing table. Finally she leapt up and placed it face-down. Why had Santino kissed her yesterday? she suddenly asked herself. Curiosity now that she had grown up? Or had he actually started fancying her five years too late? Had her cold and businesslike attitude to him stung that all-male ego of his? Had he expected her still to blush and simper and gush over him the way she had as a teenager?

Frankie shuddered with retrospective chagrin, only wishing she had found some of that defensive distance in Santino’s arms. But, as for what she had imagined she felt, hadn’t she once been hopelessly infatuated with Santino? Doubtless that adolescent memory had heavily influenced her response. For a few dangerous seconds, the years had slipped back and she had felt like that lovelorn teenager again, a helpless victim of emotions and longings too powerful for her to control.

And if Frankie went back in time she could easily remember a much younger Santino, a tall, graceful, golden-skinned youth, who had looked startlingly akin to some pagan god of myth and legend. He had only been twenty then, still a student. While he was visiting his great-uncle, Father Vassari, the elderly priest had brought him to her grandfather’s house purely because Santino spoke English and nobody else in the village did.

In those early days Frankie had picked up little of the ancient Latin-based dialect her grandfather and his sisters, Maddalena and Teresa, had spoken within their tiny home. After months of isolation, the sound of her own language had released a flood of tears and frantic, over-emotional speech from her. She had begged Santino to find out where her father was and when he was returning to take her back to England.

He had suggested that they go for a walk. ‘I am not going to talk to you as if you are a little girl,’ Santino had told her wryly. ‘I will be frank. Father Vassari believes that you will be happier if you learn to accept that this village is now your home, for the foreseeable future at least.’

Scanning her shocked face, he had emitted a rueful sigh. ‘He understands that this life is not what you have been accustomed to and that you find your lack of freedom stifling, but you too must understand that your grandfather is unlikely to change his attitudes—’

‘I hate him!’ Frankie had gasped helplessly. ‘I hate everyone here!’

‘But you have your father’s blood in your veins, and therefore your grandfather’s too,’ Santino had reminded her, endeavouring to reason her out of her passionate bitterness and homesickness. ‘Gino acknowledges that bond. If he did not, he would not have accepted you into his home. You are part of his family—’

‘They’re not my family!’ she had sobbed wretchedly.

‘Maddalena would be very hurt to hear you say that. She seems to be very fond of you.’

Her shy great-aunt, who was wholly dominated by her sharp-tongued elder sister and her quick-tempered brother, had been the only member of the household to make any effort to ease Frankie’s misery. She had never shouted at Frankie when she heard her crying in the night. She had quietly attempted to offer what comfort she could.

‘I promise that I will try to locate your father, but in return you must make a promise to me,’ Santino had informed her gravely. ‘A promise you must study to keep for your own sake.’

‘What kind of promise?’

‘Stop running away. It only makes your grandfather angrier, only convinces him that you have been very badly brought up and cannot be trusted out of the house. He is a strict man, and your continued defiance makes him much nastier than he would normally be—’

‘Did Father Vassari say Grandfather was nasty?’ Frankie had prompted, wide-eyed.

‘Of course not.’ Santino had flushed slightly. ‘But Gino Caparelli has the reputation of being a stubborn, unyielding man. What you must do is bite your tongue in his presence and appear willing to do as you’re told, even if you don’t feel willing—’

‘I bet the priest never told you to tell me to act like a hypocrite!’

‘You’re smart for a twelve-year-old!’ Santino had burst out laughing when she’d caught him out. ‘My great-uncle is very devout, but he is sincerely concerned by your unhappiness. He wanted me to tell you to respect and obey your grandfather in all things—’

‘But you didn’t say that—’

‘Where there is as yet no affection, I think it would be too much to ask of you.’

‘I just want to go back to London,’ she had mumbled, the tears threatening again. ‘To my mum... my friends, my school—’

‘But for now you must learn to live with the Sardinian half of your family, piccola mia,’ Santino had told her ruefully.

He had been so straight with her and, after long, frightening months of being treated like an impertinent child whose needs and wishes were of no account, she had been heartened by Santino’s level approach. But then he had been clever. He had known how to win a respectful hearing, and the bait he had dangled in reward for improved behaviour had convinced her that he was on her side. She had trusted him to find out where her father was.

When he had brought instead the news of her father’s death in a car crash, she had been devastated. But, in the years which had followed, Santino had become Frankie’s lifeline. He had visited his great-uncle every couple of months, more often as the old man’s health had begun to fail, and Frankie had learnt to live for Santino’s visits for he always made time for her as well.

She had had nothing in common with her father’s family. It had been an unimaginable joy and relief to talk without fear of censure to Santino and just be herself. He had sent her English books and newspapers to read and she had started writing to him. His brief letters had kept her going between visits. Learning to love and rely on Santino had come so naturally to her.

As she dredged herself out of the past, Frankie found poignant memories of Gino, Maddalena and Teresa threatening to creep up out of her subconscious. Stiffening, she closed her Sard relatives out of her mind again. Her grandfather had ignored her letters in the last five years and that hadn’t been a surprise. He could neither have understood nor condoned the actions of a granddaughter who had deserted her husband. Her father’s family had thought the sun rose and set on Santino. In their ignorance of the true state of his marriage, they would have been angry and bitterly ashamed of her behaviour.

Frankie left her room. She emerged into a panelled corridor, lined with dark medieval paintings and beautiful rugs that glowed with the dull richness of age. When she saw a stone spiral staircase twisting up out of sight at the foot of the passageway, she was tempted to explore. Well, why not? If the villas on the Costa Smeralda were not to be made available to the agency, she was now technically on holiday. She really ought to give Matt a call, she conceded absently. He might be wondering why he hadn’t heard from her in three days.

Through the studded oak door at the top of the spiral flight of steps, Frankie stepped out onto the roof...or was it the ramparts? With astonished eyes, she scanned the big square towers rising at either end and then, walking over to the parapet, she gazed down in dizzy horror at the sheerness of the drop, where ancient stone met cliff-face far below her, and then she looked up and around, drinking in the magnificent views of the snowcapped mountains that surrounded the fertile wooded valley.

‘You seem to have made a good recovery.’

Frankie very nearly jumped out of her skin. Breathlessly she spun round. Santino was strolling towards her and this time he looked disturbingly familiar. Faded blue jeans sheathed his lean hips and long, powerful thighs, a short-sleeved white cotton shirt was open at his strong brown throat. He walked like the king of the jungle on the prowl, slow, sure-footed and very much a predator.

Sexy, she thought dizzily, struggling weakly to drag her disobedient gaze from his magnificent physique. Incredibly sexy. He was so flagrantly at home with his very male body, relaxed, indolent, staggeringly selfassured. She reddened furiously as he paused several feet away. He sank down with careless grace on the edge of the parapet, displaying the kind of complete indifference to the empty air and the terrifying drop behind him that brought Frankie out in a cold sweat.

‘I saw you from the tower. I thought you’d still be in bed,’ he admitted.

‘I’m pretty resilient,’ Frankie returned stiffly, thinking that it would mean little to her if he went over the edge but, all the same, she wished he would move.

‘One committed career woman, no less,’ Santino drawled, running diamond-bright dark eyes consideringly over the plain businesslike appearance she had contrived to present in spite of the heat. ‘To think you used to wash my shirts and shrink them.’

Frankie was maddened by the further flush of embarrassment that crept up her throat. It reminded her horribly of the frightful adolescent awkwardness she had once exhibited around Santino. Not that that surprised her. Santino was drop-dead gorgeous. Santino would make a Greek god look plain and homely because he had a quality of blazing vibrance and energy that no statue could ever match. If she hadn’t fancied him like mad all those years ago, there would have been something lacking in her teenage hormones, she told herself.

‘Did I really?’ she said in a flat, bored tone.

‘I always wondered if you boiled them,’ Santino mused, perversely refusing to take the hint that the subject was a conversation-killer.

‘Well, you should have complained if it bothered you,’

‘You were a marvellous cook.’

‘I enjoyed cooking for you about as much as I enjoyed scrubbing your kitchen floor!’ And she was lying; she hated the fact that she was lying and that, worst of all, he had to know that she was lying.

But what else had she known? The formal education she had received from the age of eleven had been minimal, but her domestic training as a future wife and mother had been far more thorough. Between them, her father’s family had seen to that. No matter how hard she had fought to preserve her own identity, she had in the end been indoctrinated with prehistoric ideas of a woman’s subservient place in the home. Endless backbreaking work and catering to some man’s every wish as though he were an angry god to be appeased rather than an equal... That was what she had been taught and that was what she had absorbed as her former life in London had begun to take on the shadowy and meaningless unreality of another world.

Her spine notched up another inch, bitter resentment at what she had been reduced to steeling her afresh. She had sung as she scrubbed his kitchen floor! She had thought she knew it all by then. She had thought that by marrying Santino, who said ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ and even, amazingly, ‘That’s too heavy for you to carry,’ she had beaten the system, but in truth she had joined it. She had been prepared to settle for whatever she could get if she could have Santino. For the entire six months of their marriage, she would not have accepted a plane ticket out of Sardinia had it been forced on her...

‘I did try to persuade you to resume your education,’ he reminded her drily.

‘Oh, keep quiet...stop dragging it all back up. It makes me feel ill!’ Frankie snapped, spinning away with smarting eyes.

He had wanted her to attend a further education college in Florence. Florence! The Caparellis had been aghast when she’d mentioned it. What kind of a husband sent his wife back to school? She could read, she could write, she could count—what more did he want? And Frankie had been genuinely terrified of being sent away to a strange city where her ignorance would be exposed, where the other students might laugh at her poor Italian and where, worst of all, she would not have Santino.

In her innocence, she had actually asked Santino if he would go to Florence with her, and he had said that he would only be able to visit because the demands of his job would not allow him to live there. Of course, in the kindest possible way, she conceded grudgingly, Santino had been trying to make the first step towards loosening the ties of their ridiculous marriage by persuading her into a separation and a measure of independence. He had known very well that she was so infatuated with him that she was unlikely to make a recovery as long as he was still around.

He hadn’t wanted to hurt her. He had even said that, yes, he would miss her very much but that he felt that she would greatly gain in self-confidence if she completed her education. And she had accused him then of being ashamed of her and had raced upstairs in floods of inconsolable tears. She had refused to eat for the rest of that weekend, had alternately sulked and sobbed every time he’d tried to reason with her. No, she reflected painfully, nobody could ever say that Santino had found marriage to his child-bride a bed of roses... or, indeed, any kind of a bed at all, she conceded with burning cheeks.

‘We have a lot to talk about,’ Santino commented flatly.

Tension hummed in the air. For the first time, Frankie became aware of that thick tension and frowned at the surprising coldness she was only now registering in Santino’s voice. Before, Santino had been teasing her, yet now he was undeniably distant and cool. She didn’t know him in this mood. The awareness disconcerted her and then made her angrily defensive.

‘On a personal basis we have nothing to talk about, but good luck with your fraud case!’ Frankie told him with a ferociously bright smile. ‘However, if you want to discuss the—’

‘If you mention those villas one more time, I will lose my temper. What are they to me? Nothing,’ Santino derided with a dismissive gesture of one lean hand. ‘The bait by which I brought you here, but now no more! Their role is played now.’

‘I’m afraid I haven’t a clue what more you expect from me, and nor do I intend to hang around to find out,’ Frankie asserted, colliding with hard golden eyes that were curiously chilling, and, since that was not a sensation which she had ever associated with Santino before, she paled and tensed up even more.

‘You will. Your wings are now clipped. No longer will you fly free,’ Santino retorted with the cool, clear diction generally reserved for a child slow of understanding. ‘We are still married.’

‘Why do you keep on saying that?’ Frankie demanded in sudden flaring repudiation. ‘It’s just not true!’

‘Five years ago you made only a brief initial statement to your solicitor, who has since retired. I spoke to his son yesterday. He checked the files for me. His father advised you in a letter to consult another solicitor, one more experienced in the matrimonial field. No further action was taken,’ he completed drily.

Frankie trembled. There was something horribly convincing about Santino’s growing impatience with her. ‘If there’s been some stupid oversight, I’m sorry, and I promise that I’ll take care of it as soon as I go home again—’

‘Not on the grounds of non-consummation!’ Santino slotted in grimly.

‘Any grounds you like, for goodness’ sake...I’m not fussy,’ Frankie muttered, badly shaken by the idea that they might still be legally married.

‘Five years ago I would have agreed to an annulment.’ Santino surveyed her tense face with cool, narrowed eyes. ‘Indeed, then I considered it my duty to set you free. But that is not a duty which I recognise now. To be crude, Francesca... I now want the wife that I paid for.’

‘That you...what?’ Frankie parroted shakily.

‘I now intend to take possession of what I paid for. That is my right.’

Frankie uttered a strangled laugh that fell like a brick in the rushing silence. She stared at him incredulously. ‘You’re either crazy or joking...you’ve got to be joking!’

‘Why?’ Santino scanned her with fulminating dark golden eyes. ‘Let’s drop the face-saving euphemisms. For a start, you trapped me into marriage.’

Frankie flinched visibly. ‘I didn’t—’

Santino dealt her a quelling glance. ‘Don’t dare to deny it. Well do I recall your silence when you were questioned by your grandfather. I had never in my life laid a finger upon you but not one word did you say to that effect!’

Frankie studied the ground, belated shame rising inexorably to choke her. She had been so furious with Santino that awful night for taking her back to Sienta. She had been running away and, using him as an unsuspecting means of escape, had hidden herself behind the rear seat of his car. It had been an impulsive act, prompted by pure desperation...

Santino’s great-uncle, Father Vassari, had died that week. She had known that Santino would no longer have any reason to come to the village. She had been in disgrace on the home front too. Incapable of hiding her feelings for Santino, she had stirred up the sort of malicious local gossip that enraged her grandfather. Furious with her, he had told her that she could no longer even write to Santino.

Santino hadn’t discovered her presence in his car until he’d stopped for petrol on the coast. It had been the one and only time he had ever lost his temper with her. His sheer fury had crushed her. Deaf to her every plea for understanding and assistance, he had stuffed her forcibly back into the car and driven her all the way back home, but it bad been dawn by the time they got there. In Gino Caparelli’s eyes, her overnight absence in male company had ruined her reputation beyond all possibility of redemption. He had instantly demanded that Santino do the honourable thing and marry her.

‘Grandfather knew nothing had happened,’ Frankie began in a wobbly voice, struggling to find even a weak line of self-defence.

‘And I knew that after what you had done your life would be hell in that house if I didn’t marry you! I let conscience persuade me that you were my responsibility. And what did I receive in return?’ Santino prompted witheringly. ‘A bride who took her teddy bear to bed...’

Frankie’s colour was now so high, she was convinced it would take Arctic snow to cool her down again.

‘Hamish the teddy with the tartan scarf.’ Santino studied her with grim amusement. ‘Believe me, he was a hundred times more effective than any medieval chastity belt.’

Intense chagrin flooded her. Her teeth gritted as she threw her head high. ‘You said...you said that you wanted a wife—’

‘I already have one. I also have custody of Hamish,’ Santino informed her satirically as he rose fluidly upright again. ‘I’d say that makes my claim indisputable.’

‘You don’t have any claim over me!’

‘Have you packed?’ Meeting her stunned scrutiny, Santino repeated his question.

‘Yes, but—’

‘Bene...then, since you are no longer in need of further rest, we will waste no more time.’ Santino opened the oak door and, standing back, regarded her expectantly.

The tip of Frankie’s tongue slid out to wet her lower lip. She continued to stare helplessly at him. ‘Why are you doing this...? I mean, what’s going on?’

‘Really, Francesca...are you always this slow on the uptake?’ Santino chided, an ebony brow elevating with sardonic cool. ‘You really shouldn’t have lied to me.’

‘L-lied?’ Frankie stammered as he pressed her firmly past him and down the spiral stone steps. ‘I haven’t told you any lies!’

‘I would have been far more understanding if you had made a complete confession when I confronted you. But lies make me incredibly angry,’ Santino drawled softly. ‘When I found out the truth this morning, I was very tempted to come upstairs, tip you out of that bed and shake you until the teeth rattled in your calculating, devious little head!’

‘What are you talking about?’ Frankie exclaimed.

‘Your forty-eight per cent share of Finlay Travel.’ Santino shot her a glittering look of condemnation from icy cold dark eyes. ‘You shameless little bitch... You actually fished your lover out of a financial hole with my money!’

Frankie was so taken aback by that insane accusation, she could only gape at him.

‘Now, I didn’t expect to receive my bride back in a state of untouched virginal purity. Nor did I expect to be greeted with open arms, gratitude or any lingering delusion on your part that I could walk on water!’ Santino spelt out with sizzling derision. ‘Indeed, I believed that my expectations were thoroughly realistic. But I was not prepared to discover that for the past five years you’ve been in collusion with that greedy, grasping vixen who brought you into the world!’

CHAPTER THREE

FRANKIE tried to swallow and failed. In shock, she had fallen still. Santino was talking about her mother. He was calling Della a greedy, grasping vixen. Why? For heaven’s sake, he didn’t even know her mother, had never met her!

Why on earth was he making such wild and offensive accusations? It made no sense. She had bought her share of Finlay Travel with the proceeds of an insurance policy. Bewildered green eyes clung to his hard, sun-bronzed features and the cold, steely anger simmering in the depths of his contemptuous gaze.

‘When I think of the lengths I went to in my efforts to protect you from having your illusions about Della shattered, I am even more disgusted by your behaviour!’ He flung wide the door of her bedroom and crossed the floor to lift her case. Emerging again, he curved a powerful arm against her tense spine and carried her towards the stone staircase that wound impressively down into a big hall. ‘Dio mio... I had to pay your mother to take you back. I had to bribe her to welcome you into her home after you left me!’

‘P-pay her...you had to pay her?’ Frankie repeated in disbelief.

Santino released his breath in an audible hiss. ‘I should have insisted on an immediate annulment. I should not have allowed myself to be swayed by the assurance that it would distress you too much to have that last link severed—’

‘Distress me...?’ Frankie broke in even more shakily as she came to a halt on the uneven flagstoned floor of the hall. Her legs felt appallingly weak and hollow. Pay her? He had had to pay her mother? Perspiration dampened her short upper lip. She couldn’t get her thoughts into any kind of order. When she continued to hover, Santino pressed her out through the big oak doors spread wide on the brilliant sunlight. Without that forceful male momentum Frankie would very probably have fallen at his feet.

‘I was a complete fool,’ Santino grated. ‘Without question I paid out a vast amount of money for you to live in comfort and complete your education, and what have I got back? A wife who still speaks Italian like a tourist with a bad phrasebook! But that is the very least of the deception, is it not? You’re so appallingly mercenary, you chose to live in sin with your lover sooner than give me my freedom back!’

‘Santino—’ Frankie mumbled dizzily.

‘Keep quiet. The less I hear out of that lying little mouth right now the better!’ Santino cut in with ruthless bite. ‘I let myself be taken in yesterday. “Are you in the tourist trade now?” Dio mio...give me strength! But I thought, That is so sweet. She still doesn’t know who I am... But that charade about there being a bill for your medical care—that was overkill! You know damned well you married a bloody rich man! Only a bloody rich man could have kept you and your mother in the style in which I have kept you both for the past five years!’

With that final ringing and derisive assurance, Santino yanked open the door of the black Toyota Landcruiser parked in the cobbled courtyard, and while she stood there in a speechless daze at all the revelations being hurled at her at once he swore with impatience. Circling her with strong arms, he swept her bodily off her feet and, after settling her into the passenger seat, he slammed the door on her.

Frankie found herself sucking in oxygen as frantically as someone coming up for air after almost drowning. She pressed trembling fingers to her throbbing temples.

‘So don’t look at me with those big green eyes and tell me I’m joking when I say I intend to have what I paid for!’ Santino continued fiercely as he swung in beside her. ‘One more argument out of you and I pull the rug out from under Finlay Travel and ruin both you and your lover! And then I take Della to court for all the fake bills that have been submitted on your behalf while I was still under the impression that you were a student. By the time I’m finished with you, the sight of a Vitale bank draft with my signature on it will make you feel sick. I’m going to treat you to aversion therapy!’

Frankie was fighting to reason again, but she was in so much shock it was extraordinarily difficult. Somehow she couldn’t get past that very first devastatingly painful assurance that he had had to pay her mother to give her a home. ‘You’ve...you’ve actually met Della?’ she heard herself question weakly but incredulously as he fired the engine of the powerful car.

‘What sort of stupid question is that?’ Santino shot her a glinting glance of enquiry. A sardonic frown line divided his ebony brows as he absorbed her stark pallor. ‘Of course you know I’ve met her! Don’t tell me that while the two of you were cheerfully ripping me off all these years she somehow neglected to mention where all the money was coming from!’

‘Mum received a very generous divorce settlement from her second husband,’ Frankie mumbled tremulously, her throat convulsing as she tried to steady herself. ‘That’s where the money was coming from, and as for my share in Finlay—’

‘Your mother dumped Giles Jensen when his nightclub went bust. He didn’t have the means to make any kind of settlement. When you went back home to Mum, she was in major debt. I was the sucker who pulled Mum out of it and put a roof over your heads!’

‘I don’t—’

A plastic folder landed squarely on her lap. ‘I own your mother’s home. I had no objection to maintaining my mother-in-law when it meant that you shared her comfortable lifestyle. I’m angry now because it’s obvious that you were in on the whole scam from the beginning!’

There was a thick legal deed inside the folder. It bore the address of her mother’s smart house in Kensington and Santino’s name as the current owner. It was the kind of irrefutable proof that stole the very breath from her lungs. It made argument on that count impossible. Her stomach succumbed to nauseous cramps.

‘If there hadn’t been a recent query about the lease, I wouldn’t even have had that here to show you!’ Santino gritted. ‘But I have a stack of receipted bills a foot thick in my office in Rome. Fakes! Tell me, did you ever actually go to that fancy boarding school I paid for?’

‘I went to the local tech for a while, took a few classes...’ Frankie told him numbly as the horror of what he was telling her and the source of his very real anger began slowly and inexorably to sink in.

‘Per meraviglia...no riding, music and skiing lessons? No language tutoring? No finishing school? No educational trips or vacations abroad? You haven’t spent a single term at university, have you?’

Dully, Frankie shook her head. Piece by awful piece, it was falling into place. Della was the fraudster Santino had been talking about. Not someone on his side of the fence, but someone a great deal closer to Frankie than a solicitor she had only once met. Her mother, her own mother. She felt sick. Della enjoyed an entirely hedonistic existence of shopping and socialising. She didn’t work. She had an exquisitely furnished house, a fabulous designer wardrobe and took frequent long-haul holidays abroad. The realisation that Santino must have been paying for that lifestyle devastated Frankie.

‘I didn’t know...you’ve got to believe that!’ she burst out.

‘Fine. Then you can sit back and relax while I prosecute your mother for misuse of funds intended to be spent solely for your benefit.’

Frankie went white.

‘And I eagerly await your explanation for the thousands you put into Finlay Travel—’

‘That definitely wasn’t your money!’ she protested feverishly. “That came from an insurance policy that Dad took out for Mum and I when I was still a baby—’

‘Marco, the compulsive gambler, took out insurance?’ Santino murmured very drily. ‘Money burned a hole in his pocket. If your father had taken out a policy like that, he would have been trying to cash it in again within months. He certainly wouldn’t have kept up the payments.’

Frankie was concentrating hard now. She had never seen any proof that that money had come from an insurance pay-out. She had been only eighteen, had had no reason to question her mother’s story or the welcome feeling of security created by that most unexpected windfall. Della had simply paid the money into her account. And by the passing on of that one very substantial payment, Frankie registered painfully, Della had ensured that her daughter was bound up in her dishonesty. Had that been her mother’s intention all along? A safeguard so that if Santino ever found out what was really happening to his money he would believe that Frankie had been involved in the deception? Her stomach gave another horrible twist.

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

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