The Reluctant Husband

‘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.