The Reluctant Husband. Lynne Graham

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.