Her Passionate Italian: The Passion Bargain / A Sicilian Husband / The Italian's Marriage Bargain. Carol Marinelli

she knew why he couldn’t reach her. In her rush that lunchtime she must have left the phone in her tote bag.

      ‘Idiot,’ she muttered and went into the bedroom to get it so she could return his call—only to find Sonya had followed her and was standing in the doorway, wearing the oddest expression on her face. Francesca couldn’t quite read it—anxiety, pleading? Or was it pain from the tooth?

      ‘Are you feeling all right, cara?’ she probed gently. ‘You look terribly flushed.’ She put a cool palm against Sonya’s cheek and was surprised just how hot she felt. ‘At the risk of being accused of mothering you, would you like me to tuck you into bed and bring you a nice hot chocolate drink?’

      The tears arrived then, turning gentian-blue into midnight pools in a face that was so classically beautiful it was no wonder she’d been screen tested by a film director once. ‘Don’t be nice to me, Francesca,’ she murmured.

      ‘I love you,’ she smiled, moving her fingers into the straight, glossy pelt of her friend’s long, flaxen hair. ‘Why shouldn’t I be nice?’

      ‘Because I don’t deserve it.’ Sonya stepped away from her so she could use the sleeve of her bathrobe to wipe her eyes with. ‘I use your friendship dreadfully.’

      ‘Only because I let you.’

      ‘Yes…’ Sonya agreed and looked momentarily devastated. The phone went then, breaking the moment. Sonya went into the sitting room to answer it and a few seconds later was calling Francesca to come to the phone.

      ’Ciao, mi amore.’ It was Angelo, his voice sounding weary and flat. ‘You don’t answer your cellphone because you don’t want to speak to me and I cannot blame you.’

      ‘I didn’t have my phone with me so I couldn’t answer it, you sweet idiot,’ she chided, her eyes flickering sideways to watch Sonya disappearing into her bedroom. The moment the door shut behind her Francesca lowered her voice into soft, loving tones. ‘I’m sorry you’re stuck in Milan.’

      ‘So am I,’ he agreed. ‘I am about to get ready to take dinner with some business colleagues when I should be on my way to share a romantic dinner with you. Ah, misero,’ he declared feelingly.

      ‘Poor caro,’ she commiserated.

      Angelo heaved out a sigh. ‘But enough of this.’ He firmly pulled his mood out of the doldrums. ‘Tell me about your day.’

      ‘Well, my plans fell to pieces much as yours did…’ She went to explain, leaving out the incident at the traffic lights and editing some of the more contentious events involving Sonya so she didn’t invite him to vent his frustrations on the one person guaranteed to earn his wrath. ‘But I did manage to find a dress for Saturday,’ she finished on a high note.

      To her surprise he made no cruel remarks about Sonya’s toothache. In fact he skimmed right over the fact that she’d even been mentioned at all and asked about her dress instead. She refused to tell him and there followed a few minutes of soft teasing that was much more like the man she loved. Then he had to go and the call ended, leaving Francesca feeling loved and filled with that golden warmth that was her Angelo.

      Sonya didn’t come out of her bedroom again that evening. Francesca went in to check on her a couple of times but all she could see was the crown of her head peeping out from beneath a mound of duvet and eventually left her to sleep off the ordeal with the dentist.

      By the next morning she was herself again and ready to face Bianca’s wrath head-on. They rode down the Corso side by side on similar Vespas and dressed in the same red uniforms. Their day was busy as always.

      Angelo called at lunchtime to break the news that he was going to be stuck in Milan for another night. The next day was Saturday and they were supposed to be driving into the Alban Hills together but that plan had to be shelved. ‘I have arranged with my parents for you to travel with them,’ he told her.

      It wasn’t a prospect that filled her with delight. She had discovered quite early on in her relationship with Angelo that his parents were not the kind of people who were ever going to welcome her with open arms. She harboured a suspicion that she was not what they’d been hoping for as a wife for their precious only son and if it wasn’t for her very loose connection to the Gianni name they would have been actively against Angelo marrying her. As it was, Mrs Batiste had grilled her once about her mother, then surprised her by confessing that she and Maria Gianni had attended the same convent school. ‘You look very like her—apart from the hair,’ she’d said, Maria’s hair having been as glossy Latin black as hair could be. ‘I’m sorry she had such a difficult life, Francesca. I hope your marrying my son will give you a happier one—for Maria’s sake—and that Bruno Gianni relents his foolish stubbornness one day for your sake. But until then I think we will not mention him again.’

      And that had basically been it. The Gianni connection was smoothly sidelined, which suited Francesca because she didn’t like talking about it and was happy to keep it that way.

      The journey to Frascati wasn’t too bad. Angelo’s parents’ manner towards her might be cool but it wasn’t frigid. She loved Angelo, they loved Angelo, so that was their line of communication. They were almost at their destination when Angelo’s mother voiced her annoyance that her son should have been held up in Milan this week of all weeks.

      ‘It is his own fault,’ her husband returned without any sympathy. ‘Angelo knows it is not good business practice to keep busy people kicking their heels while they await his late arrival.’

      ‘It wasn’t as if he intended to be late. He overslept and missed the flight,’ Angelo’s mama defended loyally.

      He did? thought Francesca. It was the first she’d heard of it.

      ‘No one else missed the flight,’ the father made the succinct distinction. ‘Whatever they had been doing the night before, they still managed to get to the airport on time.’

      In the back of the car Francesca shifted slightly, catching the attention of Mr Batiste via his rear-view mirror. ‘My apologies, Francesca,’ he said, ‘I was not being critical of the late hours you young people keep, only Angelo’s failure to rise from his bed when he should,’ bringing a flush of heat into her face when she realised what he was assuming.

      But it wasn’t true. She hadn’t seen Angelo the night before he went to Milan. Because of the early time of his flight he’d told her he was going to get an early night.

      ‘We cannot afford to offend a man like Carlo Carlucci. His business is too important to us,’ Mr Batiste went on, his attention back on the road ahead so he didn’t see the way Francesca’s face went from hot to pale at the mention of Carlo Carlucci’s name. ‘Being stuck in Milan while Carlo puts him through business hoops is a better punishment than to have Carlo take his business somewhere else.’

      Mrs Batiste demanded her husband’s attention then, with a comment that was spoken too low for Francesca to hear. It didn’t matter because she had stopped listening anyway. She was thinking about Carlo Carlucci and that awful morning she had met him at a set of traffic lights. He must have been on his way to meet with Angelo at the airport yet he hadn’t bothered to mention it—nor had it stopped him from making a play for her.

      She shifted restlessly again, feeling the same hostile prickles attacking her skin as she replayed the ease with which he’d conducted that little scene.

      What made the man tick that he felt he could do that to her, knowing what he knew? Arrogance? A supreme belief in his right to toy with another man’s woman simply because it had amused him to do so? If she’d said yes to the coffee thing, would he have just laughed in her face and driven off, having got all the kicks he’d been looking for from the interlude by successfully seducing another man’s woman? Or would he have been willing to miss his flight in favour of coffee with her at Café Milan?

      Oh, don’t go there, she told herself, frowning out of the car window as something low in her abdomen began to stir.