Gianni's Pride

He oozed sinister sexuality and was probably insane to boot! A predatory man had climbed into her bed … She shuddered—had he touched her …?

Her stomach responded violently to the lurid images forming in her head. ‘God, I think I’m going to be sick!’ she groaned suddenly as she dropped her chin to her chest, the blood draining abruptly from her face.

Her voice made even this prosaic statement sound seductive! ‘I’m getting that a lot.’

The dull metronome thud thud of her blood as it pounded against the delicate membrane of her inner ear drowned out his dry words.

What had Lucy said before she left …? I hope you won’t be bored. I’m afraid nothing interesting ever happens here. What would her employer call this—a slow Friday morning?

‘This is all an innocent mistake.’

She inhaled a deep sustaining breath and lifted her head, fixing the intruder with a look of loathing. ‘Do you say that to all the women you try to molest?’ Amazingly her voice was steady, if on the shrill side.

Miranda’s fingertips brushed the phone before she heard it fall onto the polished boards—damn! Her teeth clenched, she fought down the panic she felt closing like a fist around her windpipe. I will not be some crime statistic. I’ll survive. ‘I’m going to leave now.’ Once I regain control of my limbs.

‘I’m not stopping you.’ People feared his tongue, words written and spoken were his thing, and Gianni had rarely encountered a situation where he did not have the perfect response, but then up until now he’d never been viewed as a potential rapist. He found himself falling back on repetition.

He watched her eyes flicker around the room like a trapped animal seeking an escape route. ‘I’ve told you, this is simply a misunderstanding—a mistake.’

‘Yes, your mistake.’ How come her voice was working and her legs were not? The other way around would have been much more convenient. ‘You disgusting sleaze!’ How come I am saying the sort of things almost guaranteed not to placate a dangerous lunatic? ‘I know self-defence.’

He could see her shaking from here, her eyes didn’t leave his as she watched him, but she had guts, this redhead. Terrified, she still came out fighting. Gianni felt a stab of admiration as he pulled himself into a sitting position.

The action caused the petrified redhead to take a hasty step backwards.

Gianni, who did not like scaring women, produced a smile and struggled to channel harmless and innocuous—not so easy when you were a powerfully built six feet four and practically naked—as he studied the woman hiding behind the quilt she had dragged off the bed, along with half the blanket and sheets that now lay crumpled at her feet, and tried to figure out the best way to defuse the situation.

She was petite and slim and probably younger than Lucy. Though it wasn’t always easy to tell, she had the sort of face that looked perennially young—good bones, he decided, studying her delicate heart-shaped face dominated by a pair of enormous green eyes set above a neat little tip-tilted nose. Noticing that she had a kissable mouth that would be soft and lush when it wasn’t curled into a scared snarl was not going to defuse anything, but it was impossible not to. It was the sort of thing any man could not fail to notice.

‘There’s absolutely no need to freak out this way.’

He actually had the cheek to sound vaguely impatient. Her trill of laughter emerged husky from her bone-dry throat. If ever a situation called for major freaking, this was it!

‘I’m not freaking.’ She had gone beyond freaking!

‘This isn’t what it looks like.’

‘So what the hell is it?’ she snarled, looking so spooked that he was afraid she’d do something crazy like jump through that open window if he made a move to leave. Then, accident or not, her beautiful broken neck would be his fault.

‘Look, there’s a bathroom next door with a really sturdy lock on it. Why don’t you go in there, lock the door and we’ll sort this out?’

Not the sort of suggestion you might expect a potential rapist to make … Miranda did not lower her guard, but her anxiety levels dropped from red to amber. ‘How do you know that the bathroom has a lock?’

Thoughts continued to chase one another in frantic ever-decreasing circles around her head. Was this all part of some sinister plan? Was he playing with her …? Had he cased the joint while she slept? And what about the dogs? Lucy had said they barked at strangers.

‘Did you hurt the dogs? Because if you have … they’re rescue animals and …’

‘I know, they’ve had a bad time.’ Aunt Lucy had typically taken on the most tortured, hopeless canine souls she could find. ‘The dogs are fine,’ he soothed, thinking, For animals that their owner refuses to discipline. ‘Just yell Lucy, she’ll vouch for me.’ He raised his own voice and bellowed. ‘Luce!’

Taken by surprise, Miranda blinked. ‘You know Lucy?’ That had to be good, didn’t it?

Gianni tilted his head in confirmation and raised his voice in another bass bellow. ‘Lucy!’ Before adding in a conversational tone, ‘I really had no idea she had a visitor.’ His dark brows twitched into a sable line of irritation—where was Lucy? If his yell hadn’t roused her it had to have woken Liam. ‘Luce!’

‘She isn’t here.’ She stopped, trying to conceal a stab of dismay as she thought, Way to go, Mirrie! If he didn’t already know you were alone, he does now. And he might indeed know Lucy, but he was still pretty much an unknown quantity and one not to be trusted.

His dark brows twitched into a straight line above his hawkish nose. ‘She’s away?’ He released a hissing sound of annoyance through his clenched teeth and thought, Just my luck. When was the last time Lucy left this place?

‘But she’ll be back any minute.’

The tremor in her voice brought his scrutiny to her face. His dark eyes held understanding as he lifted his broad shoulders in a shrug.

The action made her unwillingly aware of the movement of muscles under the satiny surface of his dark skin. He had the sort of body that would have an artist reaching for a pencil. He had the sort of body that she could imagine incited a less artistic and much more hands-on response!

‘Look, I’m sorry I scared you … It came as quite a shock to me too to find I was sharing.’

‘I’m not scared,’ she lied. Unable to stop her eyes straying to the fuzz of dark hair sprinkled across his magnificent pectoral muscles, she swallowed. The man might look as if he were posing for some cheesy calendar, but he exuded an earthy, raw quality that was not cheesy so much as downright disturbing. ‘How did you get in?’

‘I let myself in with the key. Lucy keeps one above the door on a ledge … Yes, I know, crazy when she’s gone to all the trouble of installing a state-of-the-art security system, but she works on the theory that nobody would ever look in such an obvious place, and in answer to your previous question I know about the bathroom lock … I know where the key is kept because I’ve been here before …’

‘Before? Are you her boyfriend?’

The suggestion drew an unexpected laugh, deep, throaty and attractive. ‘I’m family.’

This time it was Miranda who almost laughed. She might just have swallowed boyfriend, though that would beg the question of why he’d climbed into this bed and not the one in the roomy, pretty master bedroom at the front of the house.

Actually it was not hard to see this man, with his Mediterranean colouring and bold eyes, and Lucy Fitzgerald together as a couple, she mused as she studied his rather too perfect profile … Individually either would stop conversations when they walked into a room. Together they would definitely cause an earth tremor … but family? No way, she decided. Lucy, with her cut-glass accent, was fair-skinned with incredible blue eyes and masses of ash-blonde hair that looked natural. This man, with his bold black eyes, ebony hair and bronzed body, was dark and not just in colouring. There was something elemental and primitive about him … volatile … dangerous.

‘Family?’

He tilted his dark head in acknowledgement. ‘I arrived late and I didn’t want to disturb anyone so … I use this room when I stop over, even though I’ve had the odd concussion when I’ve forgotten to duck.’

He looked sincere, the story sounded genuine, but then she had continued to believe in Santa Claus right up to the moment her more sophisticated twin had disillusioned her a good two years after her contemporaries. Repressing her natural instincts towards annoying gullibility, she struggled to retain a protective level of scepticism. ‘If you say so …’

‘You’re a tough audience, you know that, don’t you? Did you see the photos downstairs?’

Miranda, who had registered the large collection of framed photos on the dresser in the dining room, maintained an uncommunicative silence, but began to consider the possibility he might actually be telling the truth about the relationship.

‘You noticed them?’

She tipped her head in wary acknowledgement. ‘So what are you—her brother?’

He took her sarcasm at face value. ‘No, her nephew.’

‘Nephew?’ She gave a derisive hoot. ‘You’ve obviously never even met Lucy.’

‘You base that on what?’

‘Well, let me see, for one she’s younger than you, and English and you … I don’t know what you are! But I think you heard she was away, thought you’d see if there was anything worth taking, saw me asleep and—’

‘Could not resist the temptation …?’

Miranda felt the colour scoring her cheeks deepen.

‘While I don’t like to boast, it has been known for a woman to voluntarily share my bed,’ he admitted mildly. ‘As for my relationship with Lucy, she is my aunt, and, like her, I’m half Irish. My other half is Italian, hers is English. Lucy is two years younger than me and she is my aunt. Grandad Fitzgerald had three wives and ten children. My father was his oldest and Lucy, who came thirty years later, his youngest.

‘Look at the photos,’ he suggested. ‘You’ll see me in at least two of them … not flattering likenesses but …’ Holding her eyes the way he would a spooked horse, he put his feet on the floor and added in a soft voice, ‘If I was going to lie I’d come up with a much more convincing story, cara.’

Miranda maintained her defensive pose. He looked no less dangerous but on the other hand he had a point: his story was just lame enough to be true …

Gianni produced a smile that Miranda struggled not to respond to.

‘Sling me that shirt and pants, would you? They’re on the chair.’ Actually they were on the floor. He ran a hand down his hair-roughened chest before letting it rest on his ridged and muscled belly. ‘I’m feeling slightly self-conscious here.’

Now that was a lie!

Miranda, whose eyes had followed the movement of his hand from his broad chest to his washboard-flat stomach, lifted her gaze abruptly. Anyone more relaxed about being scantily clad in front of a stranger would be hard to imagine. She, on the other hand, was painfully conscious of her state of undress and even more painfully conscious of his!

Not totally convinced by his story, but no longer feeling he represented a physical threat to her, she kicked the shirt his way, waving her foot in agitation as it caught on her bare toe. Danger gone, her embarrassment was kicking in big time.

Gianni bent forward and picked it up, flashed what Miranda recognised as a grin of practised charm her way and shrugged it on. ‘I’m Gianni Fitzgerald, by the way.’

Miranda ignored both the unspoken invitation to introduce herself and the hand he extended her way. She had less success ignoring the ripple of muscle beneath his satiny skin that accompanied his every action.

After a pause Gianni shrugged. ‘So where is Lucy, and when is she actually due back?’ He arched a sardonic brow. ‘Or is that classified?’

‘She’s in Spain.’ Miranda aimed her response to a point over his shoulder. At least he was putting on some clothes, which was a good thing. The bad thing was that standing there with her modesty covered by the bedding left her feeling no less vulnerable than before.

Standing on one leg, a very long, muscular and hair-roughened leg—not that she was looking—somehow he made the action as he thrust the other into the leg of the crumpled jeans she had kicked across look effortlessly elegant. Prone to clumsiness, she had always envied coordinated people.

‘Why has she gone to Spain?’

If her employer had wanted to tell this Gianni, presumably she’d have told him. Respecting Lucy Fitzgerald’s right to her privacy, Miranda said vaguely, ‘She might be back in a month.’ Actually it was vague—the arrangement had been left pretty open-ended, with Miranda assuring the other woman that she could stay as long as she was needed.

Gianni dragged a frustrated hand through his hair and slid his second leg into the jeans, tugging them up over his narrow hips, zipping the fly, but leaving the leather belt threaded through the loops hanging loose.

His bronzed chest lifted as he sucked in a deep breath and released it slowly. Lucy being absent was not a possibility he had taken into account. He’d been relying on lying low here to give Sam the breathing space she had begged. ‘We have a problem.’

‘We?’ Miranda shook her head at the inclusion; she had enough problems of her own without being included in those of a total stranger.

CHAPTER THREE

‘DADDY, I want a drink …’

Daddy …? Miranda’s head turned in the direction of the crabby childish voice.

Her jaw fell and her astonished eyes grew as wide as saucers as she registered the small figure standing in the doorway. He looked to be around three or four, was wearing a pair of pyjamas emblazoned with a cartoon character and clutching a stuffed toy that might once have been a rabbit in his hand.

Her accusing glance switched back to the man who called himself Gianni Fitzgerald. ‘He’s yours?’

Gianni nodded.

Miranda’s attention switched back to the child, who stood there rubbing his eyes with a clenched fist. His lower lip stood out as he walked across to his father and repeated his demand.

‘I want a drink—’

‘Please,’ his father inserted automatically.

Dear God, how heavily had she slept? How many other people were asleep in the house?

‘You’re not Aunty Lucy!’ The child directed an accusing look Miranda’s way from eyes that were, she saw immediately, the same unusual piercing blue as Lucy Fitzgerald’s, his hair was as dark as his father’s, the rosy-cheeked, sun-kissed face feature for feature a childish version of the older man’s.

It looked as if Gianni Fitzgerald really was who he said he was and also some things he hadn’t said he was! Things like married and a father.

Admittedly these were not necessarily the first things that someone said when they woke up and found themselves in bed with a stranger. Nevertheless, on behalf of women who might be interested, and she was guessing there might be more than two or three, a man who was spoken for in her opinion should wear a wedding ring.

Her glance flickered towards his long, brown tapering fingers. He had the hands of a musician or an artist; they were ringless.

Despite the fact that she knew she could now relax—this really had been what he claimed, a mistake, and even if it hadn’t been, a man intent on violent crime did not in general bring his child along—Miranda found herself clutching the blanket tighter. She no longer thought she needed to protect her virtue from a dangerous lunatic, but she might still die, only now from sheer embarrassment!

‘No, I’m not, I’m Miranda … Mirrie.’ She forced a smile for the child. ‘And you’re …?’

‘Careful there, champ,’ Gianni said, reaching out a hand to steady his son as he climbed up onto the bed. ‘This is Liam. Miranda …?’ Dark head tilted a little to one side, he studied her as though deciding if the name fitted; after a moment he nodded approval, so presumably it did.

Miranda turned her head away, aware that his scrutiny had brought a bloom of awareness to her cheeks. She had never encountered a man who had the trick of making the most innocent gesture … intimate.

‘Hello, Liam.’ Her smile faded and her green eyes acquired an unfriendly frost as they moved towards his father. ‘You didn’t tell me you weren’t alone.’

Gianni’s ebony brows arched sardonically. ‘Is that your version of, “I’m sorry, Gianni, I can see now that you were telling the truth—it was a genuine mistake”?’

‘Me apologise to you!’ The words were startled from Miranda.

‘Well, you did assume some very unpleasant things and I have provided you with a dinner-party story that will just give and give.’

She tried not to smile at his martyred expression. The only thing that made his arrogance tolerable—almost—was the fact he appeared to have a disarming sense of humour.

‘I think,’ she replied with dignity, ‘that I had some justification … like waking up and finding you in my bed …?’ As for sharing this incident for the amusement of her friends, Miranda could not at that moment conceive of circumstances when she’d feel like sharing this story.

‘I was mildly surprised myself, but I gave you the benefit of the doubt. Innocent until proved guilty is my motto.’

‘Well, don’t worry, you’re quite safe from me,’ she told him with a sniff before adding crossly, ‘Didn’t it occur to you to explain who you were right off and mention that you had your son with you?’

‘I didn’t get much opportunity.’

‘I’m very, very thirsty,’ the child, who was trying to run up and down the bed, complained. ‘And I want to go home. I want Clare—she always leaves me a glass of water by my bed in case I get thirsty in the night.’

Who was this Clare? Miranda wondered. And where was the child’s mother?

‘Clare isn’t here.’ Not the best decision he’d ever made, but then hindsight was a marvellous thing. ‘It’s just you and me.’ Piece of cake, Gianni—those words were really coming back to haunt him.

‘She’s here.’

The child waved a hand towards her, and Miranda took an involuntary step forward in alarm.

‘He’s going to fall,’ she warned, holding her breath as she watched the dark-haired boy sway precariously as he ran up and down the bed, coming close to the edge. His father did nothing. ‘Shouldn’t you …?’ She lifted her eyes to Gianni’s face and as she encountered a distinctly hostile expression her voice faded.

Gianni’s square jaw had tightened several notches in response to an attitude that he had plenty of experience of, an attitude that never failed to get under his skin. He was in a position to know that being female did not necessarily make a person a childcare expert and having a Y chromosome did not make him utterly clueless.

‘He’s not going to fall.’ Gianni’s confident pronouncement coincided with his son landing on his bottom on the polished boards.

With a cry Miranda moved in to help but the boy’s father, who had responded with much quicker instincts and a lot more agility, had dropped to a crouch beside the boy, hiding him from her view.

He might be pretty clueless about long journeys with a child prone to car sickness, Gianni reflected, but at least he did know enough to keep anxiety out of his voice as he asked lightly, ‘Are you all right—hurt anywhere?’

Liam was inclined to laugh off bumps and bruises unless he picked up on an adult’s anxiety—then things could tip over into hysteria.

There were tears in the limpid blue gaze that lifted to his father. Gianni smiled reassuringly and ran his hands lightly down his son’s body to check for any obvious injuries.

The boy blinked several times and bit his wobbling lip before he shook his head and said, ‘I’m fine … Fitzgeralds are tough.’

Gianni patted his son’s shoulder and gave a thumbs-up sign as he rose to his feet. ‘Good man.’

Miranda, who had watched the revealing interchange with a disapproving frown, was forced to swallow to clear the emotional lump in her throat when the boy returned the thumbs-up gesture and beamed with pride as he struggled valiantly to his feet.

This was a very appealing kid who obviously wanted to please his father, who was clearly a paid-up member of the macho ‘boys don’t cry’ school of thought.

She just hoped for this child’s sake that his mother provided a softening influence. If ever I have a son, she thought fiercely, I’ll teach him that a boy is allowed to have feelings. He’s allowed to cry.

‘You haven’t said I told you so yet.’ Gianni turned his head and arched a sardonic brow. Caught unawares, Miranda found herself pinned by a heavy-lidded cynical stare.

‘I haven’t said big boys don’t cry either,’ she fired back, unable to totally shake the illogical feeling that those mocking eyes could see right into her head.

One corner of his mouth lifted in a mocking smile. ‘Are you suggesting I’m not in touch with my feminine side, Miranda?’

Miranda was startled to hear him use her name with such familiarity. The way he said it made it sound … different? ‘N-no …’ On another occasion the suggestion might have made her laugh—feminine? The man who oozed more testosterone than a rugby team!

‘I’m half Italian, half Irish—neither are known for their inhibitions when it comes to expressing emotions.’

Miranda looked at the sensual curve of his mouth and thought, I can believe it.

‘Frequently loudly,’ he admitted with a flash of white teeth.

Miranda turned her head quickly to break the hold of his mesmeric gleaming stare and, ignoring her violently quivering stomach muscles, directed her attention to the little boy. ‘Are you sure he’s all right?’

It was the child under discussion who responded to the question. ‘No, I’m not all right. The car made me sick … a lot,’ the little boy announced with a hint of pride. He gave her a look resembling a mistreated puppy—it would have melted stone—and said pathetically, ‘The car smells. Daddy was mad.’

‘Was he? I’m sure that helped a lot.’ The smiling comment passed over the child’s head but hit its target.

Reconciled to being considered the monster in this scene, Gianni shrugged and thought, Why fight it? ‘A man and his car—you know how it is.’

Miranda gave a scornful snort, edged a little towards the window and glanced down seeing, not the shiny boy’s toy his comment had brought to mind, but a disreputable-looking four wheel drive parked down below.

You could tell a lot about a man by the car he drove, as her mother had always told her daughters—her theory was not in Miranda’s experience foolproof, but sometimes dead on. Oliver drove a solid estate, which suited him; safe, steady and dependable.

‘Gracious!’ she exclaimed. ‘I’m not surprised he was sick in that thing! What possessed you to transport a child who suffers from travel sickness in something that’s one step up from a horse and cart?’

‘You know what they say, Miranda—beggars can’t be choosers,’ he drawled with a languid shrug. ‘And I’m obviously not the expert on all things relating to childcare that you are.’ Jaw clenched, he arched a sarcastic brow. ‘How many children do you have?’

‘That’s not Daddy’s car. Daddy has a big, big car!’ the child boasted as he made a thrumming sound in his throat and began to charge around the room in imitation of a car, proving if nothing else that he hadn’t been injured by the fall.

Miranda’s softly rounded jaw tightened with annoyance. ‘I don’t have children and I never claimed to be an expert.’

‘Just a woman.’

‘What have you got against women?’

His sensually sculpted upper lip curled into an exaggerated leer. ‘I have never been accused of not liking women.’

I just bet they like you right back, she thought, dragging her gaze from his mouth, aware as she did so of the heavy ache low in her abdomen. This man really was sinfully attractive. She felt a spasm of sympathy for Liam’s mother, then as her eyes were drawn back to his mouth that vanished as it occurred to her the woman didn’t need sympathy—she had that mouth.