Gianni's Pride (12 page)

If not … She tried to shrug and simply couldn’t even pretend she was fine about the idea of not spending at least one more night in bed with Gianni. The possibility that she would never have him take her to heaven again actually filled her with a sense of utter horror.

She showered and changed quickly before running down to the kitchen. The room was empty but there were signs of recent occupation in the dirty dishes on the table and the soaking pan sitting in the sink.

She walked over to the half-full coffee pot and, after feeling it was still hot poured herself a mug. She was taking her first sip and stretching to relieve the stiffness in muscles she had not used before when after a short tap the door swung inwards.

A hand holding a bunch of carrots complete with a ribbon tied around the leafy tops was thrust into the room before a hangdog-looking Joe stepped inside.

‘A peace offering to apologise for being drunk and incapable last night. I was an idiot.’

Miranda took the carrots, but refused with a smile his invite to dinner.

‘I blew it?’

‘Not at all. I’m just pretty busy here and …’ Her lashes swept downwards and she shrugged, smiling slightly as her eyes brushed the empty coffee cup on the table. ‘It’s not you, it’s …’ She stopped again and felt the flush rise up her neck.

Joe gave a philosophical shrug. ‘It’s fine, you don’t have to explain. I knew the moment I saw you together there was something going on between you two.’

He smiled at Miranda’s alarmed protest of, ‘We’d only just met!’ and excused himself.
Gianni, with a muddy-booted Liam and the boisterous pack of dogs in tow, appeared just as a subdued Miranda was putting the last mug in the dishwasher. She had spent the time since Joe had gone thinking seriously about his comments and had come to the conclusion that she needed to cool things down; she had discovered sex, not fallen in love.

She knew about love, and what she felt for Oliver bore no resemblance to the turbulent emotions that Gianni aroused in her. Forty per cent of the time she couldn’t stand him! Having established that she loved Oliver and Gianni was just a wildly attractive man and a perfect lover, she felt her anxiety dissipate.

Then her heart almost stopped when she saw him. Dark hair mussed by the wind, he looked vibrant and so supremely masculine that Miranda didn’t even attempt to play it cool. What would be the point? Just looking at him sent her hormones into overdrive. She had no idea what was happening to her, she just knew that she had no more control over it than she did the elements.

She pressed a hand to the wild pulse throbbing in her neck. ‘You’re back,’ she said, sounding breathless because she was.

‘Let her go, Liam,’ Gianni said to Liam, who had attached himself like a limpet to Miranda’s slim legs. He actually had some sympathy for the boy’s instincts. The idea of getting up close and personal was pretty hard to resist.

‘Can I play outside?’

‘Yes, you can, but don’t chase the hens,’ Gianni yelled after his son. When he had passed through the door he turned back to Miranda.

His voice dropped to a low throaty purr as he stepped in closer. ‘I didn’t want to wake you. I thought you could do with the sleep.’ He put a finger under her chin and tilted her head up; a slow grin tinged with a mixture of amusement and satisfaction spread across his lean face. ‘You’re blushing.’

Miranda snatched her chin away and fixed him with a reproachful glare. ‘And you’re surprised.’ The things he could put in a smouldering glance could, she suspected, get them both arrested in some parts of the world. ‘I’ve less experience at this stuff than you.’

‘But you’re having fun catching up, I hope?’

‘Like you have any doubts.’ She could still not believe the things she had said to him under cover of darkness, and even thinking the things he had said back sent her temperature up several degrees.

His rumble of amused laughter cut off suddenly.

‘What,’ he said, sounding grim and forbidding, ‘is that?’

Following the direction of his dark and bewilderingly menacing stare, she saw the ribboned bunch of carrots. ‘Oh, those. Joe dropped by and gave them to me … Sweet of him, wasn’t it?’

‘He has been here?’

She gave her Titian head a puzzled shake, confused by the overt hostility in his manner. ‘Obviously.’

A muscle ticced in Gianni’s lean cheek as a wave of possessive fury so unfamiliar that he struggled to name it washed over him. He inhaled and dug his hands deep in his pockets. A snarl of dissatisfaction rumbled in his throat before he clamped his white, even teeth together.

‘Did you just growl? What on earth is wrong?’

Gianni’s lip curled. It astonished him that she could ask the question. ‘Has the man not heard of flowers?’

‘Well, you can’t eat flowers,’ Miranda pointed out fairly. ‘And it’s the thought that counts.’

‘I do not like carrots.’
Since when?
He mocked himself.

‘Well, I’ll eat them.’

‘You accepted a gift from him after the way he treated you last night.’

‘Gift!’ Her brows lifted. ‘A bunch of carrots, Gianni?’
His belligerent attitude continued to confuse her. ‘And he said sorry about that. What’s your problem anyway? You’re acting as though …’ She stopped her eyes flying wide. ‘You are—you’re jealous of Joe.’

The muscles in his jaw quivered as Gianni lowered his lashes in an attempt to conceal the shock he knew he had not succeeded in totally controlling. Not that her accusation was true, though it was, he conceded, possible that he might have lost some perspective, but it was just so bloody frustrating that Miranda seemed blind to what he had seen within a second of laying eyes on the man. Under the affable nice-guy exterior this Joe was a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

‘I do not do jealousy.’

Then he laughed and Miranda immediately felt totally stupid for blurting out anything so ludicrous.

‘You do know he’s only interested in getting into your pants?’

She stiffened at the crudity. ‘And that makes him different from you how?’

‘You’re comparing me with that sandal-wearing, beer-swilling creep!’

Miranda smiled and heard his teeth grate. ‘That would be stupid—Joe is a great deal nicer.’

He snorted in response and scowled. ‘Nice Oliver, nice Joe. Tell me, Mirrie, how come it’s not so nice Gianni who got you into bed? Could it be you have a weakness for something that is not so nice?’ He arched a sardonic brow. ‘A bit of rough, perhaps?’ His words were intended to cause offence and in this he succeeded!

Miranda paled in temper. Her lips quivered. She had been here before and experience had taught her that she was only moments away from tears and becoming totally incoherent.

‘Go to hell, Gianni, you arrogant, smug sod!’

She almost ran from the room in her anxiety to get away
before she began to blub. Throwing one last look over her shoulder before she swept from the room, she saw him standing there with an expression stamped on his face that made it clear she wasn’t the only one with a temper.

After a short, unrestrained bout of weeping she washed her face, went down to the kitchen and spent the rest of the afternoon making gallons of carrot and coriander soup and then a carrot cake. By the time she had finished decorating the cake with swirls of cream-cheese frosting she felt calmer.

Miserable, but calmer.

Gianni was avoiding her, and when their paths did cross—the house was not that big—he gave her the silent treatment, looking through her like glass. Miranda responded by leaving any room he entered, proving if nothing else that she could be just as childish as him.

It was Liam, clearly primed to act as a go-between, who opened the lines of communication.

‘Daddy is taking me to have fish and chips for supper as a treat. He says do you want to come?’

‘Tell Daddy …’ She paused as a tall figure appeared in the doorway.

‘There’s an award-winning place about ten miles away. It’s kind of a tradition when we come to stay here to go and have fish and chips.’

‘Thank you,’ she said, inclining her head with stiff formality. ‘But I’m not that hungry.’

He shrugged. ‘Rain check, then?’

She watched as he helped Liam on with his coat, knowing that by refusing the olive branch he had extended she had effectively surrendered the moral high ground.

When they had left Miranda ate carrot cake until she felt queasy and went to bed a little while later even though it was barely nine o’clock. She had not lain on the bed staring at
the ceiling and thinking dark thoughts for more than a few minutes when there was a knock on the door.

Any thought that Gianni, driven crazy by lust, had been unable to keep away and had come to beg her forgiveness—the fantasy was still a bit rusty—vanished the moment he stepped inside.

His face was drawn and pale and his rigid posture was radiating anxiety.

‘Before you tell me to go to hell, I’m not here for me. It’s Liam.’

‘What’s wrong with Liam?’

‘We didn’t make it to the fish place. He got really hot and started crying … I think I should call an ambulance.’

Miranda was already on her feet. That Gianni was asking for help when it came to Liam was a measure of his concern.

‘Have you taken his temperature?’

Gianni shook his head. ‘God, that was so obvious. Why didn’t I think of that?’ he grated, dragging a hand through his dark hair.

Miranda extracted the thermometer from under Liam’s arm and turned around with the news that the child’s temperature was raised, but not actually that much. ‘And now we’ve taken off his clothes.’ The little boy, now stripped of the layers, lay in his pants and tee shirt on the bed, his cheeks still flushed, but he had stopped crying and he was dozing. ‘I think he’ll be a lot more comfortable now. Before you go to sleep, Liam,’ she added, raising her voice, ‘how about a drink of juice and a spoon of this medicine that Clare packed? That’s it, good boy,’ she said as the boy swallowed it, then took some thirsty sips from a tumbler.

She turned and found Gianni watching her.

‘So you don’t think it’s serious?’ He hated the feeling of not being in control.

‘It’s hard to tell with children, and I’m not an expert, but I think for the moment pushing fluids and keeping an eye on him would be more appropriate than an ambulance, but obviously that’s your call.’

‘I overreacted.’

She smiled. ‘You were just being a dad.’

‘Thanks, Miranda. I’m grateful. And about before …’

She shook her head unable to recall now what the argument had even been about to begin with. ‘We both said stuff.’

‘So maybe we could …?’

Heart beating rapidly, she cut in quickly. ‘I’d like that.’

He nodded, his dark eyes holding hers, an expression in the polished depths that made her insides melt as his gaze drifted to her mouth. ‘But not tonight, I’m afraid,’ he said, directing a rueful look towards his son, who was now sleeping deeply, before throwing a spare pillow on the sofa at the foot of the bed.

Miranda nodded. ‘Of course. If you need anything …’ She stopped blushing as she just stopped herself tacking on ‘absolutely anything’.

The blush deepened as he purred, ‘Oh, if I need anything you’ll definitely be the first to know,
cara
.’

It was two-thirty when Miranda tiptoed back into the room carrying a cup of tea. In the bed Liam slept, his breathing soft and even. Gianni was on the sofa, his head on the pillow, his eyes closed, his face half in shadow, the strength of his stupendous bone structure emphasised by the light cast by the bedside light.

She stood there for a moment just staring, totally mesmerized, her heart beating hard in her chest. It hit her with the force of a tidal wave … She was in danger of falling for him. The realisation sent a rush of cold, clammy horror through her. She was falling for a man who had made it clear he didn’t do love or permanent.

She sucked in a shaky breath … ‘I won’t. I can’t.’

His eyes flickered open and Miranda jumped guiltily and almost dropped the cup.

‘What did you say?’

Dear God, what is it with me? Can I only fall for men who are never going to be able to return my feelings?

‘I wondered … I thought you might like a cup of tea.’

‘No, thanks. Have you been asleep at all?’

‘A bit,’ she lied as she placed the cup on the top of a chest of drawers. ‘He seems a lot better.’

Gianni nodded and held out a hand towards her. ‘But I could do with company.’

After a fractional pause she took it and allowed him to draw her towards him, not resisting as he pulled her down beside him on the couch.

‘Comfy?’ his deep voice asked very close to her ear.

‘Yes,’ she whispered, feeling totally overwhelmed by the intimacy, the physical closeness. He felt warm and hard and so male, her mind closed down under the onslaught of sensory information. She shivered and closed her eyes as he drew her head down onto his shoulder.

‘Relax,
cara
,’ he said, stroking a hand over her fiery curls. He kissed her closed eyelids and murmured, ‘Go to sleep.’

‘I can’t.’ Thirty seconds later she was flat out. Listening to her soft even breaths, Gianni lay there and realised that he had never shared a bed or the equivalent with a woman when sex was not on the agenda.

He shrugged off the stab of concern. One night holding a woman did not mean this had become more than simple sex. The lie did not come as easily as it normally did.

G
IANNI
caught sight of his reflection in the window.

It suddenly struck him,
Dio
, it was over a week since he had worn a tie! He could not recall the last time he had gone more than a day without donning his uniform of sharp suit and handmade shoes. Perhaps, he mused, he should instigate a casual day …?

A soft sound of amusement rumbled in his throat as he imagined the reaction if he sent a memo to this effect around the Fitzgerald offices. Or maybe not, he thought wryly. His management style had already caused a few ruffled feathers from the old guard, who had been highly suspicious of any change when he first took up the post.