Gianni's Pride (16 page)

Clenching her teeth, she struggled to push the thought from her head. Then he was sliding deep into her, filling her with his delicious hardness, and she didn’t have to try. All she was conscious of was Gianni as they moved together in total synchronicity.

The next morning Miranda woke, her nostrils twitching to the unmistakable smell of coffee. Smiling, she gave a lazy yawn and turned her head. The bed was empty but there was a coffee cup on the table beside it.

Gianni made very fine coffee, but then Gianni did a lot of things very well, she thought, stretching like a cat and very nearly purring with smug contentment as the night came rushing back.

Great coffee or not, she would have preferred to see him lying in the bed beside her. She flipped over, punched a couple of pillows and sat upright. She took a swallow of coffee before pushing the wild tangle of hair from her face.

She had drained the cup when Gianni appeared. Unable to stop herself, she pulled the sheet up to cover her breasts. She bit her lip. The man could hardly know her body any better, so what was she doing? Perhaps it was because she had something to hide, something that she was desperately afraid he would discover.

She half expected him to comment on the ludicrousness of her action, but he barely seemed to notice. As he moved towards the bed she thought,
Something seems different …?
There was a lapse of a few seconds before she realised what form the difference in question had taken—he was dressed
in a white shirt open at the neck and a pair of tailored dark trousers.

‘You look …’ She paused. Gorgeous, obviously, but she struggled for a moment to put a name to the expression on his face: not cold, not warm, but … distant. Unease fluttered in her stomach. ‘Why didn’t you wake me?’

‘I needed an early start. There was no need for you to lose your sleep, too.’

‘I’ll make you some breakfast. Is Liam—?’

He put a hand on her shoulder. ‘Liam is already in the car.’

Her eyes widened in shock, the shock quickly replaced by hurt he pretended not to see as he added, ‘We’ve had breakfast.’

Miranda swallowed. ‘You’re leaving—now …?’

He nodded.

Forgetting about modesty, Miranda swung her legs over the side of the bed and released the sheet, which slithered down to her waist. ‘I must come and say goodbye,’ she said, looking around for her robe. ‘Where have I put—?’

‘No.’ Gianni damped the beads of sweat along the rim of his upper lip with an impatient stroke of his hand. Seeing her sitting there, her lovely tight little breasts.
Dio
, a woman’s body had never pleased him more, nor given him so much agony.

He had the control of an adolescent in the grip of a hormone rush around her, and why did she have to look at him with such trusting confusion? He was trying to make this easier.

Miranda looked up, her brow furrowed in consternation. ‘I don’t understand …’

‘I think it’s better you didn’t say goodbye.’

‘Not …? But … I …’

‘You do understand that our arrangement does not include Liam, don’t you, Miranda?’

The penny finally dropped. ‘You don’t want me to see Liam?’

He directed his gaze away from her swimming eyes only to find himself staring at her quivering lower lip. ‘I think that is best,’ he said bluntly, resenting like hell the fact he had to explain. She was an intelligent woman; she should understand. ‘It wouldn’t be fair to allow him to become fond of someone and then to have that person vanish … He needs continuity.’

All of which was true, so why did he feel such a bastard? He was looking after the interests of his son.
That’s my job
, he told himself, and carried on feeling a bastard.

Miranda lowered her gaze and pulled her legs back into the bed. ‘I understand,’ she said quietly.

Her quiet dignity as she accepted his decision made him feel ten times worse, and ten times worse than bloody awful was bad.

‘I hope you have a better journey.’

‘I hope so, too.’ Gianni hardened his heart and fought the quite crazy urge to retract his edict, if this was to work he had to keep the various sections of his life compartmentalised. ‘I’m hoping to make it up on Friday night …?’ A week without sex had never seemed longer. He had never missed the sound of a woman’s voice and he was not about to start now.

Miranda looked at him as the realisation hit her that she was now a mistress. She lifted her chin. ‘Perhaps you should ring first.’

He looked taken aback by the suggestion and by the queen-like dignity she had wrapped herself in. ‘Why?’

‘Well, I don’t know when Lucy will be back. I might not be here and I wouldn’t want you to have a wasted journey.’ But he could spend the rest of his life kicking himself because he let the woman who loved him more than anyone
else possibly could slip away … Yes, she would quite like that, she thought, pasting on a serene smile to cover her vicious thoughts.

Only it wouldn’t happen. Natural justice was a cruel fiction, she thought dully. Instead he would forget her name.

‘But surely Lucy won’t be back yet!’ Gianni protested, struggling to subdue a stab of something he refused to recognise as panic.

Miranda shrugged and fought her way clear of the fog of self-pity in her head. ‘I don’t know when she’ll be back, Gianni. I’ve already told you that. So maybe Friday …?’

He nodded curtly and left without a word. She sat there listening to the sounds of him leaving: the footsteps on the stairs and the door slamming and the engine starting up, then silence.

Her serene smile vanished and she crumbled as sobs that sounded like an injured animal were dragged from deep inside her.

She wept for half an hour before she finally released her hold on the damp pillow and headed for the bathroom. She looked at her tear-stained refection in the mirror and winced.

God, but I look a wreck
, she thought, switching on the cold tap full. After splashing her face with water, she straightened her shoulders.

‘This is the deal, Mirrie,’ she told her mirror image. ‘So deal with it,’ she added, pushing back the sections of damp copper hair from her eyes and pressing her forehead on the glass.

The option was … She closed her eyes and thought, no, she could not deal with the option yet. When it did end it would hurt, but she would cope. Hearts didn’t break and, anyway, those thoughts were for the future.

She straightened up and lifted a hand to clear the misted surface of the mirror before she picked up the watch she had
left on the washstand. She wasn’t here on holiday; she was here to do a job and there was always something to do … and doing was more productive than thinking.

I
T WAS
amazing how much a person could get done when they wanted to fill every moment with activity. The place, already immaculate, shone. Every surface was polished, every weed removed from the flower beds, even the dogs’ coats were scented and gleaming after she had spent hours grooming them.

She even managed to fit some leisure time into her work schedule. Though her first instinct had been to refuse Joe’s invitation to join his team at a local pub quiz on Tuesday night, she had accepted. After all, there was no reason not to accept. It wasn’t as if Gianni were sitting home nights pining after her.

She actually had a good time. Their team came last, but that did not dampen the light-hearted spirits of this non-competitive team who were keen to party on.

The effects of one glass too many of the local cider to celebrate the loss, Miranda had got up an hour later than normal the next morning and didn’t even have time to work out how many hours it was before she was likely to see Gianni.

In the event it turned out that she saved herself a wasted effort of maths calculations, because just before dusk that evening as she was closing the stable door on Cecil, the aged pony, giving him his usual treat of one of the mints that he loved, a silver monster of a car roared into the yard, throwing
up a shower of loose chippings as it came to a screeching halt a few feet away from where she was standing.

She slid home the latch just as the door of the car was flung open. Her heart leapt into her throat at the sight of the man who unfolded his long, lean frame from the driving seat. As he began to stride across the yard towards her, their recent parting still fresh in her mind, her initial thrill of excitement became interlaced with layers of uncertainty.

It was Gianni, but the man coming towards her was not the Gianni she knew. The car had changed and so had he and she wasn’t sure what she felt about the changes. Not that there was anything to criticise—far from it!

Her heart raced as she watched him approach, struggling to see the jean-clad arrogant devil she had fallen for in this tall, dauntingly elegant and immaculately clad, expensive figure who oozed confidence, poise and, yes, she realised with a tiny thrill of unease, power. He wore it as naturally as the beautiful suit that was moulded to his equally beautiful body.

For a moment she struggled to see beyond the Italian tailoring of the dove-grey three-piece and pale silk shirt. Then he began to pull at the silk tie to loosen it and got close enough for her to see his eyes.

As she identified the gleam of raw need she saw shining in those velvet dark depths a wave of relief rushed through her. Unconscious of the soft cry of relief that left her parted lips, she began to move forward, slowing before she actually broke into a run in response to the voice in her head that cautioned …
Too eager, Mirrie
.

Good advice.

She halted a few feet away from where he now stood. She could play it cool; she just couldn’t stop shaking. ‘It’s Wednesday,’ she accused in a voice nerves had wiped clean of animation.

His dark brows lifted as he dug his hands in his pockets to stop himself grabbing her there and then. ‘I was expecting a slightly more enthusiastic welcome.’

The sardonic comment made her feel even more awkward. ‘It’s nice to see you, obviously.’

It was not so obvious to Gianni.

‘I just wasn’t expecting you, that’s all. You said Friday …?’

He gave a casual shrug. ‘I had a meeting cancelled.’

Two, to be accurate, but as he had pointed out to his PA when he had confronted her with his diary he was not making effective use of his time. Why have three meetings in three different locations when the issues under discussion overlapped? Surely it made more sense to combine them?

Not exactly rocket science and it irritated Gianni that nobody but him had picked up on this.

In case his PA had not got the drift, he had run a red pen through the two he felt could be dispensed with that would effectively free up two half days. When she had tentatively pointed out that due to the late notice some of the people involved might have trouble adjusting their schedules, he had retorted that if he could he didn’t see why they could not.

Feeling slightly guilty later that day, and uneasily aware that he had been guilty of displaying some of the temperamental qualities that he despised in those in positions of power, he had made an effort to be less abrasive and had probably gone too far the other way, even admitting that there were some problems at home.

He didn’t normally take his domestic worries into the office, but since they had returned to London things had not been normal. To begin with Liam talked continually about Mirrie and kept asking when he was going to see her, unwittingly echoing the question that remained uppermost in Gianni’s thoughts. Like his son, he couldn’t get the woman out of his head.

Miranda, who received this information with mixed feelings—did him being here now mean he wouldn’t be here at the weekend?—responded with an inane sounding, ‘Oh … that’s nice.’

He dragged a hand through his ebony hair and retorted grimly, ‘Nothing about this week has been nice.’

The knot of emotions that had lain like a heavy weight in his chest since he had left at the beginning of the week had not, as he had anticipated, fallen away once he reached London.

That explained the tension she could feel coming off him in waves—a bad week at the office.

‘Sorry,’ she said lamely.

The awkward silence stretched and Miranda felt her resentment build. What was she meant to do? He knew about this sort of stuff but Gianni wasn’t helping … He hadn’t touched her yet, let alone kissed her.

Should she make the first move?

‘I was just about to …’ In the face of his fierce, soul-stripping stare, her voice faded. She stared at the nerve clenching in his lean cheek.

‘What were you just about to?’

The sound of his voice made Miranda jump. Too stressed to think of an interesting amusing alternative, she blurted the literal truth without thinking. ‘I was going to have cocoa and go to bed.’

His dark features melted into a fierce grin. ‘That works for me!’ And he was beside her in one stride, breaking through the invisible barrier that had kept them apart. ‘Minus the cocoa.’

Then she was in his arms and Gianni was kissing her with the driving hunger of a starving man.

A blissful couple of hours later Miranda laughed when Gianni walked back into the bedroom carrying a steaming mug.

He arched a brow. ‘You said you wanted cocoa …’ And he set it down on the beside cabinet.

‘Aren’t you having one?’ she asked, picking up the mug and nursing it between her palms.

‘No, I am not. It is a vile concoction and I do not have a sweet tooth.’

A tiny sigh of appreciation escaped her as she buried her nose in the mug and watched him over the rim as he unbuckled his belt and let the trousers he had pulled on before he left the room fall to the floor. She had never imagined that she would take so much carnal pleasure from looking at a naked man, but she had done quite a few things lately that had previously not featured in her imagination.

‘It helps me sleep.’

‘That,’ Gianni admitted as he lifted the quilt and slid beneath, fitting his hard body up against her soft curves, ‘is something I had not considered.’ He took the mug from her hands and planted it out of reach.

‘What are you doing?’