Gianni's Pride (3 page)

‘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.

‘D
ADDY
, 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.’