Gianni's Pride

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.’