Gianni's Pride

by Kim Lawrence

  Part of him didn’t want to know and part of him couldn’t not ask. He didn’t like the idea, but he could live with it; he had no choice. What he couldn’t live without was Miranda.

  ‘Been anyone …?’ The penny dropped and she flushed. ‘No, there hasn’t been anyone. I suppose you’ve lost count by now?’

  ‘There hasn’t been anyone, Miranda.’ There never would be anyone but Miranda for him.

  ‘Oh!’ The warmth in his eyes made her look away quickly. Miranda couldn’t allow herself to believe what that glow said. ‘I still can’t believe she told you.’

  It was cruel! The recognition of Tam’s betrayal was yet another layer of hurt on top of the hurts she was already carrying around with her. Some days while she laughed and kept busy, acted as if she were content, she felt as if the weight of the burden would crush her and she’d simply disintegrate.

  ‘Or why she’d do it.’

  His eyes scrolled over the soft contours of her face; he felt her pain like a knife in his chest. ‘I would imagine that she wants you to be happy.’

  ‘And seeing you would do that …?’ She gave a bitter laugh and drawled, ‘And on that humble note, what really happened?’ Her eyes narrowed. ‘How did you trick her?’

  He recalled the expression on Miranda’s more streetwise twin’s face when she had issued her parting warning and shrugged. ‘I’m guessing that would not be that easy.’

  ‘Not like me, you mean. I was easy to fool.’ I started to think you really cared for me.

  He looked at the tears trembling on the lashes that surrounded her swimming eyes and released a hissing sound of frustration through his clenched teeth.

  ‘You’re fooling yourself,’ he continued grimly, ‘every time you get up and pretend that your life isn’t empty without me in it. You’re fooling yourself pretending that you don’t need to hear my voice—you ache to hear it. Every time you pretend to take pleasure from anything you’re fooling yourself.’

  As he continued to outline with terrible accuracy and awful cruelty the way she felt, Miranda became paler and paler.

  How could he know—unless …?

  Her wide, clear eyes shone with tentative hope as they flew to his face. Silent now, he just stood there staring at her.

  He smiled grimly at the question in her eyes and nodded.

  ‘Yes, you little idiot, I know because that’s the way I feel every day of my bloody life!’ he snarled, reaching for her and covering her mouth with his lips in one fluid, seamless action.

  Miranda’s cry of joy was lost in his mouth as she melted into his hard, lean body.

  The hard, hungry kiss went on and on. When Gianni dragged his mouth clear with a deep groan her head was swimming. Pressing his forehead against hers, he framed her face between his big hands and looked deep into her eyes.

  ‘You have no idea how much I have missed you,’ he said, kissing the corner of her mouth before trailing his tongue along the moist curve of her pouting upper lip and kissing the other corner. ‘I was lost without you—totally and completely lost.’

  Entranced to hear such words coming from this strong man who liked to give the impression of needing no one, she tugged gently at his lower lip before moving her lips along the stern, sexy curve of his mouth.

  ‘Are you feeling found now, Gianni? I am.’ What she felt, Miranda realised, was home, and all it took was his arms around her.

  He speared his fingers into her lush curls. ‘I’m feeling alive. Dio!’ he groaned, inhaling. ‘But I love the smell of your hair. I have dreamt of the smell of your hair.’ He buried his face in her neck and turned his head to confess softly in her ear, ‘You were right, cara mia, when you called me a coward. I was using Liam as an excuse not to become involved. I have been a fool. When I proposed in a fit of romantic idealism to Sam she quite rightly showed me the door or, actually, the tent flap.’

  Miranda pulled back a little to look into his face. ‘You proposed to Liam’s mum when she was pregnant.’

  ‘No, I proposed then as well, but the first time neither of us knew there was a Liam. I had a pretty high opinion of myself and I genuinely imagined that I was in love with her so the rejection … it hurt. So I just decided to cut down the odds of it happening again. I was so successful that I ended up living in an emotional vacuum. So successful I almost lost my chance at real love.’ His blood ran cold when he thought how close he had come to blowing it all. ‘You are my soul mate, Miranda. I truly believe that.’

  Moved to tears by his husky sincerity, Miranda took his hand and pressed it to her lips, a furrow appearing on her brow as she noticed the marks on his knuckles. ‘What did you do there? Have you been fighting?’ she asked, her protective hackles rising as she imagined him fending off armed assailants and fighting for his life.

  ‘Only with myself,’ he admitted, glancing down at his hand before smoothing her hair from her face.

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘After I closed the door on you I …’ He gave an embarrassed grimace. ‘I punched the wall … Look, I know, not a clever thing to do, and don’t worry I paid for the damage, but the cuts—I should have had them cleaned. They got infected …’

  ‘You punched the wall?’ she echoed in total amazement.

  ‘All right, I’m not proud of it—actually I’m not proud of anything I did that day. You were right—every word you said was true and deep down I knew it. I think I’ve loved you almost from day one but I was still in denial.’

  Gianni lifted the mass of fiery curls, exposing the nape of her neck. She shivered, a rash of goose bumps erupting over her entire body as his fingertips glided in a series of arabesques over her skin.

  ‘Do you still have feelings for Sam? I know she’s part of your life because of Liam but—’

  ‘Yes, she is part of my life, but if Liam hadn’t happened I wouldn’t even be able to recall the colour of her eyes or the sound of her voice today. I’ll never forget your eyes or your voice, Miranda.

  ‘And it’s just as well I don’t carry a torch for Sam because that day at the hotel she’d just been married.’

  ‘She married Alexander … you met him?’

  ‘I wasn’t going to allow Liam to spend time with someone I hadn’t met, regardless of whether the vetting process didn’t reveal any dark secrets.’ He slid his hands into her hair and tugged, sliding his fingers around the lovely curve of her jaw to angle her face up to his.

  ‘You had him vetted?’

  ‘I have everyone who comes into contact with Liam vetted.’

  ‘Me?’

  He shook his head and looked at her with such tenderness that Miranda filled up again. ‘I always make exceptions for women I find in my bed, cara.’

  The dimple in her cheek deepened. ‘My bed.’

  He tipped his dark head meekly. ‘I could argue and say it was actually Lucy’s bed …’

  ‘But that,’ she inserted, widening her eyes innocently, ‘would be so unlike you.’

  He grinned, the laughter dying from his eyes as he declared fiercely, ‘You were perfect.’

  ‘That’s not what you said.’

  ‘What can I say? Falling in love with a beautiful redheaded witch was not in my five-year plan … I was an idiot. I was trying to fight fate when I should have been enjoying what it had given me.’

  She touched his face, getting a little thrill from just knowing she could. ‘I thought you were a dream when I first saw you … You were just too perfect to be true,’ she mused, dragging her fingertips down the rough stubble on his jaw and feeling the gentle kick of lust low in her belly.

  ‘So did this Alex pass the Gianni test?’

  ‘He’s all right, and they seem good together, which is just as well given they got married.’

  She stepped into him, tilting her face up to his as she began to run her hands up and down his arms in a slow, caressing sweep, loving the feel of the coiled, hard strength.

  He tilted his head to brush the hand that briefly lay o
n his shoulder with his cheek. ‘If you’d got there five minutes earlier you’d have seen Liam in his pageboy outfit. One thing, Miranda—as much as I love you, if you want him to wear one of those things for our wedding you can get him into it because I’m not going there again!’ he declared with feeling. ‘No way!’

  Her roaming hands stilled, tightening over the bulging muscles of his upper arms hard enough to draw a questioning glance from Gianni.

  ‘Are you all right …?’ he asked, anxiety sharpening his voice. ‘You look …?’

  ‘Our wedding?’

  He relaxed fractionally, but remained confused by her astonished expression.

  ‘Well, what else did you think this was all about?’

  He sounded astounded, which was so, she thought ruefully, like Gianni. ‘You want to marry me?’

  ‘Of course. Don’t you want to marry me?’

  She arched a brow. ‘And if I said no …?’

  He tilted his head and adopted an attitude of mock offence. ‘I’d respect your wishes.’

  She let out a hoot of laughter. ‘You liar!’

  His white wolfish grin flashed. ‘Well, I’d continue to ask until you said yes, but very respectfully.’ He gave a careless shrug. ‘Which amounts to the same thing.’

  ‘You’re impossible.’ Miranda laughed. ‘But I love you.’

  ‘And I love you!’ he declared, fitting his mouth to hers, kissing her with a desperation that awoke a similar need in Miranda. Several steamy minutes later they came up for air.

  He smiled down into her passion-flushed face. ‘So is that a yes?’

  ‘You haven’t asked me yet,’ she teasingly reminded.

  ‘You want a proposal … right … I can do that …’

  ‘No, it’s fine,’ she said, laughing as he gathered her hands in his and pressed them against his chest over his heart.

  ‘Hush, I want to do this,’ he chided, silencing her with a gentle brush of his lips. ‘You once said to me, Miranda, that you were holding out for a man whose fantasy was to be your last lover and not your first.’ Holding her eyes, he lifted her hands to his lips. ‘Well, I was your first lover and it would be my honour and, yes, quite definitely my fantasy, to be your last lover. Will you marry me, Miranda Easton? Are those happy tears …? I hope?’ he added, touching a teardrop running down her smooth cheek.

  She nodded and looked up at him with love shining in her eyes like stars. ‘Yes, Gianni,’ she promised in a voice thick with emotional tears. ‘Very happy and, yes, I would love to be your wife.’

  ‘And you don’t mind that we come as a package deal, Liam and I?’

  Miranda laughed at the question and blotted the moisture on her cheeks with the back of her hand. ‘That’s not a serious question, is it?’ She sniffed. ‘I love Liam.’

  ‘And he loves you—the little monster never stops talking about you …’ Taking her hand, he directed a critical look around the room as though seeing his surroundings for the first time. ‘What is this place?’

  ‘It’s the—oh, God!’ she gasped. ‘I should have been at the party ages ago …’

  Gianni’s hands fell heavily on her shoulders. He shook his head. ‘No!’

  ‘No?’

  ‘The only party we are having is one for two people,’ he said, pointing from her chest to his. ‘Us.’ The passionate intensity in his unambiguously carnal stare made the muscles low in her pelvis quiver violently in response. The bodice of her dress chafed against her peaking nipples. ‘In order to preserve what little sanity I have left I need to spend the next day making love to you.’

  Miranda ran her tongue across her dry lips. ‘I suppose nobody will notice I’m not there … I’m staying in …’

  ‘No!’

  She blinked. ‘You’re being very masterful!’

  ‘I hope that was not a criticism, although you have to agree, I think, cara, that I have no problem with role reversal if the occasion requires it,’ he teased with a slow sardonic smile. ‘Dio, but I love it when you blush!’ he breathed. ‘I am tired of spending our nights in someone else’s bed. Tonight we will go back to London. Liam is staying with his grandmother for the weekend. We will have the place to ourselves. Then tomorrow …’ his smoky stare slid to her lips ‘… or maybe the next day we will go looking for a house in which we can put our bed.’

  Miranda was fascinated by the plan. ‘Just like that.’

  ‘Certainly just like that. Your problem, Miranda, is you make problems where there are none.’

  ‘But I’m house sitting. I’m meant to be here tomorrow. People expect—’

  ‘Details. I will sort everything out—leave it to me. You don’t think I am able?’ he challenged.

  ‘I know you’re able,’ she admitted, discovering she was extremely tempted by the idea of offloading her responsibilities on to his shoulders—they were very broad shoulders.

  He lifted a sardonic brow. ‘And I have a very nice bed … most capacious …’

  With a smile Miranda took a step towards the door before she looked back over her shoulder. ‘What are you waiting for?’

  He was at her side in an instant. She took him by the lapels and stretched up to press a long, lingering kiss on his lips. ‘Gianni, I don’t care if I spend the night on bare boards so long as I spend it with you! I can’t wait to start living the rest of my life with you.’

  His eyes glowed with fierce love and possessive pride as he looked down into the beautiful face of the woman he was going to spend his life waking up next to. ‘As my wife.’

  ‘As your wife.’

  ‘How does next week sound?’

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  MIRANDA had assumed Gianni was joking, but he hadn’t been. They had reached a compromise. It was four weeks later that they stood in the small village church where her parents had been married and exchanged their vows.

  Miranda had walked the short distance to the church with her father. She made the return journey beside Gianni in the classic convertible he had arrived in with his best man, who ran behind them all the way back with Liam dressed in a pirate costume—his choice—on his shoulders.

  They did not need the roof. The late September sun had shone benignly down on them. In fact the day had been perfect in every detail, the relaxed country wedding that Miranda had secretly always dreamed of having.

  From the flower-filled courtyard by the stables, dressed for the occasion with zinc tubs crammed with sweet-smelling late summer roses, where their guests had drunk champagne, they had all moved to the marquee that had been erected in the orchard, led by sword-waving Liam in his pirate costume throwing handfuls of rose petals at the feet of his dad and new mum.

  Miranda’s mother had taken personal charge of the décor, keeping everything simple and rustic, laying the long tables with white cloths embellished with arrangements of flowers from her garden and long strands of ivy.

  The day had passed in a happy blur for Miranda, who wore a vintage dress that had belonged to her great-grandmother and a veil that Gianni’s mother had been married in. Her sister, glowing in a blue silk dress she said made her look like a barrage balloon, had stood as her maid of honour and spent the entire day smiling except for the one moment, rather to Miranda’s mystification, when she had turned to Gianni and wagged her finger, saying sternly, ‘I meant it, big boy!’

  ‘What did she mean?’ Miranda had asked.

  Gianni had promised to tell her later but he hadn’t. There had been too many people who wanted to speak to them both, too many people who wanted to wish them well. Lucy, who had arrived looking incredibly beautiful and happy—the tall, handsome Spaniard she had in tow might, Miranda suspected, have something to do with that—had given her an especially warm hug.

  As the day lengthened and the sun vanished the scene took on a fairy-tale atmosphere illuminated by strings of white light and lanterns hung from the trees. The braziers had been lit and the guests danced long into the night, long after the bride and groom had vanished.<
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  They spent the first two weeks of their honeymoon alone in a gorgeous sugar-pink villa with breathtaking views on the Amalfi coast, before Liam arrived with both Gianni’s and Miranda’s parents and they all spent the following two weeks there.

  ‘So back to the real world,’ Gianni observed, sending a sideways glance towards his wife as they drove from the airport. ‘A grindstone with my name on it awaits.’

  Miranda nodded. In her view any world with her gorgeous husband in it was pretty special.

  ‘We’re going the wrong way,’ she realised, catching sight of a sign on the small road they had turned onto.

  ‘I wondered when you’d realise. That house we never got to find—I thought we should start looking again.’

  ‘Now?’ said Miranda, glancing at Liam dozing in the back seat. They had taken every precaution possible to prevent his travel sickness, but a car journey straight on top of the flight seemed to be pushing their luck to her.

  Clearly Gianni thought differently.

  ‘Seemed as good a time as any, but don’t worry, we’re here,’ he announced, turning into a gated driveway.

  ‘I hate to break it to you, Gianni, but this is the one we saw that first day—the one that was too big and falling down.’ A total wreck, had been his verdict.

  ‘You sure?’

  ‘Positive. They’ve done some work on the entrance and the drive, but it’s definitely the same place.’

  ‘Would that be the one that had ten bedrooms? Half a roof and a meadow where the lawn once was? The place with all the original features you were so enthused about and the grave dedicated to a long-dead family pet under a fig tree in the walled garden, which for some inexplicable reason made you weep.’

  ‘There’s no need to be nasty just because you made a mistake … and there was not half a roof. There were a few holes, admittedly, but—oh, my giddy aunt.’ She gasped as they rounded the bend in the drive and the house came into view.

  ‘Welcome to your new home, Mrs Fitzgerald,’ he said, bringing the car to a halt on the gravelled forecourt that had not previously been there.