Gianni's Pride (18 page)

‘Hello, Gianni, I thought I’d surprise you.’ Her smile wobbled as before her eyes his entire manner changed as though the light had been switched off as his expression froze over. She pressed a hand to her throat. ‘Gianni …?’

‘You should not be here, Miranda. This was not part of the arrangement.’

A cold fist of fear clutched low in her belly.

‘But I wanted to surprise you.’

Inside Gianni’s head a silent battle raged. Part of him wanted to kiss her, the other to push her away. If he gave into the former, he realised, their relationship and his life would change for ever. If he followed the latter it would be over.

So it was lose lose.

He allowed his anger towards her to build. This was the moment he had wanted to avoid. It was not meant to happen; she had crossed the line. He had worked really hard at keeping their worlds apart knowing that if he didn’t he wouldn’t be able to ignore his own feelings for her.

‘Aren’t you glad to see me?’

For a moment he didn’t respond until he finally blurted in a raw driven tone,
‘Madre di Dio!’
His voice cracked with emotion as he added thickly, ‘You look—’ He clenched his jaw and swallowed. ‘This is not going to work, Miranda. You should not be here. I need my own space. I do not wish to be crowded.’

Feeling as if she were living a nightmare, she looked at him with hurt, bruised eyes. ‘I’m not crowding you, I’m …’ Her anger sparked into life. Why was he treating her like this? ‘I even … where is it?’ she gritted, rifling impatiently through the bags at her feet and grunting in grim triumph when she found the appropriate ribbon-tied container that
was almost as pretty as the contents. ‘I even bought this for the occasion, and booked a room,’ she choked.

Tears of anger and self-disgust sparkled in her jewel-bright eyes as she held up a short slip nightdress, the silk so fine it was transparent, and waved it in front of him before dropping it on the floor.

Gianni watched, breathing hard as she ground the provocative garment into the floor with one spiky heel. Despite the situation his imagination produced an image of her wearing both heels and slip and nothing else. Gianni would have given a year of his life to see it for real. He clawed his way mentally out of the morass of lustful longing that submerged him.

‘That was for me?’ He swallowed hard. ‘You got a room, you planned …?’

‘Yes, I planned to seduce you … I spent half the day trying to look good for you …’

Helplessly aroused by the images her confession evoked, Gianni groaned before he shook his head. ‘I have Liam to consider.’

She cut him dead with a look. ‘Who are you trying to kid, Gianni? This isn’t about Liam, it’s about you and the fact that you’re too scared to allow for the possibility it’s not always possible to control everything. You won’t let yourself feel anything … well, I think you do.’

Having vented her feelings, she stood there panting, her eyes unwilling to move on from the incredible brooding beauty of his perfectly sculpted face until, conscious of the familiar heavy fluttering low in her belly, she turned her head in self-disgust, leaving a bitter metallic taste in her mouth.
Get some self-respect, Mirrie
, she told herself.

‘Miranda …’

She watched the nerve in his lean cheek clench and felt a rush of satisfaction to know she had succeeded in, if not
shaming him, at least annoying him. Or was that pain glimmering in his eyes?

She didn’t care, she told herself.

He dug a hand into his pocket and pulled out a handful of confetti that had spilt when the bag had burst. He had received a few dirty looks for throwing it over the happy couple outside the church; apparently he’d broken several by-laws by doing so.

Digging in his wallet and pulling out a wad of money to cover the clean-up bill was not going to be a solution in this situation.

‘Why the hell didn’t you tell me you were coming?’ he muttered.

Dio
, what a mess!

‘I love you,’ she heard herself blurt in a desperate driven voice. ‘I know that wasn’t part of our agreement either.’

He flinched. ‘I’m sorry you had a wasted journey but this is not going to work.’ He couldn’t give her what she wanted, what she deserved from some other man but not from him.

He had to walk away.

Only he couldn’t. His feet were nailed to the spot. He did the next best thing and closed the door.

Miranda stood there for a moment unable to believe that he had closed the door in her face, he had actually closed it in her face.

He had just looked at her and thought … what? More trouble than she was worth and shut the damned door in her face. Anger got her as far as the lift, where she gave an ironic smile and sent a silent good luck to whoever came after her in Gianni’s bed.

She’d need it, she thought, reaching for the hairpins that held the stupid new style in place. She looked ridiculous and she felt …

‘I feel fine!’ she announced loudly to the fortunately empty
lift. As her hair tumbled down she brushed it back impatiently behind her ears, staring with a frown at her fingers as they came away wet.

It wasn’t until she touched her face and felt the tears streaming down her cheeks that she realised she wasn’t fine, and the way she felt right now she wouldn’t do for a very long time.

It would have been an extraordinary gaffe if the Fitzgeralds had been allocated a table next to the bathroom or the kitchens, but the organisers were on the ball and they had been given a prime position, as befitted a group who between them were confidently expected to contribute a great deal tonight to swell the coffers of the worthy charity they were all here to support.

The Fitzgeralds were as well known in the charitable world for their generosity as their remarkable photogenic film-star good looks. Few people glanced towards the table without remarking on the latter tonight.

Natalia Fitzgerald, slim, poised, her dark hair shot with attractive strands of silver, rose graciously in response to the enthusiastic clapping.

‘What did you buy?’ her husband asked as she retook her seat.

She gave him a look of utter disdain.

‘I dozed off,’ he said defensively.

‘Mum bought a fur coat for me.’

‘Not you, you’d look terrible in it,’ her younger sister said. ‘It’s for me.’

‘Actually it’s for Tia Sophia, girls. Don’t worry, James, it wasn’t real fur and it was a bargain.’

‘I doubt that.’

Natalia Fitzgerald’s dark eyes narrowed. Gifted perfect
bone structure and flawless skin, she had not needed to resort to surgery to retain her youthful looks.

‘You have a problem with giving to charity,
caro
?’

‘Granted it is a good cause,’ Gianni heard his grumpy father, oblivious to the warning signs, concede—some men never learnt. ‘But could I not simply have written a cheque? Was it necessary for me to dress up like a dog’s dinner and smile inanely at people I don’t want to smile at?’

His wife bestowed a dazzling smile on a passing waiter. ‘You think I look like a dog’s dinner?’ she asked through clenched teeth.

Belatedly seeing the trap he had walked into, the powerful millionaire began to back-pedal hastily. ‘No, of course not, Natalia—’

‘And smile!’ she snorted. ‘You have not smiled once, has he …?’ She turned to her family for support. They, having been here before and learnt the hard way it was fatal to take sides in parental disputes, pretended not to hear.

Gianni, sitting between his sisters, smiled faintly as he allowed the familiar sound of mild domestic disharmony to pass over his head. Underneath the bickering he knew that his parents had a marriage that was rock solid, a marriage that had been strengthened and not weakened by tragedies that had touched it.

‘No wonder there is a rumour you are dead or have become a bearded recluse.’ She clicked her tongue with irritation and announced, ‘You’re just as bad, Gianni!’

Gianni’s head came up at the accusation. ‘Me?’

‘Yes, you. You look like you’re at a funeral.’ Concern filtered into the maternal gaze fixed on the dark, handsome face of her eldest born, who seemed oblivious to the efforts of the titled beauty at the next table. ‘What is wrong with you anyway?’

Gianni struggled not to snarl a reply. He had come though
he had better things to do—did he have to smile as well? ‘Nothing is wrong, Mother.’

The response was not sympathetic. ‘In that case could you pretend to be enjoying yourself?’

‘He is enjoying himself, aren’t you, Gianni?’

He exchanged glances with his father and responded to the appeal in James Fitzgerald’s blue eyes. ‘A good evening,’ he lied, thinking,
This is three hours I will never have back
. But what did that matter? What else that was more important did he have to do with his time?

It had been two months since he had closed the door on Miranda, and, while he recognised it was a good thing, unfortunately appreciation did not make it any less of a chore just to get out of bed some days. His life had become a boring grind of the dull and tedious.

‘He’s going to bid on the next item.’

The only thing he could recall expressing any interest in had been a top-of-the-range motorbike. ‘I am? I mean, I am most definitely,’ he added in response to his father’s rolling-eyed glare.

‘The next item?’ his mother queried, consulting the glossy catalogue in her lap. ‘Are you sure about that?’

Gianni gave a click of his tongue and nodded irritably, attributing her question to her views on the dangers of motorcycles. When he was a teenager she’d vetoed his request for the one he had fancied himself riding around on during his ‘rebel without a cause’ period.

Dio
, sometimes his mother treated him as if he were still seventeen.

‘Have I mentioned that you look beautiful, Natalia?’

‘No, you have not.’

‘Well, you do you look—’

‘Hush, it’s the next item.’

In the periphery of his vision Gianni was aware of someone
parade past them on the stage to the sound of loud music. Conscious of the paternal elbow in his ribs, he clapped along with everyone else, then sat back in his seat while some guy with a vaguely familiar face and oddly orange skin tones began to speak, pausing at intervals for the well-heeled—and for the most part drunk—audience to laugh at his jokes. Gianni’s thoughts began to wander long before the speech ended.

What was Miranda doing?

‘Gianni,’ his sister snapped, kicking him under the table. ‘If you don’t bid you’ll lose the item you wanted.’ She elbowed her giggling younger sister and added innocently, ‘Quick or you’ll lose it.’

In response to the prompting, Gianni cleared his throat and said a figure. Having no clue what had gone before, and not wanting to add the accusation of miserliness to misery, he made it a fairly high number and hoped the bid had not already reached this figure.

The gasp that went around the room suggested it had not.

As the tide of enthusiastic clapping swelled then went on—would it never end?—Gianni glanced up without much interest. He actually was probably too old for the leather look.

The colour left his face as he surged to his feet. The violent burst of energy that had coursed through his veins like a blast of fire was snuffed out like a candle and he stayed where he was, swearing loudly enough for several people around to stop clapping.

He had taken a step towards the dais, his intention, though he hadn’t consciously thought about it, to climb up there before he had realised that the woman standing there was not Miranda.

She had Miranda’s face, she had Miranda’s body, but it wasn’t her.

Gianni had no idea how he knew this—he just did.

Gianni didn’t give a damn that people were staring. He didn’t care what a bunch of strangers thought about him, but there was his family …

‘It was a joke, Gianni,’ his sister Bella said when he returned to the table. ‘How was I to know he’d bid enough to buy the building?’ she asked, shooting a defensive look around her family.

‘Don’t worry, Bella,’ her father said, patting her hand. ‘It is for charity. A bit over the top, Gianni, lad,’ he added, directing the comment to his son, who remained on his feet. ‘Even if you did just buy a designer maternity wardrobe for the national gross profit of Britain on a good year …’

The words jerked Gianni from his trance. He met the query in his father’s eyes with a stiff, pretty unconvincing smile and used the first excuse that came into his head.

‘Cramp.’

The initial shock had worn off but he still had problem getting his brain into gear … The sister she had mentioned was a twin … an identical twin.

‘Someone you know, Gianni?’

Gianni was able to meet his mother’s openly speculative stare and say with total certainty, ‘No.’

The woman who had Miranda’s face was not Miranda. He had proof that was, to his way of thinking, more compelling than a DNA test—he could look at her and not immediately want to plunder those soft lips. Bizarrely there was zero chemistry.

‘Pretty girl,’ she continued, not looking convinced.

Gianni shook his head. ‘No, not pretty, beautiful,’ he corrected.

‘Where are you going?’

‘I made a massive mistake and I’m going to correct it.’

A sense of calm that had eluded him during the last tortured weeks settled over Gianni. It was as if seeing the
woman with a face he had dreamt of had peeled away the last layers of self-deception.

Miranda, he realised, had been right. He was a coward, an idiot who had built the walls of his own prison brick by brick after he’d been hurt by Sam’s rejection. He’d been so determined to avoid feeling that hurt again he’d cut himself off from the possibility of love, ironically in the process putting himself through weeks of pain and suffering far more intense than anything he had felt when Sam had rejected him and left him holding the baby.

Again Miranda had seen through his self-deception. He had been using Liam as an excuse for living in an emotional bubble.

‘Wow, Gianni just admitted he made a mistake and there were witnesses!’

Not pausing to respond to his baby sister’s sarcastic cry, Gianni strode away in the direction of the backstage area. Not many doors or curtains were closed to the Fitzgerald name, he mused cynically, not realising that it was the steely determination carved in the hard lines of his austere features and the aura of danger he exuded that made people hastily point him in the right direction.