Gianni's Pride (20 page)

‘Read it and see.’

Taking the paper by a corner, taking care not to allow her fingers to brush his, she took it, aware of Gianni’s sardonic observance of the elaborate steps she took to avoid contact. She refused to look at him. Instead she glanced down at the paper unprepared to see her sister’s distinctive scrawl. Her eyes flew wide in shock and hurt.

‘Actually we had an interesting chat,’ he said, watching
the play of emotion across her face as she recognised the writing then read what was written.

Struggling to keep the doubt from her voice and a semblance of control, she levered herself off the wall and took a step towards him.

‘I don’t believe you,’ she contended, stubbornly refusing to accept the evidence of her own eyes. ‘You must have tricked her … I … Tam was—’

‘Modelling some designer maternity wear at a charity auction—’ He saw Miranda’s eyes widen, her eyelashes fluttering against her pale skin, and added quietly, ‘I was there, Miranda.’

‘It was a favour. Tom, the designer, before he got his break he worked on her show …’ She stopped and shook her head. ‘You were really there?’

‘I think that I might have bought some—actually, all—of the clothes collection.’

‘You don’t know?’ He didn’t seem to be joking.

‘For about ten seconds I thought she was you.’ The memory still had the power to send a rush of powerful emotion through him. ‘Why didn’t you tell me it was your sister who married the weird love-of-your-life guy you worked with, or that you even had a twin?’

Still turning the maternity clothes puzzle over in her head, Miranda missed the strained edge in his initial admission.

‘Oliver is not weird,’ she defended automatically, thinking,
And he’s not the love of my life—you are!

‘If you say so.’ Gianni shrugged his shoulders uninterestedly. In his view any man who preferred her twin to Miranda was a fool.

It had taken him no time to see that her twin lacked all of the qualities that set Miranda apart from other women: the amazing empathy, the gentle caring qualities, the strength,
bravery and sheer stubborn resilience and, of course, that amazing husky laugh.

‘There was no reason to tell you I was a twin. What’s wrong, Gianni?’ she taunted. ‘Do you have a thing about twins?’ Her lips moved in a moue of distaste. ‘You’d be amazed how many men share that particular fantasy.’

He met her eyes with a hard look. ‘Actually I would not be at all surprised,
cara
, at the number of men who shared my fantasy.’ It had been his living nightmare for the last two months that he had pushed her into one of those men’s bed.

His dark eyes swept downwards to the smooth ivory slopes of her breasts where they pressed against the black satiny fabric of her low-cut gown. He swallowed. ‘Has there been anyone?’

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 on 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 …’