Gianni's Pride

Positioning himself by the door so that he could keep one eye on his son, he folded his arms across his chest and watched while Lucy’s house sitter began to prepare breakfast.

‘Can I do anything to help?’

Miranda adjusted the flame on the grill and, still holding her hair from her face with her forearm, lifted her head. ‘No.’ Then, conscious of the occasions she had been accused, with some justification, of being a bit of a prima donna in the kitchen, she softened the refusal by glancing his way and adding, ‘Thank you, I’m fine. I like to cook.’ The least she could do was feed them; she had no idea how far they had to go.

Gianni pressed his back against the exposed stone wall, crossed one foot over the other and watched her.

‘You look like you know what you’re doing.’ It was a strange kitchen but her body language was relaxed and she was actually humming softly under her breath.

The women he knew did not cook; hell, they did not generally eat, though they liked to sit and push food around a plate in fashionable restaurants! He was, Gianni realised, attracted to this redhead more than he had been attracted to a woman in a long time. Recognise it and move on because it’s not happening, he told himself, unless his instincts about her were totally wide of the mark …? He studied her soft profile, hoping to pick up on something that would suggest he was wrong about her, that she was actually a woman who wanted just sex from a man and not a piece of him.

He didn’t. Desirable or not, Lucy’s house sitter was the sort of female he actively avoided. He was a single parent, he worked long hours in a demanding job—he thought he juggled the twin roles pretty well, but romance and all that went with it were not on his agenda.

‘Yes, I do,’ she admitted, not feeling the need to display any false modesty on this subject. ‘But I’m making scrambled eggs,’ she pointed out, trying not to be pleased by his comment. ‘It’s not exactly rocket science or, for that matter, Michelin-star stuff.’

‘That kind of depends on your perspective. The last woman who cooked for me put a takeaway in her microwave still in the foil tray—set the microwave on fire.’

She laughed, her eyes flying wide. ‘Seriously?’

He nodded.

Fighting the urge to respond to the charm in his smile, she lowered her gaze and muttered, ‘I’m making breakfast, you’re here—I’m not cooking for you.’

And who was she cooking for? Miranda wondered. She knew his name, she knew he was related to her employer, but what was Gianni Fitzgerald other than a man prone to dizzying mood swings and owner of more charm than was good for him? He was a man with so many contradictions that it was hard to put him in a neatly labelled box—a man who drove a vehicle that looked one wheel bolt from the grave while his clothes might be casual but the labels said expensive. Not that he couldn’t have made cheap look good, she acknowledged, wondering a little at her curiosity as her eyes swept upwards from his boot-shod feet, pausing when she reached the metal-banded watch that gleamed against the golden skin of his hair-roughened wrist.

‘Yes, it’s the right time.’

‘What? Oh!’ Her eyes flew to his face. ‘I was just checking out …’

Amusement sparkled in his dark eyes. ‘I noticed.’

‘Not you! That is the time,’ she gritted, feeling the flush working its way up her neck. She bit her lip, silently cursing the fair redhead’s skin that came with the double curse of freckles and blushing. The blush deepened when he glanced from his wrist to the clock that had to be three feet in diameter positioned on the wall directly above her head.

‘It’s a nice watch …’

And if it was genuine, and he didn’t act like a man who was interested in fakes, it was also worth as much as she earned in a month, maybe more.

He gave a non-committal grunt. ‘Is this what you do for a living?’

She shook her head and thought, Is this what you call changing the subject? ‘What?’

‘The cooking-is-the-way-to-a-man’s-heart thing.’ His gesture took in the utensils neatly arranged on the butcher’s block, but in his head he was seeing her pale back, the skin smooth and flawless. It would not, he conceded, matter if she burnt water. This innately sexual little redhead would never have any problem accessing if not men’s hearts, certainly their libido.

She lifted her chin and tossed a smile up at him. ‘Relax, I am not interested in your heart, Mr Fitzgerald,’ she retorted.

‘It’s not my heart you have an effect on, cara.’

Miranda compressed her lips, not caring to be the butt of his warped humour. The annoyance in her eyes was dramatically extinguished as she encountered the smouldering heat in his ebony stare.

Not a joke!

She snatched a startled breath and felt her stomach flip before going into free fall.

‘I’m flattered.’

Heart thudding, she brought her lashes down in a protective sweep. No man had ever looked at her with such unvarnished lust before.