Gianni's Pride Read Free Page B

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 couldfind. ‘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 ifhe were posing for some cheesy calendar, but he exuded an earthy, raw quality that was not cheesy so much as downright