Read Online Gianni's Pride by Kim Lawrence - Free Book Online Page A

unobserved in the doorway feeling a quiver in the region of her heart as she watched Liam, already in his pyjamas, shrieking with excitement, being chased around the room by his dad, who was on all fours pretending to be a bull.
    When Liam saw her he ran to her, wrapping his arms around her legs in a hug in a gesture of childish spontaneity. ‘Come play, let Daddy catch you, Mirrie!’
    ‘Not just now, Liam,’ Miranda said, glancing towards the older Fitzgerald, who was not looking so pleased to see her.
    He dragged dark hair back from his broad brow with an impatient hand. ‘Not now, Liam, go upstairs. It’s bedtime.’
    Miranda watched the little boy bounce from the room and held out the bag of sweets to Gianni. ‘I thought he might like these? You know, he might go to sleep a little easier if—’
    ‘I’m sure your knowledge of childcare is second to none, but I know Liam and he doesn’t eat sweets.’ He pushed them back at her, his fingers brushing her arm.
    Miranda jumped as the light contact sent an electric surge through her body. Stepping backwards with a gasp, she knocked a half-full coffee cup off the dresser. She caught it but the contents tipped over her top.
    His dark eyes brushed hers. The predatory gleam in the dark depths sent her stomach into a diving spin. His manner as cold as his eyes had been hot, Gianni made no comment as he left the room.
    To the casual observer, she realised, the scene would be one of cosy domesticity: a woman washing up the supper dishes while the dogs played around her feet.
    What the casual observer would not see was the general turmoil in her head. The ‘cosiness’ did not even go skin deep, she reflected, glancing at her forearm—it still tingled. She gave a shiver and plunged her hands deep into the hot water.
    ‘Down!’ None of the dogs responded to her half-hearted rebuke.
    It was never going to work, she decided, wishing she had not given in to the spontaneous impulse that had made her agree to this crazy house share.
    For all she knew her instincts might be totally off. It wasn’t as if he came across as some sort of charity case.
    Would she have been quite so keen to have him around if he hadn’t been, on a scale of one to ten, a solid fifteen?
    ‘No!’ Miranda said, rejecting the idea with a firm shake of her head as she lifted her hands from the water and blew the suds from her pink fingers. ‘I am not that shallow.’
    But I am talking to myself
.
    It was true, though, and the knowledge that she had never been a person influenced or attracted by a pretty face made her feel moderately better about her motivation, if not the situation.
    She closed her eyes and saw the gleam of raw male appreciation glittering in those dark depths and felt her stomach flip. She opened her eyes and thought,
I felt like a woman, a pretty woman
.
    When was the last time that happened?
    Did he manage to make every woman he met feel as if she were the only woman on the planet? If so it was quite a gift and the fact he had seemed to like what he saw when he looked at her had been soothing to someone whose ego had taken several rounds of bashing recently.
    The memory of the hungry, predatory gleam she had seen in his eyes surfaced and before she could push it away a rash of goose bumps erupted on the surface of her suddenly too hot skin. She felt a flash of shame, guiltily aware that she was getting turned on by the thought of a man she didn’t even like.
    She wasn’t even sure that her half-baked suspicions were true. She’d invented an entire tragic back story on the flimsiest of evidence … It wouldn’t be the first time her soft heart—or soft head, according to her less gullible twin—had got her taken for a ride.
    This could be like the time she had opened her purse to give the homeless guy with the sweet dog some change and been mugged, her purse and phone taken all over again. Thehomeless guy turned out not to be homeless and he’d stolen the dog.
    Now it