at the corners as he tipped his head in silent acknowledgement of the gesture and allowed his dark, long-lashed eyes to travel in a slow, comprehensive sweep up from her toes until he reached her face.
At this point their glances connected and Miranda, who had been enduring the scrutiny, glimpsed something that moved like silvered fire deep in his midnight-dark eyes.
She could not define what she had seen, it had only been there for a fraction of a second, but her body wasn’t dealing in names. It reacted indiscriminately, sending a wave of scorching heat through her body.
Whatever this man had, clothes were no protection, she mused as she tugged fretfully at the neck of her shirt, unwittingly loosing the top two mother-of-pearl buttons.
Gianni’s eyes went to the deep vee of milk-pale smooth skin revealed, hardly what could be termed provocative, but his body responded with a disproportionate pulse of hunger that slammed through his body before concentrating in a hard ache of frustrated desire in his groin.
He swallowed hard, annoyed by his lack of self-control, and tipped his head in exaggerated approval, resorting to strained banter in an effort to disguise his reaction while recognising an equally strong need to rationalise it.
‘I hardly recognised you with your clothes on, cara,’ he drawled, and watched the angry colour fly to her smooth cheeks.
A man woke up next to a beautiful woman and the inevitable happened. It was no mystery, nothing more complicated than physical hunger, nothing a cold shower … another cold shower would not cure.
Before Miranda could respond with a suitable degree of scorn to this worn-out cliché—it was always harder to deliver scorn when your face was the colour of a post box; this man was dangerous—Gianni’s attentions switched abruptly to his son.
‘No, stay where you are, Liam, until I check out the floor …’ The rest of the sentence was delivered in Italian and Miranda was fascinated to hear the child clearly as bilingual as his father, reply in the same tongue.
Unexpected emotion tightened in Miranda’s throat as she watched them, the sternness leaving Gianni’s face as he bent down to the chair, spanned the child’s waist with his big hands and lifted him down, pushing him in the direction of the open door.
‘I’m hungry!’
Gianni, whose routine meant he was out of the house before his son took breakfast—he rarely had time for anything himself other than a double espresso and a bagel—paused before reaching for the tin that he recalled sweet-toothed Lucy kept filled with biscuits. It was empty.
‘Dio.’ His long fingers beat out an impatient tattoo on the granite work surface as he experienced an unaccustomed stab of indecision and doubt. For a man who stayed cool while those around him went into meltdown it was an uncomfortable experience.
Small wonder, he reflected grimly, Clare had looked aghast when he’d told her he planned to spend some time alone with Liam. The nanny had probably wondered if she’d get the child back in one piece. It might have been better for everyone concerned if she’d come right out and said he didn’t have a clue.
He sighed through his nose and squared his shoulders. His time might be better spent proving her wrong rather than feeling sorry for himself. For once he had the quality time with his son that always seemed in short supply.
‘Where are the biscuits … bread …?’
Miranda watched as he looked around the room with the air of a man who expected someone to materialise and produce what he required out of thin air.
Seeing this self-assured man look at a loss actually made her feel a little less antagonistic towards him. Perhaps in his world that was what happened, Miranda speculated. He certainly had the arrogance of someone who was accustomed to giving orders and expecting people to jump.
Miranda didn’t jump, but she did walk across to the well-stocked fridge and pull out a carton of milk from the shelf. Not because she felt the need to rush to his rescue, but she could hardly let the little boy go hungry just because his father was a bossy, ungrateful control freak with, admittedly, a very nice bottom and a way of looking at her that made her feel jittery and defensive.
She found the plastic tumbler she was looking for in the second cupboard she tried and, filling it, handed it without a word to Gianni.
‘Perhaps that will keep him going until breakfast?’
Gianni waited for the lecture on child nutrition. In his experience it was a rare woman who could resist the opportunity to display her superior knowledge, and when it didn’t come he tipped his head in silent acknowledgement.
He stood guard until Liam had finished the glass of milk before wiping the milky moustache from his upper lip and nodding his permission for him to go outside into the yard.
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
