In Christofides' Keeping (3 page)

She quashed it down, telling herself that she was doing it for good reasons, and straightened up, crossing her arms defensively over her chest. To her surprise she
saw that Rico Christofides had taken a saucepan from the kitchen and was placing it in the corner of the room where, to her dismay, she saw that he’d spotted a leak.

As he straightened up again she said, more caustically than she’d intended, ‘Look, what is it you want from me?’ The rogue thought that he could be there because after seeing her again he’d been overcome with lust set her mind spinning, before she realised how unlikely that had to be.

Rico Christofides calmly sat down on the two-seater sofa and indicated for Gypsy to sit down too. With a barely disguised huff, which was really more fear than impatience, she took the chair opposite the sofa. He took a lazy sip of coffee before putting the cup down on the chipped table.

‘I’d like to know why you seem to be so determined to pretend we’ve never met, when in fact we’re intimately acquainted.’

Gypsy blushed to the roots of her hair at the way he said
intimately.
Tightly, she answered, knowing it was futile to keep pretending otherwise. ‘I am well aware of the fact that we’ve met before, but I’ve no desire to become reacquainted.’

He regarded her for an uncomfortably long moment and then said, ‘You may not believe this, but I regretted leaving you the way I did that morning.’

A spasm of emotion made Gypsy clamp her lips together. She didn’t doubt this was just a smooth move—he most likely hadn’t given her a second thought. Perhaps he’d seen her last night and assumed she might be as easy to seduce again. ‘Well, I don’t. And you’re forgetting that you left your kindly informative note.’

His face tightened. ‘Contrary to what you might have thought after that night, I’m not in the habit of picking
women up in clubs and booking into the nearest hotel for a night of anonymous sex.’

Gypsy burned inside, but shrugged nonchalantly. ‘Look, what do I know or care? It’s not something I gave much thought to.’

He sent a pointed look towards Lola’s pram, and said ascerbically, ‘Clearly I can see that perhaps one-night stands are a habit for you.’

Gypsy gasped in affront and sat up straight, hands clenched on her lap, ‘How
dare
you? I’d never had a one-night stand in my life before I met you.’

He arched a brow. ‘And yet,’ he drawled easily, ‘you were remarkably eager to throw yourself into the experience that night,
Gypsy Butler.
’

Gypsy’s heart stopped. He knew her full name—of course he did; he’d found her. He’d be able to track her down no matter where she went now. They must have given it to him at the restaurant.

He asked now, ‘So, that really
is
your name?’

Gypsy nodded, wanting him gone more than ever now, not liking the way he was making her feel so trapped, and said distractedly, ‘My mother had an obsession with Gypsy Rose Lee, hence the name.’ She left out the fact that for a good portion of her life she hadn’t been called by her birth name at all. As far as she was concerned that part of her life had ended when her father had died.

Forcing her mind away from those memories she said, harshly but quietly, mindful of Lola, ‘Look, what is it you want? I’m busy.’

He cast her a scathing glance. ‘Busy trying to get away from me, for some reason.’ His eyes narrowed on her, and she felt like a tiny piece of prey in front of a predator, with no escape in sight. ‘And at high cost—especially
when I happen to know that your disappearing act last night lost you your job…’

Gypsy held in a gasp but said shakily, ‘How do you know that?’

His shoulder moved minutely, ‘The waiters were remarkably indiscreet and loud.’ Taking her by surprise, Rico Christofides asked then, as if it had just occurred to him, ‘Where is your child’s father?’

Sitting in front of me
, she thought hysterically, and schooled her features, hitching up her chin in an unconscious gesture of defiance. ‘We’re alone.’

‘You have no other family?’

Gypsy shook her head, and tried to ignore the feeling of vulnerability his words provoked. Rico Christofides was grim. ‘Which proves my point, don’t you think? You slept with me and at least one other man soon after—for I can’t imagine that you had left a small baby in the care of a stranger while you were with me that night.’

Gypsy shook her head, aghast at the thought of leaving Lola like that while she went off to spend the night with someone. ‘Of course I didn’t. I would never have done something like that.’

Rico Christofides looked almost smug. She’d proved his point for him, albeit erroneously, because of course she hadn’t slept with anyone else since him. With panic galvanising her movements, making them jerky, Gypsy stood up with clenched fists at her sides. ‘Look, Mr Christofides, you’re really not welcome here. I’d like you to leave.’

It was only at his sharply drawn together brows and the way his head snapped up that Gypsy ran over what she’d just said and realised with sick horror its import.

He rose slowly and looked down at her, frowning, and Gypsy felt the horror spread through her when he said,
‘You know who I am. So you
did
know who I was that night?’

She shook her head, feeling sick, the possible future implications of her knowledge too much to consider right now. ‘No…no, I didn’t. It was only the next morning…when I saw you on the news…’

It had been just after she’d read his note and realised he’d gone. She’d seen the TV in the corner of the room, on a news channel and on mute. He’d obviously been watching it before he’d left that morning. To her utter surprise she’d seen
him
, clean-shaven and pristine in a suit, looking almost like a different person, walking down the steps of an official building surrounded by photographers and an important-looking entourage. Gypsy had raised the sound and watched with mounting horror as she’d discovered exactly who Rico was.

‘And yet you never contacted me once you knew…you still left…’ He said this almost musingly, as if trying to work her out. Gypsy knew that in his world women who wouldn’t take advantage of a one-night stand with a man like him would be few and far between.

She nodded her head vigorously. ‘Yes, I left.’ And then, far more defensively than she liked, ‘I got the hint that morning when I woke and you were long gone, leaving a note which made me feel like a call girl, and to be perfectly honest I have no interest in discussing this any further. I’d like you to leave
now.
Please.’

At that moment, to Gypsy’s utter horror and a spiking of panic, a cry came from the pram—which turned into a familiar wail as Lola woke from her nap and demanded attention.

S
O SHE
was
upset with how he’d left her. Rico forced his mind from that intriguing nugget of information. He could see that she was torn between wanting to go to her child and wanting him gone, and then she blurted out, over the ever increasing wails, ‘Look, now is really not a good time. Please leave us alone.’

Please leave us alone.

Something about those words, the way she said
us
, the hunted look about her face, made Rico dig his heels in. There was some bigger reason she wanted him gone. She felt threatened. That much was crystal-clear.

And, to his utter surprise, the child’s piercing wails were not making him want to run in the opposite direction, fast. Gypsy’s words, her whole demeanour was intriguing him, and he hadn’t found much intriguing at all lately. He wanted answers to her behaviour, wanted to know
why
she wanted him gone so badly, and her crying baby wasn’t about to deter him.

That realisation shocked him slightly, as his only experience with kids to date was his four-year-old niece and her baby brother. While they amused him—especially his precocious niece—his younger half-brother’s besottedness had left him perplexed. He just didn’t really
get
the whole kids thing. And certainly had no intention of
having any himself any time soon—not after the childhood he and his brother had endured…But that path led to dark memories he wasn’t prepared to contemplate now.

With a brusqueness brought on by those thoughts Rico bit out, ‘Shouldn’t you see to your child?’

With obvious dismay at his intractability, Gypsy went over to the pram and pulled back the cover. Immediately the child stopped crying, just a few snuffles now as Gypsy cooed at her and leant in to pick her up.

In that moment Gypsy’s plea to
please leave us alone
resonated in his head. Rico’s skin tightened over his bones imperceptibly. He was aware that he’d tensed and stopped breathing. As if he had some prescience of something about to occur, something momentous. Which was crazy…

Gypsy lifted out the solidly warm weight of her still sleepy daughter, unable, despite everything, to keep an instinctive smile off her face. Lola was a happy little girl—rarely grouchy, invariably even-tempered and smiley—which was impossible not to respond to. Gypsy might have castigated herself for her behaviour that night, but she’d never for one second regretted Lola, or contemplated not having her.

Gypsy automatically started to take off Lola’s outdoor jacket, as she would be warm after her nap, and tried valiantly to ignore the fact that Rico Christofides would now be looking upon his own flesh and blood for the first time. Pushing that scary thought away, she thought surely now he’d balk at the reality of a toddler and leave them alone?

A child demanding attention was hardly conducive to discussing a one-night stand? Surely he’d see that
she wasn’t in the market for that again? But even at that thought her lower belly clenched with desire, as if in denial.

Lola’s coat was off, and she sat up in Gypsy’s arms, more awake now. Having spied Rico Christofides she looked at him shyly, leaning into her mother more, sticking her thumb in her mouth—a habit she’d developed as Gypsy had tried to abstain from using pacifiers.

With the utmost reluctance Gypsy followed her daughter’s gaze, knowing what Rico Christofides would be looking at: a delicately built toddler, with wide slategrey eyes ringed with long dark lashes, slightly darker than pale skin, and a shoulder-length mop of golden corkscrew curls which habitually refused to be tamed. She was adorable. People stopped Gypsy on the street all the time to exclaim over Lola.

At that moment Lola took her thumb out of her mouth and looked at Gypsy, while pointing at Rico Christofides, and said something unintelligible with all the confidence of having uttered a coherent word.

She gave a determined wriggle that Gypsy knew better than to resist, and she had no choice but to put Lola down on her feet and watch as she toddled, still a little unsteady after her nap, over to Rico Christofides, to look up, clearly certain she’d get a warm response. When he just stared down at her, with a slightly shell-shocked expression, Gypsy felt foreboding surround her like a thick ominous fog.

Lola looked from Rico back to Gypsy and then, uncertain because of his lack of response, she came back and held her arms out to Gypsy, who picked her up again and held her close.

‘What did you say her name was?’ asked Rico after an interminable moment of tense silence, and Gypsy
nearly closed her eyes in despair.
He knew.
He’d have to be blind not to know. They had exactly the same uniquely grey eyes, and now that Gypsy had seen him again she could see they shared the same determined chin…and forehead. She was his feminine miniature—a stunning biological example of nature stamping the father’s mark on his child so that there could be no doubt she was his.

‘Lola,’ Gypsy replied faintly.

As if forcing himself to ask the question, not having taken his eyes off Lola yet, he asked hoarsely, ‘How old is she?’

Gypsy did close her eyes now—just for a second. The weight of fate and inevitability weighed her down. She was to be given no reprieve, and even if she did try to bluff her way out of this now, and run, she’d have to change her identity to evade Rico Christofides. An impossibility, considering her already precarious circumstances.

‘Fifteen months…’

‘I didn’t hear you,’ he said quickly, curtly.

Gypsy winced at the harsh tone of his voice, and said again, with fatality sinking into her bones along with a numbness which had to be shock, ‘Fifteen months.’

For the first time his gaze met hers, and she could see what was burning in those increasingly stormy grey depths. Stark suspicion, realisation, shock, horror…all tangled up.

‘But,’ he said carefully,
too
carefully, ‘that’s impossible. Because if she’s fifteen months old then, unless you slept with someone else directly after me, that would make her…
mine.
And as you haven’t contacted me then I can only assume that she
isn’t
mine.’

Gypsy’s breath became more shallow. She tightened
her hold on Lola, who was beginning to pick up on the tension. That sense of guilt surged back; she couldn’t deny him this, no matter who he was. She looked directly at Rico Christofides and swallowed. ‘I didn’t sleep with anyone else. I haven’t been with anyone else…since you.’ It killed her, but she had to say it. ‘And I wasn’t with anyone just before…you.’ She didn’t think it worth mentioning now that she’d only had one previous lover, in college.

Again too carefully, Rico Christofides said slowly, ‘So what you’re saying is that your daughter is mine? This little girl is my daughter?’

Gypsy nodded jerkily, going hot and cold in an instant. A clammy sweat broke out over her skin, making it prickle. And at that moment, with impeccable timing, clearly bored with the lack of attention, Lola started to squirm and whinge.

Gypsy seized on the distraction. ‘She’s hungry. I need to feed her.’ And she fled like a coward into the kitchen, where she put Lola into her highchair and started chattering to her saying nonsensical things. She knew she was in shock, close to hysteria—and acutely aware of the man just feet away, who now had the power to rip their lives apart.

Rico wasn’t sure if he was still standing. He’d never been so thoroughly shocked, taken by surprise, blindsided in his entire life. All of the control he took for granted had just crumbled around him like a flimsy façade, and he saw how precarious it had really been since he’d taken control of his life at the tender age of sixteen.

He knew anger was there, but couldn’t feel it quite yet. He was numbed. And all he could think about was how it had been just those four words which had made
him stop:
please leave us alone.
All he could think about was what it had been like to look into that little girl’s eyes for the first time and feel as though he’d missed a step, even though he hadn’t even been moving.

When she’d toddled over to look up at him with such innocent guile his heart had jolted once, hard, and he’d felt as if he was falling from a great height into an abyss. An abyss of grey eyes exactly the same unique shade as his own, which he’d inherited from his own father. Right now, the most curious sensation flooded him—as if an elusive piece of himself was slotting into place, something he hadn’t even been aware was missing from his life.

It was too much. Acting on blind instinct, he crashed out of Gypsy’s apartment, through the main door and to his car, where his driver jumped out. Gasping, Rico yanked open the car door and reached inside for what he was looking for. He realised belatedly that it was still raining as he pulled out a bottle of whisky and unscrewed the top, holding it by the neck before taking a deep gulp of the amber liquid.

His driver quickly ducked back into the car, clearly sensing his boss’s volatility and his need to be unobserved. With his hand clenched around the bottle, clarity slowly returned to Rico and he welcomed it. This woman had betrayed him in the most heinous way. The worst way possible.

He’d believed that his own biological father had turned his back on him, but in fact he hadn’t. His mother and his stepfather had seen to it that he had believed it, though.

And here was Gypsy Butler, repeating history, blithely bringing up his own daughter—his flesh and blood—clearly
with no intention of ever letting him know. She’d tried to get him to leave!

He’d vowed at the age of sixteen that he would never be vulnerable or powerless again. That vow had become his life’s code when he’d finally found his father and learnt just how terribly they’d both been lied to—for years. Since then, for him trust had become just a word with useless meaning.

The flimsy chance which had led him to choose that restaurant last night made him shudder in horror; at how close he’d come to never knowing of his own daughter’s existence. He looked back towards the still open front door and took in the shabby excuse for a house. Resolve solidified in his chest, and he threw the bottle of whisky back into the car.

He knew that his life was about to change for ever, and damned if he wasn’t going to change their lives too. There was a deep primal beat within him now not to let Gypsy or his daughter out of his sight again. The fierce and immediate possessiveness he felt, and the need to punish Gypsy for her actions, were raging like a fire within him.

Gypsy was shaking all over, and had to consciously try to calm herself as she finished feeding Lola and listened out for Rico’s car taking off. The speed with which he’d left the apartment had in equal measure sent a wave of relief and a wave of anger through her. While it was her worst nightmare to be in this situation,
how
could he reject his daughter so summarily?

She felt a surge of protectiveness for Lola, and cursed Rico Christofides while acknowledging that she’d expected this to be one of his possible reactions. Straight
denial and rejection—just as her father had done with her initially.

She told herself that this was a good thing; she’d salved her conscience by telling Rico Christofides, and Gypsy knew that in the long run they’d both be better off. At least she could tell her daughter as she grew up who her father was, and that it just hadn’t worked out between them. Guilt hit her again when she thought of how her daughter might perceive the disparity in their circumstances, but Gypsy reassured herself that—as she knew well—the fact that Rico Christofides was a multibillionaire did not a father make.

Her own life had been changed for ever when her ill and penniless mother had begged her father to take Gypsy in. He’d been the owner of the company where Mary Butler had been a menial cleaner. An impossibly rich man who had taken advantage of his position and taken her to bed, with all sorts of promises, only to drop her and fire her as soon as she’d told him she was pregnant. Unable to get another job or make rent payments, she’d soon become homeless.

Gypsy had spent her first few months in a women’s refuge, where her mother had gone after she’d given birth at Christmas time. Slowly her mother had built up her life again, finding more menial work and eventually getting them both a council flat in a rough part of London.

Gypsy had known from a very young age that her mother wasn’t coping, and she’d learnt to watch out for the signs so that she could take care of her. Of them both. Until she’d got home from school one day and found her mother passed out on the couch, with an empty bottle of pills on the floor.

The emergency services had managed to save
her—
just.
And the only thing that had stopped them from putting six-year-old Gypsy straight into foster care had been her mother’s assurance that she would send her to live with her father. And so Gypsy had eventually gone to live with the father who had never wanted her, and she’d never seen her mother again. She’d only found out later that her father had comprehensively shut her mother out of Gypsy’s life.

Forcing her mind away from sad memories, she strained to listen out for the car and still couldn’t hear anything.
What was he doing?
She made sure that Lola had a firm grip of the plastic cup she was drinking from and stood up, heart thumping. The door to the apartment was still open, and she crept over to close it.

With one hand on the door, she heard heavy steps.
He was coming back.
Panic made her clumsy as she tried to shut the door completely, but it was too late. A hand and foot prevented her from closing it, and as she jumped backwards in shock at how quickly he’d moved she heard a laconic drawl, edged with steel.

‘You didn’t think it would be so easy to get rid of me, did you?’