Keeping Her Close: In Christofides' Keeping / The Call of the Desert / The Legend of de Marco

Chapter Three

SO 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?’

Chapter Four

SHE watched, dry-mouthed as Rico Christofides stepped back into the room, closing the door with incongruous softness behind him, angry grey eyes narrowed intently on her, face impossibly grim. Rain clung in iridescent water droplets to his hair and jacket. She had an awful feeling of déjà-vu—the same feeling she’d had that day when she’d found her mother unconscious. Everything was about to change and she was powerless to stop it.

The anger she’d felt moments ago at thinking of him rejecting Lola dissipated under a much more potent threat. Just as her father had belatedly and reluctantly swept in and taken over when she’d been six, now Rico Christofides was about to do the same. This was the other reaction she’d expected and feared.

She fought through her fear and bit out through numb lips, ‘I don’t want you here, Mr Christofides. I never intended you to find out—’

He uttered a curt laugh. ‘Clearly you never intended me to find out. How serendipitous, then, that I just happened to choose that restaurant last night, out of the many thousands in London.’

His sensual mouth firmed, and he looked angry enough to throttle Gypsy, but she felt no sense of danger.

‘Believe me, it makes my blood run cold to think how close I came to never knowing about this.’

Gypsy heard herself say, as though from a long way away, ‘You didn’t let me finish. I didn’t intend you to find out like this. I was going to tell you…at some stage.’

He arched an imperious brow, derision all over his handsome face, ‘When? When she turned ten? Or perhaps sixteen? When she was a fully grown person who’d built up a lifetime of resentment for the father who’d abandoned her?’ His voice became blistering, his accent thickened. ‘Undoubtedly that’s what you’d planned, no? Feed her lies and tell her that her father hadn’t wanted to know her? Couldn’t be bothered to stick around?’

Gypsy shook her head. She was feeling nauseous at the condemnation in his tone. ‘No, I…I hadn’t planned that at all. I was going to tell her—and you—I promise.’

It sounded so flimsy to her ears now. The fact was she’d just proved him right; she’d planned on keeping this from him indefinitely and it made Rico’s eyes narrow even more. Gypsy could see the effort it was taking for him not to reach out and shake her. Or perhaps even worse. For the first time she did feel fear, and stepped back.

He noted the move with disgust. ‘Don’t worry, you and your promises are so far beneath my contempt right now I wouldn’t touch you with a bargepole. If you were a man, however…’ He didn’t need to finish that sentence.

Gypsy bit back the impulse to explain that she’d wanted to use her degree, set up as a practising child psychologist and be solvent before she went looking for him to deliver the news. She’d known how defenceless she would be to someone like him unless she could stand on her own two feet and demonstrate that she was successfully independent. And this situation was proving exactly how right she’d been to be scared.

Yet even now she was impossibly aware of him physically. The way his suit clung to his powerful frame, the way his hands on his hips drew the eye to their leanness. Hips which she could remember running her hands over as he’d thrust into her so deeply that sometimes she still woke from dreams that were disturbingly real…

Half dizzy with shock, and a surge of very unwelcome lust, Gypsy sank down helplessly into the chair behind her. Rico Christofides just looked at her, without an atom of sympathy or concern, even though she could feel her blood draining southwards and knew she must have gone white. She was scared to stand in case she fainted. But she drew on the inner strength which had got her through years of dealing with her domineering father and stood again, albeit shakily.

At that moment a plaintive cry came from the kitchen, and they both turned to see Lola looking from one to the other with huge grey eyes and an ominously quivering lip. Gypsy could see that she was picking up on her distress, and moved to take her up and hold her.

With Lola securely on her hip, she looked back to Rico Christofides, slightly shocked to see a stricken look on his face. She steeled herself and said, ‘Look, please leave us be. You know now—you know where we are. I don’t want anything from you. We don’t need anything from you.’

He dragged his eyes from Lola to her, and Gypsy felt the cold sting of his condemnation like a whip against her skin. ‘Well, I’m afraid that’s just not good enough—because I want something from you. My daughter. And, until such time as she can speak for herself, I’ll determine what she needs.’

His effortlessly autocratic tone made chills run up and down Gypsy’s spine. It reminded her so much of her father. She instinctively pulled Lola closer. ‘I’m her mother. Anything to do with her welfare is my decision. I chose to have her on my own. I’m a single mother.’

His eyes speared her then, and she saw a suspicious light. ‘You must have deliberately led people to believe that I’d refused to come forward to acknowledge my own daughter. Am I even mentioned on the birth certificate?’

Gypsy blanched and recalled how she’d lied about knowing his identity when asked in the hospital. She’d reassured herself that if she hadn’t seen the news that morning she wouldn’t necessarily have realised who he was. All of this behaviour; the lying was so unlike her.

She shook her head quickly and visibly flinched when he made a move towards her. For a second she thought he’d rip Lola out of her arms and take her away. Lola started to make sounds of distress.

Rico stopped dead still and said, his face pale with anger, ‘Damn you to hell, Gypsy Butler. How dare you refuse to name me as her father. You knew who I was.’

Gypsy was trying not to shake, and to pacify Lola at the same time, keeping her voice carefully calm. ‘I was protecting her, protecting us.’

As if aware of his daughter’s distress too, he surprised Gypsy by lowering his voice. But that didn’t make it any less angry. ‘From what? You had no right to take that decision.’

Gypsy couldn’t speak. How could she explain to this man that once she’d found out she was pregnant she’d known for sure that he could not be told until she was ready to deal with him?

He was waiting for her response, for her justification. She blurted out, ‘I saw you on the news that morning.’

He frowned.

Gypsy went on, ‘I saw you come out of court after you’d reduced that woman to a wreck—and all because she tried to prove that her baby was yours.’

Rico slashed a hand through the air and said curtly, ‘You know nothing of that case. I was making an example of her so that no other woman would be inclined to think they could take advantage of me in such a way.’

Gypsy hitched up her chin. ‘So how can you blame me for not running to tell you of my pregnancy? You made it clear when you left that morning that you didn’t want to see me again, and then I saw how you dealt with a woman who claimed to be the mother of your child.’

Rico bit back the urge to tell Gypsy that he’d regretted his hasty departure; he’d phoned the hotel straight after the court case was concluded, hoping against hope that she mightn’t have left. But she had. And he was not about to reveal that weakness now…especially not now.

Gypsy watched as Rico’s face became even more implacable and hard. She conveniently left out her myriad other reasons for not telling him. The memory of that woman’s humiliation in the face of Rico’s cold and very public displeasure was still etched on her brain.

His voice was utterly icy when he spoke. ‘The difference in this case is that I know we slept together. I’d only ever met that woman socially before, and because I rejected her advances and she had some paltry circumstantial evidence to suggest we might have been intimate she tried to prove that her baby was mine. I insisted on a paternity test and a public court to prove my case.’

Gypsy shivered inwardly. He was as ruthless as her father had said. ‘But you ruined that woman’s reputation, dragging her through the courts.’

His face was stony. ‘She brought it all on herself. She was convinced I wouldn’t want to risk the publicity to prove I wasn’t the father. I gave her an opportunity to avoid it and she refused, believing I’d be an easy target and pay her off to keep her quiet. Within weeks of the court case she’d admitted who the real father was and was forced to make do with his meagre million euro fortune. Believe me, she does not merit your sympathy.’

Gypsy wondered now at the woman’s sense of delusion. Anyone could see that Rico Christofides was not a man who would bow to pressure. She tried not to let his explanation sway her, but deep down she had to admit she was surprised. Even so, she asked, ‘And yet you believe that Lola might be yours?’

Rico’s eyes went to Gypsy’s, and something that flared in their depths made her go hot in the face. ‘Apart from the fact that you’ve told me she is, I can be fairly certain that she’s mine because the protection I used that night split. When you assured me you’d be safe, I believed you.’

His words fell into the vacuum they’d caused. To Gypsy’s horror, all she could remember was that moment when he’d held back from sliding into her to put on protection. Even that had caused her to entreat him desperately, ‘Please, Rico…don’t stop now. Please.’ If anything, she was probably to blame for the protection failing because she’d rushed him. And then she had promised him she’d be safe, fully believing that she had no cause to worry. But she hadn’t taken into account how erratic her cycle had grown in the months after her father’s death…

He continued, cutting through her shameful memory, ‘You dare to ask me this after you ran from me last night, knowing I was the father of your child? You ask me this when looking at her is like looking into a mirror for me?’ His mouth twisted. ‘But don’t worry. I’m not so naïve that I won’t get a paternity test done just to make sure. Your insistence that you want nothing from me only leads me to believe that you do.’ He laughed harshly. ‘You can hardly expect me to believe that I managed to impregnate the one woman in the world who wants not a cent of my fortune?’