The woman turned slightly then, before stopping to respond to something the man at the table was saying, and it was enough to give Rico a proper glimpse of her profile. A small straight nose, determined chin, and a lush mouth with the slightest hint of an overbite—which he remembered thinking an adorable imperfection in a world obsessed with perfection. Certainty slammed into him on the heels of that thought—it had to be her. He wasn’t going crazy.
His breath stopped. Everything went into slow motion as she finally turned and faced him directly. She was looking down at her notepad, scribbling something, juggling the big menus under her arm as she walked closer, and before he knew what he was doing, with something that felt horrifyingly exultant rushing through him, Rico stood and grasped the woman’s arm, stopping her in her tracks.
Gypsy didn’t know what was happening at first. All she knew was that someone had a tight grip on her arm. She looked up with a retort on her lips—and fell into steely grey eyes.
And stopped breathing, stopped functioning.
She blinked. Words died in her mouth. It couldn’t be him. She was dreaming—or it was a nightmare. She was certainly tired enough to be sleep-walking. But she could feel the colour draining from her face, the peripheral noise fading into the background.
She was looking into exactly the same colour eyes as—There her mind shut down. It was him. The man who had haunted her dreams for nearly two years. Rico Christofides. Half-Greek, half-Argentinian, billionaire entrepreneur, a legend of his own making.
‘It is you.’ He spoke her thoughts out loud in his deep voice, and sent Gypsy’s brain into a tailspin. Very distantly she was aware of a voice screaming at her to run, get away. Escape.
She shook her head, but it felt as if she was under water. Was she still standing? All she was aware of was the dark depths of those deep-set stormy grey eyes, boring into her all the way to her soul, his hand tight on her arm. Midnight-black hair, slightly crooked nose, dark brows, defined jaw…It was all so familiar to her—except her dreams hadn’t done him justice. He was so tall, towering over her, his shoulders so broad that she couldn’t see anything but him.
Absurdly through the shock came the hurt—again—that he’d wasted little time in walking away from her the next morning. Leaving just an abrupt note which had read: The room is paid for. R.
A pointed cough sounded nearby. He didn’t move, and Gypsy couldn’t look away. Her carefully constructed world was crumbling into pieces around her.
‘Rico? Is something wrong with our order?’
A voice. A female voice. Confirming what Gypsy didn’t want to know by saying his name out loud. She registered dimly that it must be the stunning red-haired woman she’d walked past and noticed just minutes before. She couldn’t believe now that she’d passed him so blithely, with no hint of warning.
But he ignored the woman and said again faintly, ‘It’s you.’
Gypsy managed to shake her head and at the same time somehow miraculously extricate her arm from his long-fingered grasp. She prayed that she could speak and say something that made sense. Something that would get her out of this situation and away from him. After all, it had been one night—mere hours—how could someone like him possibly remember her? After the way he’d left, why would he want to remember her? How could this awful fiery awareness be snaking through her veins?
‘I’m sorry. You must be confusing me with someone else.’
Gypsy left him standing there and went straight to the staff bathroom, seriously afraid that she might be sick. Taking deep breaths over the sink, she felt clammy and sweaty. And all that was going through her mind was the imperative need to run, get away.
Ever since she’d found out that she was pregnant after their cataclysmic night together she’d known that some day she would have to tell Rico Christofides that he had a daughter. A fifteen-month-old daughter, with exactly the same colour eyes as her father. Gypsy felt nauseous again, but willed it down.
She could remember her terror at the prospect of becoming a mother, along with her instantly deep and abiding connection with the tiny baby growing within her. And with that had come the intense desire to protect her child. She’d seen how Rico Christofides dealt with women who dared to name him as the father of their child, and had had no desire to expose herself to that public humiliation. Even if she’d been certain that she could prove paternity.
Pregnant, and feeling extremely nervous and vulnerable at the daunting prospect of how Rico Christofides might react to the news, Gypsy had taken the difficult decision to have Lola on her own. She’d wanted to be in a strong and solvent position when she contacted him. Working as a waitress, albeit in an upmarket restaurant, was not the ideal situation for her to be in when dealing with someone as powerful as him.
Panic surged again. Gypsy didn’t even see her own white face in the mirror. If she didn’t get out of there now, Rico Christofides couldn’t fail to recall the woman who had acted completely out of character and who, on a tide of desire so intense that she still woke sometimes at night aching, had succumbed to his masterful seduction and indulged in a one-night stand.
Making a fateful decision, uncomfortably aware that she was acting on blind instinct and panic but seeing no other solution, she splashed some water on her face and went to find her boss.
‘Tom, please,’ Gypsy begged, and mentally crossed everything. She hated lying, and especially using her daughter to do it. But she had no choice. Not with the father of her child just through the kitchen doors.
‘I have to get home to Lola. Something has…come up.’
Her boss raked his hand through his short sandy hair. ‘Jeez, Gypsy you really pick your moments—you know we’re short staffed as it is. Can’t it wait for another hour, until we have the main rush over with?’
Gypsy hated herself for this. She shook her head, already taking off her apron as she did so. ‘I’m sorry, Tom. Really sorry—believe me.’
His face tightened and he crossed his arms. Gypsy felt the slither of fear trickle down her spine. ‘So am I, Gypsy. I don’t want to do this to you, but it’s come to this: you’ve been late nearly every day for the past two weeks.’
Gypsy started to protest, saying something about the inflexible hours of her daughter’s minder conflicting with her shift hours, but her boss cut her off.
‘You’re a good worker, but there’s a line of people behind you waiting to get a job here who won’t let me down like this.’
He took a breath, and Gypsy’s foreboding increased. ‘If you leave like this now then I’m afraid you won’t have a job to come back to. It’s that simple.’
A vivid memory surged back of the moment she’d found out that the man who had turned her world upside down was none other than one of the world’s most powerful men, and nausea returned.
The thought of going back out to the dining room and trying to function normally was inconceivable. She’d end up getting fired anyway for spilling someone’s dinner into their lap, she was shaking so much. She looked at Tom and shook her head again sadly, already anticipating the drudge of having to look for another job, silently giving thanks that she had some savings to tide them over for a couple of weeks. ‘I’m sorry, Tom, I have no choice.’
Her boss stood back after a long moment and gestured with his arm. ‘Then I’m sorry too, Gypsy, because you’re leaving me no choice.’
She couldn’t say anything. Her throat was too tight. She gathered up her things and left through the back kitchen door, stepping out into the dark and dank alleyway behind the exclusive restaurant.