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