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Suddenly his head snapped back down. Those eyes opened and looked straight at her. Heat flooded her face when she recalled how she’d woken only that morning to find Rico on one arm, staring at her with a wicked gleam in his eye, his broad and powerful chest bare.

She’d watched, instantly awake and breathless, as he’d taken the pillow from the centre of the bed and thrown it to the other side of the room. Suddenly filled with nebulous emotions, acutely aware of how much she’d misjudged him, she’d entreated huskily, ‘No, Rico,’ terrified he’d see her vulnerability.

But he’d just come closer and closed the gap between them. His skin had been hot and silky as he’d trapped her under one arm, bicep bulging. ‘Yes, Rico. I find that my patience is running very thin.’

Every nerve-point in Gypsy’s body had come alive, treacherously telling of her inability to deny this desire. His head had lowered and his mouth had slanted over hers, stifling anything else she might say. After a futile moment of trying not to react to his kiss, to his proximity, Gypsy’s mouth had opened and Rico had plundered ruthlessly, tongue stabbing deep, making Gypsy’s back arch.

Her hands had instinctively clung to his arms, fingers digging into hard muscle. Before she’d known how he did it, the buttons of her pyjama top were undone and he was spreading the sides apart to bare her breasts to his gaze. The hardening rosy tips had tingled as he’d brushed a hand over one, and then the other.

Gypsy’s breath had come fast and shallow, and when he’d lowered his head and mouth to suck one tip deep she’d all but bucked off the bed, so sensitised it had hurt.

Just as his hand had been travelling down to the waistband of her pants, a mewl had come from Lola in the other room.

They’d both stopped, waiting, and it had come again—stronger. Louder. She’d woken up. With a veritable turmoil of tangled emotions and frustrated desires in her belly Gypsy had pushed Rico away and got up, hastily buttoning her top again. Reluctantly she’d looked back to the bed, to see Rico lying there, arms behind his head, the sheet just managing to hide the extent of his arousal, chest broad and awe inspiring, gleaming dark olive with a smattering of masculine hair.

He’d smiled wickedly and drawled, ‘Next time we won’t have a convenient interruption. I can promi

se you that…’

Gypsy had fled.

Now, as Rico’s far too assessing eyes looked at her, she burned all over. She wasn’t sure if it was her imagination, but she thought she’d caught him looking at her periodically over the last couple of days with a speculative gleam. He just arched a brow now, and asked laconically, ‘So, did you find anything interesting on the internet?’

All the heat that had just warmed Gypsy’s cheeks leached out. ‘What do you mean?’

‘You know exactly what I mean,’ he said easily. ‘Isobel told me you’d been on the internet, and it’s an easy thing to check the history. I think you possibly found out everything but my shoe size.’

No wonder he’d been looking at her; he knew she’d been snooping. The heat flooded back—and she hadn’t even found out anything about his personal life, his real father in Greece, or what had happened to him between the ages of sixteen and twenty, when he’d burst on the scene having become a dotcom millionaire overnight.

Gypsy’s arms tightened across the sleeping Lola, causing her to shift slightly. Stiffly she said, ‘I felt that perhaps I owed you the benefit of the doubt. I realised that I really didn’t have much basis for my…’ She faltered tellingly.

‘Prejudice I think is the word you’re looking for.’ And then he shocked her by saying, ‘Perhaps we’re both guilty of the same thing. After all…you’ve given me very little to go on…’

Gypsy quivered inwardly at the thought of one of his many minions checking her out. ‘There’s nothing much to tell.’

Rico turned to face her more. ‘And yet I find that’s really not the case at all. You’re quite the enigma. You patently didn’t come after me for the easiest gold-digging opportunity in history, but the ease with which you can navigate a high-end charity event tells me you know that world. And yet you were living in a hovel when I found you.’

For the first time Gypsy felt that perhaps she could tell Rico something of her life, but then that visceral fear surged up: despite what she knew about him now, she still couldn’t trust him. It held her back. There was too much at stake. He might play fair in business, but would he play fair in personal matters—especially those concerning his own daughter? He’d said he wouldn’t ever forgive Gypsy for what she’d done. It was only now that she knew a little of his personal history that she could see how it might have shaped his need not to be seen rejecting his own child.

She reiterated stiffly, ‘There’s really nothing to tell.’

After locking eyes with her for a long moment, until Gypsy felt breathless, Rico said, ‘Why don’t you take Lola and get some sleep in the bedroom? I still have work to do.’

And, as much to escape as anything else, Gypsy took his suggestion and left.

A few hours after doing some brain-numbing work which had more to do with blocking out the erotic memory of kissing Gypsy that morning, and how hard it had been to let her walk away, than any actual need to work Rico stretched and stood up.

He prowled silently to the back of the plane to look in on Gypsy and Lola, and stopped just inside the doorway with an ominous tightening in his chest. Gypsy lay on her side, her hair in a stream of curls around her head, knees up and her hand protectively on Lola’s chest, cocooning her. Lola lay in complete abandon, legs and arms splayed. Gypsy had put pillows on Lola’s other side to prevent her rolling off the bed.

A fierce sense of possessiveness rose up within him, and it encompassed the two people on the bed—not just the little one. The constriction in his chest not easing one bit, he walked in and pulled a blanket first of all over Gypsy, and then a smaller one over Lola. Neither one moved. He stood watching Gypsy and tried to battle the maelstrom of emotions she so effortlessly aroused.

He’d told her she was an enigma, and she was. Information on her background was starting to trickle through, and what he’d learnt so far had him reeling. He’d just given her a chance to tell him herself, but she hadn’t. And he wanted to know why she was so reluctant to tell him of her past.

It was becoming harder and harder for him to cling on to his sense of injustice that she’d kept Lola secret from him. It was also becoming harder for him to remember why he didn’t want to shackle her to him in marriage. The prospect, once so repugnant, now had a distinct appeal. He couldn’t lie to himself that he wasn’t a little envious of what Rafael and Isobel had together, and, while he didn’t imagine he’d ever experience that for himself, he certainly wasn’t averse to trying to create a home based around family…and mutual desire.

All Gypsy’s behaviour in the past few days had pointed to her sharing a very similar moral compass to Isobel’s, and he knew Isobel was not a woman who would choose to have a child and decide not to tell the father without good reason.

Gypsy’s presence by his side at the social functions had been a revelation. In the past he’d had to deal with sulks and moues of disappointment from mistresses or dates when he’d wanted to do his bit and then leave as soon as possible. But he’d got the distinct impression that Gypsy had as little time for those events as he did. She’d had no desire to ogle the A-list celebrities, or talk inanities with the sycophants who all wanted a slice of him—or more accurately his fortune. In the space of two nights he’d found himself instinctively seeking her hand and relishing finding that she was right behind him without a murmur of dissent—if anything she’d shared his look of mild distaste.

Source: www.allfreenovel.com
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