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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.
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.
