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

She looked at Rico Christofides and recognised his wide-legged stance with dismay. He wasn’t going anywhere any time soon. With extreme reluctance she finally said, ‘Can I get you tea or coffee?’

His eyes narrowed on her once again. The barest hint of a smile tipped up one corner of his wickedly sensual mouth as he recognised her capitulation. ‘I’d love a coffee, please. Black, no sugar.’

Stark, with no sweetener—just like him, Gypsy thought churlishly as she went into the kitchen to put on the kettle. All she could hope for now was that Lola wouldn’t wake up and Rico Christofides would satisfy whatever bizarre lingering curiosity he had about her and leave. Soon.

Rico looked around the bare apartment as Gypsy moved about the kitchen and he suppressed a shudder of distaste. Without her presence right in front of him his brain seemed to clear slightly. Once again he questioned his sanity in pursuing her here, especially when his eyes fell on the battered-looking buggy which sat just feet away against the wall. His sane impulse was to come up with some plausible excuse—even just ask her why she seemed to be determined to pretend she didn’t know him—but a greater overriding impulse was urging him to stay. Even if there was a child in the picture.

He could only make out the fact that her daughter was quite small, so therefore she must have had her since she’d been with him. And even though Rico knew he had no right to feel a surge of anger at that, he did.

Even just watching her pull off that damned unflattering hat and coat had scrambled his brain and made him almost forget the presence of the child. The quick movement of her small hands had reminded him of how they’d felt on him, stroking along the most sensitive part of his anatomy until he’d had to beg her to stop…He frowned. Why was she so intent on denying she knew him? And that night? Even if he had left the way he had, he knew it had been as cataclysmic for her too. The shocked look of awe on her face just after she’d exploded around him had told him that.

With no false pride he knew he was a good lover, but what he’d experienced that night with Gypsy had gone beyond anything he’d ever known before. Or since. It had shaken him out of his complacency. Was that why he needed to see her again? To recapture that moment? To see if it had been his imagination or something…more? He balked at that. He never wanted anything more with any woman. But that night with Gypsy had touched him on a level that had left him feeling an ache of dissatisfaction, and it had only grown since then, pervading everything around him and tainting the few liaisons he’d had with women in the interim.

He knew seeing her last night had thrown the fact that he’d been trying to recapture that fleeting transcendence he’d experienced with her into sharp relief. With that thought reverberating through his mind he heard Gypsy re-enter the room. He turned to face her and took the coffee she held out. She was avoiding his eyes.

Gypsy escaped Rico’s gaze and occupied herself by going to peek in at Lola who, to her relief, was still sleeping peacefully, her cheeks pink and her rosebud mouth in a little moue. Long black lashes rested against plump baby cheeks. Gypsy’s heart swelled, as it did every time she looked at her daughter, and at that moment she felt an overwhelming surge of guilt at knowing she was denying Lola’s father knowledge of her when he stood only feet away.

She quashed it down, telling herself that she was doing it for good reasons, and straightened up, crossing her arms defensively over her chest. To her surprise she saw that Rico Christofides had taken a saucepan from the kitchen and was placing it in the corner of the room where, to her dismay, she saw that he’d spotted a leak.

As he straightened up again she said, more caustically than she’d intended, ‘Look, what is it you want from me?’ The rogue thought that he could be there because after seeing her again he’d been overcome with lust set her mind spinning, before she realised how unlikely that had to be.

Rico Christofides calmly sat down on the two-seater sofa and indicated for Gypsy to sit down too. With a barely disguised huff, which was really more fear than impatience, she took the chair opposite the sofa. He took a lazy sip of coffee before putting the cup down on the chipped table.

‘I’d like to know why you seem to be so determined to pretend we’ve never met, when in fact we’re intimately acquainted.’

Gypsy blushed to the roots of her hair at the way he said intimately. Tightly, she answered, knowing it was futile to keep pretending otherwise. ‘I am well aware of the fact that we’ve met before, but I’ve no desire to become reacquainted.’

He regarded her for an uncomfortably long moment and then said, ‘You may not believe this, but I regretted leaving you the way I did that morning.’

A spasm of emotion made Gypsy clamp her lips together. She didn’t doubt this was just a smooth move—he most likely hadn’t given her a second thought. Perhaps he’d seen her last night and assumed she might be as easy to seduce again. ‘Well, I don’t. And you’re forgetting that you left your kindly informative note.’

His face tightened. ‘Contrary to what you might have thought after that night, I’m not in the habit of picking women up in clubs and booking into the nearest hotel for a night of anonymous sex.’

Gypsy burned inside, but shrugged nonchalantly. ‘Look, what do I know or care? It’s not something I gave much thought to.’

He sent a pointed look towards Lola’s pram, and said ascerbically, ‘Clearly I can see that perhaps one-night stands are a habit for you.’

Gypsy gasped in affront and sat up straight, hands clenched on her lap, ‘How dare you? I’d never had a one-night stand in my life before I met you.’

He arched a brow. ‘And yet,’ he drawled easily, ‘you were remarkably eager to throw yourself into the experience that night, Gypsy Butler.’

Gypsy’s heart stopped. He knew her full name—of course he did; he’d found her. He’d be able to track her down no matter where she went now. They must have given it to him at the restaurant.

He asked now, ‘So, that really is your name?’

Gypsy nodded, wanting him gone more than ever now, not liking the way he was making her feel so trapped, and said distractedly, ‘My mother had an obsession with Gypsy Rose Lee, hence the name.’ She left out the fact that for a good portion of her life she hadn’t been called by her birth name at all. As far as she was concerned that part of her life had ended when her father had died.

Forcing her mind away from those memories she said, harshly but quietly, mindful of Lola, ‘Look, what is it you want? I’m busy.’

He cast her a scathing glance. ‘Busy trying to get away from me, for some reason.’ His eyes narrowed on her, and she felt like a tiny piece of prey in front of a predator, with no escape in sight. ‘And at high cost—especially when I happen to know that your disappearing act last night lost you your job…’

Gypsy held in a gasp but said shakily, ‘How do you know that?’

His shoulder moved minutely, ‘The waiters were remarkably indiscreet and loud.’ Taking her by surprise, Rico Christofides asked then, as if it had just occurred to him, ‘Where is your child’s father?’

Sitting in front of me, she thought hysterically, and schooled her features, hitching up her chin in an unconscious gesture of defiance. ‘We’re alone.’

‘You have no other family?’

Gypsy shook her head, and tried to ignore the feeling of vulnerability his words provoked. Rico Christofides was grim. ‘Which proves my point, don’t you think? You slept with me and at least one other man soon after—for I can’t imagine that you had left a small baby in the care of a stranger while you were with me that night.’

Gypsy shook her head, aghast at the thought of leaving Lola like that while she went off to spend the night with someone. ‘Of course I didn’t. I would never have done something like that.’

Rico Christofides looked almost smug. She’d proved his point for him, albeit erroneously, because of course she hadn’t slept with anyone else since him. With panic galvanising her movements, making them jerky, Gypsy stood up with clenched fists at her sides. ‘Look, Mr Christofides, you’re really not welcome here. I’d like you to leave.’

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.