But what if that was not what happened at all?
Today she had seen Leo as she never had before. Perhaps he had always been this way and she had been too overawed by him to note it, but today she realized that she had the power to hurt him as much as he had hurt her. It did not make her happy or proud of herself. But, as she sat and looked at him, she felt that shifting once again, as if they sat on a fault line and the earth was readjusting itself beneath them. If he did not hold all the power, then that meant she could only disappear if she chose to let that happen. If she did it herself, to herself. But …what if she did not?
What then?
She was not a puppet, she thought, the words feeling almost nonsensical, impossible, in her own head even as they resounded like truth in her gut. But a partner. His partner.
The idea of it all but took her breath away.
“If you are leaving me,” he said, his voice low and rough, his gaze intent on hers as if he was inside of her already, as if he could read her as easily as he read her body, as if he knew what she was thinking, “then you must do it soon, Bethany. I am only a man, and not a particularly decent one, I do not think. I fear my good intentions are few and far between where you are concerned.”
She felt the tug in her heart, the silver string wrapping around her again and again, tying her securely to him as it always had. She understood, in a way she never had before, that she could choose.
Every moment of the day, every moment with this man, she could choose: hope or fear. One would help her fly and one would shut her down. She had spent three years in fear, all alone in that house in Toronto. She had spent all the scared and lonely nights she needed to spend. Did she really want to spend the rest of her life that way, loving this man and keeping herself apart from him because it scared her too much to be with him?
What kind of life was that?
She sat up straighter and could not look at him. She lifted up the hands that she’d kept clenched into fists while the sobs had wracked her body and she’d cried out all the years of sorrow.
“But what if I choose to stay?” she asked, her voice the barest whisper, though she saw each word hit him like an electrical bolt. His dark eyes blazed with a fierce hope she recognized. She felt it hitch in her own chest.
And then, slowly, she opened up her hands until he could see her palms and what lay in each of them—what she had scrabbled to find in the pocket of the purse where she’d secreted them. What she had held on to even as she fell to her knees.
In one palm lay a simple platinum band. In the other, an exquisite sapphire ring.
“I was given to understand you got rid of them,” Leo said with an echo of his usual arch amusement, but he picked up the rings, holding them in his much bigger hands as if he was seeing them for the first time. As if he had not selected them himself from the Cartier boutique in Waikiki. As if he had not slid them onto her trembling fingers while she’d cried tears of joy through a smile so wide it had made her jaw ache.
“I refused to wear them,” Bethany admitted, looking at him and pushing through the cloud of fear—because what was a little more vulnerability at this point? What was left to protect, if she lost him and herself? “But I could not be without them.”
It was one more truth she had ignored. One more clue. One more part of a deep, abiding and painful love she had given up on, called hopeless, but had never quite managed to let go.
His eyes met hers then and Bethany felt exactly the same way she’d felt when they’d married on that private beach in Hawaii years ago. Holy. Sacred.
Right—despite everything.
They had stripped everything away, and here they still were. She could choose to fear, or she could choose to hope. She could choose—and the truth was that her heart had chosen long ago.
It had never wavered, even when she had—especially then.
“Allow me,” Leo said.
Then, just as he had so long ago, he put the rings back where they belonged. One by one, he gently slid them onto Bethany’s left hand. When they were secured, he laced his fingers tight to hers and drew her hand to his mouth.
“Do we start again?” he asked, his brown eyes calm and clear but so alive. So filled with hope, with a love she thought she just might dare to believe. To return. Bethany felt his gaze move through her, down to her toes.
Such a simple question, for such a complicated endeavor. But what else could they do? They could not seem to live apart. They could not seem to leave. Perhaps it was time to see what they could build together.
“We cannot seem to end,” she said, but her heart felt full, and the threads that tied her to him felt intricately knotted, tangled and tight. At last, she admitted to herself that she wanted it that way. That on some level she always had.
“Then we might as well begin,” he said huskily. A new promise. “Again and again.”
“Until we get it right,” Bethany vowed, her voice soft and sure.
He leaned closer and pressed his mouth to hers, making it right. Lighting the great fire that had always burned within them.
Sealing the promises they’d made so long ago. Sealing their fate.
Setting them both free.
Keeping Her Close
Abby Green
ABBY GREEN deferred doing a social anthropology degree to work freelance as an assistant director in the film and television industry—which is a social study in itself! Since then it’s been early starts, long hours, mucky fields, ugly car parks and wet-weather gear—especially working in Ireland. She has no bona fide qualifications, but could probably help negotiate a peace agreement between two warring countries after years of dealing with recalcitrant actors. Since discovering a guide to writing romance one day, she decided to capitalise on her long-time love for Mills & Boon® romances and attempt to follow in the footsteps of such authors as Kate Walker and Penny Jordan.
She’s enjoying the excuse to be paid to sit inside, away from the elements. She lives in Dublin and hopes that you will enjoy her stories. You can e-mail her at [email protected].
In Christofides’ Keeping
Abby Green
This is for Lindi Loo and Lola, my two favourite girls
Chapter One
RICO CHRISTOFIDES stifled his irritation and tried to rein in his wandering attention. What was wrong with him? He was in one of the most exclusive restaurants in London, dining with one of the most beautiful women in the world. But it was as if someone had turned the sound down and all he could hear was the steady thump-thump of his heart.
He saw Elena gesticulating and speaking with a little too much animation, her eyes glittering a little too brightly as she tossed her luxurious mane of red hair over one shoulder, leaving the other one bare. It was meant to entice but it didn’t.
He knew all the moves. He’d seen countless women perform them for years, and he’d enjoyed them. But right now he felt no more desire for this woman than he would for an inanimate wooden object. He regretted the impulse he’d acted on to call her up once he’d known he’d be in London for a few days.
Curiously, he was being enticed by a tantalising memory. He’d glanced fleetingly at one of the waitresses as they’d walked in and in an instant something about the way she moved had registered on his brain, throwing him back in time—two years back in time, to be precise. He’d found himself thinking of the one woman who hadn’t been like all the others. The one woman who had managed to smash through the high wall of defences he kept rigid around himself and his emotions.
For just one night.
His fist clenched on his thigh under the table. It had to be just because he was back in London for the first time since that night. He forced himself to smile tightly in answer to something Elena had said, which seemed to require that response, and to his relief he could see that she was off again, clearly loving the sound of her voice more than she cared if he was listening or not.
The night he’d met her—Gypsy…if that even was her name—th
ey’d just come out of the club and he’d been about to tell her his name. She’d put a hand over his mouth, saying fervently, ‘I don’t want to know who you are…tonight isn’t about that.’
Scepticism hadn’t been far away. Either she knew damn well who he was, as he’d been splashed all over the tabloids for days before that night, or else…But Rico had found himself pausing as he’d looked down at her. She’d looked so lovely and young and fresh…and untainted. And for that moment, for the first time in his life, he’d pushed aside cynicism and suspicion—his constant companions—and said, ‘OK, then, temptress…what about just first names?’
Before she could say anything and still believing deep down and with not a little arrogance that she had to know who he was, he’d held out his hand and said with a flourish, ‘Rico…at your service.’
She’d placed her small soft hand in his and hesitated for a long moment before saying huskily, ‘I’m Gypsy.’
A made-up name. It had to be. He’d chuckled, and he could remember even now how alien it had felt to allow that emotion to rise up. ‘Fair enough. Play your silly game if you want…Right now I’m interested in a lot more than your name…’
Someone laughed raucously at a nearby table, jerking Rico out of the memory, but even so a hot spiral of desire ran through him and he had a sudden memory flash of hearts beating in unison, sweat-slicked skin, her sleek body around his in an embrace so velvet hot and tight that he’d fought just to keep control. And then her muscles had started to spasm around him, she’d given a fractured breathy moan, and he’d lost it in a way that he’d never lost it before or since.
‘Rico, darling…’ Elena was pouting at him, lips too blood-red. ‘You’re miles away. Please tell me you’re not thinking of boring work.’
Rico stifled a cynical grimace. It was that very boring work, and all the many millions he’d made in the process, that had women like Elena hovering around him in droves, waiting for little more than a crooked finger to signal his interest. Even so, the acknowledgement couldn’t stop him from shifting uncomfortably in his seat, very disturbed by the fact that he was being turned on not by the woman opposite him, but by a ghost from the past. Because that ghost was the one woman who hadn’t fallen at his feet in sycophantic ecstasy when he’d singled her out.
On the contrary: she’d tried to walk away from him. And then the following morning she had walked away from him. But not before he’d left her on the bed, like a callow, unsophisticated youth. Regret burned him, and Rico didn’t do regret.
He forced another tight smile and reached across for Elena’s far too available hand. She practically purred when he took it. He opened his mouth to offer some platitude as a waitress walked past their table, and he frowned when his body inexplicably reacted—tightening almost as if it sensed something his brain hadn’t yet registered. He looked up; it was the waitress he’d noticed on the way in. The waitress who had sparked a veritable torrent of memories.
Was he going completely insane? An evocative scent lingered on the air in her wake. He tried to sound casual, and not as if he was afraid he was going crazy. He looked back to his date. ‘What scent are you wearing?’
Elena’s lips curled seductively as she offered Rico her wrist to smell. ‘Poison…do you like?’
He bent his head, but even before he smelt the distinctive perfume he knew it was all wrong. Nausea clenched his belly. He looked up again, as if drawn helplessly, to see the back of the waitress. She was taking an order at a nearby table. That evocative scent reminded him of—Abruptly Elena pulled her hand from his with a barely disguised huffy sigh and stood from the table, smoothing a hand over one artfully cocked hip sheathed in silk.
‘I’m going to go and powder my nose. Hopefully by the time I get back you won’t be so distracted.’
Rico disregarded the reproach in her voice and didn’t watch her walk away. He was transfixed now by the slim back of the petite waitress just a few feet away. She had a neatly shaped figure—firm buttocks, defined by the close-fitting black skirt which hid her legs to the knee, and slender but shapely calves and tiny ankles. Feet in low-heeled black shoes. So far so unremarkable.
His gaze travelled back up, past the plain white shirt, with just a hint of the bra underneath, taking in her hair, which looked a dark honey-brown but which he guessed might be lighter in daylight. It was densely curled, tied back into a tight bun, but he could already imagine the wild corkscrew curls that would burst free. Almost exactly like—He shook his head again, cursing softly. Why was that memory so hauntingly vivid tonight?
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.’
<
br /> 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.
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