‘I can be out of here by tomorrow evening,’ Riccardo told her bluntly, ignoring the apology. ‘I’ll want to spend it with Gina, as you might understand.’
‘’Course.’ Winter would roll into spring, then into summer, and on and on and on. She wondered how she would feel as time went by and she saw him every week, twice a week, how ever many times, there at her house, collecting their daughter. She wondered how she would feel when there was a woman’s face looking out from the passenger seat of his car. ‘But when it comes to these arrangements there are a few conditions.’
‘Yes?’
‘Gina can’t be out too late during the week because of her homework. So on the agreed days you’ll have to arrange to be here fairly early so that she can be brought back home by, let’s say, eight-thirty. That would give her time to do some homework and have a bath before you come so that she can just hop into bed when you drop her off.’
‘Fine. But you’ll have to understand that I work, and I can’t always plan meetings down to a certain hour. Sometimes I’ll have to give you very short notice of when I can see her, but I guarantee it’ll be no less than twice a week, and I want her every other weekend.’
‘She’s going to be pulled from pillar to post,’ Charlotte whispered, on the verge of tears.
‘I gave you the option of making our arrangement permanent. You rejected it.’
‘For all the right reasons!’
‘Then there’s the question of holidays.’
‘I can’t think about that right now.’
‘Try,’ Riccardo rasped harshly. He watched as she curled herself into a tighter ball on the chair.
‘I don’t know.’
‘I will want her to spend some time in Italy. She has relatives over there, people she’s never met.’
‘I hadn’t thought…How are they going to react?’
‘With great joy,’ Riccardo said dryly. ‘My mother’s been after this result for years. ’Course, she would have preferred to have seen her grandchild through the more conventional route of marriage, but there you go.’
‘Marriage to a girl with the right connections,’ Charlotte said bitterly.
‘She gave up on that ambition a long time ago,’ Riccardo told her shortly. She had resigned herself to a son who went out with ‘babes’, none of whom she had ever met anyway because they weren’t of the variety that he took on holiday. Like Charlie had said, with bullseye accuracy.
‘And what about the rest of the world?’
‘I’m not following you.’
‘Your friends. Business colleagues.’
‘What about them?’
‘What will they say? What will they think of you? I mean, it’s not every day that a big cheese finds himself embroiled in a scandal…’
‘Now who’s the dinosaur?’ Riccardo commented wryly. ‘For starters, it’s not a scandal. And then gossip involving businessmen barely qualifies as gossip. Anyway…’ he shrugged, ‘…I really don’t give a damn about what other people think of the happenings in my personal life.’#p#分页标题#e#
Charlotte wished she possessed such insouciance. She might just have been able to deal with Riccardo’s presence in her life a bit better. As it was, she had only just recovered from the curiosity of friends and workmates, who all now knew about Riccardo, and she foresaw miserable times ahead trying to handle her broken life. Which brought her back to her original remark about conditions.
‘I also would rather you kept your private life out of Gina’s domain…’ she said tentatively, and Riccardo frowned. ‘I mean…’ She continued hurriedly, just in case he thought that she was trying to angle the conversation back to an argument about the women he dated. ‘I don’t care what you get up to between the sheets, but I don’t want Gina being introduced to a procession of your women.’
‘And if it’s just the one?’
‘Well, that would be different. Of course.’ Was there one? she wondered?
‘And should I bring her round for your inspection beforehand? Just to make sure that I’m not contravening any of your moral laws?’
‘There’s no need to be sarcastic,’ Charlotte said hotly.
She looked so young. Young and vulnerable, leaning forward in the chair with her feet tucked solidly underneath her as if anchoring them down just in case they decided to stand up and flee. ‘No, there’s no need. You have my word. The only woman I will ever introduce to Gina will be the woman I intend to commit my life to.’