Miraculously, she’d been accepted, and with a scholarship, too. She would start school in the fall, when her baby was three months old.
Soon after, her morning sickness had disappeared. She’d managed to save some money, and she had a plan for her future.
But now, Franck was due to return to New York next week for good. Daisy couldn’t imagine sharing his apartment with him. She needed to move out.
Where else could she live? None of her friends had extra space, and she couldn’t afford to rent her own apartment, not when she was saving every penny for baby expenses and moving expenses. It was a problem.
If she’d had enough money, she would have left for California immediately. In New York City, she was scared of accidentally running into Leonidas. If he ever learned she was pregnant, he might try to take custody of their baby. She was desperate to be free of him. Desperate for a clean break.
But she had a job here, friends here, and—as uncomfortable as it might make her—at least at Franck’s, she had a roof over her head. She just had to hold on until summer. Her baby was due in early June. By the end of August, she’d have money to get a deposit on a new apartment, and the two of them could start a new life in California.
Until then, she just had to cross her fingers and pray Leonidas wouldn’t come looking for her.
He won’t. It will all work out, Daisy told herself, as she had so many times over the last few months. I’ll be fine.
The difference was, she’d finally started to believe it.
In the distance, dark clouds were threatening rain, and she could see her breath in the cold air. Quickening her pace, Daisy started humming softly as she hurried home. She’d heard that a baby, even in the womb, could hear her mother’s voice, so she’d started talking and singing to her at all hours. As she sang aloud, some tourists looked at her with alarm. Daisy giggled. Just another crazy New Yorker, walking down the street and singing to herself!
Reaching her co-op building, she greeted the doorman with a smile. “Hey, Walter.”
“Good afternoon, Miss Cassidy. How’s that baby?” he asked sweetly, as he always did.
“Wonderful,” she replied, and took the elevator to the top floor.
As she came through the door, her dog, Sunny, still a puppy at heart in spite of having grown so big, bounded up with a happy bark, tail waving her body frantically. She acted as if Daisy had been gone for months, rather than hours. With a laugh, Daisy petted her lavishly, then went to the kitchen to put food in her dog dish.
She didn’t bother to take off her coat. She knew how this would go. As expected, Sunny gulped down her food, then immediately leaped back to the door with a happy bark. Daisy sighed a little to herself. Sunny did love her walks. Even when it was cold and threatening rain.
Grabbing the leash, Daisy attached it to the dog’s collar and left the apartment.
Once outside, she took a deep breath of the cold, damp air. It was late afternoon as she took the dog for their usual walk along the river path. By the time they returned forty minutes later, the drizzle was threatening to deepen into rain, and the sun was falling in the west, streaking the fiery sky red and orange, silhouetting the sharp Manhattan skyline across the East River. As busy as she’d been, she’d forgotten to eat that day, and she was starving. Seeing her co-op building ahead, Daisy hurried her pace, fantasizing about what she’d have for dinner.
Then she saw the black Rolls-Royce parked in front of the building. A chill went down her spine as a towering, dark-haired figure got out of the limo.
She stopped cold, causing a surprised yelp from Sunny. She wanted to turn and run—a ridiculous idea, when she knew Leonidas Niarxos could easily run her down, with his powerful body and long legs.
Their eyes met, and he came forward grimly.
She couldn’t move, staring at his darkly powerful form, with the backdrop view of the majestic bridge and red sunset.
Please, she thought as he approached. Let her black puffy coat be enough to hide her pregnancy. Please, please.
But her hope was crushed with his very first words.
“So it’s true?” Leonidas’s voice was dangerously low, his black eyes gleaming like white-hot coal in the twilight. He looked down at her belly, bulging out beneath the long black puffy coat. “You’re pregnant?”
Instinctively, she wrapped her hands over her baby bump. How had he heard? She trembled all over. “What are you doing here?”
“Are you, Daisy?”
She could hardly deny it. “Yes.”
His burning gaze met hers. “Is the baby mine?”
She swallowed hard, wanting more than
anything to lie.