Leonidas wanted to reassure her, but he didn’t know how. At work, his leadership style was based on giving criticism, not reassurance.
As they left the restaurant, he thought about her words. Business is your passion. If that were true, why was it that for the last six months, he’d just been going through the motions at Liontari? He hardly cared about it at all anymore. He had yet to drag himself into the New York office, and the last few months in Paris, he’d barely bothered to criticize his employees.
As they walked out to where their driver waited with the Range Rover, Daisy suddenly nestled against him, wrapping her arm around his.
“Thank you,” she whispered, and he felt her lips brush against the flesh of his ear. “For the crepes. The coat. The perfume.” Pulling back, she looked at him, her eyes sparkling in the spring sun. “Thank you for a wonderful day.”
He looked down at her, his heart pounding at the intimacy of her simple touch.
And suddenly, Leonidas couldn’t imagine any passion, any longing, any desire greater than the one he had for her.
CHAPTER SIX
DAISY STARED AT herself in the mirror of her pretty cream-and-pink guest suite in Leonidas’s New York mansion.
A stranger looked back at her, a glamorous woman in a red gown straight out of Pretty Woman. The dress caressed her baby bump, showcasing her full breasts, with a slit up the side of the skirt that showed off her legs. Long honey-brown hair hung thickly over her bare shoulders. Her eyelashes were darkened with mascara, her lips as red as the dress, all bought from the drugstore a few months ago. But she was wearing the scent Leonidas had bought her on their shopping excursion three days earlier. Even the shoes on her feet were new. That morning, just as she’d realized she could not possibly wear her scuffed-up black pumps with this dress, new shoes had mysteriously appeared at her door—strappy sandals covered with crystals in her exact size.
“Who are you?” Daisy said to the woman in the mirror. Her voice echoed against the bedroom’s high ceilings and white bed.
From the dog bed by the elegant fireplace, Sunny lifted her head in confusion. With a sigh, Daisy said to her, “It’s all right, Sunny. I’m all right.”
But was she?
She glanced back at her cell phone sitting on the vanity table, feeling dizzy. She didn’t just look different now. She was different.
When she’d come out of the shower an hour before, she’d anxiously checked her online bank account to see if her most recent payment, a deposit for nursing school, had cleared yet. Once that money disappeared from her account, she expected to have very little left, so she was nervous about checks bouncing if she’d forgotten anything.
But looking at her bank account, she’d lost her breath. She’d closed her eyes and counted to five. Then she’d looked at her account again.
Her bank account had the scant hundreds she’d expected—plus an extra million dollars.
Leonidas had just made her a rich woman.
Why? How could he? She’d never asked for his money! Daisy shivered in the red dress. But she knew it wasn’t for her, not exactly. It was to protect their baby, so she’d never worry or be afraid.
I will always provide for you. It’s my job as a man. You would not try to deny me that.
Especially since she’d denied him other things. Like kisses. When, her first night here, he’d almost kissed her outside her bedroom door, she’d been far too tempted. It had scared her. She’d known, if she ever let him kiss her, that she would surrender everything.
And her life had already become unrecognizable enough. She looked at herself in the ball gown. Could she really keep his money—even for her baby?
It was true she’d already quit her job. When she’d gone to the diner, her boss had been all too happy for Daisy to leave her job, no advance notice required.
“We don’t actually need an employee sitting at the register,” Claudia had confided. “But I knew it hurt your feet to wait tables, and I couldn’t fire you.” She’d glanced at the Range Rover through the window. “But look at you now! It’s a fairy tale! You said this Greek billionaire even wants to marry you?”
Daisy had winced. “I haven’t agreed.”
“Are you crazy?” Claudia gazed reverently at the handsome dark-haired tycoon, typing on his phone in the back seat. Then she frowned. “Have you told Franck?”
“I don’t know why Franck would care.” Daisy had smiled weakly. “I’m sure he’ll just be glad
to get me out of his apartment,”
“You know he’s in love with you.”
Daisy rolled her eyes. “He was my father’s best friend. He’s not in love with me.”
Claudia lifted an eyebrow. “Isn’t he?”