Daisy was hyperventilating. Through it all, Leonidas kept silent.
Until...
“One million dollars.” His deep, booming voice spoke from beside her. Sucking in her breath, she looked up at him. He smiled back, his dark eyes warm.
“Sold! To the gentleman at table thirteen!”
As people at their table clustered around him, shaking his hand and congratulating him on the winning bid, Daisy trembled with emotion. She couldn’t believe what had just happened.
I believe in you.
But it hadn’t just been Leonidas who’d bid for her painting. He hadn’t said a word, not until the end. Other people had bid for it. A bunch of strangers who had no idea Daisy was the artist. She hadn’t had to beg them to buy it. They’d all just wanted it.
Was it possible she’d been wrong, and she did have some talent after all...?
Leonidas turned away from his friends. He looked down at her, his dark gaze glittering. “They’ll deliver the painting later. Do you want to leave?”
Wordlessly, Daisy nodded.
Outside, the Manhattan street was dark and quiet, except for the patter of cold rain. As they hurried toward the limo waiting in a side lane near the hotel, the rain felt like ice against her skin. Leaning over her, Leonidas tried to protect Daisy from the weather with his arms, with only a small amount of success. They were both laughing as they slid damply into the back seat of the Rolls-Royce.
“Take us home,” Leonidas told Jenkins, who nodded and turned the wheel.
“Home,” Daisy echoed, and in that moment, the brownstone mansion almost did feel like home. For a moment, they smiled at each other.
Then the air between them electrified.
She abruptly turned away, toward the window, where the lights of the city reflected in the puddles of rain. She felt Leonidas’s gaze on her, but she couldn’t look at him. Emotions were pounding through her like waves.
Once they arrived at his mansion, she followed him up the steps to the entrance. He punched in the security code, and they entered, to find it dark and quiet.
“Everyone must have gone to bed.” He gave a low laugh. “Even your dog must be asleep, since she’s not rushing to greet us.” He flicked on the foyer’s light, causing the crystal chandelier to illuminate in a thousand fires overhead, reflecting on the stately stone staircase behind them.
Taking her fur stole, Leonidas hung it in the closet. He looked down at Daisy, who was still silent. His handsome face became troubled.
“Daisy, did I do wrong?” He set his jaw. “If I did, I’m sorry. I thought if—”
“You believed in me, when I didn’t believe in myself,” she whispered.
His dark eyes met hers. “Of course I believe,” he said simply. “I always have. From that first day at the diner, I saw you were more than beautiful. You’re the best and kindest woman I’ve ever met—”
Reaching up, Daisy put her hands on his broad shoulders, feeling the fabric of his tuxedo jacket, damp with rain. And lifting her lips to his, she kissed him passionately.
* * *
A moment before, entering the house, Leonidas had looked at Daisy’s lovely, distant face as she’d stood half in shadow. For the first time, he’d questioned whether he’d done the right thing, offering her painting at the charity fundraiser without her knowledge or permission.
But the idea of Daisy giving up her dreams was unbearable to Leonidas. Whether her painting was actually worth a million dollars, or a hundred, he didn’t care. He was accustomed to his own despair, but a w
orld where a warm, loving woman like Daisy had no hope was a world he did not want to live in.
So he’d taken the painting from the guest room, and offered it to the charity’s auction committee. He’d known if the painting was the last item up for auction, that at least a few people in the audience, after imbibing champagne all night, would assume the painting was an unknown masterpiece, and that others, seeing the bidding war heat up, would not want to be left out, and would swiftly follow suit.
Leonidas would never forget the look on Daisy’s beautiful face when her student painting had sold for a million dollars. Not until the day he died.
As they’d left the grand hotel, he’d gloried in the successful outcome of his plan. But she’d been silent all the way home, refusing to meet his eyes. He’d started to have doubts. Perhaps he should have asked her permission. Perhaps—
And so he’d turned to her, as they stood alone at the base of the stone staircase. But even as he’d tried to ask, he’d been unable to look away from her.