by Jennie Lucas
His lips suddenly parted.
A simple idea. Insane. Easy. With one stroke, everything could be secure. Everything could be his.
It was an idea so crazy, he’d never imagined he would consider it. But as soon as he thought of it, the vibrating tension left his body. Leonidas suddenly felt calmer than he’d felt in days—in months.
He gave her a small smile. “Our baby needs a father. She needs a name. And I intend to give her mine.” He met her gaze. “And you, as well.”
She stared at him, her lovely face horrified. “What are you saying?”
“The answer is simple, Daisy.” He tilted his head, looking down at her. “You’re going to marry me.”
CHAPTER FOUR
MARRY LEONIDAS NIARXOS?
Standing in the deepening shadows of the apartment, Daisy stared at Leonidas, her mouth open.
“Are you crazy?” she exploded. “I’m not going to marry you!”
His darkly handsome face grew cold. “We both created this child. We should both raise her.” His black eyes narrowed. “I never want her to question who she is. Or feel anything less than cherished by both her parents.”
“As if you could ever love anyone!” She still felt sick remembering how he’d once said, I never claimed to love you.
“You’re right. I’m not sure I know how to love anyone.” As she gaped at his honesty, Leonidas shook his head. “But I know I can protect and provide. It is my job as a man. Not just for her. Also for you.”
“Why?” she whispered.
Leonidas looked down at her.
“Because I can,” he said simply. He took a deep breath. “I might not have the ability to love you, Daisy. But I can take care of you. Just as I can take care of our daughter. If you’ll let me.”
Daisy swallowed hard.
“But, marriage...” she whispered. “How could we promise each other forever, without love?”
“Love is not necessary between us—or even desirable. Romantic love can be destructive.”
Destructive? Daisy looked at his clenched jaw, the tightness around his eyes. Had someone broken Leonidas’s heart? She fought the impulse to reach out to him, to ask questions, to offer comfort. Sympathy was the last thing she wanted to feel right now.
“What about marrying someone you despise?” she pointed out. “That seems pretty destructive.”
“Do you really hate me so much, Daisy? Just because I was afraid to tell you my last name when we met? Just because, when a man tried to sell me a forgery, I pressed charges? For that, you’re determined to hate me for the rest of your life? No matter what that does to our child?”
She bit her lip. When he put it like that...
Her heart was pounding. She thought of how she’d felt last October, when she’d loved him, and he’d broken her heart. It would kill her if that ever happened again. “I can’t love you again.”
“Good.” Leonidas looked down at her in the falling light. “I’m not asking you to. But give me a chance to win back your trust.”
Her heart lifted to her throat. Trust?
It was a cruel reminder of how she’d once trusted Leo, blindly believing him to be perfect. How could she ever trust him again?
Daisy looked down at her short waterproof boots. “I don’t know if I can.”
“Why won’t you try?” His face was in shadow. He tilted his head. “Are you in love with someone else? The artist who owns this apartment, Franck Bain?”
“I told you, he’s a friend, nothing more!” Daisy kept Franck’s marriage proposal to herself. No point in giving Leonidas ammunition. She shook her head fiercely. “I don’t want to love anyone. Not anymore. I’ve given up on that fairy tale since—”
Her voice cut off, but it was too late.
Leonidas drew closer. The light from the hallway caressed the hard edges of his face. “Since you loved me?”
A shiver went through Daisy. Against her will, her gaze fell to his cruel, sensual lips. She still couldn’t forget the memory of his kiss, his mouth so hot against her skin, making her whole body come alive.
No, she told herself angrily. No! She’d allowed her body to override her brain once before. And look what had happened!
But she still felt Leonidas’s every movement. His every breath. Even though he didn’t touch her, she could still feel him, blood and bone.
He looked down at her. “You don’t need to worry, then,” he said softly. “Because we agree. Neither of us is seeking love. Because romantic love is destructive.”
She agreed with him, didn’t she? So why did her heart twist a little as she said, “Yes, I guess you’re right.” She took a deep breath. “That doesn’t mean I can just forgive or forget what you did.”
“You loved your father.”
“Yes.”
“He meant everything to you.”
“Yes!”
Leonidas looked at her. “Don’t you think our daughter deserves the chance to have a father, too?”
She caught her breath.
Was she being selfish? Putting her own anger ahead of their baby’s best interests—not just financially, but emotionally?
“How can I know you’ll be a good father to our daughter?” she said in a small voice.
“I swear it to you. On my honor.”
“Your honor,” she said bitterly. Her hands went protectively over her baby bump, over her cotton shirt.
He gently put his larger hand over hers.
“Yes. My honor. Which means a great deal to me.” He looked her straight in the eye. “I have no family, Daisy. No siblings or cousins. Both my parents are dead. I never intended to marry or have a child of my own. But now... This baby is all I have. All I care about is her happiness. I will do anything to protect her.”
Daisy heard the words for the vow they were. Her heart lifted to her throat. He truly wanted to be a good father. She heard it in his voice. He cared about this child in a way she’d never expected.
Her heart suddenly ached. How she wished she could believe him! How lovely it would be to actually have a partner in her pregnancy, someone else looking out for her, rather than having to figure out everything herself!
But could she live with a man who’d done what Leonidas had done? Even if she never loved him—could she live with him? Accept him as her co-parent—trust him as a friend?
His hand tightened over hers. “There could be other benefits to our marriage, Daisy,” he said huskily. “More than just being partners. Living together, we could have other...pleasures.”
He was talking about sharing a bed. Images of their lovemaking flashed through her, and she felt a bead of sweat between her breasts.
“If you think I’m falling into bed with you, you’re crazy,” she said desperately. She stepped back, pulling away from his touch. Just to make sure she didn’t do something she’d regret, like reach for his strong, powerful body, pull it against her own, and lift her lips to his...
She couldn’t. She mustn’t!
“I can’t forget how it felt to make love to you,” he said in a low voice. “I still dream about it. Do you?”
“No,” she lied.
His dark eyes glinted. His lips curved wickedly as he came forward, and without warning, he swept her up into his powerful arms.
“Shall I remind you what it was like?” he said softly, his gaze hot against her trembling lips.
For a moment, standing in this apartment where they’d made love so many times, in so many locations—on that sofa, against that wall—all she wanted was to kiss him, to feel his hands against her naked skin. It terrified her, how easily he made her body yearn to surrender!
But if she did, how long would it take before she gave him everything?
Trembling, she wrenched away. “No.”
He looked at her, and she thought
she saw a flash of vulnerability in his dark eyes. Then his handsome face hardened. “I’m not going away, Daisy. I’m not going to abandon her.”
“I know.” She prayed he didn’t realize how close she was to spinning out of control. She needed to get him out of here, out of this apartment with all its painfully joyful memories. “I’m tired. Can we talk tomorrow?”
“No,” he said, unyielding. “This needs to be settled.”
Sunny rose from her dog bed to sniff curiously at Leonidas. The dog looked up at him with hopeful eyes, clearly waiting to be petted. He briefly scratched her ears. As he straightened, the dog licked his hand.
Traitor. Daisy glared at her pet. Just when she most wanted her canine protector to growl and bark, another female fell helplessly at the Greek tycoon’s feet!
Leonidas stood before her, illuminated by the bright Manhattan skyline and the starry night, and a lump rose in her throat. Did he know how memories of their love affair haunted her?
If it had been Leo wanting to kiss her, she would have already fallen into his arms. If it had been Leo proposing, she would have married him in an instant.
But it wasn’t. Instead, it was a handsome stranger, a coldhearted billionaire, the man who’d put her father in jail.
“I can see you’re tired,” Leonidas said gently, looking at her slumped shoulders and the way her hands cradled her belly. “Are you hungry? Perhaps I could take you to dinner?”
He sounded hesitant, as if he were expecting her to refuse. But after her early morning shift at the diner, followed by her checkup at the obstetrician’s office and then walking her energetic dog, Daisy was tired and hungry.
“Another fancy restaurant?” she said.
“Whatever kind of restaurant you want. Homey. Casual.” Leonidas smiled down at Sunny, who was by now licking his hand and flirtatiously holding up her paw. He added, “You can even bring your dog.” He straightened, giving her a slow-rising, sensual smile. “What do you say?”
It was really not fair to use her dog against her. Or that smile, which burned right through her. Daisy hated how her body reacted to Leonidas’s smile, causing electricity to course through her veins. She was no better than her pet, she thought in disgust.
But she was hungry. And more than anything, she wanted to get Leonidas out of this apartment, with all its sensual memories, before she did something she’d regret.
“Fine,” she bit out. “Dinner. Just dinner, mind. Someplace homey and casual. Where dogs are allowed.”
Leonidas’s smile became a grin. “I know just the place.”
* * *
Leonidas looked at Daisy, sitting next to him in the back seat of the Rolls-Royce. Daisy’s floppy yellow dog was in her lap, sticking her head excitedly out the window. The animal’s tongue lolled out of her mouth as they crossed over the East River, into Manhattan.
Sadly, the pet’s mistress didn’t seem nearly so pleased. Daisy’s lovely face was troubled as she stared fiercely out the window.
But it was enough. He’d convinced Daisy to come to dinner. He’d given quiet instructions to his chauffeur, Jenkins, and sent a text to his assistant. Everything was set.
Now he had Daisy, he never intended to let her go.
It was strange. Leonidas had never imagined wanting to get married, and certainly never imagined becoming a father. But now he was determined to do both and do them well. In spite of—or even perhaps because of—his own awful childhood.
For his whole life, he’d been driven to prove himself. His first memories involved desperately trying to please the man he thought was his father, who called him stupid and useless. Leonidas had tried to do better, to make his penmanship, his English conjugations, his skill with an épée all perfect. But no matter his efforts, Giannis had bullied him and sneered at him, while his mother ignored him completely—unless they were in company. Appearances were all that mattered, and as violently as his parents fought each other, they were united in wanting others to believe they had the perfect marriage, the perfect son, the perfect family.
But the truth was far from perfect. His parents had seemed to hate each other—but not as much as they hated Leonidas. From the age of five, when he’d first noticed that other children were hugged and loved and praised by their parents, Leonidas had known something was horribly wrong with him. There had to be, or why would his own parents despise him, no matter how hard he tried?
He’d never managed to impress them. When he was fourteen, they’d died, leaving him with no one but distant trustees, and boarding school in America.
At twenty-one, fresh out of Princeton, he’d seized the reins of Giannis’s failing leather goods business, near bankruptcy after seven years of being run into the ground by trustees. He decided he didn’t need a family. He didn’t need love. Success would be the thing to prove his worth to the world.
And he’d done what no one expected of an heir: he’d rebuilt the company from the ground up. He’d renamed it Liontari, and over the next fifteen years, he’d made it a global empire through will and work and luck. He’d fought his way through business acquisitions, hostile takeovers, and created, through blood and sweat, the worldwide conglomerate now headquartered in New York.
But none of those battles, none of those hard-won multimillion-dollar deals, had ever made him feel as triumphant as Daisy agreeing to dinner tonight.
This was personal.
Leonidas had never been promiscuous with love affairs, having only a few short-term relationships each year, but the women in his life had often accused him of being cold, even soulless. “You have no feelings at all!” was an accusation that had been hurled at him more than once.
And it was probably true. He tended to intellectualize everything. He didn’t feel things like everyone else seemed to. Even when he beat down business rivals, he didn’t glory in the triumph. Losing a lover made him shrug, not weep.
But he told himself he was lucky. Without feelings, he could be rational, rather than pursuing emotional wild goose chases as others did. The only emotion he really knew was anger, and he kept even that in check when he could.
Except when he’d been Leo.
It was strange, looking back. For the month he’d been Daisy’s lover, it had been exhilarating to let down his guard and not have to live up to the world’s expectations of Leonidas Niarxos, billionaire playboy. In Daisy’s eyes, he’d been an ordinary man, a nobody, really—but somehow she’d still thought him worthy.
And he’d loved it. He’d been free to be truly himself, instead of always being primed for battle, ready to attack or defend. He’d been able to show his silly side, like the time they’d nearly died laughing together while digging through vintage vinyl albums at a Brooklyn record shop, teasing each other about whose taste in music was worse. Or the time they’d brought weird flavors of ice cream home from an artisanal shop, and they’d ended up smearing each other with all the different flavors—chocolate cinnamon, whiskey banana and even one oddly tart sugar dill... He shivered, remembering how it had tasted to suckle that exotic flavor off Daisy’s bare, taut nipple.
In the back of his mind, Leonidas had always known it could not last.
But this would.
He would marry Daisy. They’d raise their child together. Their daughter would have a different childhood than Leonidas had had. She would always feel wanted. Cherished. Encouraged. Whether she was making mud pies or learning calculus or kicking soccer balls, whether she was succeeding or failing, she would always know that her father adored her.
But marriage was the key to that stability. Otherwise, what would stop Daisy from someday becoming another man’s wife? Leonidas wanted to be a full-time father, not a part-time one. He wanted a stable home, and for their daughter to always know exactly who her family was. And if Daisy married someone else, how could he guarantee that any other man could care for Leonidas’s child as she nee
ded—as she deserved?
He had to be there for his child. And Daisy.
He had to convince her that he was right.
But how?
Leonidas looked at Daisy, sitting next to him in the spacious back seat of the limo. Convincing her to join him for dinner was a good start. But as they crossed into Manhattan, she still stared fiercely out the window, stroking her dog as if it were an emotional support animal. Her lower lip wobbled, as if she were fighting back tears.
The smile slid away from Leonidas’s face. A marriage where the husband and wife fought in white-knuckled warfare, or secretly despised each other in a cold war, was the last thing he wanted. He’d seen that in his own parents, though they’d supposedly once been passionately in love.
He wanted a partnership with Daisy. A friendship. That was the best way to create a home for a child. At least so he’d heard.
Leonidas took a deep breath. He had to woo Daisy. Win her. Convince her he was worthy of her trust and esteem, if not her love. Just as he’d done with Liontari—he had to take their bankrupt, desolate relationship, and make it the envy of the world.
But how?
As the Rolls-Royce crossed into the shadowy canyons between Manhattan’s illuminated skyscrapers, the moonlight was pale above them. The limo finally pulled up in front of his five-story mansion in the West Village. Daisy looked up through her car window.
“You call that homey?” she said in a low voice.
He shrugged. “It’s home. And very dog friendly.”
“Since when?”
“Since now.” Getting out of the car, Leonidas shook his head at his driver, and opened her door himself.
But as Daisy got out of the back seat, she wouldn’t meet Leonidas’s eyes, or take his offered hand. Cuddling her dog against her chest, she looked up at Leonidas’s hundred-year-old brownstone, her lovely face anxious.
“I’m not sure this is a good idea.”