by Jennie Lucas
“Yes,” Franck said, stroking his chin as he looked at Daisy. “You have talent. More than I realized. I wonder if...”
Oh, heavens, was he about to proposition her? “If what?”
“I’ve moved my business to California.” His thin face darkened. “Your husband ran me out of New York.”
That was news to her. “Leonidas? Why?”
He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. He’ll soon be your ex.” Franck smacked his lips—she could swear he did. “Your divorce will make you very wealthy.”
The last thing Daisy wanted to do was discuss the financial details of her divorce with Franck Bain. She looked at his sedan parked on the other side of the picket fence, wishing he would leave already. “Um...”
“So obviously you won’t need an income. But I wonder,” his gaze swept over her, “if you might be interested in doing something with me. For pleasure.”
Ugh. The way he said pleasure made her cringe. She responded coldly, “What are you talking about?”
He lifted a sparse eyebrow. “You could be part of something big.”
“I’m sure you are involved in many big things. Don’t let me keep you from them.”
“There’s a good market in lost masterpieces.” He tilted his head slyly. “Especially old portraits.”
Daisy stared at him. Unease trickled down her spine. Could he possibly mean...? “What market?”
“Don’t pretend you don’t understand.” He grinned. “How do you think I got so rich? I help clients find the paintings they most desire.”
Time seemed to stop beneath the warm California sunshine. “You mean...by creating them?”
Franck shrugged.
“It was you,” she whispered. “All this time you said my father was innocent. But you knew he was guilty. You were his accomplice.”
Franck shook his head scornfully. “How else do you think Patrick was able to stay home and take care of you after your mother died? She brought in the income. His gallery barely made a penny.”
She said hoarsely, “I can’t believe it...”
“Patrick refused my offer for years. Then he suddenly had to take care of a little kid by himself. He came to me, desperate. We agreed that I would paint, and he’d use his connections to sell the art. We did very well. For years.” Franck’s reptilian eyes narrowed. “Until he wanted to go for the big score, selling a Picasso. We never should have tried it.”
“Why did you, then?” she said in a small voice.
He shrugged. “Your father was worried about you. You’d just flamed out as an artist. And he was sick of selling forgeries to the nouveaux riches. He wanted to leave New York. Move somewhere and start over.”
Memory flashed through her, of the night she’d been crying over her failure to sell a single painting.
We could start over, her father had told her suddenly. Move to Santa Barbara.
What about your gallery, Dad?
Maybe I’d like a change, too. Just one more deal to close, and then...
Could he have possibly taken such a risk—done something so criminal—just because he couldn’t bear to see his daughter cry? Guilt flashed through her.
She glared at Franck. “You sat through his trial every day and never admitted you were his accomplice. You let him go to prison alone!”
He rolled his eyes. “The Picasso was your father’s idea. I was happy selling cheap masterpieces to suckers. Selling a Picasso to a billionaire? I never liked the risk.” He scowled. “And then your husband ruined everything. I’d done a perfect copy of the Picasso. But I heard last week that Niarxos had chopped it up with a pair of scissors as a kid?” He glowered. “How was I supposed to know? Who does that?”
“Someone who’s hurting,” Daisy whispered over the lump in her throat. Her heart was pounding. The foundation of what she’d thought was true in her life was dissolving beneath her feet.
I didn’t do it, baby, her father had pleaded. I swear it on my life. On my love for you.
Her father had lied. He’d told her what she wanted to hear. What he’d desperately wanted her to believe.
But why had Daisy let herself believe it?
When her mother got so sick, her father had stopped spending time at the gallery, spending it instead at home with his beloved wife, and their young daughter. Yet somehow, his gallery had done better than ever. He’d hired more people. Instead of their family having less money, they’d had more.
Why hadn’t Daisy ever let herself see the truth?
Because she hadn’t wanted to see. Because she’d wanted to believe the best of her father. Because she’d loved him.
And she still loved him. She would have forgiven everything, if he’d just given her the chance...
“Why didn’t Dad tell me?” she said brokenly.
Franck shook his head. “He said you had to believe the best of him, or he was afraid that you wouldn’t survive.”
“That I wouldn’t survive?” she said slowly. She frowned. “That doesn’t make sense. It...”
She had a sudden memory of her father trying to talk to her, the day he’d been questioned by the police.
Daisy, I’ve been arrested... He’d paused. You should know I’m not perfect—
Of course you are, Dad, she’d rushed to say. You’re perfect. The best man in the world. Don’t try to tell me anything different.
Would he have told her then? If she hadn’t made it clear she didn’t want to know about his mistakes?
And Leonidas. It was true that she’d never totally forgiven him for what he’d done to her father. She’d tried to forget. She’d told him he was perfect. Because she loved him.
The men she loved had to be perfect.
I’m not wonderful. I’m not perfect. I’m a selfish, cold bastard, he’d told her. And she’d insisted he was wrong.
But he wasn’t. Leonidas could be selfish. He could be cold. Why couldn’t she admit that, and say she loved him anyway?
Rose-colored glasses were a double-edged sword. She’d believed in her father, believed in her husband. She’d boxed them in, pressuring them to live up to that image of perfection, an image no one could live up to for long.
No wonder Leonidas had fled.
She’d insisted on his perfection, as if he were a shining knight on a white charger. And when he’d finally shown his weaknesses, she’d betrayed him, by telling his secrets to some reporter.
The fact that the lost Picasso had been finally found, as she’d heard that morning in the news, did not absolve her. Her cheeks went hot with shame.
Leonidas had been right. She’d betrayed him.
“We could be partners, you and I.” Speaking softly in the sunlit garden, Franck moved closer to her. “My hands aren’t what they used to be, but I have connections now. Even if you don’t need the money after your divorce, you could do the paintings just for fun.” He cackled. “Old masters for suckers. Much more satisfying than sketching fat babies and dogs!”
Daisy jerked back, glaring at him. “I like fat babies and dogs!”
His forehead furrowed. Seeing rejection in her set jaw, he stiffened, scowling. “Fine.” Then his pale blue eyes gleamed. “But you owe me. For all those months I took care of you.” He gave an oily smile. “If you won’t paint for me, I’ll take payment in other ways—”
He grabbed her roughly. She tried to pull away. “What are you doing—don’t!”
“Don’t you think I deserve a little kindness,” he panted, his long fingers digging into her shoulders, “for all those months I took care of you—”
She struggled desperately as he lowered his head. Before he could force a kiss on her, she screamed—
Then everything happened at once.
Her baby woke and started wailing in the baby carrier...
Her dog rushed toward Franck
, showing her teeth with a growl...
Daisy lifted her knee up, hard and sharp, against Franck’s groin, causing him to give a choked grunt, and release her...
And—
“Get the hell away from her!”
Leonidas’s enraged, deep voice boomed behind her. As Franck was stumbling back from her blow, her husband was suddenly there, vengeful in his black shirt and trousers, his powerful body stepping in front of her. Daisy’s mouth parted in shock as Leonidas punched the other man hard in the jaw, knocking him to the ground.
“Don’t you dare touch her!”
“Leo,” she whispered, wondering if she was dreaming.
His tall, muscular form turned anxiously. “Are you all right, agape mou? He did not hurt you?”
Rubbing her shoulders a little, she shook her head, her eyes wide. “I’m all right.”
Leonidas exhaled with relief. He scooped up their crying baby, who immediately quieted, comforted in her father’s arms. Then he drew Daisy close, searching her gaze intently with his own.
“I’m so sorry,” he said in a low voice. “Can you ever forgive me?”
Daisy stared up at Leonidas’s handsome face. His jaw was dark with five o’clock shadow, as if he hadn’t had time to shave. His usually immaculate clothes were rumpled, as if he’d rushed straight from the airport. His black eyes were vulnerable, stricken.
“Can I forgive you?” she repeated, bewildered.
“Very touching,” Franck snarled at them from the grass.
“Shut up,” Daisy told him, at the same moment Leonidas said pleasantly, without looking at the man, “Another word, and I’ll set the dog on you.”
Their normally goofy, people-loving dog was, indeed, growling at the man threateningly.
As Sunny approached, Franck Bain scrambled back, flinging himself over the white picket fence into a tangle of rose bushes. Daisy heard his sharp yelp followed by swift footsteps. His car engine started with a roar, then he peeled off down the road.
“Sunny!” Daisy’s blood was still up as she called her pet back into the middle of the garden. Kneeling into the soft grass, she petted her dog again and again, crooning, “Good girl!” as the dog’s tail wagged happily.
“I couldn’t understand why you got involved.” Behind her, Leonidas’s voice was low. “The first time you heard crying in an alley, I didn’t know why you insisted on going to see what it was. It seemed better to ignore it.”
Still kneeling beside her dog, Daisy turned her head. Her husband stood behind her, tall and broad shouldered. His handsome face was full of emotion.
“You insisted on taking care of the puppy, when you barely had enough money to take care of yourself. It was foolish.” He took a deep breath, his dark hair gleaming in the sun. “Why try to save something abandoned? Something so unloved and broken?”
She saw sudden tears in his black eyes.
“Now I understand,” he whispered. “Because you did the same with me.”
Daisy’s lips parted. Rising to her feet, she reached for him. He pulled her into his powerful arms.
“Oh, my darling,” Leonidas breathed into her hair, holding her close against his hard-muscled chest. “How can you ever forgive me for leaving you? I thought I could never be the man you needed me to be, and I couldn’t bear to let you down. But I never should have run away like a coward...”
“Stop.” Daisy put her hand on his rough cheek. “I was wrong about so much. All that time I blamed you for putting an innocent man in prison... Franck admitted that my father was guilty, all along. And I refused to see it. Because I needed my dad to be perfect.” She lifted her gaze to his. “Just like I needed my husband to be perfect. I’m so sorry.”
“I would give anything to be perfect for you.” Holding their precious baby in the crook of one arm, he looked intently into her eyes. “You deserve it, Daisy. But I knew I could never be. I could never be good enough to deserve your love.”
She clung to him in her cottage’s flower-filled garden, overlooking the wide blue Pacific. “But you can—you are—”
“I convinced myself that you and Livvy would be better off without me. But after you left, my soul was empty. Nothing mattered. Even when I finally acquired the Picasso—thanks to you—”
“I heard about that. Was it everything you dreamed of?”
Leonidas looked down at her. “I finally had it, this thing I’d been searching for half my life, and I felt nothing. It was just swirls of paint. And I realized that everything I’d ever feared had come true. I’d lost the love of my life, by being too proud and stupid when you tried to save me, by not being brave enough to risk my heart. Now the only thing I fear,” he said quietly, “is that I’ve lost you forever.”
Her lips parted. “What did you say? The love of your life?”
“I love you, Daisy.” Leonidas looked from her to the small, drowsy baby still cuddled against his hard-muscled arm. “You and Livvy are my life.” He took a deep breath. “And I’ll spend the rest of that life trying to be perfect for you, trying to be whatever you need me to be—”
“No,” she cut him off. His handsome face looked stricken. Reaching her hand up to his rough, unshaven cheek, Daisy said, “You don’t need to be perfect, Leo. You don’t need to do anything or change anything. I love you. Just as you are.”
His dark eyes shone with unshed tears. Taking her hand in his own, he lifted it to his lips and kissed it passionately. “Agape mou—”
Sooner or later, we all learn the truth, Daisy thought later. The truth about others, the truth about ourselves. If you could be brave enough to face it. Brave enough to understand, and forgive, and love in spite of everything.
As her husband pulled her against his chest, into the circle of his arms, with their tiny baby tucked tenderly between them, and their dog leaping joyfully around their feet, he lowered his head and kissed her with lips like fire.
And Daisy really knew, at last, what love was.
It wasn’t about rose-colored glasses or knights on white horses. It wasn’t about being perfect. It was about seeing each other, flaws and all. Loving everything, the sunshine and shadow inside every soul. And not being afraid.
As Leo kissed her beneath the orange trees, with their feet in the grass and dirt, it was better than perfect.
It was real.
* * *
Leonidas looked out of the back window of their West Village mansion with dismay. Amid a snowy January in New York City, another foot of snow had fallen the night before.
In their yard, Sunny was leaping back and forth through the blanket of white, chasing a terrified-looking squirrel. Snow clung to their dog’s golden fur, including her ears and eyelashes.
“This is a disaster,” Leonidas groaned to his wife, who was watching from the breakfast nook.
She looked up at him tranquilly, turning a page of her book. “How so?”
“If we let her inside again, Mrs. Berry will kill us.” He sighed. “Sunny will just have to live in the yard from now on. I’ll build her a dog house.”
“You will?”
“I’ll hire someone,” he conceded. “Because Sunny can never come back inside. She’d track snow and dirt all over the floors and make the whole house smell of dog.”
“No, she won’t,” his wife said serenely, turning another page. “You’re going to give her a bath.”
He looked back with alarm. “Me?”
Daisy smiled. “Who better?”
Leonidas’s eyes lingered on her. Even after a full night of lovemaking, his wife looked more desirable than ever, sitting at their breakfast table in a lush silk nightgown and robe, sipping black tea and reading a book, as baby Livvy, now seven months old, batted toys in a baby play gym on the floor.
Leonidas said with mock severity, “Do you really think you can give me orders and I’ll just obey? L
ike a pet?”
She looked up from her book, her pale green eyes limpid and wide, fringed with dark lashes. Tilting her head, she bit her pink lower lip. Her shoulders moved slightly, causing the neckline of her robe to gape, hinting at the cleavage of her full breasts beneath the silk. His heartbeat quickened.
“Fine,” he said. “I’ll give the dog a bath. Not because you asked me. Because I want to.”
Her smile widened, and she turned back to her book, calmly taking another sip of tea. He watched her lips press enticingly against the edge of the china cup, edged with twenty-four-carat gold.
“Maybe we can have a little quality time later,” he suggested.
Daisy looked at him sideways beneath her lashes. “Maybe.”
Glancing at their innocent baby, who seemed to be staring at them with big brown eyes, drool coming from her mouth as she’d just gotten her first tooth, Leonidas sat down next to his wife at the table. “Maybe we can have a lot of quality time later.”
Smiling, she put her hand on his cheek. “Maybe.”
They’d been married for nearly a year, but for Leonidas, it felt like they’d just met. Every day, he felt a greater rush, a greater thrill, at the joy of being with her.
But at the same time, he felt safe. He felt adored. He felt...home.
In the four months since they’d returned to New York, many things had changed. Daisy had become the most in-demand portrait artist in the city, all the more celebrated because she took so few clients. “I’m already so busy with our baby, and you,” she’d said. “I simply don’t have time for more right now.”
Who was Leonidas to argue? Whenever she was ready to become a full-time artist, he suspected Daisy would take over the world. He felt so proud to be her man. Especially since, as she often told him, he was the one who’d given her the courage, and inspiration, to draw again.
He was home more now, too. His company was in the process of hiring a new CEO, as Leonidas had decided to step back and merely be the largest shareholder. “I don’t have time for more,” he’d told his wife tenderly. “I’m already so busy with the baby. And you.”