Penniless and Secretly Pregnant Read online

  So why was he trying to hurt her like this?

  “Cheer up,” Leonidas whispered, as dinner ended and they rose to go out on the dance floor. “The auction will be fun.”

  “Easy for you to say.” Daisy tried not to feel anything as he pulled her into his arms. He was so powerful, so impossibly desirable in his sleek tuxedo. As he swayed her to the music, an old romantic ballad from the forties, he was the most handsome man in the world. Damn him.

  He smiled down at her, his dark eyes twinkling. “Everything will be fine. I promise.”

  “Yes, it will,” she retorted. “Because I’m leaving before the auction starts.”

  His smile dropped. “No. Please stay.” Licking his lips, he added, “For the kids.”

  “For the kids,” she grumbled. But it was strange. He didn’t seem like a man bent on her destruction. Was it possible Leonidas wasn’t actively trying to wreck her, but honestly believed someone might bid for her awful painting—against all those other amazing auction items?

  If he did, he was deluding himself. Just like Daisy had, for years. In spite of getting mediocre marks in art school, she’d always hoped that somehow she might succeed and make a living from art, as her father had. That she’d find her voice, as Leonidas once said.

  But she never had. Instead, she’d spent years suffering that terrible hope, getting gallery shows in Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island through her father’s connections, only to sell nothing. Friends had offered to come to the shows and buy her paintings, but of course Daisy couldn’t allow that. Her friends didn’t have money to waste, and anyway, she would have been glad to paint them something for free.

  But none of her friends had asked for a free painting. Which could mean only one thing: even her friends didn’t like her art, not really.

  Even Daisy herself wasn’t sure about it. But she’d still tried to force herself to be upbeat, desperately trying to promote her art to bored strangers.

  A year of that. Of awful hope, and finally crushing despair. There had been only one good thing to come from her father’s trial—a horrible silver lining that she’d never admitted, even to herself. He had needed her, and that had given her an excuse to surrender the horror of her dream.

  But now, Daisy was being forced to relive it all. She would never forgive Leonidas for this.

  “Are—you—ready?” The auctioneer chanted from the stage. There was an excited hubbub from guests at the cleared tables. Women in ball gowns and men in tuxedos sat on the edge of their seats, ready to bid vast fortunes for amusements and whims. For the kids, Daisy repeated to herself.

  Leonidas put his arm around her. “Try to enjoy this,” he whispered. Daisy stared at the oversize arrangement of white and red roses on the table and tried to breathe. Soon this would all be over.

  “Let’s get started,” the auctioneer boomed into the microphone. “For our first item...”

  Everything sold quickly—the guitar, the autographed book, the week in the Maldives. The audience was full of smiles and glee, happily getting into bidding wars with their friends, as if they were bidding with counterfeit money, and no amount was too high.

  And finally...

  “For our last item, we have an unsigned painting, by Anonymous. Do I have a bid?” Even the auctioneer sounded doubtful. “Uh, let’s start the bidding at...two hundred dollars.”

  It was the lowest starting bid of the night, by far. And Daisy knew that no one would even want to give that much. She braced herself for a long, awkward silence, after which Leonidas would be forced to make a pity bid, to try to save face. He would see he had no reason to believe in her. Even he would be forced to admit that Daisy was a talentless hack. She was near tears.

  “Two hundred dollars,” someone called from the back.

  Who was it? Daisy blinked, craning her neck.

  “Three hundred,” called a woman from a nearby table. She was a stranger. Daisy didn’t know anyone here, except Leonidas.

  “Five hundred,” someone else said.

  “A thousand,” cried an elderly man from the front.

  The bidding accelerated, became hotly contested—even more than the guitar once owned by Johnny Cash. Daisy sat in shock as the number climbed.

  Five thousand. Ten. Twenty. Fifty thousand. A hundred thousand dollars.

  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.

  Daisy was more beautiful than any art ever created.

  Her long brown hair fell over her bare shoulders. Her full breasts thrust up against the low sweetheart neckline of her red column dress, the fabric falling gently over the swell of her pregnant belly. Her dark lashes fluttered against her cheek as her teeth worried against her lower lip, so plump and red.

  In the shadows of the foyer, the sparkling light refracted in the hundred-year-old crystal chandelier, gleaming against her lips, her cheekbones, her luminous eyes.

  And then she’d kissed him.

  As her soft lips touched his, he felt a shock of electricity that coursed down his body, from his hair to his fingertips to his toes. His muscles went rigid. He burned, then melted.

  He’d been forcing himself to abide by his promise not to touch her. But every day, every hour, he’d felt the agony of that. All he’d wanted to do was kiss her, seduce her, possess her.

  But now she was kissing him.

  With a rush, he cupped his hands along her jawline, moving back to tangle in her hair, drawing her close. He kissed her hungrily, twining his tongue with hers. He felt out of control, as if his hunger might devour them both. He wrenched away, looking down at her. His heart was pounding.

  “Come to bed with me,” he whispered, running his hand down her throat, along the bare edge of her collarbone. He felt her tremble. Lowering his head, he softly kissed her throat, running his hand through her hair. “Come to bed...”

  Her green eyes were reckless and wild. Wordlessly, she nodded. But as he took her hand to lead her to the stairs, she swayed and seemed to stagger, as if her knees had gone weak.

  With one swoop, Leonidas lifted her up into his arms. She weighed nothing at all, he thought in wonder. As he carried her up the carved stone staircase, he looked down at her, marveling that she had such power over him.

  She’d bewitched him, utterly and completely. As he carried her up the stairs, all the darkness of his world receded. When he looked into her eyes, his heart felt warm and alive, instead of frozen in ice. Beneath the soft glow of her eyes, he could almost believe he wasn’t the monster his parents had believed him to be. Maybe he was someone worthy. Someone good.

  Leonidas carried her down the hall, into his shadowy bedroom, lit by dappled lights from the window. Outside, the city had fallen into deepening night. Across the street, he could see the illuminated tips of skyscrapers peeking over the rooftops, and beyond that, the twinkling stars, cold and distant.

  He lowered her reverently to the king-sized bed. Her honey-brown hair swirled like a cirrus cloud across the pillows. She looked up at him with heavy-lidded eyes, and he caught his breath.

  Leonidas dropped his tuxedo jacket and tie to the floor. Kicking off his shoes, he fell next to her on the bed. He slowly removed each of her high-heeled sandals, first one, then the other. Leaning forward, he cupped her face and kissed her tenderly. Her lips parted as he felt her sigh, and it took every ounce of his willpower to hold himself back, when all he wanted to do was possess her. Now.

  But he held himself back. She was pregnant with his baby. He would not overwhelm her. He would be gentle. He’d take his time. Lure her. Seduce her.

  And make her his own—forever.

  Reaching out, he gently cupped her cheek. His hand stroked whisper soft down her neck, to her bare shoulder.

  With an intake of breath, she met his gaze. Her eyes were full of tears as she tried to smile.

  “Leo,” she whispered.

  His heart lifted to his throat.

  Leo. She’d called him Leo. The name she’d used long ago, before she knew his true identity, back when she’d loved him...

  Leonidas shuddered with emotion. Wrapping his arms around her, he pulled her tight. As he kissed her, memories from last fall, when he’d known such joy in her arms, filled him body and soul. The night he’d first kissed her in Brooklyn, the night he’d taken her virginity, all the nights after.

  But this kiss was even better.

  Because now, Daisy knew who he was. She’d kissed him first. She knew the worst of him, but still wanted him.

  Except she didn’t know the worst. He sucked in his breath. And she must never know...

  No. He must not think of it. Not now. Not ever.

  He deepened the kiss, until it became rough, almost savage in his need to obliterate all else. Daisy’s embrace was passionate and pure, like the woman herself. Being in her arms was the only thing that made him forget...

  All thought, all reason, fled his mind as her lips seared his. Part of him almost expected she’d stop him, pull back, tell him she was too good for him—and how could he deny the truth of that?

  But she did not pull away. Instead, her lips strained against his, matching his fire. The whole world seemed to whirl around him as he held her, facing each other on the bed. He kissed slowly down her throat.

  “Sweet,” he groaned against her skin. “So sweet.”

  Her hands reached for the buttons of his white shirt. When they wouldn’t easily open, she reached beneath the fabric in her impatience, and stroked his bare chest. Sitting up, he ripped the shirt off his body, causing the final buttons to scatter noisily across the marble floor, along with his platinum cufflinks.

  Turning back to her, he unzipped the back of her red gown and gently pulled it down her body, revealing her white strapless bra, barely containing her overflowing breasts, and then her full, pregnant belly, her white lace panties clinging to her hips.

  He tossed the ball gown to the floor. He almost could not bear to look at her, she was so beautiful, looking up at him in the tiny white lingerie that revealed her explosive curves, her brown hair glossy and coiled over the pillows, her green eyes dark with desire.

  “Kiss me,” she whispered.

  A low groan escaped him, and he obeyed. He turned her to face him, kissing her for moments, or maybe for hours. Time seemed to stretch and compress as he was lost in her embrace. He kissed down her throat to the edge of the white satin bra. Reaching around her back, he loosened the clasp, and the fabric fell away. He looked at her breasts, so deliciously full, and holding his breath, he reached out to cup them with his hands.

  Her lips parted and her eyes closed, her expression lost in pleasure. He stroked her full nipples, causing them to pebble beneath his touch. Lowering his head, he pulled one into his mouth, swirling it with his tongue, suckling her.

  Her hands gripped the white duvet, as if she felt herself flying into the sky. He tenderly kissed around the curve of her full, pregnant belly. Moving back up, he kissed her lips long and lingeringly, before he finally drew back.

  Cupping her cheek, he looked down at her with sudden urgency in the darkness of the bedroom, with the twinkling lights of Manhattan slanted across the marble floor like trails of diamonds.

  “Marry me,” he whispered. “Marry me, Daisy.
”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  MARRY HIM?

  Daisy’s eyes flew open. She was naked, melting beneath his touch. She wanted him; oh, how she wanted him.

  But marry him?

  “I...” She shivered as Leonidas slowly stroked his warm hand down her cheek to her throat and the crevice between her breasts. Every part of her ached for his touch. Not just her body. Her heart.

  Looking at him in the shadowy bedroom, she’d suddenly seen the man she’d loved last fall. Leo. Her Leo. Her lover, with whom she’d spent so many days laughing, talking, kissing in the sunlight, holding hands beneath the autumn leaves. He hadn’t taken her virginity. She’d given it to him. Her Leo.

  But could she surrender everything? Could she ever forgive herself if she did? What kind of woman would she be?

  “I can’t marry you,” she whispered.

  “You know me.” His hands stroked softly down her body. Closing his eyes, he rested his head in the valley between her breasts. Surprised, she looked down and placed her hands gently against his dark hair. “I want to be with you. Always.”

  That couldn’t be tears in his eyes. No, impossible. Leonidas Niarxos was ruthless. He had no heart. He himself had said so.

  And yet, somehow Leonidas had become her Leo again. His eyes were like pools of darkness glittering with stars, as deep and unfathomable as the night. His body was Leo’s. His tanned, muscular chest was powerful, his skin like satin over steel. Daisy’s fingers wonderingly stroked his rough dark hair, his small, hard nipples, then down over the flat muscles of his belly.

  Leo, but not Leo. Not exactly. She knew too much now. Leo had been her equal. This man was more powerful than Daisy in every possible way. He was a famous, self-made billionaire who’d crushed the world beneath his Italian leather shoe, building a global fortune. He was the most eligible playboy in the world, handsome and rich, the man every woman wanted.