by Jennie Lucas
“Do you want me to come with you?” Leonidas asked.
“No,” Daisy said.
Leonidas watched as she disappeared into the busy, bright diner. He thought of the morning they’d first met. She’d taken one look at his expensive designer suit and laughed. “Nice suit. Headed to court? Unpaid parking tickets?” With a warm smile, she’d held up her coffee pot. “You poor guy. Coffee’s on me.”
They’d ended up spending the rest of the day together. If it had been one of his typical dates, he would have taken Daisy to the most exclusive restaurant in Manhattan, then perhaps out dancing at a club, then a nightcap at his mansion. But he’d known it couldn’t be a date, not when he couldn’t even tell her his real name.
So they’d simply spent the afternoon walking around her neighborhood in Brooklyn, visiting quirky little shops she liked, walking down the street lined with red brick buildings, ending with the view of the East River, and the massive bridge sticking out against the sky. Daisy greeted people by name on the street, warmly, and their eyes always lit up when they saw her.
It had been a wild ride, one that would put the roller coasters at Coney Island to shame. She’d made him come alive in a way he’d never imagined. Joy and color and light had burst into his life that day, from the moment he’d met her in this diner. It had been like a vibrant summer after a long, frozen winter.
But it could never be like that again. He would never be Leo again. Daisy would never look at him with love in her eyes again.
No. They would be partners. He wouldn’t, couldn’t, ask for more. Not when he had nothing more to give in return.
Waiting in the back seat of the Range Rover, he tried to distract himself with his phone. He had ten million messages from board members and designers and marketing heads, all of them anxious about various things; he found it difficult to care. He was relieved when he finally heard the SUV’s door open.
“Everything all right?” he asked.
“I quit.” Daisy gave a wistful smile. “Claudia—that’s my boss—said she didn’t need me to give notice. Turns out my job sitting at the cash register was not actually that useful, but she couldn’t fire a pregnant single mother.” She paused. “But now that I’ve got a billionaire baby daddy...”
Leonidas smiled. “You told her about me?”
She paused, then looked away. “Not everything.”
Silence fell as his driver took them out of Brooklyn, crossing back over the bridge into Manhattan.
Leonidas watched her, feeling strangely sad. He fought to push the emotion away. Work, he thought. Work could save them.
“So you haven’t heard of Vertigris or Helios,” he said finally. “What about Bandia?”
Still looking out the window, Daisy shook her head.
“It’s a small luxury brand that does only maternity clothing and baby clothing. We could go there to look for your coat.”
“Okay.” Her voice was flat.
“Or Astrara. Have you heard of that?”
Daisy finally looked at him, her face annoyed. “Of course I’ve heard of Astrara. I don’t live under a rock.”
Finally, she’d actually heard of one of his brands. He was slightly mollified. He maybe should have started with Astrara, as famous as Gucci or Chanel. “Which do you prefer to visit first? Bandia? Astrara? One of the others?”
“Does it matter?”
“Of course it matters,” he said. He waited.
Daisy sat back against the seat. “Bandia,” she sighed. “It sounds like it has the most reasonable prices.”
Leonidas was careful not to disabuse her of that notion as they arrived at the grand Fifth Avenue boutique. After pulling in front, the driver turned off the engine. Tourists passing on the sidewalk gawked at them.
“Even in Manhattan,” she grumbled. “Everyone stares at you.”
Hiding a smile, Leonidas turned to help Daisy out. “They’re looking at you.”
Biting her lip, she took his hand, but to his disappointment, dropped it as soon as she was out of the SUV. As they walked into the boutique, Bandia’s shop assistants audibly gasped.
“Mr. Niarxos!”
“You honor us!”
“Sir! We are so happy to...”
He cut them off with a gesture toward Daisy: “This is my—” future wife...baby mama...lover... “—dear friend, Miss Cassidy. She needs a new wardrobe. I trust you can help her find things to her taste.”
“Wardrobe!” Daisy gasped. She immediately corrected, “I just need a coat.”
The assistants turned huge, worshipful eyes to Daisy. “Welcome to Bandia!”
“Miss Cassidy, may I get you some sparkling water? Fruit?”
“This way, if you please, to the private dressing suite, madam.”
Perfect, Leonidas thought in approval. Just as he’d expected. He’d send the CEO of Bandia a note and let her know he approved of staff training levels.
“Madam, what type of clothes do you prefer?” The store’s manager hurried to pay her obeisance as well. “Our newest releases for the fall line? Or perhaps the latest for resort?”
Daisy stared at them like a deer in headlights. “I just...need a coat,” she croaked.
“Bring everything and anything in her size,” Leonidas answered. “So she can decide.”
They were both led to the VIP dressing suite, which had its own private lounge, where Leonidas could sit on a white leather sofa and drink champagne, as salesgirls brought rack after rack of expensive, gorgeous clothing for Daisy to try on in the adjacent changing room behind a thick white velvet curtain.
“I don’t need all these clothes,” she grumbled to Leonidas. “Why should I try them on, when I don’t need them?”
“Market research?”
“Fine,” she sighed.
Reluctantly, she tried on outfit after expensive outfit. Each time she stepped in front of the mirrors in the lounge, the salesgirls joyfully exclaimed over her.
“You look good in everything!”
“Beautiful!” another sighed.
“I hope when I’m pregnant someday I’ll look half as good as you!”
It was true, Leonidas thought. Daisy looked good in everything. As she stood in front of the mirrors in an elegant maternity pantsuit, he marveled at her chic beauty.
“Do you like it?” he called.
Glancing back at him, she shrugged. “It’s all right.”
“Just all right?”
“It’s not very... comfortable.”
He frowned. That wasn’t something he ever worried about. “Comfortable?”
“I prefer my T-shirts and stretch pants,” she said cheerfully.
“Keep looking.”
Rolling her eyes a little, Daisy continued to try on clothes for the next hour, as Leonidas sat on the leather sofa, sipping complimentary Vertigris champagne—one of Liontari’s other brands, from a two-hundred-year-old vineyard in France. His company was nothing if not vertically integrated.
Every time she stepped out of the changing room, to stand in front of the large mirrors in the lounge, Leonidas asked hopefully, “Do you like it?”
Always, the shrug. “It’s fine.”
“Fine?” A thousand-dollar maternity tunic was fine?
“Not as good as my usual T-shirts. Which, by the way, you can buy three for ten dollars.” She tilted her head. “Is this the kind of market research you were looking for?”
Leonidas felt disgruntled. He’d hoped to impress her. Obviously it wasn’t working. The only thing that had made Daisy’s eyes sparkle was when the salesgirls brought over baby outfits that matched the postpartum clothes, cooing, “This will be perfect after your little one is born!”
Then Daisy looked at the price tag. “Three hundred dollars? For a baby dress that will be covered in spit-up, and probably
only worn twice before she outgrows it?” She’d shaken her head. “And it’s kind of scratchy. I want my baby to be comfortable and cozy, too!” Then Daisy looked around with a frown. “Don’t you have any winter coats?”
The salesgirls looked at each other sheepishly. “I’m sorry, Miss Cassidy,” one said. “It’s March. We cleared out all the winter clothes for our new spring line.”
“It’s still snowing, and you’re selling bikinis,” Daisy said, her voice full of good-humored regret.
“There might be a few coats on the sales rack,” one salesgirl said hesitantly.
Daisy seemed overjoyed when one puffy white coat fit her—if anything, it was a little too big. “And it’s cozy, too!” Then she saw the price, and her smile disappeared. “Too much!”
“It’s fifty percent off,” Leonidas pointed out irritably.
“Still too much,” Daisy said, but she continued hugging the coat around her tightly, as if she never wanted to take it off.
“We’ll take it,” he told the sales staff.
“I can’t possibly let you pay—”
“You won’t let me buy a cheap coat, from my own company? To warm the mother of my child? Are you really so unkind?”
Daisy hugged the coat around her, then said in a small voice, “All right, I guess. Thank you.” She looked at Leonidas. “Are you ready to go?”
Finally. He’d convinced her to let him buy something. But he’d wanted to buy her so much more. “Not quite.” He looked at the salesgirls. “She needs a ball gown.”
As the staff left the lounge to gather the dresses, Daisy looked at him incredulously. “A ball gown? You can’t be serious.”
“I’m taking you to a party on Saturday.”
She groaned. “A party?”
“It’s for charity.” He quirked an eyebrow. “A fundraiser for homeless children. Don’t you want to come and make sure they get a healthy chunk of my ill-gotten fortune?”
“Fine,” she sighed. A moment later, when the salesgirls rolled a large rack of maternity ball gowns into the lounge, she grabbed the closest one, which was a deep scarlet red. She went back into the private changing room to try it on.
Leonidas waited to see it, practically holding his breath.
But when Daisy pushed back the curtain a few moments later, she was dressed in her white shirt and black leggings. “I’m done.”
“But the gown?”
“The gown is fine.”
She wasn’t going to let him see it, he realized. Disappointed, he said hastily, “You must need new lingerie for—”
Daisy snorted. “I’m not trying that on in front of you. Are you ready to go?”
“Aren’t there any other things you want to try on? Anything at all?”
“Nope.” She turned with a smile to the salesgirls, hugging them. “Thank you so much for your help, Davina, Laquelle, Mary. And Posey—good luck on law school!”
Trust Daisy to make friends, instead of picking out designer outfits. As they left Bandia, going outside to where the SUV waited, Leonidas helped Daisy—now wearing her new white coat—into the back seat, as Jenkins tucked the carefully wrapped red ball gown into the trunk.
Daisy’s pink lips lifted mischievously. “I’m sorry I didn’t love all the clothes.”
“It’s fine.” But he felt irritated. If not Bandia, surely one of his other luxury brands would make her appreciate his multibillion-dollar global conglomerate! He turned to Jenkins. “Take us to Astrara.”
But even the dazzling delights of the famous three-story boutique, as enormous as a luxury department store, seemed to leave her cold. Daisy made friends with the salesgirls, and marveled at the cost of the clothes, which she proclaimed were also “weird looking” and “scratchy.”
After that, he took Daisy to a luxury beauty and skin-care boutique, which seemed to bore her. “I like the stuff from the drugstore,” she informed him.
Finally, in desperation, he took them to a famous perfumery on Fifth Avenue, Loyavault.
As she walked through the aisles of luxury perfume, she seemed dazzled by the lovely colors and bright boxes and lush scents. She bent her head to smell one perfume in a pink bottle, and her green eyes lit up with a bright smile.
“Wow,” she whispered.
Leonidas felt the same, just looking at her.
He took the bottle from her hand. “Floral, roses and white jasmine, with an earthy note of amber.” They stood close, so close, almost touching. “I’ll have them wrap it up for you.”
She bit her lip. “I shouldn’t.”
“I missed your birthday,” he said quietly. “Won’t you let me get you a present?”
She exhaled, then slowly nodded.
“But after this, we’re done shopping.”
Giving in to the inevitable, he sighed.
Daisy wasn’t impressed by luxury. Or his company. Or him. It hurt his pride, a little. In each store, Daisy had been treated as if she were the queen of England, visiting from Buckingham Palace. Each time, she blushed with confusion, but was soon chatting with the staff on a first-name basis. And before long, the employees seemed to forget the powerful Liontari CEO was even there.
The salesgirls treasured Daisy for herself. He wasn’t the only one to see Daisy’s bright warmth. She shone like a star.
What a corporate wife she would make!
“Shall we go for lunch?” he asked as they left Loyavault. Outside, the March sun had come out, and the air was blue and bright, as the spring snow started to melt like it had never existed. She looked at him with a skeptical eye.
“Let me guess. Some elegant Midtown restaurant, French and fancy?”
He hastily rethought his restaurant choice.
“There’s a place just a block away. It’s French, but not fancy. Strictly speaking, it’s not precisely French, but Breton. Crepes.”
“You mean like pancakes? Yum.”
Thus encouraged, he said, “Shall we walk? Or ride?”
“Walk.”
They strolled the long city block to the small hole-in-the-wall establishment, tucked into a side street, where it had existed for fifty years. He led her into the wood-paneled restaurant, rustic as a Breton farmhouse, with a crackling wood-burning fire.
Unlike the more elegant restaurants, no one knew Leonidas here. He’d been here only once before, when he’d visited the city on a weekend from Princeton. They had to wait for a table.
But Daisy didn’t seem to mind. She took his arm as they waited together in the tight reception space, and all of Leonidas’s ideas of trying to bribe someone for an earlier table flew out the window.
Soon, a wizened host with a white beard led them to a tiny table for two near the fire. He didn’t give them menus.
“You want the full?” the elderly man asked in an accented, raspy voice.
Leonidas and Daisy looked at each other.
“Yes?” he said.
“Sure?” she said.
“Cider,” the man demanded.
“Just water,” Leonidas replied. “Thank you.”
After the waiter departed, he looked at Daisy across the table. “You don’t really seem to like luxury. Fancy restaurants, fancy cars, fancy clothes.”
She suddenly looked guilty. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be rude...”
“You’re never rude,” he said. “I’m just curious why?”
“More market research?”
“If you like.”
She sighed. “It all just seems so expensive. So...unnecessary.”
“Unnecessary?” He felt a little stung. “Would you call art necessary?”
Daisy looked at him with startled eyes. “Of course it’s necessary! It’s an expression of the soul. The exploration and explanation of what makes us human.”
“The same could be
said of clothing. Or makeup or perfume. Or food.”
She started to argue, then paused, stroking her chin.
“You’re right,” she admitted.
Leonidas felt a surge of triumph way out of proportion for such a small victory.
“Here,” the white-bearded man said abruptly, shoving plates at them with savory buckwheat galettes, filled with the traditional ham, cheese and a whole cooked egg in the middle.
“Thank you.” Daisy’s eyes were huge. Then she took a bite. The sound of her soft moan of pleasure shook Leonidas. “It’s—so—good,” she breathed, and holding her fork like a weapon, she gobbled down the large crepe faster than he’d ever seen anyone eat before. He looked at her, and could think of nothing else but wanting to hear her make that sound again.
“Would you like another?”
“Another?” She licked her lips, and he had to grip the table.
“Save room for—dessert—” He managed to croak out. If only the dessert could be in his bedroom, with her naked, like that time with the ice cream. That would be the perfect end to their meal. Or anytime. Forever—
“Are you going to eat that?” Daisy said, looking longingly at his untouched crepe.
He pushed it toward her. “Please take it.”
“Thank you,” she almost sang, as if he’d just done something worthy of the Nobel Prize. And she ate that one, too, in rapid time.
Leonidas couldn’t tear his eyes away as she lifted the fork to her mouth, before sliding it out again. As she leaned forward, her collar gaped, and he saw the push of her soft breasts against the hard wood of the table—
With a gulp, he looked away. A moment later, the plates were cleared.
“Ready for dessert?” the elderly man barked.
“Yes, please,” she said, smiling back at him warmly. “I’ve never tasted anything so delicious in my life.”
The old man frowned, and then his wrinkled eyes suddenly beamed at her. “You have good sense, madame.”
Another conquest fell at Daisy’s feet. But then, who could resist her?
Not Leonidas.
But he was, stupidly, the only man on earth who’d given his word of honor never to kiss her.
