Penniless And Secretly Pregnant - Jennie Lucas Page 0,10
lawyer press charges? Should he have paid millions for a painting he knew was fake, or allowed someone else to potentially be defrauded? He’d done the right thing.
Obviously Daisy didn’t see it that way. He had to help her see it from his perspective. Setting his jaw, he led her down the dark, empty upstairs hallway and pushed open the second door, switching on the bedroom light.
She stopped in the doorway, glaring at him.
He felt irritated at her accusatory gaze. Did she really think he’d brought her into his bedroom to seduce her? That he intended to simply toss her on the bed and cover her with kisses until the past was forgiven and forgotten?
If only!
Leonidas forced himself to take a deep breath. He kept his voice calm and reassuring, just the way Daisy had spoken when she’d held that abandoned puppy in the alley.
“I’m just bringing you in here to talk,” he said soothingly. “Where no one else can hear us.”
She flashed him another glance he couldn’t read, but came into the bedroom. He closed the door softly behind her.
His bedroom was Spartan, starkly decorated with a king-sized bed, walk-in closet and a lot of open space. Through a large window, he could see the orange and red leaves of the trees on the quiet lane outside, darkening in the twilight.
Standing near the closed door, Daisy wrapped her arms around herself as if for protection, and said in a low voice, “Did you know who I was? The day we met?”
He could not lie to her. “Yes.”
She lifted pale green eyes, swimming with tears. “Why did you seduce me? For a laugh? For revenge?”
“No, Daisy, no—” He tried to move toward her, wanting to take her in his arms, to offer comfort. But she moved violently back before he could touch her. He froze, dropping his hands. “I saw a drawing of the trial, when your father’s verdict was read. It made me feel sorry for you.”
The emotion in her face changed to anger. “Sorry for me?”
That hadn’t come out right. “I heard your father died in prison, and I came looking for you because...because I wanted to make sure you were all right. And perhaps give you some money.”
“Money?” Her expression hardened. “Do you really think that could compensate me for my father’s death? Some... some payoff?”
“That was never my intention, it—” Leonidas cut himself off, gritting his teeth. He forced his voice to remain calm. “You never deserved to suffer. You were innocent.”
“So was my father!”
Against his best intentions, his own anger rose. “You cannot be so blind as to think that your father was innocent. Of course he wasn’t. He tried to sell a forgery.”
“Then he foolishly trusted the wrong person. Someone must have tricked him and convinced him the painting was real. He never would have tried to sell it otherwise! He was a good man! Perfect!”
“Are you kidding? Your father was selling forgeries for years.”
“No one else ever accused him—”
“Because either they were too embarrassed, or they didn’t realize the paintings were fakes. Your father knew he wasn’t selling a real Picasso.”
“How would he know that? No one has seen the painting for decades. How did that lawyer lackey of yours even know it wasn’t real?”
Leonidas had a flash of memory from twenty years before. His misery as a boy at his parents’ strange neglect and hatred. The shock of his mother’s final abandonment. His heartbroken fury, as a boy of fourteen. He could still feel the cold steel in his hand. The canvas ripping beneath his blade in the violent joy of destruction, of finally giving in to his rage—
Looking away, Leonidas said tightly, “I was the one who knew it was a fake. From the moment I saw it in Ross’s office.”
“You.” Daisy glared at him in the cold silence of his bedroom, across the enormous bed, which he’d so recently dreamed of sharing with her. “Why couldn’t you just let it go? What’s one Picasso to you, more or less?”
Leonidas’s shoulders tightened. He didn’t want to think about what it meant to him. Or why he’d been looking for it so desperately for two decades.
“So I should have just let your father get away with his deceit?” he said coldly. “Allowed him to continue passing off fake paintings?”
“My father was innocent!” Her expression was fierce. “He looked into my eyes and swore it!”
“Because he couldn’t bear for you to know the truth. He loved you too much.”
Anguish shone in her beautiful