Penniless And Secretly Pregnant - Jennie Lucas Page 0,48

And who could be more trustworthy than Daisy?

He wanted to tell his wife the truth. But the idea was terrifying. Even as he’d held his new bride, snuggled up against him, on the overnight flight from New York, tension had built inside him.

So he’d promised himself that he’d tell her at the end of their honeymoon, after a week of lovemaking, eating fresh seafood and watching the sun set over the Aegean.

Appearance is what matters. How many times had his parents drilled that into him as a child—not just by words, but by example? At twenty-one, he’d thrown himself into the luxury business, determined to do even better than Giannis and Eleni Niarxos had in projecting an aura of perfection. Leonidas had become his brand—global, wealthy, sophisticated, cold.

Except there was this quiet voice inside him, growing steadily harder to repress, that he was more than his brand, so much more. He wasn’t the monster his parents had called him; he could be warm and alive. Like her.

Daisy licked her delicious pink lips. “What do you mean?” she said haltingly, her voice like music. “I don’t know who you are?”

In her arms, pressed against her breasts and belly, she cradled her sketch of him.

It was the sketch which had made him blurt out the words. The man in her drawing looked strong and warm and kind and sure, with humor gleaming from his eyes. Nothing like Leonidas had ever been. Not even as a boy.

But perhaps he could still become that man if—

“Leo?”

“I was never meant to be born,” he said. “My very existence is a lie.” He gave a grim smile. “You might say I’m a forgery.”

“What are you talking about?”

Leonidas took a deep breath. “You think I’m Leonidas Gianakos Niarxos, the son of Giannis Niarxos.”

Her lovely face looked bewildered. “Aren’t you?”

This was harder than he’d thought. He could not force the words from his lips. His whole body was screaming Danger! and telling him to be quiet before it was too late, before he risked everything.

Rising from the chair, he paced the wide terrace. He felt her eyes follow him. He probably looked crazy. Because he was. Keeping this story buried inside him for so long had made him crazy.

Turning, Leonidas gripped the railing of the balustrade, looking out at the sea beneath the hot Greek sun. “My parents married for love.” He paused. “That was unusual for wealthy Greek families at the time. And they were young. My father was heir to the Niarxos company, which made luxury leather goods. My mother was the heiress to a shipping fortune. She brought money as her dowry—and a Picasso.”

“Love with Birds,” Daisy whispered, then cut herself off.

“Yes.” He glanced back at her. “From everything I’ve heard, my parents were crazy about each other.” His hands tightened. “But years passed, and they could not have a baby. Society’s golden couple was not perfect after all. All of their friends, who’d been secretly jealous of their flaunted passion, taunted them with their smug pity. And when it turned out to be my father’s fault that they could not conceive, my mother started complaining about him to her friends. Their love evaporated into rage and blame.” He glanced back at her. “I only heard of this years later, you understand.”

Daisy’s face was pale. “Then you were born...”

“Right.” Leonidas gave a crooked smile. “Nine months later, I was born. Their marriage was saved. And that was the end of it.”

Setting down her sketchbook carefully on the table, she rose to her feet. Going to him on the edge of the terrace, she said quietly, “What really happened?”

His heart was pounding painfully beneath his ribs. “I’m the only one alive,” he whispered, “who knows the full story.”

Leonidas looked down at the pounding surf on the white sand beach below.

“From the time I was born, everything I did or said seemed to set my father on edge, making him yell that I was useless and stupid. My mother just avoided me. It was only at fourteen, after my father’s funeral, that I learned the reason why.”

Standing beside him, Daisy didn’t say a word.

“I always had the best clothes, the best education money could buy. Appearance was what mattered to them. No one must criticize how they treated their only child.” He paused. “If not for Maria, I’m not sure I would have survived.”

Reaching out, she put her hand over his on the railing. “Leo...”

Leonidas pulled his hand away. He couldn’t bear to be touched. Not now.