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‘What was it you said? Oh, that’s right. It has to be real.’ His lips curved upwards and he stroked a strand of hair away from her face. ‘I’d say that was pretty damn real.’

There was no mistaking the gleam of satisfaction in his eyes.

Daisy stared at him dazedly. Her heart was slamming into her ribcage. With shock and more than a little embarrassment she realised that her fingers were still wrapped around his arm and slowly, cautiously, not wanting to draw attention to the fact, she lifted her hand.

He watched her calmly. ‘So... Last chance. What’s it to be? Me? Or the police?’

Daisy flinched. The bluntness of his question was like a punch to the jaw. If it had been just her, she wouldn’t have hesitated. She would have turned him down right there and then. He was ruthless and cold-blooded. The relationship he was suggesting would be a travesty of everything she believed. Why, then, w

as she considering marrying a man she hated with whom she would share nothing but a lie?

Because it wasn’t just about her. There were other people to consider. Not just David but her parents too.

Before she could change her mind, she met his gaze and said quickly, ‘You.’

He smiled a small triumphant smile that made panic trickle over her skin, cold and damp like rain. She was too ashamed of herself to care. Too ashamed that her decision had been made not solely out of love and loyalty but because being with Rollo would mean that, just for a while, she could forget Daisy Maddox and her hopeless dreams of true love. Because right now finding the right man was a whole lot scarier than the thought of faking it with the wrong one.

‘Good. Then we should leave.’

‘I want to see David—’

He shook his head. ‘Another time. He needs to go home.’ His eyes met hers—clear, green, assessing. ‘And you need to come with me. To the Upper East Side,’ he said lazily. ‘Your home for the next twelve months.’

Home! The word sounded so warm and friendly. Daisy bit her lip. It seemed unlikely, but maybe Rollo really did have a softer, warmer side. And silently she prayed that he did. Otherwise she was going to spend the next twelve months feeling like an inmate at the world’s most exclusive prison.

CHAPTER THREE

I AM SO not ready for this, Daisy thought as just over an hour later she followed Rollo into the hallway of his penthouse on Park Avenue.

Everything was moving so fast.

Waiting in the lift, she’d half thought that the whole crazy plan might just dissolve in the face of reality. But Rollo had overseen all the arrangements with a quiet, indisputable authority. David had been escorted home and told to take a few days’ leave. Daisy’s absence had been explained by a hastily concocted plan involving a last-minute callback for a part at a theatre in Philadelphia.

Within minutes of agreeing to become his wife it felt as though time had sped up exponentially, so that one moment she’d been standing in his office and the next she’d been sitting in a sleek black limousine, moving smoothly through traffic towards the Upper East Side.

She might have started to panic sooner, only she had been so distracted by how it had felt when he’d kissed her that she had barely registered the journey. Instead she had simply sat in silence, replaying the moment when his lips had touched hers.

Gazing up, she felt her heartbeat slow. In his office she had just been grateful that Rollo had not called the police. But now that her panic had gone and she was standing in a hallway roughly the same size as David’s entire apartment she felt the same mixture of shock and doubt as an astronaut crash-landing on a strange alien planet.

It didn’t feel real. It certainly didn’t feel like her life anymore.

In front of her a huge chandelier made of crystal droplets cascaded down like a waterfall into the centre of the marble floor, while on the far side of the hallway a staircase wide enough for a car rose gracefully up to a galleried landing. But what drew her attention most were the three vast contemporary canvases on the walls.

Gazing at the one nearest, she frowned. It looked familiar...

‘It’s a Pollock. One of his earlier works.’

Her pulse jolted forward like a startled deer. Engrossed by her new surroundings, she had completely forgotten that Rollo was there. But her shock was quickly supplanted as his words registered on her brain.

A Pollock! Rollo owned an actual Jackson Pollock.

The thought blew her mind.

Theoretically, she knew he was rich, but this was a real work of art—the sort that fetched millions at auction. And it was in his hallway.

Hoping she didn’t look as gauche as she felt, she nodded nonchalantly. ‘David loves his paintings.’

‘Personally I find them a little busy. But these...’ he gestured casually towards the walls ‘...weren’t my choice anyway. My curator picked them. He thinks they have the greatest potential to rise in value.’

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