Page 4 of Virgin's Night with the Greek

He arched one sceptical eyebrow. ‘I find that hard to believe.’

For a moment, she just stared at him in appalled horror. Was he implying what she thought he was implying? ‘And what, exactly, is that supposed to mean?’

‘You’re hardly a well-known name,’ he said, and she inwardly winced because it was undeniably true. ‘So how did you come to be painting my mother?’

‘Not that it’s any of your business,’ said Willow icily, ‘but we met at the launch of a new art gallery in London. I was waitressing. She admired my hair. We got chatting. She mentioned wanting a portrait done. I sent her some photos of my work and that was it.’

‘Does it always take a month?’

‘Two to three weeks, usually.’ To fit around her menstrual cycle, not that she was going to tell himthat. ‘Hers took longer because she kept disappearing.’

‘So you moved in.’

‘She invited me to,’ she said, annoyed that she was even bothering to give him an explanation when none was needed. ‘She was really quite insistent about it. I got the impression she was lonely.’

‘Lonely?’ he said with a bark of humourless laughter. ‘That’s ridiculous. She’s constantly surrounded by people, some of whom have been known to take advantage of her ridiculous generosity.’

‘Yes, well, someone once sang about being alone in a crowded room, and you can think what you like about people taking advantage of your mother, but I’m not one of them.’

Leo’s dark eyes narrowed while he considered her words and despite the outrage swirling around inside her, Willow grudgingly supposed she could see where his concern was coming from even if she didn’t appreciate his accusations. His family was not only one of the most glamorous in the world, it was also one of the wealthiest. He regularly appeared on various rich lists. He didn’t know anything about her, and, possibly understandably, he obviously didn’t trust Selene to make sensible decisions.

‘What’s your objection to the portrait anyway?’ she said, choosing to let the matter of her motives go because either he believed her or he didn’t, and bringing the conversation back to the point. ‘Have you actually seen it?’

Leo visibly shuddered and winced. ‘What? No. I can’t think of anything worse.’

‘You should. It’s very tasteful. Your mother is beautiful. She’s a woman in love and that shines through.’

‘She’s always in love. Or thinks she is.’

The disdain evident in his voice piqued her curiosity. ‘Do you have a problem with love?’

His jaw tightened. ‘I have a problem with a life-size nude picture of my middle-aged mother going on public display.’

‘You don’t know how lucky you are to have a middle-aged mother to be captured on paper and put on display in the first place,’ she said, swallowing down the small tight lump that lodged in her throat. ‘Mine died a decade ago, when she was thirty-nine and I was fourteen. I’d give anything to have her back and paint her now, clothed or unclothed, whatever her behaviour.’

Some undefinable emotion flickered across Leo’s expression, but thankfully he didn’t produce the standard yet meaningless, in this context,I’m sorry.

‘Tell me what you want, Miss Jacobs,’ he said instead, which at least had the benefit of yanking her out of her melancholy and refocusing her thoughts. ‘There will be something.’

His arrogance was outrageous, but Willow was not to be deterred. No amount of money—or anything else—was going to sway her. Not when everything she’d ever dreamed of professionally was within touching distance.

‘Mr Stanhope,’ she said with a tight smile. ‘Leo, if I may. It’s not about the money. At least, not entirely. It’s more about opportunity, and this exhibition is a once-in-a-lifetime one. I want my name to be on everyone’s lips in the art world. I want to be the go-to artist for a portrait in pastel. I’ve waited a long time for this break. So you could offer me the sun, the moon and the stars and it would be in vain. There is absolutely nothing you can say or do that will make me change my mind.’

‘No?’ he said after a beat. ‘Well, how about this? The picture is due to go on show two weeks on Monday, right?’

Wondering where he was going with this, Willow nodded warily. ‘That’s correct.’

‘My sister is getting married the following Thursday.’

‘I heard.’ Selene had shown her the dress she was planning to wear. Willow had only just about managed to hide her appal and keep to herself her thoughts about the mother of the bride wearing white—and not all that much of it—to her daughter’s special day.

‘The fact that a wedding is even taking place is a miracle,’ said Leo. ‘When Daphne was thirteen she was diagnosed with leukaemia. The outlook was not good. She wasn’t expected to live more than five years. But she has. She’s in remission. And now she’s found someone with whom she wants to spend the rest of her hopefully long life. This wedding of hers is a huge event. A celebration of survival as well as their relationship. There will be seven hundred guests in attendance. Family. Friends. Europe’s elite and its biggest gossips. I will not have Daphne, or her fiancé, being upstaged by anything or anyone. Least of all a scandalous portrait of our thoughtless, self-centred, hedonistic mother.’

Leo stopped, a muscle pounding in his cheek, his dark eyes blazing, as if this mattered a lot to him, as if it wasn’t really about the picture at all. And as Willow processed his words and the tone in which they’d been delivered, which suggested he cared about his sister deeply and wasn’t simply out to spoil anyone’s fun, she realised she’d been wrong. Because therewassomething that could change her mind, after all.

CHAPTER TWO

LEOWAITEDFORWillow’s response to his last line of defence, his heart beating oddly fast and his head pounding. Persuading her to see the situation his way was proving harder than he’d anticipated. In his experience, the other side always,alwayscapitulated. But not the woman standing in front of him with her arms folded across her chest and her chin up. Disconcertingly, she didn’t seem remotely fazed by him.

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