He gave her a wry smile. “Your grandmother didn’t know whether to hug me or slap me, did she?”
When they’d arrived a few hours earlier, Xerxes had already summoned the top cardiologist from San Francisco to meet them at the local hospital. The doctor had run tests on her grandmother’s heart and confirmed it hadn’t been an actual attack, but an “episode” that was no lasting cause for concern, as long as Dorothy Linden adjusted her diet and started getting more regular exercise.
The elderly woman, for her part, stubbornly maintained that no exercise or diet changes were necessary because she’d just had a broken heart worrying about her granddaughter.
And no wonder. Rose had discovered that Lars had explained her disappearance by telling them Rose was just a flighty, runaway bride who’d changed her mind and couldn’t be bothered to contact her family. That was his big explanation!
Rose growled. If she hadn’t hated Lars before, she’d have certainly hated him now. Rather than admit any of his own guilt, he’d left Rose in the position of having to explain to her grandmother—who was still in the hospital for observation, at the cardiologist’s insistence—why Rose, supposedly a married woman, had disappeared for days after her wedding only to reappear here today with another man on her arm!
Thank heaven for Xerxes. He’d been her rock through all of this. Looking up now at the set of his jaw, at the hard lines of his handsome face as he stared out the window of her bedroom, Rose blinked back tears. When she’d tried to explain to her family what had happened, she’d floundered helplessly.
Then Xerxes had stepped in. He’d gently explained to her grandmother that Lars had lied, that he’d never been free to wed and that he, Xerxes, had kidnapped Rose from her own wedding to force him to admit he already had a wife. Xerxes had quietly faced down her family’s wrath and blame, and told them he was sorry. He’d been kind and courteous.
The only thing he hadn’t told them was that he and Rose had become lovers. Which, in this family, was probably all for the best.
Now he was in Rose’s old bedroom. This handsome, powerful man, who’d been so good to her family. This devastatingly strong man who’d moved heaven and earth to bring Rose home in record time. This ruthless man who she knew had a good heart, no matter how he might try to hide it. This man she loved.
Looking at his dark figure in front of the window, she suddenly trembled in a way that had nothing to do with exhaustion.
“Why did you bring me home?” She rose slowly to her feet. “The local sheriff is a friend of the family. He lives just down the street.”
He stared at her, and for the first time she noticed the dark circles under his eyes. “If you want to escape, or have me arrested, I know I cannot stop you now.”
“So why did you do it? Why risk bringing me back here, when you knew you might lose me as a bargaining chip to get Laetitia—or worse?”
He looked down at the old hardwood floor. “Because your family means everything to you.” He smiled to himself. “They’re just like you said they were.”
As if on cue, she heard her young nephews scuffling downstairs, heard them knock something over with a loud crash. As her father’s loud scolding floated up through the floorboards, Xerxes gave a low laugh. “I never imagined a family could really be like this.”
“Was your childhood so different?”
His jaw clenched as he turned back to the window. “I always knew I was neither wanted nor loved. My mother was a maid in San Francisco who got pregnant by her boss.”
Her eyes widened. “You’re from San Francisco?”
He shrugged. “I lived there until I was five, when my mother got fed up with responsibility. She went back to her old employer and threatened to reveal my existence to his fragile, wealthy wife.” He gave a harsh laugh. “To get rid of the problem, my father paid her off, then sent me to live with my shamed grandparents in Greece.”
“At five!” Rose said, shocked. “That must have broken your mother’s heart!”
He snorted. “She took her payoff money and left for a life of excitement and freedom in Miami.” As if examining the fabric, he ran his hand idly along her old linen curtains. “She never wanted to go back to the life she’d fled, to a barren island of rocks and parents who despised her modern ways. My grandparents did not speak English and were ashamed of me, their bastard grandson. But my father—” he spat out the word “—sent some money, so I was a source of income they could not refuse.”
Rose stared at him, pain curling around her heart. She thought of the five-year-old boy, abandoned by his mother, rejected by his father, sent away to be ignored and despised by his grandparents in a faraway land.
Xerxes’s eyes traced around Rose’s old bedroom. “I used to dream of having a home like this, a family like this. When my grandparents didn’t speak to me for days, I dreamed of someday coming back to America and finding my real parents.”
“And did you?” she breathed.
He gave a hard, ugly laugh. “Yes. But by then I was a grown man who’d already made my fortune. I found my father and took his business apart.”
“You ruined your own father?” she whispered.
“And I enjoyed it.” His eyes glittered. “I did not know he would die from the heart attack. But I should have known he had a weak heart, from the way he condemned me as a child to loneliness and silence.”
“Oh, Xerxes…”
He paused. “I did keep the one secret he cared about, just out of spite. I never revealed to the world that I was his son.”
“You protected him.”
“He wasn’t the one I was protecting.” He abruptly closed the curtains, covering the window. “Then I went looking for my mother and found her in Florida, living in a rathole, abandoned by her latest lover, dying from liver disease and booze.”
“What did you do?”
“I brought her a bottle of vodka in a bright red bow.” He gave a hard laugh. “She was glad to see it. I’d planned to abandon her, as she had me.” He looked away. “Instead, I tried to get her to go to rehab, bought her a new apartment and paid her bills until she died.”
“You cared for her,” Rose whispered.
He shrugged with a casual air belied by the darkness in his eyes. “A moment of weakness. And she died anyway.”
Rose’s heart was in her throat. Coming behind him, she wrapped her arms around him, pressing her cheek to his back. “I’m sorry.”
He turned around in her arms.
“Now you know what I am,” he said in a low voice. “Now you know why you’d be a fool to love me. Even you. Especially you.”
But I do, she thought, her heart aching in her chest. I do love you.
Her lips parted to speak the words, but at that moment her bedroom door was pushed open with a loud squeak of the hinges. Her mother stood in the doorway, wearing her usual vintage floral apron over her pantsuit. Vera Linden took one look at the couple and put her hands on her hips.
“Now, you two,” she said warningly. She turned to Xerxes with a greater show of warmth. “Mr. Novros—”
“Xerxes,” he corrected her with a smile.
“Xerxes, we’ve set you up for the night in Tom’s old room down the hall. I’ll show you.” Her mother glanced between them sharply. “But there’ll be no funny business tonight. I mean it.”
“Of course not, ma’am,” Xerxes said meekly. He looked at Rose, and his dark eyes danced with sudden laughter. Then he sobered. “Get some