She set her coffee cup down on the table with a trembling hand. “You must think I’m the biggest idiot in the world,” she whispered, blinking fast. “Believing Lars would actually marry anybody like me.”
Staring at her, Xerxes abruptly grabbed both of her hands in his own. The sizzle of her soft touch, of her fingers against his rough palm, was torture. Ignoring the pain of his own longing, he looked into her beautiful face.
“Anybody? You weren’t just anybody. You were the special one.” His fingers tightened over hers as he whispered, “You were the only one he wanted to keep.”
As if his touch burned her, she ripped her hands from his grasp, looking away.
“I still don’t understand what he was doing in San Francisco when we met. He told me that he’d been looking for business opportunities—” she gave a small laugh “—but I’ve never seen him work.”
Xerxes set his jaw, fighting the fury that threatened to choke him at the memory. “There’s a medical clinic an hour east of San Francisco, the best brain trauma hospital in the world. At first I thought he’d taken Laetitia there. Instead, he dumped her at an old cabin in the mountains before he went to San Francisco to try to put her family’s mansion up for sale.”
Rose blinked. “A cabin?”
“It’s old and desolate. No electricity. No running water.” Grimly, he looked away. “When I arrived, I found dying embers in the fireplace, a new blanket on the floor, an open bag of potato chips in the kitchen. But Laetitia was gone. Since then, I’ve chased rumors of her around the world, looking in one desolate clinic after another, trying to find her before Lars finally gets his wish and she dies.”
“I still can’t believe he would be so cruel.”
“You can’t?” He gave a hard, ugly laugh. “Love brings out the worst kind of self-deception.”
Rose’s turquoise eyes looked close to tears as she sucked in her breath. “You can’t still think I love him!”
He shrugged.
“What happened to you?” she said softly. “What made you so hard and cynical?”
“I just know that when people think they’re in love—” he couldn’t keep the sneer out of his voice “—they’re usually lying. Either to others, or to themselves.”
She blinked at him. “And yet you say you love her.”
Clenching his jaw, Xerxes looked away. “I won’t abandon her. I won’t leave her to die alone and be forgotten. I can’t. I won’t.”
He could see the questions in her eyes. Her body leaned toward him. But he wouldn’t allow her to get any closer. His need for her already made him too vulnerable. He could not imagine what would happen if he wanted more than just her body. If he started wanting part of her heart. If he someday wanted to actually be the good man she thought he was.
Clenching his jaw, he looked down at her.
“Laetitia was barely eighteen when Växborg married her in Las Vegas. They must have argued because she was driving back alone. My guess is that she’d already decided to leave him. Then she crashed in the desert.” His hands tightened. “For a year, I’ve tried to find her. But I feel like I’m running out of time.”
His voice choked. He looked away.
Suddenly, he felt Rose’s soft arms around him. She’d risen from her chair and now knelt before him, pulling him into her embrace without a word.
For a moment, he breathed in the scent of flowers and sunshine. He felt comforted. He felt safe, even protected. But that was ridiculous. He’d never been protected by anyone. So how could he feel so safe in the arms of this woman who was a foot shorter and half his body weight, who had no money in her bank account and no power of her own?
Except that was a lie. Rose had incredible power, a strength he’d never seen before. She made him betray himself from within. She tempted him beyond measure. Not just with her body or beauty or strength.
She made him feel…like he was home.
With an intake of breath, he closed his eyes.
“You once said everything and everyone could be bought,” she said.
His eyes flew open. “Yes.”
“So why not just pay Lars off, allow him to keep Laetitia’s fortune?”
“Reward him for what he’s done to her?” he demanded fiercely. “Allow him to profit for nearly killing her?”
Her eyes met his. “It would be the easiest thing to do.”
“I do not care about easiest. I care about right. He will not receive a single euro from me. Ever,” he bit out.
“Just as I thought,” she said with a tremulous smile. “A man of principle. But there’s one small problem.”
“And that is?”
She took a deep breath. “What if Lars changes his mind about giving up everything for me?”
Xerxes reached out to stroke her cheek. “He won’t. A man would do anything to possess a woman like you,” he whispered. “He would betray his own soul.”
She held her breath.
He started to lean toward her. Then he stopped himself, clenching his hands to his fists.
Abruptly, he rose to his feet. “I should go.”
She grabbed his arm.
“Stay,” she said, looking up at him.
“If I stay,” he said in a low voice, “I will kiss you.”
“I know.”
He looked down at her harshly. “Do you know what you’re asking me?”
“Yes.” She looked up at him, her turquoise eyes full of light as she whispered, “I want you to kiss me.”
ROSE heard his harsh intake of breath. It was all she could do to not to release his arm. Heat suffused her cheeks at her bold words.
But she’d said it. She’d actually said the thought that had been pounding in her heart all night as she lay alone in the large bed. The question that had built inside her all morning as she made breakfast.
She’d realized Xerxes would never go back on his word not to kiss her. If she wanted him, she would have to beg.
He turned to her now, cradling her face in his strong hands as he looked down at her with such hot intensity that she felt lost in it.
“If I kiss you,” he ground out, “it won’t stop at a kiss.”
Wouldn’t it? She hadn’t thought that far ahead. All she knew was that if he didn’t kiss her soon, she thought she would die.
This is madness, Rose’s mind was frantically trying to tell her. But her body had long stopped listening to her brain.
“It will destroy your relationship with Växborg for-ever,” he said quietly.
Her eyes widened as she demanded, “Do you honestly think I care about that?”
“I hope not. I hope it like hell,” Xerxes said roughly. Stroking her cheekbones with the pads of his thumbs, he searched her gaze with his own. “But…I want you to understand. There would be no going back.”
She could see the hunger in his dark eyes, hear the ragged edge of his voice. She could feel how much he wanted her with each stroke of his trembling fingertips against her skin. Shivers