The Bride Thief (10 page)

Turning her around, he held her against the glass wall of the shower and lowered his mouth to hers in a hard, demanding kiss. When she returned his embrace, he did not wait. He lifted her legs around his waist. Without warning or permission, he took her as his own, thrusting inside her, holding her against the shower wall. He exploded as steam and hot water poured over them both.

Afterward, he took her to the bed and made love to her again, this time with tenderness, bringing her to gasping fulfillment that made her weep tears of joy. Who was this woman? He thought as he held her to his chest. Who was this woman who could offer him her sympathy, her body, her heart—without making any demands of her own?

He should have known it wouldn’t last.

Later that night, as they were served dinner by the rented villa’s housekeeper, Rose suddenly looked up at him in the candlelight. The two of them were sitting together at the end of a long table, in front of the wall of windows with a view of the moonlit Pacific and the Gulf of Cortez. He could see an old fishing boat with hanging lights, and in the distance was an enormous cruise ship. Mariachi music from the resort town below drifted up the hillside through the open windows.

Rose took a bracing gulp of a lime margarita, then leaned forward over the table. The candlelight cast shadows on her face, giving her the beautiful, concerned expression of a Renaissance Madonna as she asked quietly, “Why have we been traveling so much? Has Lars called the police? Has he been chasing us?”

Xerxes snorted. “Växborg would never call the police. That would just reveal his own crimes. He’s still in Las Vegas, settling the divorce.”

“Then why?” She pressed her lips together. “It must be your business making such demands,” she said softly. She shook her head. “It must exhaust you.”

He wanted to explain to her that it wasn’t his business, just his failure to find Laetitia that kept them constantly on the move; but the words choked in his throat. He couldn’t bear Rose’s sympathy now, on top of everything else. If she tried to smile and tell him consolingly that he was still
a good man
and no doubt
trying his best,
or that it
wasn’t his fault,
he would smash the wall with his fist.

When he did not reply, she looked down at her plate. She took another bite of her
enchiladas de mariscos.
Waving her fork, she tilted her head at him, her eyes gleaming.

“I know you’re rich and powerful and all,” she teased, clearly trying to elevate the mood, “but what exactly do you do, anyway?”

Xerxes served himself more of the enchiladas and fish tacos that the villa’s cook had prepared. “I buy distressed companies. I sell the divisions that are profitable. I discard the parts that are not.”

Her face closed down. “Oh.”

He blinked at her. “You don’t approve?”

She shook her head.

“Why?” he asked curiously.

She shrugged.

“Tell me.”

She sighed. “Look, I know I don’t have any right to criticize. You’re a millionaire with a private jet and I’m a waitress with fifty dollars in my bank account. But I’ve been working my way through college, studying entrepreneurial business management at San Francisco State…” She hesitated, biting her lip, as if she expected him to mock her.

He leaned forward in his chair. “Go on.”

“Your company seems profitable, and that’s great, but…”

“Yes?”

She pressed her lips together, then looked up. “But
people
work at those companies. People who lose their jobs.”

“So?”

There was a loud burst of mariachi music from the town below, and she looked in the distance at the dark, moonswept Pacific. “I’m biased, I guess. My grandfather had a candy company a long time ago. It did really well, then things fell apart. Ingredients became more expensive, and we didn’t have the nationwide distribution of the larger companies. Ten years ago, after my father took over, a conglomerate offered to buy Linden Candy. It would have made us wealthy, but my dad knew they’d close the factory and move production, leaving half our town out of work. So for the sake of his employees—his neighbors and friends—my father refused.”

“Foolish.”

“No, not foolish!” she retorted. “It was
noble.
Courageous, even. My dad said we would either all sink together, or he would find a way to make the company succeed.”

“And what happened?”

She looked down at her hands in her lap. “In spite of all his best efforts, the company went bankrupt.”

Xerxes gave a single firm nod. “He never should have allowed his feelings to override his business judgment.”

“He was protecting his employees!”

“He didn’t protect them. He failed them. And worse—he failed you. If he’d sold the company, you wouldn’t be working your way through college at the age of twenty-nine.”

She glared at him. “My father did the right thing. He held to his principles. I thought you of all people would appreciate that.”

“I
of all people
believe in facing reality. The company was a business. Not a charitable institution.”

“You sound so harsh!”

“That is how business works,” he said evenly, dipping his taco chips into his shrimp
ceviche
and fresh guacamole. “Things that were once successful die, they get replaced by the new. Business.”

“It doesn’t have to be that way.” She bit her lip, then said in a rush, “Someday, I’ll start it up again. I’ve made up a business plan. I’ll find a way to open the factory and—”

“Forget it,” he said brutally. “Accept it’s over and move on.”

She looked away, trembling. She took a gulp of lime margarita, then set the glass back down on the table. “It’s easy for you to say, isn’t it? You just break companies up for parts. Dissecting and eating them like a vulture.”

“It’s profitable.”

“You would have no clue how to truly run a company, to love it and invest your heart and soul in it.”

“You’re right,” he said. “And I wouldn’t want to. I don’t want it to be personal. It’s
business.
”

“Nothing’s ever personal for you, is it?” Putting her hands on the table, she pushed herself to her feet. “I feel sorry for you. I do.”

If it had been anyone else, he would have shrugged off their criticism and let them leave. But not Rose. She was the one person he couldn’t stand to be angry at him.

He reached his hand over hers. “I’m sorry,” he said softly. “I don’t wish to fight with you.”

Her eyes relented. “I don’t want to fight, either.” She licked her lips and said, “But if you could just see how much greater it could be, how much more satisfying and challenging, to actually create something of value, anything—”

“No,” he said. “Even if I could do it, I wouldn’t. It would be a waste of energy and money.” He rose to his feet. “You’ve been cooped up in this penthouse all day. Shall we go out?”

“Out?” she said in astonishment.

He shrugged, even as his eyes caressed her. “I hear music from town. Want to go dancing with me?”

She sucked in her breath. “You would let me go out in public? You’d trust me not to run to the police?”

“If you’ll give me your word you won’t, I’ll trust you.”

“I give you my word,” she said, then paused. “Anyway, I want to help Laetitia now. I…want to help you.”

Of course she did, Xerxes thought, his eyes searching her sweetly beautiful face as if memorizing it for eternity. He’d kidnapped her, seduced her, refused to answer her questions. And yet she wanted to help him. Rose had the most loving heart of any woman—any person—he’d ever known.

She bit her lip, her face suddenly drawn. “But when do you think Lars will finalize the divorce?”

Xerxes didn’t want to think about it. “Any day now.”

She looked sad, then brightened. “But we have tonight. And I can hardly believe how much I’ve seen of the world in such a short time,” she said as he wrapped a pale cashmere cardigan around her shoulders.

“You haven’t minded all the travel?”

“Mind it?” She ticked off her fingers. “Greece, the Maldives, and now Mexico. After spending my whole life close to home, barely leaving northern California, it’s been amazing!”

“That’s what I can’t imagine.”

“Never going anywhere?”

“Having a home that I didn’t wish to leave.”

“You’ve never had a home?”

He didn’t like the pity in her eyes. “I haven’t needed one.” He looked down at her.
But you make everywhere feel like home to me,
he thought. All he said was, “I’ve enjoyed our time together as well.”

“I wasn’t sure if you even liked me at first,” she said teasingly as he escorted her from the villa toward his rented MG convertible. “When you left it up to me to decide if we would even kiss…”

As he opened her door, he said, “I always knew I would get you into bed.”

She froze, then looked back at him. “You did?”

He suddenly wanted to tell her the truth.
Had
to tell her the truth. “I seduced you deliberately, Rose. Bit by bit. But I always knew I would win.”

“Oh.” Looking dazed, she climbed into the convertible and he closed the door behind her. Climbing into the driver’s side, he drove them out of the gated community down the winding hillside toward town. She remained silent for a few moments. He looked at her.

“Now do you regret our affair?” he said quietly.

“No.” She turned away. “It’s just…”

“Just?”

“When I meet the man I marry,” she said in a small voice, “what if he asks me why I didn’t wait for him? What if he asks why I didn’t have faith?”

“Rose!” he growled.

“But the thing is, I did wait,” she whispered. “I waited so long. And he never came. The only man who seemed remotely like a prince turned out to be a massive frog.”

Xerxes looked at her and envied—no,
hated
—the man she would someday marry. “He won’t ask you any stupid questions like that. He’ll just get down on his knees and thank God you are his wife.”

She gave him a tremulous smile. “Really?”

“Yes.” He found a parking spot near the marina. Turning off the car engine, he turned to face her beneath the warm lights of the town and took her hands in his own.

“I wonder if you have any idea how truly rare you are,” he said. “How you make life beautiful wherever you go. To everyone around you. Even me.”

She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye. He saw the emotion in her face, but her voice seemed purposefully light as she said, “Well, you were a hard case.”

He snorted a laugh, but as he leaned forward to kiss her, his phone rang. He was still smiling when he answered, “Novros.”

“We’re divorced.”

Växborg’s voice was full of repressed fury.

Xerxes turned away from Rose, speaking in a low voice. “What?”

“You heard me.”

“The filing is complete?”

“Yes. I’ve used your connections to push it through. Tomorrow morning, it will be registered as final.”

“Then call me tomorrow,” Xerxes said shortly, but his eyes traced over Rose, who was watching him with big eyes.
Tomorrow.
He would have to give her up so soon?

“Wait!” Växborg said. “I need to talk to Rose.”

“No.”

“Her father just called. Her grandmother has had a heart attack and might not last the night. You have to let me take Rose home.”

“You think I’ll fall for that?” Xerxes said with a snort.

“Have a heart, you bastard. It’s her family!”

Xerxes looked at Rose’s face, so sweet and trusting. Family meant everything to her.

His jaw hardened. “I don’t have a heart, Växborg,” he replied coldly. “Haven’t you learned that by now?”

“Was it Lars?” Rose asked after he’d hung up.

He gave a grim nod.

“And?”

“The divorce will be final in the morning.”

“Oh,” she said in a small voice. He saw the tremble of her delicate swanlike throat as she said, “So tonight’s our last night.”

They’d both known, all along, that their affair would soon end. What he hadn’t realized was how completely and utterly he would hate the thought of ever letting her go. He gave a single unsteady nod.

“You’ll still trade me,” she whispered. “Won’t you?”

He’d made a promise. He had no choice. “Yes.”

She gave him a trembling smile. “Then tonight is a celebration, I guess. Tomorrow, we’ll both get what we want. I’ll go home to my family, and you’ll get Laetitia back.”

Staring at her, Xerxes set his jaw. He abruptly turned away, dialing his phone and speaking into it in rapid Greek. When he hung up his phone, his suspicions had been confirmed. Växborg hadn’t lied.

“Where shall we go first?” Rose said, visibly forcing a smile. “Shall we go dancing, as you said?”

“The airport.”

“The airport?” She sucked in her breath, then sounded near tears as she said, “We can’t even have one last night?”

“I’m taking you to San Francisco,” he said quietly.

“San Francisco? Not Las Vegas?”

Looking down at her, he placed his hands gently over hers. “You’re going to need to be strong, Rose. I have some bad news. Your grandmother’s had a heart attack.”

Rose gasped, falling back against her car seat. He grabbed her, cradling her against his chest.

“I’ll get her the best care, Rose,” he vowed. “She’ll be all right. I promise you.”

She stared up at him, her brow furrowed. Then she embraced him in a flood of tears.

“Thank you,” she wept.

Xerxes held her to his chest, stroking her back, murmuring words of nonsensical comfort. All he could think about was that he would do anything, absolutely anything, to make her grandmother well.
Anything to make Rose happy.

When she finally pulled away to look up at him, tears were streaming down her face. “Why are you being so good to us?” she whispered. “You don’t even know her.”

“No,” Xerxes said quietly. Looking down at her, he stroked her beautiful face and felt a lump in his throat as he said, “But I know you love her. That’s all I need to know.”

Chapter Thirteen

I
T WAS
almost midnight when Rose finally collapsed in her old childhood bedroom.

Trembling with exhaustion, clasping the same pink cardigan she’d worn in Mexico more tightly over her arms, she sank down on her small single bed, staring blankly at old posters of rock stars she’d pasted as a teenager over the peeling, faded floral wallpaper. A beloved old teddy bear looked down from her bookshelves, next to baking trophies she’d won at the local fair in high school. Downstairs, she could hear her family talking in low voices as they moved over the creaky floorboards. She could smell her mother’s clam chowder bubbling on the stove.

She was home. Nothing had changed. And yet—Rose looked at Xerxes’s dark form in front of her window—everything had changed.

They’d both changed on the jet into clothes more appropriate for the cold rain of northern California. Now wearing black pants, a white shirt and a black woolen coat, he looked out at the lights twinkling in the distance. “Is that your family’s old factory?”

Rose had spent most of her childhood sitting in that window, reading books and staring out dreamily at the rainy gray surf beneath the ocean cliff. She knew every view from the rambling Victorian house by heart. “Yes.”

A few dim lights still illuminated the old hollow shell of her grandfather’s factory, which had once employed half this small town making chewy taffies in the heyday of the 1950s and 1960s. But Rose didn’t want to talk about the factory. She didn’t want to hear Xerxes tell her yet again that it was a hopeless situation and she should let it go.

Instead, she wanted to breathe in this moment and just be grateful. Grateful that her grandmother had lived and was getting better. Grateful that she herself was finally home.

Crossing her ankles and tucking her black jeanclad legs beneath her, Rose looked up at him. “Thank you.”

Blinking, he glanced back at her. “For what?”

“How can you even ask? For everything you did for Gran.”

He shrugged. “I did nothing.”

“You’re wrong,” she said softly. “You brought me home.”

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 sleep, Rose. We leave for Las Vegas in the morning.”

As the door closed, Rose sucked in her breath. In the morning.
The trade.

Pushing the painful reminder away, Rose stared at the closed door as she changed into old flannel pajamas. The only thing more strange than having Xerxes in her childhood home was how well he fit in here. He blended with her family in a way that Lars never had. Lars never would have slept in her brother’s old room. He would have insisted on renting a suite at a luxury seaside hotel twenty miles away. That is, if he’d even been willing to bear the inconvenience of a night here at all.

“Rose?”

She looked up to see Vera in her doorway. “Hi, Mom.”

“I meant to bring this to you earlier.” Her mother sat down beside her on the bed and handed her a cup of peppermint tea. “I’m so glad you’re back. We were all so worried.”

“Thanks.” Rose took a sip of the lukewarm tea, then added in a carefully casual tone, “Is Xerxes settled in?”

Vera snorted, then shook her head wryly. “And to think just a few days ago we were in Sweden, watching you marry another man.”

Rose blushed. “Yeah,” she muttered. “Funny, huh?”

“I guess it’s all right to tell you now that I never liked Lars, Rose.”

“You didn’t like him?” Rose said in surprise. “You never said so.”

Her mother shrugged. “What business is it of mine whom you choose to love? But I always hoped when you finally settled down,” she said wistfully, “you would bring home a man who’s just regular folk, like us.” She paused. “A man like the one who’s sleeping right now in Tom’s room down the hall.”

Rose nearly snorted peppermint tea out of her nose hearing Xerxes Novros, the international Greek millionaire, described by her mother as
regular folk.

“Anyway, thank heaven your gran is better.” Her mother rose from the bed with a tender smile. “And you’re home. Everything is all right now.” She paused at the door, her hands on her hips as she swiveled around, her eyes narrowed. “But I meant what I said, Rosie. No funny business in our house.”

“All right, Mom,” Rose said, rolling her eyes. But she could see why her mother had felt the need to repeat the warning. As she walked down the hall later to brush her teeth, her feet slowed down of their own accord as she passed by her brother’s old room where Xerxes slept.

She loved him.
Why hadn’t she told him when she had the chance? Why couldn’t she be brave enough to tell him now?

After washing her face and brushing her teeth in the bathroom, she paused again at his closed door as she returned down the hall. Raising her hand to knock, she hesitated. Then with a deep breath, she rapped softly.

There was no answer.

She exhaled. He must be asleep already. She sighed, filled with a jumble of nerves and disappointment.

Tomorrow,
Rose vowed to herself. She would tell him that she loved him before they reached Las Vegas. Tomorrow, before he traded her for Laetitia and her chance was lost forever.

She’d already experienced so many miracles in her life. The miracle of a good family. Of a home. Of a grandmother who was steadily getting better.

Having Xerxes love her back would be too much to ask. But tomorrow, Rose would take her courage in her hands and do it.

Xerxes heard a soft knock on his door.

Rose.
She’d come to him, in spite of her mother’s warning. With an intake of breath, he hurried from the bed and reached for the door.

Then he stopped. He knew what would happen if he invited her into the bedroom.
He knew.
Making love to Rose was all he could think about. Especially here, where there was so much love everywhere. He felt awash in it. Enveloped in love. And he knew it wasn’t just the house.

It was Rose. She loved him.

She hadn’t spoken the words. But he’d been able to see it on her beautiful face. She’d never learned to lie. Her expressive eyes were an open book for him to read.

She’d seen him at his worst, she knew what he’d done, and yet she loved him. How was it possible?

Clenching his hands into fists, Xerxes took a deep breath. He heard her waiting on the other side of the door, waiting for him to open it and let her in. It was like agony, knowing she was there and still doing nothing. Finally, he heard her give up and her footsteps disappear down the hall.

He exhaled. Closing his eyes, he leaned back against the door.

He wanted her. Now more than ever.

But it was more than that. It had become far more than lust. More then admiration. More even than respect.