The Snow Bride

“Spaghetti bolognese?” he said faintly.

“Spaghetti is delicious,” she said defensively.

He looked at her.

“And with rice noodles, too!” she said, taking the spoon from him. “That’s certainly exotic! Shall I serve?”

Rose dumped some spaghetti on each plate, then looked down at her cold, rather unappetizing concoction. She’d had to improvise for ingredients. She’d used rice noodles for pasta, and since she hadn’t found a handy can of marinara sauce or even tomato paste, she’d improvised by smashing fresh tomatoes into a rudimentary sauce. She’d added a mishmash of chopped mystery meat she’d found in the fridge with whatever spices she could find in the kitchen, and hoped for the best.

All right, so she wasn’t always the best cook—except where candy was concerned—but even she couldn’t ruin something as simple as spaghetti, she hoped.

She took a bite, and discovered she was wrong.

It was awful. And cold, in the bargain. She nearly choked it out, then covered up her gag reflex with a cough before she managed to swallow it down. “Wow,” she managed to say.

Xerxes took a bite and blanched. Standing up, he threw the napkin back on the table. “I don’t know if the housekeeper was drunk in the kitchen, or if this is a joke, but I’m going to register a complaint—”

“No!” Rose grabbed his wrist, looking up at him pleadingly. “It’s not her fault. It’s mine!”

He looked down at her with a frown. “What?”

“I sent Mrs. Vadi home. I told her I’d make dinner and you wouldn’t know the difference.” Rose shook her head tearfully. “Don’t tell her manager she left. If they knew, they might fire her and it’s not her fault I botched dinner so badly!”

He slowly sat down, staring at her. “You sent her home? Why?”

“We got to talking and…her husband died recently and her little girl was sick at home alone. She needed help,” she said, “so I helped her.”

He gaped at her. “You—got to talking?” he said faintly. “I have employees who’ve worked for me for ten years and I don’t know anything about their personal lives.”

“That’s too bad.”

“I like it that way.” He blinked, still looking bewildered. “But why you would volunteer to do her work, when you could have just relaxed on the beach? It’s her job. Her responsibility. Not yours.”

Rose looked out into the growing shadows of night, listening to the roar of the ocean waves. “I had to help her be with her little girl,” she whispered, lifting her chin to meet his eyes. “Because all I want to do is talk to my own mother.”

Silence fell between them.

“I can’t risk it,” he said quietly. “If you talk to your mother, she might contact U.S. authorities. A kidnapped young bride is just the sort of sensational story that would be splashed all over the international news.”

“What if I gave you my word she wouldn’t tell?” she said desperately.

He shook his head. “I’m sorry.”

She stared down at her plate. “Anyway, I had to let Mrs. Vadi go home and be with her family tonight. Because I can’t.”

“I still don’t understand.”

“Don’t you have a family?”

He blinked. “Not the way you mean.”

“No siblings?”

“I was raised an only child.”

“Your mother?”

“Dead.”

“Your father?”

“No.”

“That’s dreadful,” Rose said softly, her heart breaking. Looking at his profile in the darkening twilight, she tightened her fingers over his. “I’m so sorry.”

For a moment, he didn’t move. Then he pulled his hand away. “Let me guess,” he said sardonically. “You lived in a big old house, your mother baked cookies when you came home from school and your father taught you how to ride your bike.”

“Yes,” she said simply.

“Of course.” He looked away. “You had the fairy tale.”

She stared at him. The fairy tale?

Standing up abruptly, he reached for her hands and pulled her to her feet. “Come on,” he said gruffly. “This time, I’ll make dinner.”

The full moon had risen low over the horizon as they walked along the deserted beach to the honeymoon cottage. Pulling her into the modern kitchen, he turned on a light.

“I can help,” she offered weakly.

“Absolutely not.” He used the chopping knife in his hand to point at the kitchen table. “Sit there.”

As she watched, he swiftly made two large turkey sandwiches, served with slices of ripe mango. He set both plates down on the kitchen table and sat beside her.

He popped open a small bottle of Indian beer and handed it to her, then clinked his bottle against hers with a grin. “Bon appétit.”

The sandwich and fruit were delicious. As she ate, Rose looked at him in the sleek, dimly lit kitchen. His words still echoed through her mind.

You had the fairy tale.

She’d once thought marrying a handsome baron in a castle was the amazing dream. The truth was that she’d had the fairy tale all along.

She’d had family and friends she loved. She had a small apartment of her own, with her childhood home just an hour away. She’d had enough money to pay her bills. So what if she’d had to hold down more than one job to make ends meet? So what if her car didn’t always work well, or she had to jump-start it half the time to get to her night classes? She’d had a happy childhood. She’d had a happy life.

She’d been lucky beyond words.

“You’re right,” she said over the lump in her throat. “With my family, I mean. I guess I did have the fairy tale.”

Finishing his sandwich, Xerxes took a sip of beer and looked at her. “You’ll have it again.” Moonlight from the window frosted his body, making him appear otherworldly, like a dark angel, as he leaned toward her. “A woman like you was born to have a happy life.”

Her breathing quickened as his gaze fell to her mouth. He was going to kiss her. She could feel it. He stroked her cheek, tilting her head up toward his, and she could barely hear the roar of the ocean over the rapid beat of her heart.

“I’ve never met a woman like you before,” he said softly, his black eyes searching hers as he stroked her bare forearm lightly with his fingertips. “You…amaze me.”

This honeymoon cottage, so remote in the middle of a wide, distant ocean, seemed like their own distant world. His handsome, rugged face, the powerful curve of his body as he leaned toward her, the light feeling of his touch against her skin, made her brain stop working. She trembled, licking her lips. Would she fall into his arms when he kissed her? Would she fall into his bed?

He glanced down at her half-empty plate. “Are you finished?”

She stared up at him, unable to even say yes.

He smiled, then took her hand in his own. “Come.”

He led her from the kitchen to the large sitting room and sat her down gently on the couch. Going back to the kitchen, he returned with a tray. She watched as he dropped fresh raspberries into a crystal flute. Popping open a bottle of expensive champagne, he poured it over the raspberries then held out the flute to her, watching her with his inscrutable dark eyes.

“What is this?” she whispered.

“I’m making it up to you.”

“What?”

“I ruined your wedding night.” When she didn’t take the flute, he pressed it into her hand, wrapping his fingers around hers. She could barely breathe as she looked up at him, feeling his large hand wrapped around her smaller one. He said in a low voice, “I am going to make it up to you tonight.”

“How?” she stammered.

He stepped back, his gaze still intensely upon her. She felt butterflies in her stomach and nervously drank the rest of the delicious raspberry-infused champagne. But the butterflies only increased. Xerxes silently refilled her champagne with a sensual promise in his dark gaze.

Then he left her, going into the adjacent white marble bathroom, with its bathtub built for two that overlooked the moonlit sea. He turned on the faucet, starting a hot, steamy bath, filling it with fragrant bubble bath.

“It’s ready,” he whispered, pulling her to her feet. She gripped his hand, feeling a little unsteady.

He pulled her into the elegant bathroom. Still holding her champagne flute, which had somehow been refilled again, she looked down at the enormous bathtub full of bubbles. Beyond it, an enormous open window overlooked the moonlit Indian Ocean. She felt the warm breeze off the lanai. Warm steam and the scent of exotic, spiced flowers filled the room.

She felt his touch move like silk against her waist as he opened the belts that held the two gauzy robes to her body. He dropped first one robe, then the other, to the marble floor.

Xerxes towered over Rose as he looked down at her, his eyes slowly tracing her body as she stood nearly naked in her pale pink bikini. He gave her a dark, sensual smile and a flash of heat raced over her body, causing a bead of sweat to break out between her breasts. What was his electricity that made her so weak, that left her shaking from the inside out?

The smile dropped from his sensual mouth.

“Take off your bikini,” he whispered.

Without thinking, she reached up for the tie behind her neck. Then she realized what she was doing. She dropped her hand.

“I can’t,” she stammered. “Not with you right here.”

“I’ll turn around.”

She had a sudden view of his broad-shouldered back in the form-fitting T-shirt as he turned around. She stared at his form, his slim hips in his jeans, the hard-muscled curve of his backside.

“Done?” he said without turning around.

With a jolt, she put her hands unsteadily to her head. Had she been ogling him? The bubbles of the champagne made her feel so strangely unlike herself.

But it wasn’t just the champagne. She looked back at the fragrant, steaming bubble bath. She knew she should leave this room at once. She should tell Xerxes she had no interest in champagne or warmth or bubbles. She should go back into the bedroom alone and close the door. That was the sensible thing to do.

But she suddenly didn’t want to be sensible.

She’d spent twenty-nine years waiting for her prince to come, saving herself for a man she could love forever. But what if he wasn’t coming? What if, as Xerxes had said, her knight in shining armor did not even exist? What if she’d wasted all her youth yearning for a romantic dream that would never happen?

She was tired of being the girl who was always alone. Always waiting, as locked away from pleasure as any sleeping princess in a glass coffin.

Rose took a haggard breath. If she could not have the romantic dream everyone else in her family had, she would take what joy she could in the life that was left to her. She would take risks. She would be bold.

Slowly, Rose untied her bikini top and dropped it to the floor. She untied the bottom and kicked it away. Climbing naked into the bathtub, she sank beneath the fragrant white bubbles. Closing her eyes, holding her breath, she slid all the way down beneath the water.

When she rose up from the bath a moment later, her hair soaking wet, she felt reborn.

She heard a choked gasp behind her.

Xerxes was now standing by the bathtub, staring down at her. Following his eyes, she saw rivulets of water running between her breasts, saw her nipples flushed deep pink. They pebbled beneath his gaze.

With a gasp, she sank into the water, covering her body with thick white bubbles.

“You said you would turn around!” she said.

He gave a low laugh. “I never said I wouldn’t turn back.” He sat on the edge of the large tub and looked down at her. “You are so beautiful,” he whispered, running his hand along her naked shoulder, visible above the bubbles. “The most magnificent woman I’ve ever seen.”

She blushed. “You’re just tipsy on champagne.”

“I haven’t had any champagne.”

She blinked, glancing at the nearly empty bottle next to the bathtub. Who’d drunk all that, then? By the way her body felt pleasantly separated from her brain, the answer was appallingly clear. She shook her head. “You…are you trying to…”

“To what?”

“Get me drunk?” she blurted out.

His sensual mouth curved. “Why would I do that?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “You tell me.”

He stroked her water-slicked blond hair curling over her collarbone. She looked up at him breathlessly, her neck tilting back. He leaned over her, his lips inches from hers. Her mouth inched toward his, wanting him to kiss her. Willing him to kiss her.

“Turn around,” he ordered, and without thought she obeyed, turning her face toward the window.

She felt his hands fall heavily on her naked shoulders. He began to slowly rub circles into the overwrought muscles of her neck and shoulders. She closed her eyes. It was bliss. It was heaven. It was…

Dangerous.

“So you think I am going to all this effort to seduce you,” he said quietly.

Hearing him actually speak the words made her fears seem ludicrous. He was a powerful, ruthless millionaire with the world at his fingertips. And he’d told her he loved another woman—someone he intended to trade for Rose. She was just his captive, his pawn. Why would he go to such effort to seduce Rose, the ex-girlfriend of his enemy, a waitress and twenty-nine-year-old nobody? Her cheeks became hot. “I know that sounds ridiculous.”

“You’re right,” he said quietly. “I am going to seduce you.”

Her eyes flew open. As he continued to sensually rub her neck and shoulders, she stared wide-eyed out the window. In the silence, she saw the slender black silhouettes of palm trees swaying in front of the brilliant white clouds lit up by the moon, saw the stars twinkling in the night.

She felt the intense pleasure of his touch. Felt his strength. Felt his power.

When he leaned over her, she felt his breath against the crook of her neck, then his lips brushed the tender flesh of her earlobe.

“I want you.” The whisper of his lips against her skin caused a sizzle of fire down her body. “And I intend to do everything I can to win you.”

She felt dizzy, the world trembling all around her. She was naked in the warmth of the bath he’d drawn for her, tipsy on his expensive champagne. But most intoxicating of all was this feeling building inside her, this strange ache of forbidden desire. She felt his cotton shirt brush against her hair, felt the warmth of his muscular arms lean against hers.

She closed her eyes, waiting for him to seize her, turn her around in his arms and pull her into his hot embrace. Waiting for him to end this sweet torment.

He was going to kiss her…wasn’t he?

“I want you, Rose,” he whispered. “So much.” He took a sudden deep, ragged breath, then said in a low voice, “But you deserve better than a man like me.”

And suddenly, his warmth was gone.

Startled, she whirled around. In her movement, she splashed bathwater and bubbles wildly to the floor.

All she saw was his retreating back as he left her. Without a backward glance.

CHAPTER TEN

You deserve better than a man like me.

The next morning, Xerxes woke up stiff and sore from sleeping alone outside in the hammock on the beach. He still couldn’t believe it.

He’d had her. Naked and ripe for the taking. He’d seen it in her body’s reaction to his touch, in the quiver of her neck and shoulders beneath the stroke of his fingers, in the flush of heat on her skin.

He’d had her. Getting her to release him from his promise, luring her into just gasping out the words kiss me would have been the easiest thing in the world.

It had taken slightly longer than he’d thought it would, but he’d finally succeeded in getting her where he wanted her. Bedding Rose last night would have been at once his revenge—and his reward.

And yet he’d let her go. He’d stumbled away from the bathtub, and her body covered with bubbles, without a word. Once outside, he’d stripped off his dusty clothes and dived naked into the sea to clear his body of dust. To clear his soul of desire.

You deserve better than a man like me.

Now, raking his hand through his hair, he twisted his aching neck to crack the aching vertebrae. After sleeping outside all night, he cursed himself silently. Why had he let her go last night? Why had he shown such foolish mercy?

“I’ll have faith…” He heard her voice like music, and remembered the way she’d looked at him with eyes of endless blue. “A life without faith, without being brave enough to risk loving someone and be loved in return, is no life at all.”

Xerxes’s lip curled. His frustration and lack of sleep were clearly melting his brain!

He’d come to the Maldives yesterday filled with optimism, after his chief bodyguard had told him Laetitia had been sighted here. He’d known if he could find her on his own and get her safely to good medical care, he would have no need to deal with Växborg. Once Laetitia was well, she could divorce him herself. And Xerxes—he could keep Rose for himself.

But after almost a year of repeated sightings that proved false, Xerxes should have known better than to hope. The small hut at the end of the dusty road on the other side of the island had been deserted. Talking to the neighbors, they discovered that someone who looked like Laetitia had indeed been there. But she’d been moved just two days before, and they did not know where she’d gone. Her caretaker, a toothless old woman who spoke no English and had no medical training, had been paid in cash. The woman said that the young sleeping woman still lived. That was all she knew.

Returning alone to the honeymoon cottage, Xerxes had been furious and angry—at Växborg, but even more at himself.

Why couldn’t he find Laetitia?

Why couldn’t he save her?

Why did he keep failing?

When Xerxes had seen Rose sleeping peacefully at the table on the beach, he’d stopped on the sand. She was alone beneath the sunset, ethereally sexy in those little gauzy robes over a bikini. And he’d suddenly known how he would take out his frustration. How he would take both his solace—and his pleasure.

Before he’d reached out his hand to shake her awake, he’d already decided that he would possess her. He wouldn’t force her. He just wouldn’t leave her any other choice.

No woman could resist a seduction as gentle as a question. Once secure in the false belief that she held all the power, a woman always surrendered. Power was a heady aphrodisiac.

And last night, Rose would have surrendered as well. If he hadn’t let her go.

Why? He rubbed his forehead wearily. Why had he done it? Because he liked her? Because she had a good heart? Because he admired her?

He thought again of her beauty. Of her luscious body. And his eyes narrowed.

Next time, he would be ruthless.

“Did you really sleep out here all night?”

At the sound of her shy voice, he looked up to discover Rose standing awkwardly beside the hammock. She was wearing a little white cover-up of eyelet cotton and flip-flop sandals. Her face was bare and lightly tanned, her blond hair wavy and tumbling down her shoulders. She looked very young.

“Yes,” he said shortly.

“You didn’t have to do that, you know. You could have slept on the couch.” She gave him a tremulous smile. “I don’t bite.”

“Maybe I do.”

“I’m not afraid of you.”

At her shining smile, an ache filled his chest that felt like pain.

Morning had dawned over the beach, streaking pink across the sky over the crystalline waves. A fresh breeze blew through the palm trees overhead, causing tendrils of her blond hair to curl across her beautiful face.

And it was then that he saw it in her face, bright as day. Rose actually cared about him.

The realization jolted him like a kick in the gut. He climbed out of the hammock so quickly that he nearly fell.

“Are you all right?”

“Fine.” He straightened, irritated.

“Why did you leave like that last night?” she persisted, in spite of the clear signals. He didn’t wish to discuss it.

“For your own good,” he muttered.

“What?”

Angrily, he whirled on her. “Just leave it alone. Trust me. You slept better last night without my company.”

She stared at him.

“No,” she said in a low voice. “You’re wrong. I didn’t sleep at all.” Her beautiful face was heartbreakingly angelic as she whispered, “I couldn’t stop thinking about you.”

Their eyes met, and he couldn’t look away.

He wanted her so badly that his whole body thrummed with it. Painfully. Single-mindedly.

He wanted to take her right here on the deserted beach, to rip off her white cover-up in the pale pink morning, to push her naked body against the sand and kiss and suckle and taste every inch of her skin. He wanted to push himself inside her, to fill her completely, to ride her until she forgot every other lover, until she screamed his name.

Standing before her in yesterday’s T-shirt and jeans, Xerxes held himself still. His hands clenched with the effort it took not to kiss her. “Why were you thinking about me?”

“You try to pretend you’re selfish and cruel,” she said softly. “But I keep thinking about you and coming to one conclusion. You’re a good man.”

He gave a low laugh, like thunder reverberating across the dark sky. “I am not good.” Something snapped inside him and he reached for her shoulders, looking down into her eyes searchingly as he whispered, “But you…you are.”

“Oh.” She blushed. “I’m not so very good. I’ve been feeling quite stupid, actually, driving you away from your bed. The couch, I mean.”

She was stammering, embarrassed. As if she had anything to feel guilty about, when it had been Xerxes who deliberately rented the honeymoon cottage to set the stage for easy seduction! “Don’t worry about it.” He looked down at his clothes, no longer dusty but now stiff from dried seawater. “A night beneath the stars is just what I needed.”

She bit her lip. “Still, I feel badly. No more sleeping outside, all right? Come inside. I’ve made you some breakfast.”

“You did?” He paused, then added dryly, “Is that supposed to be consolation, or punishment?”

“I know how to cook!” she said, sticking out her tongue. “The spaghetti was not my fault. I thought the rice noodles would work.”

He could feel the warmth off her body as he looked down at her. The smile slid from her face as their eyes locked, burning through him.

“Are you sure you can trust me?” he said roughly. “To be alone with you in the cottage?”

Looking up with big eyes, she nodded.

“How do you know?”

“I can feel it. Besides—” she suddenly gave him a cheeky grin “—you gave me a promise.”

She headed toward the cottage. He stared at her for a moment, then followed her, admiring the sweet curve of her backside with every step. She was starting to fill out a bit, he noticed with satisfaction. He would enjoy continuing to fatten her up. He had the sudden image of Rose, rounded and pregnant with his child.

Oh, my God. Sucking in his breath, he stopped in place, nearly slapping himself on the skull. What the hell madness was this?

“This way,” she called. He hurried through the cottage, barely noticing the perfectly swept floors and gleaming kitchen as he hurried past the bedroom door and out onto the lanai. The shadowed patio was still cool in the early morning. He saw she’d set up the little table for two. Next to the coffeepot was a plate with buttered toast and a carefully cut bowl of fruit beside the flowers.

She gave him a grin. “See? I know how to cook.”

“Fruit and toast?”

“I wanted Mrs. Vadi to stay home until her daughter was well.” She looked at him anxiously. “That’s all right, isn’t it? This is what I know how to make.” She gave a sudden giggle. “I know I’m a wretched cook, but I’m actually much better at cleaning than cooking. The cottage looked clean, didn’t it?”