The Snow Bride: The Virgin's Choice / Snowbound Seduction / The Santorini Bride

“Thanks, but I’ll just stay up here. In my room.” Where it’s safe, her tone seemed to imply.

He smiled up at her. “Come, Miss Linden. Your captivity doesn’t have to be a prison. There’s no reason you can’t enjoy yourself while you’re with me. Come downstairs.”

She hesitated, then shook her head, her cheeks a charming shade of pink. “No, thanks, really. I’ll, um, see you later,” she said, then disappeared back into her bedroom.

She was afraid to even be around him. He almost laughed aloud. Seducing her would be even easier than he’d thought. If he were exceptionally clever he might have her flat on her back before noon.

If she wouldn’t come downstairs, he would go to her. Whistling an old Greek folk song, Xerxes walked back inside his sprawling villa and went down the hallway toward the stairs. His cell phone vibrated and he answered, “Novros.”

“Let me talk to Rose,” Lars Växborg demanded.

At the sound of the man’s peevish, aristocratic voice, Xerxes veered from the hallway and went into his private office. He went to the far window with its magnificent view of the sea, and replied coolly, “Has your divorce been finalized yet?”

“Practically. I’m in Las Vegas. I’ve signed the papers. With all your influence and mine, it’s been expedited. It’s as good as done. Let me talk to her.”

“No.” Initiating a divorce meant nothing, as they both knew perfectly well. Until the final ruling, it could be canceled at any time. Xerxes sat down in his chair. “You can speak to Rose when we make the trade.”

“Damn you! Have you touched her? Tell me! Have you kissed her?”

“Yes,” Xerxes said with dark pleasure.

“You bastard!” Växborg choked out. “What else have you—”

“Just one kiss,” Xerxes said, then added ominously, “so far.”

“You filthy brute, don’t you touch her! She’s mine!”

Xerxes gave a low, deliberate laugh. “Complete your divorce. Return Laetitia to me as fast as you can. Before I forget my duties as host and entertain myself with your would-be bride. Before I enjoy Rose’s body in my bed, over and over, until she forgets your name.”

“Don’t touch her, you bastard!” Växborg nearly shrieked. “Don’t even think about—”

Xerxes hung up, still smiling to himself. Then he heard a noise and looked up.

Rose was standing in the open doorway, her mouth wide.

“You heard?” he said finally.

“I just came…came downstairs to see…to see…” She swallowed, staring across the shadowy office. Her beautiful face looked stricken as she whispered, “You intend to seduce me just to hurt Lars? Your promise not to kiss me was a lie?”

“No, Rose, listen—”

She put her hands over her ears. “Don’t even try to explain. You’re a liar,” she said, backing away. “Just like him!”

Turning, she ran out of the office.

With a muttered curse Xerxes raced after her. She was astonishingly fast for a woman so petite, and ran all the way down the hall and out the back door of the villa before he was even out of his office. Outside, he pursued her past the pool and halfway up the hillside, toward the vineyard.

The sky had grown dark with gray clouds as he grabbed her. She struggled to escape, clawing at him, her chest lifting beneath her snug, thin top with every pant of her breath. “Let me go!”

He pushed her against a rough stone wall. “Quit calling me a liar. I always keep my promises,” he ground out. “Always.”

“But you said—”

“I insinuated the worst to Växborg because I want him scared of what I might do to you. It is the only way he will divorce Laetitia and give up her fortune.”

Rose abruptly stopped struggling. Tears were streaming down her eyes. “Why are you so determined to save her?” she whispered. “Who is she to you? Tell me!”

“Don’t tell anyone. Ever.” Xerxes remembered the fury in Laetitia’s dark, beautiful eyes as they’d spoken for the first and last time. “It wasn’t enough for you to destroy my father. Now you want to kill my mother as well? You must never speak a word of this to anyone. Promise me.”

Now, in the distance, Xerxes heard thunder rolling low across the sky. He could still feel the same bleak hollowness in his gut he’d felt that day.

He looked down at Rose in his arms, so petite, so impossibly beautiful. He heard the whisper of her breath. He looked into her wide turquoise eyes, a sea of emotion for a man to drown in. Her pink, full mouth, natural and bare of makeup, parted as she licked her lips.

Clenching his hands into fists, he released her.

“I did not lie,” he said in a low voice. “I will not kiss you unless you ask me.”

Beneath the deepening shadows of the approaching storm, Rose looked up at him, tilting her head. “You don’t intend to seduce me?”

“I want to seduce you,” he said in a low voice. “It’s all I can think about. But I gave you my word. I won’t so much as kiss you.”

She took a deep breath. “Oh.” She stared down at the ground. “Lars said he still wanted to trade for me?”

“He arrogantly assumes he will win back your heart.”

Clenching her jaw, she shook her head vehemently. “Never.” She lifted her luminous eyes to his. “You know, you saved me from making the greatest mistake of my life yesterday. And you are keeping your promise to me. So you can’t be all bad. I was thinking you can’t be…”

“I am,” he bit out. “All bad.”

“But you’re risking everything to save Laetitia,” she said softly. “That is hardly selfish.”

“I am saving her for my own reasons. Because…”

“Because?”

“Because I made a promise to protect her.”

Rose gave a slow nod. “Which just proves my point.”

Xerxes gave a low laugh. He took pride in keeping his word, starting with the promise he’d made to himself as a young, scared, lonely boy of five, abandoned by both parents, when he’d sworn he would someday find them again.

“I keep my promises,” he said grimly. A flash of lightning illuminated the dark clouds. “That doesn’t make me good.”

“Who is Laetitia, Xerxes? Tell me.” Rose moved closer, looking up into his face. A moment ago, she’d been angry, but now, she was touching his arm, her gaze curious and tender. “Is she your friend?”

Her small hand rested lightly on his skin, and he shuddered beneath that gentle touch. He had to fight the impulse to draw his arm away—or crush her small body beneath the force of his embrace. “It doesn’t matter.”

“Your…lover?”

He looked away.

“Do you love her?”

Xerxes turned to look down at her, his eyes locking with hers as the first drops of rain started to fall from the gray sky.

“Yes,” he bit out. “I love her.”

CHAPTER NINE

XERXES loved this other woman. His stark words caused a tremble through Rose’s heart, a whisper of pain that she couldn’t understand. She swallowed. “And you think once she’s in your care, you can save her. You think you can wake her.”

“Her marriage has doomed her to die,” he said in a low voice. “I won’t allow that to happen.”

Rose looked at him, her heart in her throat. He loved a woman so much he was determined to save her at any cost to himself. That was true love, she thought. The kind that would sacrifice anything, do anything, for the beloved. “You really love her,” she breathed, “don’t you?”

“So?” he said coldly, then his black eyes widened. His lips twisted sardonically. “Ah. You are imagining I am some white knight in a fairy tale.”

“Aren’t you?”

He snorted scornfully. “You are quite the romantic, aren’t you?”

He said the words like an insult. Rose blushed. “Just because I can see the best of people, then—”

“You are wrong about me.” Xerxes’s eyes glittered. “And you’re wrong to have such blind faith. Your noblehearted knight does not exist.”

Rose took a deep breath. “I believe he does. I’ll wait. I’ll have faith.”

He laughed, a hard, ugly sound. “Faith is a lie that fools tell themselves in the night.”

She stared at him. “Do you really believe that?”

Xerxes turned out to face the sea.

She looked at the taut lines of his body. The tanned, muscular arms. Her eyes traced the dark shadow of his jaw, the mussed wave of his black hair.

Her arms started to reach out to comfort him before she caught herself. Why would her body reach to comfort him? She always worried about other people’s feelings but she was way off here, being concerned about him. Xerxes Novros was powerful and rich. He could get any woman he wanted—and probably did. So why would Rose possibly think she could comfort him? Or even that he needed comfort?

Faith is a lie that fools tell themselves in the night. It was the most heartbreaking thing she’d ever heard.

“Maybe you’re right,” she said slowly. She shook her head. “But a life without faith, without being brave enough to risk loving someone and be loved in return, is no life at all.”

His jaw tightened. “I measure success differently. On how I keep my word.”

It was almost unbearable now for Rose to keep still, to resist the urge to wrap her arms around him and ask what had left such a deep scar on his heart. Rose had to force her arms to remain at her sides, her hands tightening into fists with the effort it took not to reach her arms around him.

“But such honor is meaningless without love,” she said in a low voice. “And you must know that already. It’s why you’re desperate to save Laetitia. Because you love her.”

Slowly, he turned toward her. “It’s not what you think.”

“It’s not?”

He didn’t answer. She took a deep breath and changed the subject. “But what if your plan doesn’t work?” she said in a small voice. “What if Lars won’t trade her for me after all?”

“It has to work.” He blinked, his eyes briefly bleak. “It must.”

Rose’s heart felt anguished in sympathy for the dark, powerful man before her, who looked so haunted and alone. But just as she could bear it no longer and started to reach for him, Xerxes’s eyes widened to stare at a point behind her ear. He called out in Greek, and she whirled around to see a bodyguard approaching them rapidly, hurrying up the hillside. The hulking man spoke into Xerxes’s ear.

Xerxes’s eyes went wide. He inhaled a deep breath that expanded his chest, then turned to her. “Time to go.”

“Go?” she stammered. “Where?”

“Right now.”

“Why?” she said, bewildered.

Xerxes seems strangely back to his old self as he grinned. “I have a new desire to see a tropical beach.”

She looked out in shock and pointed towards the sea. “What do you call that?”

“Rainy and cold.”

“It’s warm!”

“But not hot.” He put his hand on her shoulder and looked down into her eyes with a deep, smoldering heat. “And I want to see you in a bikini.”

“Where?”

But Xerxes just turned and headed for the villa with the bodyguard. She stared at him in shock. What had changed his mood?

Rose stomped her foot in confusion, then yelled after him, far too late, “Wherever we’re going, if you think I’m going to wear a bikini for you, you’re crazy!”

By late afternoon, they had arrived via private jet to an island in the crystal blue waters of the Indian Ocean. Above a white, sandy beach, palm trees swayed in the hot breeze.

“Where are we?” Rose stammered, yawning from her nap as they climbed out of the SUV.

“The Maldives,” he said simply. She turned to stare at him in shock.

“How many islands do you own anyway?” she said faintly.

He gave a hearty laugh. “I don’t own this one. We’re at a resort owned by a friend of mine, Nikos Stavrakis. He’s assigned a full-time housekeeper to this cottage exclusively for our stay. The bodyguards will be at the gatehouse a mile down the road.”

Taking her hand, Xerxes escorted her into a small yellow cottage on a private, secluded beach. Inside the main living area, a fan moved the air from the high wooden ceiling. Through the wall of windows, she saw a private pool and veranda beside the white beach and azure waters, beneath swaying palm trees.

Rose had read about Stavrakis resorts. They were swanky hotels for rich people, the kind of glamorous places she read about in celebrity gossip magazines. Utterly out of reach of a regular person like her.

She glanced around the cottage. Cozy as it was, on a private beach with devoted housekeeper, she still wouldn’t be surprised if it cost ten thousand dollars a night.

And they would be sharing this intimate space alone. She looked back at Xerxes, and the cottage suddenly seemed a little smaller.

“There’s no television,” he said. “But I don’t think you’ll miss it.”

She licked her lips. “Why not? What will we be doing?”

“A selection of new books and magazines has been provided for you. The housekeeper will prepare delicious meals and clean and do anything else you need. You’ll have nothing to do but sit on the beach and work on your tan.”

She stared at him. Then she scowled. “Meaning—I can’t leave.”

“You have no need to.”

But it meant she couldn’t sneak into the local village to look for an Internet café or try to telephone her family. She looked around her. There wasn’t even a phone here, much less a computer with a modem.

“Do you like the cottage?”

She glared at him. “Sure. It’s lovely—for a prison.”

“If you wish to regard it that way.”

“How else should I see it?”

“You could call it a vacation.” Lifting a dark eyebrow, he gave her a wicked half smile. His eyes traced her body. “It’s a pity we had no time to pack in Greece. Fortunately I’ve arranged a new wardrobe for you here.”

He pushed open the sliding doors to reveal the bedroom. Walking to a closet, he opened the doors.

Peering past him, Rose saw an arrangement of bikinis and several little beach cover-ups, scandalizingly short robes of thin cotton lace or translucent gauze. That was it. There was nothing else to wear. Her eyes widened. Leaning back, she put her hands on her hips and scowled at him. “Where’s the rest?”

“Oh. Is there nothing in there but bikinis for you?” he said innocently.

But it was worse than that. She sucked in her breath as, looking further inside the closet, she saw men’s T-shirts and shorts. A sinking feeling went through her heart. “Why are your clothes in my closet?”

He came behind her, not touching, but close enough that she could feel the warmth from his body. “This is a honeymoon cottage. There is only one bedroom. And only one bed.”

The honeymoon cottage.

“Oh,” she managed to say with suddenly dry lips. She jerked away, choking out, “I’ll take the couch, then.”

He looked down at her. “You will take the bed.”

“That wouldn’t be fair.” Even as she told herself that he was her captor and deserved to suffer, she felt guilty about kicking him to the couch. He’d promised he wouldn’t touch her and she was starting to believe him. Hesitantly, she said, “I suppose we could share….”

“No,” he cut her off roughly.

“Why?”

“Being close to you when I am forbidden to touch you…There’s only so much a man can take. Unless you actually want to make me suffer?”

Their eyes locked, and for an instant, she forgot to breathe. Then she blinked. “A little suffering on your part might be nice, yes,” she said with an impish smile.

His returning smile rose slowly across his face, and without realizing what she was doing, she leaned forward on her toes.

“Sir.” A bodyguard entered the front room with a loud rap at the door, and they both whirled toward him. Exhaling, Xerxes gave him a quick nod. “Excuse me,” he said, turning back to her. “I must leave you now.”

“But we just got here!”

“I have something urgent to do. I will return later.” He stroked her cheek. “I’ve arranged for the housekeeper to serve dinner on the beach.”

Squeezing her hand, he left. Rose stared after him in shock.

After he left, she walked along the beach and explored the lush grounds behind the cottage. It was strange to be so alone in this beautiful place. Crossing through a tropical garden, she stopped as her jaw dropped when she saw two large weeping rose trees.

Pink fairy roses. Xerxes’s favorite flower. Growing wild on this island in the Indian Ocean, thousands of miles from Greece.

Resolutely, she turned and walked away. Then, after five steps, she stopped. Whirling, she went back to the nearest rose tree. Careful not to pierce her fingertips with thorns, she picked one of the tiny pink blooms. Returning to the cottage, she carefully put it in water in a tiny bud vase she found in the stocked modern kitchen.

Hours of sunshine later, she finally put aside the novel she was reading on the lanai in the deepening afternoon. She’d been alone all day long at a luxury beach house. She’d had a lovely lunch served to her by the housekeeper. Reading a fabulous novel and watching the sunlight sparkle across the blue waters of the Indian Ocean, kidnapped or not, she should have been having a decent time.

But she wasn’t. She was missing something. Or someone.

The thought brought her up short. She couldn’t miss Xerxes’s company. Ridiculous. He was her captor! If she occasionally found him amusing or entrancing she was merely making the best of a bad situation, that was all.

But they’d spent the long flight here talking. He’d sat right beside her, plying her with Greek dishes, asking her interested, sympathetic questions about her family and home.

She’d answered in monosyllables at first, giving him one tart reply after another. But instead of being offended, he’d seemed to enjoy the repartee. And his undivided attention had been strangely…pleasurable.

She’d felt his arm along the back of the white leather sofa behind her, so close to her body, and she’d trembled. Every time he looked at her, the intensity and heat of his dark gaze turned her inside out.

Rose didn’t want to think about it now. Or why she’d not only noticed his favorite flower in a lush garden, but she’d also picked a rose for him and placed it in water.

Looking up from her book, she noticed the dark-haired, plump young housekeeper struggling to carry a table across the beach to a spot overlooking the surf. Relieved to leave the lanai and lounge chair and all her disconcerting thoughts behind her, Rose got to her feet and hurried down to the beach. “Wait! Can I help?”

The housekeeper, who looked only a few years older than Rose, shook her head, even though she looked as if she were fighting back tears.

“Really?” Rose bit her lip. “Please, Mrs. Vadi, won’t you let me help?”

“No,” the woman said, then burst into tears. Within minutes, Rose had learned the woman was grieving for her husband, who’d died six months before, and that she was worried about her feverish eight-year-old daughter, whom she’d had to leave at home alone.

“But I can’t lose this job, miss,” the woman gasped, wiping her eyes fiercely. “If I do, I won’t be able to keep a roof over my child’s head.”

“Go home!” Rose said, sympathetic tears welling in her own eyes.

“I can’t.”

“Mr. Novros will never know you’re gone.” When the woman still hesitated, Rose grabbed her sleeve. “Please, it’s such a small thing,” she whispered. “I’m so far away from my own family. Let me at least help yours.”

The housekeeper wept and embraced her, then gave her detailed instructions about how to make the dinner, instructions Rose found herself unable to remember when she faced the stainless-steel kitchen alone half an hour later. After several inedible attempts, she gave up and prepared her own favorite dinner instead. As the rice noodles bubbled, Rose went outside and finished setting up the table by the beach.

She cast an anxious look at the sun lowering in the west in streaks of red and orange. Expecting Xerxes to return any moment, she hurried to the cottage, where she showered and brushed her hair. What to wear? Beachwear was all she had, thanks to him. Scowling, she went back to the wardrobe. She briefly considered wearing one of Xerxes’s T-shirts or khaki shorts, but the thought of wearing his clothing was too intimate. That would be the action of a lover, which—she told herself firmly—she would never be.

Ultimately, she wore two gauzy beach cover-ups layered over a pale pink bikini. She surveyed her modest look with satisfaction. The two robes together blocked her body from view. She smiled at herself in the mirror, anticipating his reaction. That would teach him!

Carrying out the dinner tray, she impulsively grabbed the pink rose she’d picked in the garden, still in a bud vase, and placed it in the center of the table. Then she sat down and waited, staring across the white sand beach toward the red and purple sunset streaking the sparkling sapphire ocean.

She jerked awake as she felt Xerxes shaking her shoulder. With a start, Rose realized she’d fallen asleep with her head cradled in her arms on the table.

It was now almost dark. His silhouette was black against the fading red sunset. He’d changed on the plane, but she saw that his jeans and T-shirt were dusty, and his face was grim. His good mood of just a few hours before had evaporated.

“What’s wrong?” she said. “What’s happened?”

“Forget it,” he said heavily, sitting in the chair next to her.

“Where have you been?”

He shook his head bitterly. “It doesn’t matter.” He looked at the flower. “Where did that rose come from?”

She bit her lip. Had she done something wrong, something that would reveal that she’d sent the housekeeper home? “Why do you ask?” she evaded.

“The rose,” he said, then looked up at her. “I heard it was the national flower of these islands, but I’ve never been to this resort. I’m not known by the staff. Is it a coincidence? Or did you request it for me?”

“It was nothing, really,” she said awkwardly. Her cheeks felt burning hot. “I found them in the garden. I was surprised to see the same roses here, growing thousands of miles from your home. I thought you’d like it. That’s all.”

“I do,” he said quietly. “Thank you.”

Taking the rose out of the vase, he reached across the table and tucked it behind her ear, in her long, wavy blond hair. His hand trailed slowly down from her ear, caressing her cheek. Then he took her hand in his own, across the table, and she shivered in the warm night.

Overhead, the sky was streaked with red and purple like the echoes of ash and fire. Like the fire slowly smoldering in his dark eyes as he looked at her. Like the fire that was filling her body with the bewildering ache of desire.

“I’m sorry I’m so late,” he murmured, then looked at the covered silver dish. “Dinner must be long cold.” He sighed with regret. “I’ve been dreaming for the last hour about the dinner the housekeeper would prepare for us. Maldivian food is supposed to be spectacular, a mix of Indian, Asian and Middle Eastern flavors. Nikos has raved about her cooking more than once. I can hardly wait—”

With a flourish, he pulled the lid off the silver tray. And stared. He sat back into his chair with an amazed thump.

“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.