ROSE went numb with shock. As Xerxes pulled her from the SUV, leading her across the dark tarmac to the waiting plane, she did not resist.
“But he can’t have a wife,” she said numbly, looking up at him with bewildered confusion. “I’m Lars’s wife!”
“The wedding was fake,” he said coldly. “The vows were fake. The minister was fake. And most of all, Miss Linden—” he glanced down at her with glittering dark eyes as they reached the bottom of the steps “—you are fake.”
He pushed her up the stairs into the cabin of the plane, where they were greeted by two flight attendants, the captain and the copilot. Bodyguards poured in behind them before they disappeared into the back of the jet.
The captain gave Xerxes a respectful nod. “We are ready for takeoff at your order, sir.”
A brunette flight attendant took Xerxes’s coat, while the other one, a redhead, greeted him with a silver tray holding drinks. Rose heard the cabin door close behind her with a loud bang.
“Thank you.” Taking a flute of champagne from the tray, Xerxes sat down on a white leather seat in the front cabin of the jet. He turned carelessly back to Rose. “Champagne, Miss Linden? No?”
When Rose just stared at him in shock without replying, Xerxes gave a small, private smile and nodded at the captain. “You may proceed.”
The captain and copilot disappeared to the front of the cabin to complete their takeoff preparations, and the flight attendants left for the back of the plane. Alone with Rose in the front cabin, Xerxes stretched out his arm on the back of the white leather seat. As he took a sip of his champagne, he seemed relaxed. Contented.
Rose stared at the crystal flute in that large, rough hand. Just an hour ago, she herself had been sipping champagne in the gilded ballroom of her husband’s castle at her gorgeous wedding reception. Lars had looked up and smiled at her across the crowd.
Was it possible it had all been a lie?
A crack of pain went through her heart. No. It couldn’t be true. Couldn’t!
“You’re wrong about Lars,” Rose choked out. “He wouldn’t have done this awful thing you’re accusing him of—”
“Bigamy.”
She flinched. “Don’t use that horrible word!”
“You’re right,” he said coolly, finishing off his flute of champagne and setting it down. “It wasn’t bigamy, because his wedding to you was a sham from start to finish.”
“You’re wrong!”
“Did you ever sign any paperwork?”
Rose sucked in her breath as she realized for the first time that she’d never signed any papers. No marriage license. No forms. Nothing.
He watched her. “Växborg hasn’t visited Sweden for years. None of his friends here know about his first marriage. But the minister who conducted your ceremony was an out-of-work actor from Stockholm.”
“No,” she said automatically. But she remembered how the minister had been strangely young and handsome. She’d been so nervous, almost sick, as she stood in the ruined shell of the ancient stone church and waited to speak her vows. She’d shrugged off the minister’s soap-opera-star good looks, deciding all Swedish men must be as blond and handsome as Lars. But was it possible that what Xerxes Novros was telling her held some shred of truth…?
No! Rose shook her head fiercely. “Lars wouldn’t have pursued me if he were already married. He wouldn’t have even noticed me pouring his coffee in San Francisco!”
“He wouldn’t?”
“No! He wouldn’t! Marriage lasts forever. It is the friendship and passion that lasts your whole life. Loyalty and love are the foundation of everything!”
He stared at her sardonically. “And where did you hear that, princess?”
“I didn’t have to hear it from anyone,” she snapped. “My parents have been married for nearly forty years. My grandparents were married for sixty before my granddad died. All my brothers and sisters are married except for one. All married. Happily. Forever.”
Xerxes looked at her for a long time, then pressed the intercom. When the flight attendant came through the door, he turned to her, pushing the empty champagne flute back into her hands. His voice was almost surly as he said, “Scotch. Rocks.”
As she left, Xerxes turned back to Rose. “I can see marriage means a great deal to you.” He gave a hard look at the ostentatious diamond on her left hand. “So much that you didn’t mind speaking a few false vows in order to get your hands on that.”
He thought she cared about this huge diamond ring? She clasped her hands together tightly. Rose didn’t care about jewelry, only what it symbolized! “You think I would have let Lars even flirt with me if I’d thought he was married? Never!”
“Everything is for sale in this world. Everyone has a price. And clearly—” he looked with scorn from her ring to her designer wedding gown “—that was yours.”
“The lace was hand-stitched by nuns in France,” Lars had told her proudly when he’d presented it to her. He’d laughed at Rose’s desire to wear her mother’s simple 1960s-era wedding gown to a simple ceremony in her California hometown. “I will plan everything, petal. All you will need to do is be beautiful—and be ready for our honeymoon!”
Shaking the memory from her mind, Rose took a steadying breath.
“You’re wrong,” she said. “Either you’ve made a mistake, or…or…”
Or you’re lying, she wanted to say, but didn’t have the courage, faced with his wrathful gaze.
Rising to his feet, her captor crossed two steps to her. His eyes were like black fire. He towered over her, and she had to force herself not to cower, but to stand straight and tall, to stand her ground.
“Växborg has no money of his own. His money comes from his wife’s inheritance, from her wealthy mother.” His lips twisted as he scornfully touched the exquisite lace of her sleeve. “That’s her money you’re wearing on your back right now.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Keep on telling yourself that, princess.” “If any of this were true, if he were as bad as you say, why wouldn’t his wife just divorce him?”
Xerxes looked away, his jaw clenching. “She can’t.”
“Why?”
Narrowing his eyes, he looked at her. “They were in an accident. She’s in a coma. Not that you would care.”
His tone made it clear he thought Rose was a greedy, heartless brat. She—who’d worked two jobs to pay her own way through college, to help her parents survive since the family business went bankrupt!
Rose blinked fast. At that moment, the engine grew louder as the jet started to move down the runway. She nearly stumbled as it jolted forward.
“Sit down,” he said.
Ignoring the lump in her throat, she braced her arm against the ceiling and lifted her chin. “Don’t you dare tell me—”
“Sit down,” he barked.
Her knees failed beneath her and she fell onto the white leather couch with a whomp. She realized to her shock that her body had obeyed him, even when her mind had refused.
The plane accelerated down the runway as he sat beside her. She gripped the armrest. He calmly reached for his laptop.
Once they were airborne, Rose glanced out the tiny window. All she could see was endless darkness with eerie moonlit clouds.
No one could help her now. She was on her own. She took several deep breaths, trying to keep herself from panicking. “Where are you taking me?”
He didn’t answer. He stared at the screen on his laptop and typed rapidly, then took a sip of the Scotch that the smiling stewardess brought him on a tray. Rose waited until they were left alone again before she spoke.
“Where are you taking me?” she repeated more forcefully.
“It’s irrelevant.”
“Tell me where.”
“I hardly think you’re in a position to make demands.”
“You kidnapped me!”
“Such a melodramatic word.”
“How else would you describe it?”
“Justice,” he said coldly.
“You don’t have my passport.”
“That’s all been arranged.”
“How?”
He shrugged. “As everything else is. For a price.”
Watching beads of water condense on the outside of his glass tumbler, she clenched her hands into fists. “Tell me where we’re going right now,” she raged. “Or else…or else…”
He looked at her, his dark eyes amused. “Or else?”
Oh, how she wished she had her brother’s old baseball bat, or even a heavy handbag to threaten him with! She tried to look very mean as she thundered, “You will tell me where we’re going or I will make this flight your own private hell!”
Xerxes stared at her for a long instant. “Now that I believe,” he said mildly as his lips quirked. Typing a few last words on his computer, he turned back to face her and said, “I am taking you to Greece.”
“Why?”
“To force Växborg to give me what I want.”
“And that is?”
“If he loves you like you think,” he said the word scornfully, “he will agree to a trade.”
“Trade?” She stared at him. “What trade?”
“You. For her.” Taking another sip of Scotch, he set the tumbler down on the table and looked at her evenly. “I will use you to force him to divorce his wife. His real wife.”
Rose stared at him. Slowly, she lifted her chin.
“I am his real wife,” she said quietly. “And nothing you can say will convince me otherwise.”
Xerxes frowned. “Is it really possible—” he searched her gaze with narrowed eyes “—that you did not know?”
She shook her head. “There is nothing to know! You’ve made a horrible mistake!”
“I couldn’t understand why he would pretend to marry you like this. But if you didn’t know he already had a wife…” His eyes traced her face, her breasts, her body. He tilted his head curiously. “Did you give him some kind of ultimatum? Did he think pretending to marry you was the only way he could keep you in his bed?”
To keep her in Lars’s bed? Rose gaped at him. She’d never been in his bed—or any man’s! She was saving her virginity for her wedding night!
The thought made her suck in her breath.
Surely Lars wouldn’t have gone through such an elaborate wedding pretense just to get her into his bed…?
“I will do anything for you,” Lars had said urgently last week, his pale blue eyes boring into hers. “Anything, petal. This is torture. You must be mine.”
With a ragged breath, Rose pushed the memory aside. “Our marriage was real,” she said. “There is no other wife.”
Abruptly, Xerxes moved to the chair directly across from her. He leaned forward, and the knees of his long legs brushed the wide skirts of her wedding gown.
“I am telling you the truth, Rose,” he said quietly.
She stared up at him. His face was too brutally masculine to be conventionally handsome like Lars’s sleek blond features. Instead, Xerxes had a hard, square jawline that was already dark with shadow. He had an aquiline nose and dark eyebrows above black eyes as endless and luminous as the night. His hair was cut short, above his ear, but with a slightly mussed, wild wave.
As he leaned forward, looking into her eyes, she was aware of the warmth and strength of his body. Against her will, she was suddenly aware of the rhythm of his breath, deep and in time with hers. She was aware of his scent, the masculine combination of some kind of woodsy cologne and musk and leather.
He was so close to her. So close.
With a ragged breath, she looked away.
“Who is she, then?” Rose said in a small voice. “His supposed first wife?”
“Laetitia Van Reyn.”
“Van Reyn?”
“You know the name?”
“There’s a wealthy family in San Francisco, mentioned often in the newspapers…”
“The same,” he said grimly.
“But the parents are dead,” Rose recalled. “Their only child is barely out of high school. I read she left for college.”
“She’s in a coma,” he said brutally. “No one knows she needs help. And I can’t find her and get her to a hospital.” His black gaze traced over her. “But you are his weakness. He will trade her. For you.”
She shook her head, dazed.
“You are the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen. Except for…that.” He frowned as his eyes narrowed. “Take that off.”
“What?”
“Your dress. Take it off.”
“What are you talking about?” “The wedding dress is an insult. To her. To me. Take it off. You are not a bride.”
“I was—am!”
“Take off that dress,” he growled. “Or I will take it off for you.”
“I have nothing else to wear!”
He gave her a cold smile. “That is not my problem.”
She rose to her feet in fury, lifting her chin. “I have the right to wear this. I am a bride, a married woman. You’re a liar!”
He swiftly rose to his feet, like a predator. “Call me that again, princess,” he said dangerously.
“Baroness,” she corrected fiercely. She tossed her hair, glaring up at him with all the fury of her five feet, four inches. Her eyes glittered as she met him toe to toe. “And you, Xerxes Novros, are a liar!”