“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 o
f 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.”