The Holiday Escapes Collection. Sandra Marton

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!”

       Chapter Four