The Holiday Escapes Collection. Sandra Marton

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 noble-hearted 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