LITMIR.BIZ

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was still fully dressed. She’d been sleeping on an enormous bed, in a strange bedroom. The masculine, dark-floored bedroom was flooded with golden light from the windows.

      How long had she been sleeping? She yawned, and her mouth felt dry, as if it was lined with cotton. Who had brought her here? Could it have been Kasimir himself?

      The thought of being carried in those strong arms, against his powerful chest, as she slept on unaware, caused her to tremble. She looked down at the mussed white bedspread.

      Could it possibly be his bed…?

      With a gulp, Josie jumped up as if it had burned her. The clock on the fireplace mantel said three o’clock. Gracious! She’d slept for hours. She stretched her arms above her head with another yawn. It had been nice of Kasimir to let her sleep. She felt so much better.

      Until she saw herself in the full-length mirror on the other side of the bedroom. Wait. Was that what she looked like? She took three steps towards it, then sucked in her breath in horror, covering her mouth with her hand.

      Josie knew she wasn’t the most fashionable dresser, and that she was a bit on the plump side, too. But she’d had no idea she looked this bad. She’d crossed the Pacific twice in the same rumpled T-shirt and wrinkled, oversize men’s jeans that she’d bought secondhand last year. In her flight back from Seattle, she’d been crushed in the last row, in a sweaty middle seat between oversize businessmen who took her armrests and stretched their knees into her personal space. And she hadn’t had a shower or even brushed her teeth for two days.

      Josie gasped aloud, realizing she’d been grungy and gross like this when she’d been face-to-face with Kasimir. Picturing his sleek, expensive clothes, his perfect body, the way he looked so powerful and sexy as a Greek god with those amazing eyes and broad shoulders and chiseled cheekbones, her cheeks flamed.

      She narrowed her eyes. She might be a frumpy nobody, but there was no way she was going to face him again, possibly on her fake wedding day, without a shower and some clean clothes. No way!

      Looking around for her backpack, she saw it sitting by the door and snatched it up, then headed for the large en suite bathroom.

      It was luxurious, all gleaming white marble and shining silver. Tossing her tattered backpack on the marble counter, where it looked extremely out of place, she started to dig through it for a toothbrush. Some great packing job, she thought in irritation. In the forty seconds she’d rushed around their tiny apartment in Honolulu, trying to flee before Vladimir Xendzov could collect Bree as his rightful property, Josie had grabbed almost nothing of use.

      The top of a bikini—just the top, no bottom. Her mother’s wool cardigan sweater, now frayed and darned. Some slippers. She hadn’t even remembered to pack underwear. Gah!

      Desperately, she dug further. A few cheap souvenirs from Waikiki. Her cell phone, now dead because she’d forgotten to pack the charger. A tattered Elizabeth Gaskell novel which had belonged to her mother when she was a high-school English teacher. A small vinyl photo album, that flopped open to a photo of her family taken a year before Josie was born.

      Her heart twisted as she picked it up. In the picture, her mother was glowing with health, her father was beaming with pride and five-year-old Bree, with blond pigtails, had a huge toothless gap in her smile. Josie ran her hand over their faces. Beneath the clear plastic, the old photo was wrinkled at the edges from all the nights Josie had slept with it under her pillow as a child, while she was left alone with the babysitter for weeks at a time. Her parents and Bree looked so happy.

      Before Josie was born.

      It was an old grief, one she’d always lived with. If Josie had never been conceived, her mother wouldn’t have put off chemotherapy treatments for the sake of her unborn child. Or died a month after Josie’s birth, causing her father to go off the deep end, quitting his job as a math teacher and taking his seven-year-old poker-playing prodigy daughter Bree down the Alaskan coast to fleece tourists. Josie blinked back tears.

      If she had never been born…

      Her parents and Bree might still be happy and safe in a snug little suburban home.

      Squaring her shoulders, she shook the thought away. Tucking the photo album back into her bag, she looked at her own bleak reflection, then grabbed her frayed toothbrush, drenched it in minty toothpaste and cleaned her teeth with a vengeance.

      A moment later, she stepped into the steaming hot water of the huge marble shower. The rush of water felt good against her skin, like a massage against the tired muscles of her back and shoulders, washing all the dust and grime and grief away. Using some exotic orange-scented shampoo with Arabic writing—where on earth had Kasimir gotten that?—Josie washed her long brown hair thoroughly. Then she washed it again, just to be sure.

      It was going to be all right, she repeated to herself. It would all be all right.

      Soon, her sister would be safe.

      Soon, her sister would be home.

      And once Bree was free from Vladimir Xendzov’s clutches, maybe Josie would finally have the guts to tell her what she felt in her heart, but had never been brave enough to say.

      As much as she loved and appreciated all that Bree had sacrificed for her over the past ten years, Josie was no longer a child. She was twenty-two. She wanted to learn how to drive. To get a job on her own. To be allowed to go to bars, to date. She wanted the freedom to make mistakes, without Bree as an anxious mother hen, constantly standing over her shoulder.

      She wanted to grow up.

      Turning off the water, she got out of the shower. The large bathroom was steamy, the mirrors opaque with white fog. She wondered how long she’d been in the water. She didn’t wear a watch because she hated to watch the passage of time, which seemed to go far too slowly when she was working, and rushed by at breakneck speed when she was not. Why, she’d often wondered, couldn’t time rush by at work, and then slip into delicious slowness when she was at home, lasting and lasting, like sunlight on a summer’s day?

      Wrapping a plush white towel around her body, over skin that was scrubbed clean with orange soap and pink with heat, she looked at the sartorial choices offered by her backpack. Let’s see. Which was better: a wool cardigan or a bikini top?

      With a grumpy sigh, she looked back at the dirty, wrinkled T-shirt, jeans and white cotton panties and bra crumpled on the shining white tile of the bathroom floor. She’d worn those clothes for two days straight. The thought of putting them back over her clean skin was dreadful. But she had no other option.

      Or did she…?

      Her eyes fell upon something hanging on the back of the bathroom door that she hadn’t noticed before. A white shift dress. Going towards it, she saw a note attached to the hanger.

       Every bride needs a wedding dress. Join me at the rooftop pool when you’re awake.

      She smiled down at the hard black angles of his handwriting. She’d thought she hadn’t wanted a dress, that she wanted to keep their wedding as dull and unromantic as possible. But now… how had he known the small gesture would mean so much?

      Then she saw the dress’s tag. Chanel. Holy cow. Maybe the gesture wasn’t so small. For a moment, she was afraid to touch the fabric. Then she stroked the lace softly with her fingertips. It felt like a whisper. Like a dream.

      Maybe everything really was going to be all right.

      Josie exhaled, blinking back tears. She’d taken a huge gamble, using her last paycheck to come back to Honolulu, trusting Kasimir to help her. But it had paid off. For the first time in her life, she’d done something right.

      It was a strangely intoxicating feeling.

      Josie had always been the one who ruined things, not the one who saved them. She’d learned from a young age that the only way to make up for all the pain she’d caused everyone was just to take a book and go read quietly and invisibly in a corner, making as little trouble or fuss as possible.

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