The Snow Bride - Anne McAllister Mills & Boon By Request

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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 of 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.”

      Clenching her jaw, she shook her head vehemently. “Never.” She lifted her luminous eyes to his. “You know, you saved me from making the greatest mistake of my life yesterday. And you are keeping your promise to me. So you can’t be all bad. I was thinking you can’t be…”

      “I am,” he bit out. “All bad.”

      “But you’re risking everything to save Laetitia,” she said softly. “That is hardly selfish.”

      “I am saving her for my own reasons. Because…”

      “Because?”

      “Because I made a promise to protect her.”

      Rose gave a slow nod. “Which just proves my point.”

      Xerxes gave a low 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.”

      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 noblehearted 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.”

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