Free The Bride Thief by Jennie Lucas

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,