“Stop joking about this!” Her voice ended with a humiliating sob. “I mean it!”
Seeing her tears, he released his arms. He touched her gently on the shoulders.
“All right. I will never kiss you again,” he said in a low voice. His blue gaze burned through her like white fire. “I give you my word of honor.”
She swallowed, then wiped her eyes roughly with the back of her hand. “I don’t like being used,” she whispered. Squaring her shoulders, she looked up. “Just stick to our original deal. A professional arrangement. You get your land. I get my sister back safe.”
“Yes.” Matching her tone, he said, “We’ll be at the airport in a few moments.”
She suddenly remembered. “My backpack—”
“I’ll have my housekeeper bring it to the airport.” Pulling out his phone, he dialed and gave his orders. After he hung up, he asked Josie quietly, “What is so important in the backpack, anyway?”
“Nothing much,” she said, looking down at her hands, now tightly folded over the white lace of her dress. “An old photo of my family. A sweater that used to belong to my mother. Before she—” Josie’s lip trembled “—died. Right after I was born.”
Silence fell.
“I’m sorry,” he said gruffly. “I lost my own mother when I was twenty-two. I still miss her. She was the only truly good, decent woman I’ve ever known. At least until—”
His voice cut off.
“Until?”
“Never mind,” he muttered.
Josie stared at him. Then her hand reached out for his.
Kasimir looked down at her hand. “You’re trying to make me feel better?” he said slowly. He looked up. “I thought you were ready to kill me.”
“I was—I mean, I am.” She swallowed, then whispered, “But I know how it feels to lose your parents. I know what it’s like to feel orphaned and alone. And I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy.” She tried to smile. “Though I guess you’ve done all right, haven’t you? Being a billionaire prince and all.”
He stared at her for a long moment. “It’s not always what it’s cracked up to be.” He looked away. “You asked me where we’re going? I’m taking you home.”
“To Alaska?”
He snorted, then shook his head. “Not even close.” He looked down at her tight white dress. “We’ll need to get you some new clothes.”
She followed his gaze. Sitting down, her body was squeezed by the white sheath like a sausage, pressing her full breasts halfway to her chin. Her nipples were barely tucked in for decency. She gulped, fighting the urge to cover herself with her bouquet of flowers. She cleared her throat. “I was planning to wash all my dirty clothes today. Does this place we’re going to happen to have a washer and dryer...?”
Her voice trailed off when she saw his gaze roaming from her breasts, to her hips, and back again. Her cheeks colored.
“I wish I’d never told you,” she said grumpily, folding her arms and turning away.
“Told me what?”
“About the underwear.”
Silence fell in the backseat of the car.
“Me, too,” he muttered.
* * *
Josie craned her neck to look right, left, then up. And up some more.
“Unreal,” she muttered.
Kasimir flashed her a grin. “I’m glad you like it.”
“This is your home?”
“No.” He smiled at her, looking sleek and shaved in a clean suit, having showered on their overnight flight. “My home is in the desert, a two-hour helicopter ride away. But this...” He shrugged. “It’s just a place to do business. I come here as little as possible. It’s a bit too...civilized.”
Too civilized?
Josie shook her head as she looked back up at the beautiful Moorish palace, two stories tall, surrounded by gently swaying palm trees and the glimmer of a blue-water pool.
It was like a honeymoon all right, she thought. If you were really, really rich.
After sleeping all night on a full-size bed in the back cabin of Kasimir’s private jet, she’d woken up refreshed. She’d looked out the jet’s small windows to see a golden land rising beyond the sparkling blue ocean, and past that, sunlight breaking over black mountains.
“Where are we?” she’d breathed.
Kasimir had looked at her, his eyes shining. “Morocco.” His smile was warm. “My home.”
Now, they were standing in front of his palace in the desert outside Marrakech. She could see the dark crags of the Atlas Mountains in the distance, illuminated by the bright morning sun. Birds were singing as they soared across the wide desert sky. The pool glimmered darts of sunlight, like diamonds, against the deep green palm trees.
It was an oasis here. Of beauty, yes. She glanced behind her at the guardhouse beside the wrought-iron gate. But also of money and power.
“It’s beautiful.” She exhaled, then could no longer keep herself from blurting out, “So is she here?”
He looked at her blankly. “Who?”
“Bree.” She furrowed her brow. “You said she was here!”
“I never said that. I said I had a slight suspicion of where she might be.”
“Do you think she’s in Morocco?”
His lips twisted. “Unlikely.”
Josie glared at him. “Then why on earth did we come all the way here?”
“Hawaii was getting tiresome,” he said coldly. “I wanted to leave. And I told you. This is where I do business...”
“Business!” she cried. “Your only business is finding Bree!”
“Yes.” He tilted his head. “Once I have your land.”
She gasped. “You said as soon as we were married, you’d save her!”
“No.” He looked at her. “I said I’d save her after we got married. When I had possession of your land.”
She shook her head helplessly. “You can’t intend to wait for some stupid legal formalities...”
“Can’t I?” Kasimir said sharply. “It would be easy for you to decide, after your sister is safely home, that you’d prefer not to transfer your land to me at all. Or to suddenly insist that I pay you, say, a hundred million dollars for it.”
“A hundred million...” She couldn’t even finish the number. “For six hundred acres?”
“You know what the land means to me,” he said tightly. “You could use my feelings against me.”
“I wouldn’t!”
“I know you won’t. Because you won’t have the chance.”
“Getting the land could take months!”
“I have the best lawyers in the country working on it. I expect to have it in my possession within a few weeks.”
A few weeks? She forced herself to take a deep breath, to calm the frantic beating of her heart, so she could say reasonably, “I can’t wait that long.”
His lips pursed. “You have no choice.”
“But my sister’s in danger!” she exploded.
“Danger?” He looked at her incredulously. “If anyone’s in danger, it’s Vladimir.”
Josie frowned. “What do you mean by that?”
He blinked. “She’s always been his weakness, that’s all,” he muttered. He reached for her hand. “Come inside. I want to show you something.”
He led her through the exotic green garden towards the palace, and as they walked past the soaring Moorish arches, she looked up in amazement. The foyer was painted with intertwined flowers and vines and geometric motifs in gold leaf and bright colors. Raised Arabic calligraphy was embedded into the plaster on the walls. She’d never seen anything quite so beautiful, or so foreign.
Josie’s lips parted as, in the next room, she saw the ornamental stucco pattern of the soaring ceiling, which seemed to drip stalactites in perfect symmetry. “Are those muqarnas?” she breathed.
He looked at her with raised eyebrows.
“I love architecture coffee-table books,” she said, rather defensively.
“Of course you do.” He sounded amused.
Her eyes narrowed, and she tilted her head. “It’s beautiful. Even though it’s fake.”
“Fake?” he said.
“The builder tried to make it look older, Moorish in design, but with those art-nouveau elements in the windows...I’m guessing it was built in the 1920s?”
He gave her a surprised look. “You got all that from a single coffee-table book?”
Her cheeks colored slightly. “I might have spent a few hours lingering over books at my favorite couscous restaurant.”
He grinned at her. “Well, you’re right. This was built as a hotel when Morocco was a French protectorate.” He looked at her approvingly. “There’s no way Bree is smarter than you.”