Rose stared at him, pain curling around her heart. She thought of the five-year-old boy, abandoned by his mother, rejected by his father, sent away to be ignored and despised by his grandparents in a faraway land.
Xerxes’s eyes traced around Rose’s old bedroom. “I used to dream of having a home like this, a family like this. When my grandparents didn’t speak to me for days, I dreamed of someday coming back to America and finding my real parents.”
“And did you?” she breathed.
He gave a hard, ugly laugh. “Yes. But by then I was a grown man who’d already made my fortune. I found my father and took his business apart.”
“You ruined your own father?” she whispered.
“And I enjoyed it.” His eyes glittered. “I did not know he would die from the heart attack. But I should have known he had a weak heart, from the way he condemned me as a child to loneliness and silence.”
“Oh, Xerxes…”
He paused. “I did keep the one secret he cared about, just out of spite. I never revealed to the world that I was his son.”
“You protected him.”
“He wasn’t the one I was protecting.” He abruptly closed the curtains, covering the window. “Then I went looking for my mother and found her in Florida, living in a rathole, abandoned by her latest lover, dying from liver disease and booze.”
“What did you do?”
“I brought her a bottle of vodka in a bright red bow.” He gave a hard laugh. “She was glad to see it. I’d planned to abandon her, as she had me.” He looked away. “Instead, I tried to get her to go to rehab, bought her a new apartment and paid her bills until she died.”
“You cared for her,” Rose whispered.
He shrugged with a casual air belied by the darkness in his eyes. “A moment of weakness. And she died anyway.”
Rose’s heart was in her throat. Coming behind him, she wrapped her arms around him, pressing her cheek to his back. “I’m sorry.”
He turned around in her arms.
“Now you know what I am,” he said in a low voice. “Now you know why you’d be a fool to love me. Even you. Especially you.”
But I do, she thought, her heart aching in her chest. I do love you.
Her lips parted to speak the words, but at that moment her bedroom door was pushed open with a loud squeak of the hinges. Her mother stood in the doorway, wearing her usual vintage floral apron over her pantsuit. Vera Linden took one look at the couple and put her hands on her hips.
“Now, you two,” she said warningly. She turned to Xerxes with a greater show of warmth. “Mr. Novros—”
“Xerxes,” he corrected her with a smile.
“Xerxes, we’ve set you up for the night in Tom’s old room down the hall. I’ll show you.” Her mother glanced between them sharply. “But there’ll be no funny business tonight. I mean it.”
“Of course not, ma’am,” Xerxes said meekly. He looked at Rose, and his dark eyes danced with sudden laughter. Then he sobered. “Get some sleep, Rose. We leave for Las Vegas in the morning.”
As the door closed, Rose sucked in her breath. In the morning. The trade.
Pushing the painful reminder away, Rose stared at the closed door as she changed into old flannel pajamas. The only thing more strange than having Xerxes in her childhood home was how well he fit in here. He blended with her family in a way that Lars never had. Lars never would have slept in her brother’s old room. He would have insisted on renting a suite at a luxury seaside hotel twenty miles away. That is, if he’d even been willing to bear the inconvenience of a night here at all.
“Rose?”
She looked up to see Vera in her doorway. “Hi, Mom.”
“I meant to bring this to you earlier.” Her mother sat down beside her on the bed and handed her a cup of peppermint tea. “I’m so glad you’re back. We were all so worried.”
“Thanks.” Rose took a sip of the lukewarm tea, then added in a carefully casual tone, “Is Xerxes settled in?”
Vera snorted, then shook her head wryly. “And to think just a few days ago we were in Sweden, watching you marry another man.”