elevator. “Thirty-ninth floor. And, um, congratulations, miss.”
“Thank you,” Josie murmured, tugging her knapsack higher on her shoulder as she turned away. She felt the doorman watching her as she crossed the elegant lobby, her flip-flops echoing against the marble floor. She numbly got on the elevator. On the thirty-ninth floor, the door opened with a ding. Cautiously, she crept out into a hallway.
“Welcome, Miss Dalton.” Two large, grim-looking bodyguards were waiting for her. In a quick, professional motion, one of them frisked her as the other one rifled through her bag.
“What are you checking for?” Josie said with an awkward laugh. “You think I would bring a hand grenade? To a wedding proposal?”
The bodyguards did not return her smile. “She’s clear,” one of them said, and handed her back the knapsack. “Please go in, Miss Dalton.”
“Um. Thanks.” Looking at the imposing door, she clutched her bag against her chest. “He’s in there?”
He nodded sternly. “His Highness is expecting you.”
Josie swallowed hard. “Right. I mean, great. I mean…” She turned back to them. “He’s a good guy, right? A good employer? He can be trusted?”
The bodyguards stared back at her, their faces impassive.
“His Highness is expecting you,” the first one repeated in an expressionless voice. “Please go in.”
“Okay.” You robot, she added silently, irritated.
Whatever. She didn’t need reassurance. She’d just listen to her intuition. To her heart.
Which meant Josie was really in trouble. There was a reason her dying father had left her a large parcel of Alaskan land in an unbreakable trust, which she could not receive until she was either twenty-five—three years from now—or married. Even when she was a child, Black Jack Dalton had known his naive, trusting younger daughter needed all the help she could get. To say she could be naive about people was an understatement.
But it’s a good quality, Bree had told her sadly two days ago. I wish I had more of it.
Bree. Josie could only imagine what her older sister was going through right now, as a prisoner of that other billionaire tycoon, Kasimir Xendzov’s brother. Closing her eyes, she took a deep breath.
“For Bree,” she whispered, and flung open the penthouse door.
The lavish foyer was empty. Stepping nervously across the marble floor, hearing the echo of her steps, she looked up at a soaring chandelier illuminating the sweeping staircase. This penthouse was like a mansion in the sky, she thought in awe.
Josie’s lips parted when she saw the view through the floor-to-ceiling windows. Crossing the foyer to the great room, she looked out at the twinkling lights of the still-dark city, and beyond that, pink and orange sunrise sparkling across the Pacific Ocean.
“So… you changed your mind.”
His low, masculine purr came from behind her. She stiffened then, bracing herself, slowly turned around.
Prince Kasimir Xendzov’s incredible good looks still hit her like a fierce blow. He was even more impossibly handsome than she remembered. He was tall, around six foot three, with broad shoulders and a hard-muscled body. His blue eyes were electric against tanned skin and dark hair. The expensive cut of his dark suit and tie, and the gleaming leather of his black shoes spoke of money—while the ruthlessness in his eyes and chiseled jawline screamed power.
In spite of her efforts, Josie was briefly thunderstruck.
Normally, she had no problems talking to people. As far as she was concerned, there was no such thing as a stranger. But Kasimir left her tongue-tied. No man this handsome had ever paid her the slightest notice. In fact, she wasn’t sure there was any other man on earth with Kasimir’s breathtaking masculine beauty. Looking into his darkly handsome face, she almost forgot to breathe.
“The last time I saw you, you said you’d never marry me.” Kasimir slowly looked her over, from her flip-flops to her jeans and T-shirt. “For any price.”
Josie’s cheeks turned pink. “Maybe I was a bit hasty,” she stammered.
“You threw your drink in my face.”
“It was an accident!” she protested.
He lifted an incredulous dark eyebrow. “You jumped up and ran out of the restaurant.”
“You just surprised me!” Three nights ago, on Christmas Eve, Kasimir had called her at the Hale Ka’nani Hotel, where she was working as a housekeeper. “My sister told me to never talk to you,” she’d blurted out when he introduced himself. “I’m hanging up.”
“Then you’ll miss the best offer of your life,” he’d replied silkily. He’d asked her to meet him at a hole-in-the-wall restaurant near Waikiki Beach. In spite of knowing he was forbidden—or perhaps because of it—she was intrigued by his mysterious proposal. And then she’d been even more shocked to find out he’d meant a real proposal. Marriage.
“You ran away from me,” Kasimir said quietly, taking a step towards her, “as if you were being chased by the devil himself.”
She swallowed.
“Because I did think you were the devil,” she whispered.
His blue eyes narrowed in disbelief. “This is your way of saying you’ll marry me?”
She shook her head. “You don’t understand,” she choked out. “You…”
Her throat closed. How could she explain that even though he and his brother had ruined their lives ten years ago, she’d still been electrified by Kasimir’s bright blue eyes when he’d asked her to marry him? How to explain that, even though she knew it was only to get his hands on her land, she’d been overwhelmed by too many years of yearning for some man, any man, to notice her—and that she’d been tempted to blurt out Yes, betraying all her ideals about love and marriage?
How could she possibly explain such pathetic, naive stupidity? She couldn’t.
“Why did you change your mind?” he asked in a low voice. “Do you need the money?”
They did need to pay off the dangerous men who’d pursued them for ten years, demanding payment of their dead father’s long-ago debts. But Josie shook her head.
“Then is it the title of princess that you want?”
Josie threw him a startled glance. “Really?”
“Many women dream of it.”
“Not me.” She shook her head with a snort. “Besides, my sister told me your title’s worthless. You might be the grandson of a Russian prince, but it’s not like you actually own any land—”
Whoops. She cut off in midsentence at his glare.
“We once owned hundreds of thousands of acres in Russia,” he said coldly. “And we owned the homestead in Alaska for nearly a hundred years, since my great-grandmother fled Siberia. It is rightfully ours.”
“Sorry, but your brother sold your homestead to my father fair and square!”
He took a step towards her.
“Against my will,” he said softly. “Without my knowledge.”
Josie took an unwilling step back from the icy glitter in his blue eyes. A self-made billionaire, Kasimir Xendzov was known to be a ruthless, heartless playboy whose main interest, even more than dating supermodels or adding to his pile of money, was destroying his older brother, who had cheated him out of their business partnership right before it would have made him hundreds of millions of dollars.
“Are you afraid of me?” he asked suddenly.
“No,”