Page 16 of The Billionaire's Last-Minute Marriage
He couldn’t even remember what he had said, only that within a few moments he had extracted her from the situation and she had begged him to get her out of there. He had taken her outside, knowing the old library well considering he himself often ducked out of such events. Every year.
He’d led her to one of the smaller libraries, meaning to quickly deposit her there and head back to the party himself. But just as he had moved to leave he had felt her hand on his elbow and she had offered the words that had probably sealed their fate.
‘You could always just hide here too.’
And he had. Before he’d realised it, an hour had passed and a single glance out at the corridor showed a crowd of guests had begun to disperse, some of them heading directly for them. His mystery blonde had excused herself to go to the bathroom and he had been commandeered by his father to break up a spat that had broken out between Arista and one of their board members.
When he had returned to find her, she had gone.
Disappeared as though she had never existed in the first place. And when he had asked his father if he knew the young blonde woman, Zeus had been strangely tight-lipped. Except for a malicious gleam, which Xander in retrospect should have been wary of.
Monday morning had dawned, and he had walked into his office to say goodbye before flying back to Europe, only to find his father waiting, his brand-new executive assistant, Pandora Quinn, in tow.
It had been wrong of him not to acknowledge in any way that they had already met, but rage and previous experience of people who’d tried to take advantage of knowing him had clouded his own judgement. Neither of them had ever once referenced that first night, not even when Zeus had announced his forced hiatus eight weeks later, recalling Xander from Europe, and they had been suddenly forced to work side by side.
He’d always wondered about the swiftness of her hiring. Now, after her attempts to retrieve something from the safe, something that Zeus had supposedly ‘promised’ her, he knew that something more had been going on behind her sudden employment with his father... He remembered her indignant claim that she was not a criminal, despite being caught red-handed—was it possible that Pandora had been just as much a victim of Zeus’s machinations as he was?
And now, in the face of her questionable deceit, was it possible that he had decided to punish her in the same fashion as his father had always punished him? The thought made him absolutely sick to his stomach. His father had been cruel, he had played with people’s emotions and used what they wanted against them in order to maintain control.
Xander never did that. But he had demanded that she become his wife, for goodness’ sake. He had demanded she play the part of the temporary society bride, not even bothering to ask how that might impact her for the duration. In his mind, she had owed him the service. For him, she had got in the way of what he wanted and so she had to pay the price.
He was no better than Zeus. Perhaps, he was even worse. That thought was enough to keep him awake, stomach roiling and head pounding as the jet moved across the Pacific and into darkness once more.
Finally, having not had a wink of sleep, he got up to find her. He hovered outside the door of the main cabin, where she’d gone to rest, needing to clarify those points with her. To know if his suspicions about Zeus somehow manipulating her were true. But then, as though on cue, a bang sounded from the room within, granting him due cause to open the door and force his way inside, where the bed, though unmade, was completely empty.
Shock reverberated through him, filling him with adrenaline as he pushed his way further into the room, eyes scanning the perimeter. She had definitely come in here earlier. He had heard the door snap shut behind her.
He was just about to burst back into the main cabin and search every corner, when a small rustling sound caught his attention. The large double bed took up most of the cabin, but for small spaces on either side. The far side of the bed was where the noise had come from.
Xander climbed across the bed, peering down to where the Egyptian cotton duvet had apparently fallen to the floor. He lifted one corner and smelled the scent of roses.
Pandora lay in a foetal position, seemingly rolled up in the duvet like a delicate burrito of sorts.
Her eyes opened, her entire body snapping to attention with a speed that led him to believe that she hadn’t been sleeping.
‘What are you doing in here?’ she asked. ‘Have we landed?’
‘I think a better question is what are you doing down there?’ He resisted the urge to assist her as she pulled herself awkwardly upwards from the small space. ‘This is a ten-thousand-dollar bed and you’re sleeping on the floor.’
‘I couldn’t sleep.’ She stared at the huge bed, clearly embarrassed. ‘I move around a lot. It felt too open.’
He stared down at her, seeing the dark bruises under her eyes. There were still seven hours before they landed in Osaka, but at this rate they’d both be hallucinating from sleep deprivation. He helped her up from the small space, easing her shoulders back until she was sitting on the side of the bed.
‘Okay, the way I see this we could both be stubborn and suffer, or we could just join forces here.’ He gestured to the empty bed, then lifted a hand to silence her immediate interruption. ‘Think about it, Quinn—I’ll fill up the empty space and you will stop banging around my jet waking me up.’
‘Xander, honestly, I’m used to finding new ways to cope.’
‘You don’t need to cope. You need to sleep.’
She blinked up at him, whatever words she’d been about to say wiped out by a sudden gigantic yawn. He felt the urge to follow suit, his eyes feeling heavy almost as though he were drunk. Without thinking, he walked to the other side of the bed and sat down, removing his shoes and lying down to stretch out on the soft white sheets. As expected, the pillows were heaven and he let out a deep growl of appreciation.
‘Lie down. Let’s just try sleeping together.’ He paused, inwardly cursing his own foolish choice of words. ‘Sleepbesideone another, I mean.’
She was already lowering herself to the pillow on the opposite side of the bed, her lips pursed as she stiffened. ‘Sorry, I’m not good at accepting help.’
That simple admission cut through him, unravelling an anger within him towards whoever in her past had made her close up this way. ‘Lie quietly with me for five minutes and if it doesn’t work, we’ll resort to alcohol.’
‘Okay,’ she breathed, eyes threatening to close even as she whispered, ‘This probably won’t work, Xander.’
