“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.”#p#分页标题#e#
Her heart fluttered. In spite of her best efforts, she was still beaming foolishly beneath his praise as he led her past a shadowy cloistered walkway to the open courtyard at the center of the palace. The white merciless sun beat down in the blue sky, but the center courtyard garden was cool, with lush flowers and an orange tree on each corner. Soft breezes sighed through palm trees, leaving dappled shadows over the burbling stone fountain.