Page 40 of The Blonde Who Came in from the Cold
“If you were too loving, we wouldn’t be going there.”
It wasn’t a large island. According to their intel, just a little over twenty square miles, but the peaks seemed to rise forever, rocky and jagged like a knife sticking out of the Atlantic and trying to stab the sky.
Alex couldn’t help herself: she whistled. Then she reached for a button on the armrest. “Liz, can you get us a good look at this before you take us down?”
A woman’s voice came through the speaker. “I can try.”
The jet banked and took a slow circuit around the tiny island. They saw waterfalls and lush green foliage. Even the places that were hard and gray were also lush and green, and Alex couldn’t make those two facts make sense, but there they were, right in front of her eyes.
“There.” King pointed to a building near the top of the highest peak. There was a lone road zigzagging up the jagged rocks, and the whole thing looked like it had been carved into the mountain ages ago and had spent the last few centuries trying to fight the sky.
“Well, doesn’t that look lovely.”
“Not the word I would use,” King said dryly.
“It’s called sarcasm, darling.”
She studied his profile in the bright, clear light that filtered through the airplane’s window. There was a spark in his eye when he said, “If you say so, sweetheart.”
“I do.Dear.” Alex dropped the word like a hand grenade.
“By all means, love bucket.”
Which was a step too far and Alex cringed. “Love bucket?” King looked... confused. Like this was a game and she’d changed the rules. “Love bucket?” Alex snapped again. “That sounds like something they’d have in a Victorian brothel. Love—”
But the plane banked again, harder and sharper, and Alex felt herself tipping and falling—right into Michael Kingsley. His hand felt impossibly large on her waist, and Alex thought it might burn a hole right through her dress—through her skin.
“Easy there, Sterling.”
Alex didn’t like it. Not the little dip she felt in her stomach as the plane started its rapid descent. Not the look in his eyes when the pilot said, “Hold on back there. This is gonna be quick.” Not the way he gripped her tighter and tugged her down onto the plush leather seat when the plane dropped sharply over the edge of a rocky cliff and down into the lush green valley that stretched between the mountain and the sea.
Alex didn’t reach for the seat belt. She didn’t reach for anything. She was too busy trying to find her balance and her dignity.
On the other side of the window, the sand was black and the water was sapphire, but all Alex could think as the plane touched down and bounced along the too-short runway wasIt’s fake.
Because of course it was. That was what she’d signed up for: fake names and fake loves and fake lives. They’d just landed on the island of one of the most dangerous arms dealers in the world, but somehow she felt safer there, as Mrs. Donna Dixon, than she’d ever been as herself.
The plane slowed, then stopped, but Alex didn’t move off of King’s lap. She didn’t stand or scurry or pull on her sunglasses or her cover or her dignity. She just... sat there. Waiting until—
“Are you ready?” King suddenly looked like he wasn’t at all sure of the answer.
“No.” She didn’t know where the word came from. It just popped out.
“Oh. Of course.” King pulled back, and Alex waited for some insult or jab, but he just started looking around like they’d forgotten something, then he picked up a small velvet box. “I guess you’ll be needing this.”
And then the most infuriating man that Alex had ever known presented her with a four-carat Harry Winston. “For the cover.”
Fake.Every lastthing.
“And here I thought it was because of our undying love.”
“Do you want it or—”
“Hey. A girl only gets Fake Married once.” Which wasn’t true. She’d already been fake married to him once before, but this time felt... “You’re supposed to get down on one knee, you know? Ask my father’s permission. Maybe spell outWill you fake marry me?in rose petals.”
He closed his eyes as if to silently remind himself that Merritt was an old woman and a living legend and it would be a great mistake to kill her.
“Alexandra Sterling,” he ground out, “will you be my fake wife?”
