King's Ransom

by Amelia Autin

  He couldn’t get it out of his mind there was something he wasn’t seeing with regard to Juliana. Something she wasn’t telling him. Something important. He still thought it had something to do with DeWinter despite her denials. And if she wouldn’t tell him, he would just have to get his answers out of the other man. No matter what he had to do to get them.

  * * *

  Andre left the ancient dining hall where the household staff was serving a buffet dinner to the cast and crew of King’s Ransom. He’d already learned neither DeWinter nor his wife were in attendance. Nor Juliana for that matter, but for once his eyes weren’t seeking her out. He was going to get answers. If not from Juliana, then from DeWinter. To that end he’d ordered his bodyguard to stay behind—over the man’s vehement objections—because he needed privacy for what he was going to do, what he was going to ask.

  But before he could head up the Grand Staircase, his cousin Zax caught up with him. “Andre! A moment, please!”

  He paused with his foot on the first step and turned. “Can it wait, Zax?”

  “No.”

  Andre sighed, but not so his cousin would notice. “What is so urgent?”

  Zax’s normally austere expression was even more forbidding than usual. “What is this rumor I hear that you are considering allowing women in combat?”

  “It is no rumor. I intend to bring it to a vote before the Privy Council later this week.”

  “You are pushing too far too fast, Andre,” Zax warned. “Was it not bad enough your first royal proclamation threw open the doors to allow women to serve in the military?”

  “Are you still on that? It has been three years.”

  “Auxiliary service behind the line was bad enough. But now you want women in combat? Serving alongside men?”

  “Combat service will not be mandatory,” Andre explained in his reasonable way. “That was never my intent. Just as military service is completely optional for women, so, too, will combat service be optional. You have no sister, so perhaps you do not see this the same way I do. But Mara is right when she says women should make the decision for themselves—that career path should not be arbitrarily denied them merely because they are women.”

  Zax ground his teeth. “Mara is wrong. Combat is no place for women. You should know that—would you have wanted women serving beside you in Afghanistan? I certainly would not, not even as chopper pilots doing search and rescue as I did, or medevac. You are asking too much of the people this time. And the military—”

  Andre cut his cousin off. “What of the military?”

  “The men have remained loyal to you through all the other changes you have implemented, politically and militarily. But this may be the last straw.”

  Andre gave Zax a steady look. “It is the right thing to do. If I must compromise my conscience to retain my throne, I will surrender the throne and keep my self-respect.”

  Zax made a gesture of frustration. “It is not a matter of surrendering your throne—nothing so easy as that. You are playing with fire, Andre. Two assassination attempts in the past three years by traditionalists—”

  “Like you.”

  His cousin’s eyes hardened but he nodded. “Yes. Traditionalists, like me. Men who opposed the changes you implemented. Two attempts—foiled by the grace of God.”

  “The grace of God—and the devotion of the men guarding me,” Andre corrected. “The would-be assassins are dead and I am still alive.”

  “And I am ultimately responsible for keeping you safe despite yourself. Despite your actions that make you even more of a target than you would otherwise be. Do you know how difficult that is? Hell, Andre, I can think of a half dozen ways to kill you myself, at no risk to me.”

  Andre smiled his faint smile. “Then it is a good thing you are on my side, is it not?” he said gently. He placed a conciliatory hand on his cousin’s shoulder. “We can discuss this further, but not now, if you please. Come see me tomorrow morning—marshal your arguments and I will listen to what you have to say, I promise. Tell my appointments secretary I said to make room in the schedule for you.”

  He waited for Zax’s reluctant assent and watched until his cousin was out of sight, a slight frown furrowing his brow. Things had grown so strained between them these past few weeks. And now he wondered how Zax had heard about his latest proposition. Someone on the Privy Council must have talked—there was no other explanation. Had whomever it was hoped Zax could dissuade him from pursuing this course?

  He continued on to the DeWinters’ suite and knocked on the door, mentally shelving one problem to confront another, but his sharp rap wasn’t answered immediately. Impatient, he knocked again, harder this time.

  “Just a minute!” The solid oak door was jerked open suddenly, and DeWinter stood there, a casually inquisitive expression on his face that turned into surprise when he saw the king framed in the doorway. The surprise quickly turned into something else. “I’ll be damned,” he said softly. “Bree was right.”

  “Accept my apologies for the intrusion on you and your wife.” Good manners dictated the apology, but despite Zax’s earlier interruption Andre was riding with his emotions on a curb bit, so his tone was perfunctory. “I must speak with you...about Juliana.”

  “Who is it, Dirk?” Sabrina came up behind her husband. “Oh.” She glanced from Andre’s hard, set expression to her husband’s dawning smile, and she put a restraining hand on his arm. “Honey, I don’t think—”

  He cut her off. “I know you don’t, but it’s okay,” he reassured her. He looked back at Andre and cocked a questioning eyebrow. There was also a bit of a challenge in his eyes, in his stance. “What did you want to know...about Juliana?”

  Andre’s gaze slid toward Sabrina. “Privately,” he insisted after turning his attention back to DeWinter. The two men assessed each other like gamecocks, each noting the strengths in the other man...and seeking out the weaknesses, the chinks in the other’s armor. Then came the realization in both sets of eyes that there were no weaknesses to exploit. Andre inclined his head slightly, acknowledging an equal. “Walk with me,” he demanded softly.

  “Dirk, I—”

  “It’s really okay,” he told his wife. “I’ll be back shortly. I promise.”

  The two men strode silently but purposefully back down the East Wing’s lengthy hallway, then down the Grand Staircase, the king leading the way. The two guards at the front doors snapped to attention and saluted when Andre came into sight, but he turned away to a side corridor. “This way,” he said, leading the other man into the music room.

  Andre locked the door and stood with his back to it for a moment, watching silently as DeWinter wandered toward the grand piano on a dais in one corner of the room, sat down and began playing. Then, his voice hard and unrelenting, he stated, “Juliana tells me you and she are not lovers.”

  DeWinter’s hands paused in midstroke, and he looked up at Andre. “You’ve got stones, I’ll give you that.”

  “I would know if that is the truth.”

  One corner of DeWinter’s mouth quirked up in a half smile. “Far be it from me to contradict a lady.”

  Andre took a step forward. “Are you saying you are lovers?” he demanded coldly, clenching his right fist despite his promise to himself not to lose his temper. Had Juliana lied to him about this?

  “No, I’m saying you’ve yet to prove to me it’s any of your damn business.” DeWinter obviously wasn’t about to back down to anyone, king or commoner. There was a long tense pause, during which DeWinter seemed to reach a decision. “I’ve known Juliana for ten years,” he said finally. “I’ve been married for twelve.” His voice was as cold and hostile as Andre’s had been. “That’s all the answer you should need. And it’s all the answer you’re going to get.”

  Eventually Andre nodded. “Fair enough. But you are an intelligent, observant man, so answer me this. Is Juliana in love with you?”

  DeWinter laughed suddenly, and Andre slowly let out the breath he was
holding. No man could sound that unconcerned if there was any truth to the question. Not where someone as devastatingly beautiful as Juliana was concerned. “Juliana’s a brilliant actress. On screen she’s loved me since our first movie together—her Tessa to my Terry O’Dare was incandescent. Incomparable. And if she looked at me in real life the way she looks at me on the set of this movie, as if I’m her whole world and her only chance for salvation, I’d be hard-pressed to walk away from her. Although I’d like to think I’d remain faithful to Bree,” he added drily. “But that’s all there is between us. Make-believe. She’s not, nor has she ever been, in love with me.” The confident, forthright way he made that assertion convinced Andre his suspicions were wrong. Dead wrong.

  Relief flooded him. Not DeWinter. Never him. Someone. But not him.

  “Now I’ve got a couple of questions of my own,” DeWinter said, closing the keyboard with a decided thud and rising to his full six foot two. “Juliana didn’t want to return to Zakhar to film this movie. She wouldn’t tell us why, but it’s obvious to me...now. It’s also obvious you maneuvered to get her here. Why? And who the hell do you think you are to break her heart?” Now his stance was a threat.

  Andre considered both questions for several heartbeats and chose to answer the last one first. “I never broke her heart.” He hesitated for another couple of heartbeats. “She left me.”

  “Well, that answers the first question, too,” DeWinter replied. “Why,” he answered as Andre lifted a questioning eyebrow. “You want her back. That’s why you went to all this trouble and expense to get her here.” When Andre didn’t answer, just folded his lips tighter together, DeWinter said, “The screenwriter you picked is a friend of mine. She let it slip who commissioned the screenplay. When I asked the studio about it they played dumb...but I’m not stupid. I offered to take a substantial cut in salary for a piece of the film, but I was smugly told they had all the financing they needed. And I wasn’t even here a week before I started putting two and two together and coming up with some very interesting answers.”

  Andre didn’t want to ask, but he had no choice. “Have you said anything to Juliana?”

  DeWinter shook his head. “She’s having a hard enough time with things as it is.” He took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “Juliana and I have been nothing but friends since the day we met. But I’ll be honest. From the very beginning I told myself I could heal her...if I were free.”

  He let that sink in, watching Andre with sharp eyes before continuing. “But the flip side is that if I had been single and hunting her, we wouldn’t be friends. Juliana doesn’t let men get close to her—not in that way. Someone did that to her. Some man. I’ve always known it—I just never knew who it was...until now.”

  Andre shook his head decisively. “It was not me.”

  DeWinter grunted, but whether in denial or agreement, Andre couldn’t be sure. And now that DeWinter had confirmed he and Juliana weren’t lovers, now that he’d denied Juliana was in love with him, Andre needed time. Time to reassess, to consider what it all meant. Time to figure out why Juliana would accuse him of breaking her heart. And why DeWinter had been misled into thinking the same thing.

  But there was still one question he wanted answered. “What was Juliana telling you this afternoon on the set?” It still ate at him, the pleading expression on her face as she looked at the man opposite him, the way she’d touched him with intimate purpose.

  DeWinter cursed fluently, and suddenly the two men were standing toe to toe in confrontation, neither one backing down. “That is none of your damn business.”

  “That is what she said, too.” Andre’s eyes narrowed. “If you have lied to me—”

  “What Juliana said is private, and has nothing whatever to do with you, or her, either, for that matter. It concerns my wife. And that’s all I’m going to tell you.” Eyes clashed; steely resolve met steely resolve. Then DeWinter shouldered Andre aside and stalked out.

  * * *

  At first Juliana had been so angry at Andre she’d gone for a long walk in the gardens surrounding the palace, needing to expend all the excess energy that had built up during their confrontation. But then she realized she should warn Dirk. She wouldn’t put it past Andre to ask Dirk the same questions he’d asked her earlier... To see if our answers match, she thought derisively. Damn him!

  She hurried inside, smiling at the guards at the door as they let her in. In her haste she didn’t see the shadowy figure that had followed her into the garden now follow her up the stairs and down the corridor to the DeWinters’ suite, pretending to continue on without hesitation when she stopped and tapped on the DeWinters’ door.

  Sabrina opened the door. “Oh, it’s you,” she said, a worried frown on her face. “I thought it might be Dirk.”

  Surprised, Juliana asked, “He’s not here?”

  Sabrina shook her head. “He went off with the king twenty minutes ago.”

  “Damn! I didn’t warn him soon enough.”

  Sabrina cocked her head to one side. “You know why the king wanted to see Dirk?” Hot color seeped into Juliana’s cheeks, and Sabrina pushed the door wide. “You’d better come in and tell me about it.” She led Juliana into the sitting room and curled up gingerly in a corner of one of the sofas, waving a hand to tell Juliana to sit wherever she wanted.

  But she couldn’t sit. And at first she thought she couldn’t tell her friend what Andre had accused her of. What if deep down Bree suspects that, too? Juliana felt like crying. She didn’t want her friend to think she would betray her trust. I don’t have that many friends in Hollywood that I can afford to lose Bree...and Dirk, she thought with dismay.

  Sabrina made it easy on her. “So the king thinks you and Dirk are lovers?”

  Juliana gasped. “How did you know?” Then she stumbled over herself to deny there was any truth to Andre’s accusation. “Not that we are... We aren’t... I would never... Dirk wouldn’t...”

  Sabrina laughed, and it was such a carefree sound it put to rest Juliana’s sudden suspicion that her friend might have thought... “You’re right. You wouldn’t. And Dirk wouldn’t, either. But I don’t think the king knows that.” Her smile turned empathetic, but it wasn’t just for Juliana. “I think he looks at you...and he doesn’t think at all, he feels. And he transposes his own feelings for you onto every man around you.” She patted the sofa beside her, coaxing Juliana to sit next to her. When Juliana perched on the edge, she said kindly, “Don’t you think it’s time you told me what this is all about?”

  Warmth surged up into Juliana’s cheeks again, and she couldn’t meet her friend’s eyes. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Dirk and I have eyes, you know,” Sabrina said softly. “He told me you freeze on the set whenever the king shows up. He affects your performance, which isn’t like you—no man ever makes you flub your lines like that. And we saw the two of you together at the reception, don’t forget that. Add up everything we’ve seen, throw in the fact that you never wanted to come back here, and it’s obvious there’s history between the two of you. I hope you know I would never betray a confidence you gave me. Not even to Dirk.”

  Juliana linked her fingers together and twisted them subconsciously, then glanced over at Sabrina. “You’re right,” she admitted in a tight little voice. “Andre and I knew each other a long time ago.”

  “He’s part of your mysterious past?”

  Juliana’s tone was harsh. “He’s all of it.” Sabrina made an encouraging sound, and she continued. “I was eighteen. He was twenty-two. I thought he loved me. He didn’t. End of story.”

  “Nice try,” Sabrina said drily. “Try again.”

  Juliana took a deep, shuddering breath. “We had one night together. One. Then I went back to the States to attend college in Virginia. I wrote to him...more than once. Love letters. Emails. Pouring my heart out to him. It makes me sick now to remember just how pathetic I must have seemed to him.” She stopped, unable to continue for a minute. “H
e never wrote back,” she said finally. “No letters. No emails. I waited for him to call me. He never did.” Her eyes filled with tears. “So I called him. Several times. But he never answered. I thought he loved me, even though he never said the words. I was so sure. But—”

  “He does love you.”

  Juliana rubbed the heels of her hands against her eyes like a little girl, wiping away the tears. “He wants me. Just like nearly every other man in the world except Dirk. He thinks I’ve slept around and figures why shouldn’t I sleep with him, too? After all, I did once before.”

  Sabrina’s smile was gentle. “What makes you think Dirk doesn’t want you?”

  Chapter 8

  “What?” Shocked, Juliana stared at Sabrina.

  “Don’t get me wrong. I trust Dirk completely. I know he would never cheat on me, would never have an affair with you or any other woman.” Sabrina’s eyes shone with her complete confidence in her husband’s loyalty. “But he’s a man—very much so. And you’re an incredibly beautiful and sexy woman. He’s held you in his arms. He’s kissed you. He’s made love to you on-screen, sometimes with very little in the way of clothes between you. He wouldn’t be human if he hadn’t thought about it at times.”

  She waited for Juliana to digest that. “But that’s as far as it goes. Even if he wasn’t married to me, you’ve got Touch Me Not signs everywhere. And Dirk is too much of a gentleman to ever risk hurting you. He knows there was a man in your murky past who shattered your trust in men. And since we’ve been here in Zakhar, I’m sure he’s figured out who, the same way I have. Just not why.”

  At the tail end of that last sentence Sabrina suddenly caught her breath and pressed her fingers to her side. Juliana reached over and placed a comforting hand over her friend’s hand. “Bree, what is it?”