by Amelia Autin
He nodded slowly. “At first I remained faithful because I thought you were faithful to me.” He hesitated. “I must tell you. I knew you were dating in college. My agent reported he had seen you—more than once—in the company of other men.”
Juliana’s gaze fell before his, remembering. Then she looked up at Andre again, determined to be honest with him. “I was so hurt...and yes, angry...at what I thought was your rejection that I did accept dates with other men. That’s true. I won’t lie to you. I told myself you weren’t the only man in the world—that if you didn’t want me, other men did. But none of them was you, and I...”
A self-deprecating smile touched his lips. “I had wanted you to spread your wings, little one, just not that way. I had not expected it of you. I will not lie either—I was jealous. And hurt. But I was still arrogant enough to believe you loved me in your heart of hearts.”
“Andre—”
“No, let me finish, little one. I did not call again because by that time I knew if I heard your voice I would not be able to wait—your voice was a fire in my blood, and if I heard it I would have to have you with me. It was that simple. Yet how could I have you with me in a battle zone? In Afghanistan? I could not put you in danger that way. It was easier not to risk hearing your voice.
“I did not write again because the only words that occurred to me were demands for you to admit you loved me and pleas for you to return to Zakhar immediately and marry me, both things I swore to myself I would not do. Not until you had finished college. Not until you were a woman grown. And of course, I was not even in Zakhar at that time. Returning before my tour of duty was up would have been a shameful thing. I could not do that...unless you were carrying our child. And by that time I knew you were not.
“Then, too, I had not heard from you except for that one cold sentence.” His lips tightened. “My father’s agents must have blocked my outgoing calls, intercepted my emails to you and every one of your attempts to contact me, so I did not know...”
She touched his arm in empathy for the pain his father’s machinations and his own self-denial had brought him. “A soldier’s lot is a lonely one,” he continued. “His personal life is on hold. Often the only thing sustaining him is his belief in the importance of his mission. And that his loved ones will be there when he returns. Each day that passed without you was harder than the one before. Even though my days in Afghanistan demanded my full attention, the thought of you kept me going. But the nights...” He paused and his jaw tightened.
“And yet I told myself I could survive because I would see you once school was over for the year,” he continued finally, “that of course you would spend the summer in Zakhar, and you would be there waiting for me when I returned from my tour of duty. I would have the chance to woo you in person as I should have done from the first. I would have you to myself for a few precious weeks, and you would know you were mine before I was forced to let you go again. But the end of the school year came and went, and you did not return. Not to Zakhar, not to me. Instead you went to Hollywood...and took a lover.”
His nostrils flared as he breathed deeply. “My first reaction was betrayal...and blinding rage.” The expression in his eyes frightened her for a moment. “I almost went after you then. After him. I could have killed him, and I told myself I could have taken you, forced you— No, Juliana.” He held her firmly, refusing to let her look away. “I must tell you and then we will never speak of it again. I told myself I could force you to take me, whether you wanted me or not. You belonged to me, and you had dared to give another man what was mine alone.”
Andre stared down at Juliana for endless seconds, until his frightening expression faded into something else. “But then I knew I could not. I could not take you in anger. I could never take you except in love—but you did not love me! My arrogance was humbled, and I knew somehow I did not deserve your love.”
“I didn’t,” she began, wanting to deny that she’d taken a lover, but she knew she had no proof. Nothing to convince him. “What would have been the point of returning to Zakhar?” she said in a small voice. “I thought you didn’t want me anymore. I thought you had forgotten me.”
He smiled that faint smile. “That I could never do. But even though you did not return, even though you were not faithful to me, I remained faithful to you. I cannot really explain why. I did not start out saying, ‘There will never be another woman for me,’ especially after I learned what you had done. But you were there whenever I looked at another woman, and I could not...”
He drew another deep breath and expelled it harshly. “Time did not stand still—I had a job to do, which I did. I could not forget you, but I could focus on the task I had set myself to accomplish—bringing the best of the twenty-first century to Zakhar and its people. And I could change myself into a man worthy of your love.”
“You were always worthy of my love,” she told him, fighting back tears. “And I never forgot you, either. I just didn’t know you loved me...” She trailed off, wishing she could tell him the truth as she’d tried to tell him once before...and have him believe her.
“The years passed,” he continued when she stopped. “My father pressured me to marry into one of the royal houses of Europe—to father sons to inherit the throne after me. He was obsessed with it.” He laughed bitterly. “He must have regretted then that he had driven you away, but he never said anything, and I did not know. I only knew I could never marry another, could never father children with a woman I did not love—a woman who was not you. Not even for Zakhar.”
“Why didn’t you...” she began, and when he looked a question at her she tried to put into words what she needed to know, needed to understand. “Why didn’t you come to me years ago? Why did you wait so long?”
“I did not know you loved me. How could I? Your name was linked with one man after another.” His face was carved in stone, as if he could hide his pain behind a marble wall. “I watched your career from afar, waiting for you to realize the difference between what those other men offered you and what I did. Dreaming of a day when you would return to me because you could not stay away. Then my father died and I ascended the throne.”
A muscle twitched in his cheek. “There were other things I had to deal with then. Mara was one of them. That is another thing my father has to answer for. Someday I will tell you about her, but not today.” His eyes burned into hers. “And still I waited. Paying the price for that night. Wondering if I would ever pay enough.”
“You weren’t the only one who paid for that night,” she whispered. His brows drew together in a questioning frown. “You ruined me for other men.”
A shaft of pain slashed across his face, and Juliana realized he’d misunderstood. “No, not that way. But every man I met I subconsciously measured against you. Every man who touched me, who kissed me...I remembered your touch, your kiss.” Her voice dropped to a whisper as she confessed, “I remembered the feel of you deep inside me.” She shivered, her body responding to then and now. “I could never find a man who erased that memory, who made me want to forget you. And so I could never let them touch me...that way.”
He took a step closer. “What are you saying, Juliana? Are you telling me...?”
She knew he wouldn’t ask. Didn’t feel he had the right to ask. He loved her even believing she had not led a chaste life as he had. And in some elemental way that was as it should be. But she didn’t want those lies about her to hurt him the way they’d hurt him for years. She had to try one more time. If he didn’t believe her, at least she would have told him the truth.
“Yes,” she said. “You’re not the only one the press lies about. The first time one of those magazines claimed I had taken a lover, I protested. I even went to my lawyer, thinking to demand a retraction, and if I didn’t get one I would sue. I wanted to proclaim my innocence to the entire world, most especially to you. Even though I believed you didn’t want me anymore, your opinion of me still mattered. But my lawyer made me see I could
never prove it in court. The man...” She swallowed. “I had dated him. I just refused to sleep with him. His pride couldn’t bear being rejected. So he lied. He was the ‘unnamed source’ of the story. A trial would have come down to my word against his, with no guarantee anyone would believe me. And I was terrified that somehow you would be dragged into it...
“After that I knew there was no going back. I could never prove my innocence to anyone, much less you, so what did it matter?” She caught her breath on a sob, but forced it down. “I just closed my eyes and ears to the lies and continued acting. Only with acting could I escape the pain of losing you. Only when I was pretending to be someone else could I forget you.”
She swallowed again. “At least my family and close friends knew the truth. No one who really knew me believed the lies, and no one who believed the lies really knew me.” She looked away, remembering. “Then I returned to Zakhar to film King’s Ransom and met you again.”
“The only reason for King’s Ransom was to bring you here.”
Her brow wrinkled in puzzlement. “I don’t understand.”
“I knew that love story had always fascinated you. I found a good screenwriter, paid her, gave her access to private historical records from the palace library to research the story. Then I contacted the studio and offered to underwrite the film, but gave them two conditions—anonymity...and you. No one was to know of my involvement, especially you. And no other actress could play Eleonora. Then when they signed you I granted them permission to film on location.”
“You...planned it?” she asked in wonder. “All of it?” When he nodded, she said, “I...I don’t know what to say.” Amazed. Trying to calculate what it must have cost him—the financing alone on a movie like this would have been...
A king’s ransom, she acknowledged, stunned speechless by the realization. Andre paid a king’s ransom to bring me back to him. Just like...
“I had waited too long for you to return on your own, but you never did. I had to find a way to bring you back to Zakhar. To me.” He drew a deep breath. “I knew there was no other man in your life, and had not been for years. So I knew I still had a chance to win your love.”
“How did you know that?” She shook her head. “The stories in the magazines...on the internet...”
He hesitated, as if he didn’t want to confess something, then he said, “I had men watching you. Guarding you.”
“What?” She didn’t know if she should be angry, hurt or...touched. Touched that he’d wanted to win her back despite thinking the worst of her. Then she thought of something. “Do you have men guarding me here in Zakhar, too?”
“Of course,” he said simply. “You are precious to me. I would do anything to keep you safe, even if it means protecting you against your will.”
“That was one of your men? The man who saved my life when the car almost ran me down by accident?”
“Of course,” he said again. “Lieutenant Marek Zale, a good man. He headed up the team guarding you in Hollywood, the team that followed you here and kept you safe. But once he saved your life he had to be pulled off the protective detail surrounding you. I did not want you to know you were being guarded, and if you saw him again you might have become suspicious.” Then he added, “But was it an accident? I do not believe so, and neither does Lieutenant Zale. And there was the incident with the light that fell on the set.” He started to say something else, but Juliana interrupted.
“They had to be accidents,” she averred dismissively. “Who would want to kill me?”
He didn’t answer and she was silent for a moment, putting aside that question and digesting his earlier statement about setting men to watch over her in Hollywood. Fitting this new aspect of him into what she’d thought she’d known. “When I met you again I didn’t know what to think. You wanted me. You told me in no uncertain terms, but you thought I was...easy.”
“Never that,” he insisted fiercely. One arm wrapped around her like an iron band, drawing her flush against his body, and she could feel his desire. “Last night when you came to me...could you not tell? I thought it was painfully obvious the only reason I wanted you was because I loved you. Because I have always loved you.”
His face wrinkled in pain. “The other men in your life...I told myself they did not matter—they were part of the price I paid for taking your innocence and then letting you go without a word.” She closed her eyes at the harshness in his voice, but now she knew it wasn’t directed at her; it was directed at himself. “But, Juliana,” he continued, “I could never take you except in love. That is what I meant that first night.”
She opened her eyes and saw the truth written on his beloved face. “I didn’t know,” she told him softly. She brushed the fingers of one hand along the curve of his cheek and felt it harden beneath her touch. “I didn’t understand. I thought you were just staking your claim as the next man to have me, even though you’d already had me years earlier.”
She gazed into his green eyes, those eyes that had haunted her dreams for eleven years, willing him with her soul to believe her next words. “I have no proof to offer you other than my love. I’ve never slept with any man...except you.”
He stared down at her for endless seconds, then drew a sharp breath. He caught her hand, lifted it and pressed a fervent kiss into her palm. “Thank you for that, little one. I do not deserve it—and I would have loved you even if it had not been true—but...thank you.”
“You believe me? Without proof?”
“Your eyes are all the proof I need.” He smiled down at her. “Eleven years ago when you offered me the sweetest gift any man had ever been offered, your eyes told me you were innocent. But they also told me something else. They told me you loved me. Not as a girl in the throes of a crush the way you had loved me for years, but as the woman you had become that summer.”
He kissed her reverently. “Now your eyes tell me the same thing. They tell me you are innocent—and that you love me.”
* * *
Two hours later Andre reluctantly parted from Juliana at the door to the Queen’s Suite. He’d told her he had every intention of accompanying her back to Hollywood for Sabrina’s funeral—he’d rearranged his entire schedule to go with her, although he couldn’t stay longer than that, couldn’t stay while she finished out her obligations to King’s Ransom—but he would be there to help her through the emotional trauma of the funeral. And when he’d told her he’d already set things in motion for their departure that evening, she’d convinced him he needed a few hours of sleep before they embarked.
Andre’s press secretary had announced their engagement to the whole world an hour earlier, complete with hastily taken pictures of the radiant couple and the impressive engagement ring. “The sooner, the better,” Andre had insisted. Juliana had maintained they had to call her father before that happened—no way was she going to hurt her father by not telling him first. This time when Juliana called him she had woken him from a sound sleep, although he’d assured her he didn’t mind for a reason like this. After she and Andre had both talked with her father and received his blessing, Juliana had laughingly explained to Andre about the last time she’d called her father.
Then Andre walked Juliana to her door...hand in hand. His bodyguard Lukas followed a discreet two steps behind them, and Juliana’s bodyguards had made themselves temporarily scarce at the silent command in Andre’s eyes, although Andre no longer cared who saw him with Juliana.
They paused at the doorway to the Queen’s Suite. Lukas stood off to one side, his eyes scanning the corridor in either direction, ensuring their privacy. “Come to me through the passageway, little one,” Andre coaxed in a soft undertone as he leaned close to her. “How can I sleep without you now?”
Her eyes met his. “How can you sleep with me there?” she teased gently, her expression conveying she knew exactly what he had in mind...and it wasn’t sleep.
He chuckled softly. “You are right, of course.” He held her gaze. “I wil
l have to learn to sleep with you at my side...but not today.” He raised her left hand to his lips and brushed kisses over each of her fingers, lingering on the one wearing his engagement ring. Then he opened the door for her and pushed her gently through it before closing the door firmly, hearing the old-fashioned latch click into place. He turned and headed for the King’s Suite, Lukas by his side.
“Congratulations, Sire,” Lukas said, his sincerity obvious.
Andre smiled. “Thank you, Lukas.”
Lukas hesitated, then added, “She is a wonderful woman, and you are a lucky man. All Zakhar will rejoice.”
“Not all,” Andre disclaimed. “There will not be universal rejoicing. But I do not care about that. It is her or no one.” The two men shared a look of male understanding.
When they turned the corner into the corridor that would take them to Andre’s suite, Lukas’s hand quickly slid inside his unbuttoned jacket, then withdrew when he recognized the three men who stood in front of Andre’s private office. Waiting. One was Damon Kostya, who wasn’t supposed to be on duty that day. The second was the helicopter pilot who’d flown Andre to Taryna both days, the one who’d managed to land the chopper safely on only one engine. And the third was the man who’d saved Juliana’s life the first time, Marek Zale.
* * *
Juliana thought about ringing for Daphne before dragging out a suitcase from the wardrobe where it had been stashed, tossing it onto her bed and flipping the lid open. “Remember, two rings on the buzzer, and I will be here directly,” the maid had told her earlier this morning, but Juliana decided to put off calling for Daphne until later. She didn’t need help packing the one suitcase she would take to Hollywood, although she did want to discuss with the maid what she was leaving behind, the things she wanted Daphne to keep safe for her for when she returned to Zakhar.
“When I return,” she whispered to herself, unable to hold in the thrill that accompanied the words. She went swiftly through the dresses hanging in the closet. She made a quick trip to the dresser for a handful of bras and panties, then another trip back to the closet for shoes.