That was before she’d learned the truth. Before she’d learned that one chance was all she would ever have. And not just because Andre would never be hers. There would never be a child for her because there would never be another man whose child she would want to bear.
* * *
Andre watched Juliana touch DeWinter’s arm and stare up at him, an expression of pleading on her face. He couldn’t hear what she was saying, but whatever it was seemed to move DeWinter. When DeWinter raised Juliana’s hand and kissed it something cold and terrifying sliced through him.
The fingers of Andre’s right hand unconsciously curled into a fist. DeWinter touched Juliana at the reception, too, he remembered, with his wife standing right there. Are they having an affair? His cousin Niko’s offhand comment yesterday about the apparent closeness and obvious affection between the two movie stars had flicked Andre on the raw, and he’d been hard-pressed to hide his reaction from his cousin’s curiously intent stare. Somehow he’d managed it, had managed to present a front of casual indifference, but inside he’d been seething. He still was. Andre would never have believed the Juliana he knew could have an affair with a married man, but then...she had changed. She wasn’t the woman he remembered. She was hard. Cold. Cynical.
Then he remembered her tears in front of the royal lovers’ tomb and her well-known political stance as a children’s rights activist, and he realized that despite recent evidence to the contrary she wasn’t hard and cold. Cynical? Yes. But not hard and cold—she cared passionately. She’d been wounded, and the pain had turned her cynical. Which of her lovers did it? he wondered. Which one broke her heart? The tabloids, the celebrity magazines and the internet, his only sources of news of Juliana in the early years, had never even hinted her heart was broken. On the contrary, the stories had all indicated she was the original ice queen, moving from man to man but never giving her heart.
It was that last that had kept hope alive as year followed empty year. If Juliana had given her heart to no other man, then her heart could be won...by him. She had loved him once. She could love him again. He just had to find the key to unlock the mystery. If he knew why she had stopped loving him, he could change whatever it was in himself that needed changing. But if Juliana’s heart had been broken it meant she had given her heart to another man. And if she had given her heart irretrievably—not just her body—then hope was dead.
He’d suffered the torments of the damned when Juliana dropped out of college after one year, went to Hollywood and took a lover instead of returning to Zakhar...and him. He could still remember the murderous rage that had possessed him when he returned from his tour of duty with the United Nations peacekeeping mission in Afghanistan and learned what Juliana had done. Could still remember finding himself standing in the midst of the wreckage he’d made of the cottage where they’d shared one luminous night—with absolutely no memory of taking it apart, piece by jagged piece. Only his hands, bruised and bleeding, bore mute testimony to what he’d done.
Then the madness that had gripped him evaporated, and sanity had returned. He’d fallen to his knees in the ruins and wept for the first and only time in his adult life. Not just for the loss of the woman he loved, but for the frightening glimpse of his true self, for the gentleman he wasn’t. And he’d known even as he wept that somehow he’d brought this on himself, that if he hadn’t surrendered to temptation as he’d sworn he wouldn’t do, he wouldn’t be paying for it now. That if he’d been a better man he wouldn’t have lost Juliana.
That had been the turning point in his life. He’d vowed never again would he let himself lose control. Never again would he succumb to temptation. Never again would that murderous rage be let loose. Somehow he would find the inner strength. And in doing so he would change himself into a man who deserved Juliana’s love. Just as the first Andre Alexei had done, he would find a way to bring her back to him, no matter the cost. Somehow he would find a way to regain her love.
“Cut! And that’s a wrap! Great job, Dirk. You, too, Juliana. Let’s call it a day.”
The director’s words broke into Andre’s consciousness, and he realized he’d been so caught up in his thoughts, his memories, that he hadn’t even observed the scene that had just been filmed. Now he looked over to where DeWinter had stood with Juliana minutes before and was surprised to see the other man gone already. Juliana was still there, talking to the director about something, but as he watched she finished her discussion and started to leave. Grips were already tearing down the set, the lights, and moving the cameras preparatory to setting up the following day in another location within the palace. Juliana picked her way carefully through the disarray, holding her skirts up to avoid tripping over the wires everywhere.