And yet...that didn’t seem to be the way he thought of her now. “You gave yourself to me once,” he’d told her the other night. As if she’d been a precious gift, one he treasured in his memory and wanted to keep forever.
Once again she realized that too many things didn’t make sense. Too many contradictions between what she knew had happened then and what she was hearing now. Dirk telling her Andre believed she’d deserted him, but he was determined to win her back anyway. She’d been adamant Andre had lied to Dirk, but...what if he hadn’t been lying? “Tell me, Juliana,” Andre had said that night in the little library even before he’d talked with Dirk. “If not DeWinter, then who? Someone hurt you. Someone broke your heart... Tell me who it was.”
And when she’d accused him of being the one who broke her heart, he’d said, “Do not lie to me, Juliana. Your heart was not broken when you chose to go to Hollywood instead of returning to Zakhar that summer.” She’d been shocked at how he was twisting things around. But...what if he wasn’t? What if he truly believed it? Was it possible?
Nothing made sense anymore. Least of all the money he’d sent her. The money...and the motive behind it. She could forgive him almost anything else now that he seemed to love her again. But the money was the one thing she was finding nearly impossible to forgive because it was the one thing she couldn’t explain away.
* * *
It was nearly dark by the time Andre returned to the village with the assessment team, and the temperature had dropped with the setting sun. Even though it was summer, the average temperature in the mountains here near Taryna was twenty to twenty-five degrees cooler than it was in Drago, and Andre and the rest of the team had dressed accordingly.
His brain was fully occupied with the answers the engineers, hydrologists and geochemists had come up with for all the questions he’d originally posed to them, as well as the additional questions that had been raised as a result of what they’d uncovered. Exhaustion tugged at him, but he refused to give in to it. The rest of the team was dragging after the miles they’d hiked today, miles in the thinner mountain air that made it more difficult to replenish the oxygen their muscles burned.
But Andre knew no one would complain as long as he never showed even a hint of weakness, so he was careful not to show it. Still, he was glad to see the church tower of Taryna in the distance. He’d pushed himself to the limit yesterday, and today had been the same. He’d be glad to get back to the palace, glad for the simple luxury of being alone so he wouldn’t have to hide his weakness from the world.
They passed through the village, and Andre stopped to talk with the man spearheading the cleanup operation—a colonel in the Zakharian National Forces and a whiz at organization. “Go on ahead,” he told the other members of the team. “Do not wait for me. We will meet tomorrow at the palace at—” he looked at his wristwatch and amended his initial time “—9:00 a.m. I would like a written report from each of you detailing your observations and recommendations.” He smiled at them. “Thank you. You are all invaluable to this team. I will see you tomorrow.”
Dismissed, the rest of the assessment team headed to where the helicopters had been waiting since their arrival this morning. Andre’s personal bodyguard stayed behind with the king, of course, and Andre mentally counted up the number of team members and the number of available seats in each helicopter, satisfying himself that everyone would have a seat in the three helicopters that had brought the team here, even though a couple of the structural engineers had arrived earlier this morning with the cleanup crew. He wouldn’t hold anyone up by staying to get a progress report on the cleanup.
He spent twenty minutes with the colonel, committing relevant information to memory, and agreeing with the colonel’s request for more manpower. “You will have it,” he told the colonel in no uncertain terms. Even if I have to disregard the Privy Council’s wishes, he thought with a sudden spurt of internal anger. Again.
When he was done Andre and his bodyguard headed to the royal helicopter. He suddenly thought of Juliana as they passed the spot where she’d stood in front of the cameras, a children’s playground, where the playground equipment—swings, jungle gym and seesaws—were all half buried in dirt and rocks. He smiled to himself, remembering how she’d unerringly picked that spot as the most poignant, and the most likely to appeal to parents the world over even without her saying a single word. He’d watched the filming for a few moments before the assessment team had headed up the mountain. Somewhere in the piles of wreckage that had once been houses, Juliana had uncovered a battered and filthy baby doll, and she’d cradled it in her arms as the cameras rolled.