King's Ransom (Man on a Mission 2)

“I...didn’t,” she managed. “But he...”

“Don’t tell me he stopped loving you,” her father stated unequivocally. “Because I refuse to believe it.”

“I... It’s complicated,” Juliana stammered out. “You don’t know... I never told you, Dad, but...”

“But you slept with him the night before you left Zakhar.” Stunned speechless, Juliana could only gasp again. “Oh, baby,” her father said with tenderness, “did you think I wouldn’t know?”

“But...you never said anything.”

“What should I have said? It was your decision. I figured you knew what you were doing—or thought you did. I figured you’d gone to him—which was no more than your mother did when she sought me out.”

“Mom did that?” Juliana couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “But you said... You told me good girls don’t.”

“Girls, yes. But you weren’t a girl by then, any more than your mother was when we fell in love.” He hesitated. “Is that why you never asked me for advice on this? Because you thought I’d judge you harshly?” His voice softened with regret. “Oh, baby, I’m sorry. If I’d known...I would have said something.”

His sigh sounded in her ear. “I never thought badly of you for what you did. I never thought badly of Andre, either, or that he took advantage of you—well, no more than I thought badly of myself for not being able to resist your mother when she came to me.”

“Why didn’t you ever tell me? About Mom...and you?”

“How do you think we ended up together? There were almost twenty years between us, and I tried so hard to be noble. Tried so hard to resist loving her. But your mother was having none of that.” He chuckled softly to himself, and Juliana knew he was remembering her mother in a way she’d never envisioned her parents. “She came to me, told me she loved me, and the hell with my efforts to be noble and deny what was between us. Then she—” He halted abruptly, coughed and added drily, “You were born almost nine months to the day afterward.”

Juliana’s throat tightened with emotion. “Oh, Dad, I wish I’d known. All I could think of was you telling me good girls don’t, and I didn’t want you to know what I’d done.”

“I didn’t want you to take sex lightly, that’s all. I wanted it to mean as much to you as it meant to your mother—a precious intimacy to be shared with the man you loved. I wanted you to grow up to be like her—strong, courageous and true. Fearless when it came to love. You weren’t my little girl anymore that summer—I knew that. You were a woman, making choices you had every right to make for yourself.”

He let that sink in. “And don’t forget, I knew Andre. I knew the kind of man he was. Most important to me as your father, I knew he loved you more than anything, loved you enough to sacrifice his own desires for your benefit...to let you go...to give you time to grow up completely. You couldn’t have picked a better man to love.”

* * *

Thirty minutes later Juliana was still in a state of shock. Not just that her father knew about the night she’d spent with Andre, but that he adamantly refused to believe what she’d told him about Andre’s actions afterward.

“There’s an explanation, baby,” her father insisted. “Give him a chance to explain. I can’t and I won’t believe it unless I hear it from Andre himself—and even then I’d have a hard time believing. He’s too good a man.” The conviction in her father’s voice shook her to the core, and she couldn’t have spoken even if her father hadn’t continued.

“I never liked Andre’s father, but you know that. I didn’t like the way he treated his daughter, for one thing, as if she were worthless, when most fathers would have been immensely proud of Mara. And I didn’t like the way he treated his son, either, as if Andre was just a possession to him, someone he could dictate to. But Andre never let what his father thought he should do control his actions—if he believed something was the right thing to do, he did it, and damn the consequences. That kind of moral courage is rare.”

After she hung up the phone Juliana stood undecided for a moment, then abruptly headed for the DeWinters’ suite. Needing to know she wasn’t crazy to be thinking of staying in Zakhar. Hoping maybe Sabrina could help her make sense of the confusion of thoughts and emotions swirling through her. Especially since her conversation with her father had only raised more questions than provided answers.