“Juliana?” Maddie’s voice interrupted them. “They’re waiting for you on the set.”
Juliana turned. She wanted to tell Maddie to tell the director he’d just have to wait. But that would be unprofessional, would fly in the face of everything Dirk had taught her. “I’ll be right there,” she told Maddie. She waited for her assistant to leave before saying, “I have to go. They’re waiting.” Regret colored her words, and she prayed he would understand.
His faint smile told her he did. “Go,” he said, touching her cheek with one finger, but careful not to mar her makeup. “Duty comes first. Did you think I would not understand?” He laughed softly. “You wrong me, little one. Duty I have understood from the beginning. Just...come to me when you can. That is all I ask.”
* * *
Juliana had just laid her head on her pillow when the phone by her bed rang, startling her. Reminding her of last night’s devastating news delivered via a phone call. Please don’t let it be Marty, she prayed. Please don’t let it be more bad news.
“Yes?” she answered cautiously.
The palace operator said, “I have Princess Mara on the phone for you, Miss Richardson. Would you like to talk to her?”
Her heart had jumped when the phone rang, but now it jumped again. Mara was calling her. Juliana had not spoken to her onetime best friend in eleven years. But the reason she’d cut off all contact with Mara was no longer valid, and now Mara was reaching out to her.
“Of course,” she said swiftly as emotion swamped her, making it difficult to get the next words out. “Of course I’ll take the call.” A click sounded in her ear, then...
“Juliana? Is that you?”
“Mara?” Tears sprang to her eyes and her throat closed. “Oh, Mara, it’s so good to hear your voice. You have no idea...”
“I was sorry to hear about your friend, Juliana,” Mara said in her soft, pretty voice, with its faintly accented English. “I know what it is like to lose a friend.” She hesitated, then added in Zakharan, “It is one of the hardest things in the world.” Her voice broke on the last words, and suddenly both women were crying. Healing tears for both of them.
* * *
Love is too precious to waste.
Juliana woke in the middle of the night with that one thought in her mind. Her heart was pounding from the nightmare that had possessed her sleeping self until she woke, clinging to that phrase like a lifeline. A nightmare where Andre lay dead as Sabrina was dead. A nightmare where she wept bitter, futile tears over lost chances.
Earlier tonight, what had Mara said on the phone about her husband? “I almost lost Trace because he was afraid to believe in our love. Second chances come so seldom, Juliana, but I was blessed to have that opportunity. I grabbed it with both hands and will never regret it.”
Second chances.
Weeks ago when Dirk had told her he was quitting acting for Sabrina, what had he said? “I don’t know how much time I have left with her, but I want every minute, every second. She’s mine until God takes her away from me, and I’m not going to waste a moment...”
Sabrina was dead. There was no going back for Dirk, no chance to make different choices. But Andre was alive. Alive...and sleeping just a short distance away. And despite her grief, she wasn’t going to wait until she returned from Hollywood as she had first thought. “I’m not going to waste a moment, either,” Juliana whispered to herself as she threw off the covers and climbed out of bed with sudden determination. “Not a single moment.”
She walked toward the tapestry concealing the doorway to the passageway between her bedroom and Andre’s and dragged it to one side. She turned the key in the lock and pushed the door open, then hesitated. The entrance was pitch-black, and she didn’t have a flashlight. She had no idea how far it was, and she really didn’t relish the idea of feeling her way in the darkness. But there couldn’t be anything to frighten her. Could there? Hadn’t Andre said he’d had the passageway cleaned out? Still...
Then she remembered the scented candles in the bathroom, and she ran there, quickly lighting one. She shielded the flame with her left hand as she walked carefully back into her bedroom carrying the candle in her right, then slid behind the wall hanging and started down the passageway. The candle flickered, casting shadows this way and that, and she thought about Eleonora making her way through this same corridor more than five hundred years ago. Eleonora, who’d suffered years of torture and abuse at the hands of her captors, but who never gave up hope that someday Andre Alexei would ransom her. Eleonora, who believed in immortal love. As I do, she realized suddenly. As I do.