by Amelia Autin
“What do you mean?”
“You know the ‘misunderstanding’ that separated Andre and me? I should have confronted him when I was eighteen, when I thought he’d repudiated me. I didn’t. And I paid a bitter price for eleven years.”
“I’m not sure I follow.”
“It wasn’t Andre’s doing—it was all his father. But I didn’t know that. Neither did he. He actually thought—can you believe it?—that I’d decided I didn’t love him after all. It wasn’t until he lured me back to Zakhar with a starring role in King’s Ransom that we finally figured it out. But...” Juliana hesitated. “Eleven years. Eleven years we wasted being apart because we let our pride get in the way.”
Alana saw the parallel Juliana had drawn. And she knew what she had to do...as soon as she got up the courage. Jason had shot her down once when she’d asked the question. But he had admitted she would be the woman he’d choose as his children’s mother if he ever had a family. Which meant he loved her, even if he couldn’t bring himself to say the words. Now all she had to do was convince him to confide in her.
* * *
Jason signed the lengthy contract his executive assistant had brought in and handed it back to him. Wing Wah Enterprises had just acquired a controlling interest in a British firm that was already making a name for itself in cyber technology, which would nicely round out Wing Wah’s portfolio and add a tidy little profit to the bottom line. His investors would be happy.
“I’ve already alerted the flight crew about your trip to London, sir,” his executive assistant said, referring to the crew of the company’s Gulfstream G550 corporate jet. “They filed a flight plan and have advised me there’s a window of opportunity for a six-forty-five takeoff this evening. That means you’ll have time to go home and pack a bag.”
Barely, Jason thought privately with a quick glance at his Rolex, a present from his parents and cherished for that reason.
He didn’t always use the corporate jet when he flew, but in this case it was warranted for two reasons. First, the last-minute nature of the trip, since he hadn’t been sure until the company’s attorney had given him the green light to sign the contract this morning that there’d be a reason to go. And second, his entire executive team would travel with him, including an attorney and the head of personnel.
The last thing he wanted to do was leave Hong Kong right now, with things not yet resolved with Alana. But he knew it was necessary to visit the cyber tech firm and reassure its employees he had no intention of making sweeping changes, something everyone feared when the company for which he or she worked was taken over by a multinational firm like Wing Wah Enterprises. Especially one based outside their home country.
He’d thought he’d have the opportunity to tell Alana personally about his pending trip to London, although he hadn’t known last night it would be today. But the disastrous end to their evening—from the broken condom to having to confess he wanted no children, now or ever—had put paid to that possibility.
His exec handed him a portfolio containing a detailed itinerary. “I booked you and the executive team into The Savoy, sir. I know you prefer The Dorchester or The Connaught,” he explained quickly when Jason frowned, “but The Savoy is in Covent Garden, a stone’s throw from where you’ll be spending the next week. Much more convenient, sir.”
“Thank you.” He gave the man his best smile. “What would I do without you?”
* * *
Jason texted his sister from the company’s jet just before he shut off his smartphone.
London on business unexpectedly, he typed. Not avoiding you. Not avoiding Alana. Staying at The Savoy. Call me if...
He knew he didn’t have to be specific. Mei-li was smart enough to know what he meant.
After takeoff he accepted a cold bottle of water from the smiling flight attendant, one of two who were part of the Gulfstream’s flight crew. Then he reclined in his leather seat and stared out the window. Brooding over Alana.
Eventually he dozed. He hadn’t had a lot of sleep last night—for which Alana was responsible, both directly and indirectly. First, the incredible evening with her...right up till the end, which had not gone as planned. Then the abduction nightmare that had woken him far too early this morning, after which he’d been wide awake...and thinking of her.
Without realizing it, Jason drifted into REM sleep. His heartbeat kicked up a notch. His respiratory rate increased. His brain waves altered. And he dreamed. Vividly.
At first he dreamed of Alana, from the moment he’d carried her out of that hellhole of an apartment to the tears that had glistened in her eyes last night when he’d admitted, If it was any woman, it would be you. I want you to know that.
Then, in the way of dreams, he was thirteen years old, he and David joining Sean at the prestigious boarding school outside Windsor, England. Sean, their staunch defender, who’d started there the year before when he’d turned thirteen himself.
No one alive except David, who’d shared some of the same experiences, knew what Jason’s life had been like those years between thirteen and eighteen, when he’d matriculated and had headed off to Oxford. No one alive except David knew the worst, too, the scars inflicted on Jason’s psyche much earlier by both his grandfathers. And he wanted to keep it that way. Sean had known, but Sean was dead.
Jason wasn’t even aware when his dreams segued to Sean. Sean...and RMM. Receiving the gut-wrenching news about Sean’s murder. Holding Mei-li as she wept her heart out in his arms over their loss. The vow he’d made over the grave, to be the man Sean never had a chance to be. To fight injustice the way Sean always had, to protect the innocent. The earliest years of RMM and the heartbreaking failures. Then he’d learned. And success had soon followed upon success with RMM. Until recently.
Jason stirred restlessly in his sleep, but it didn’t disturb the dream.
RMM’s success rate was still incredibly high, given all the uncertainties revolving around the things they did, both legal and illegal. But the occasional failure bothered him because there never seemed to be a cause he could put his finger on. And with no root cause there could be no corrective action. You couldn’t fix something if you didn’t know how it was broken.
Curiously, it was only those covert ops he was personally involved in—though certainly not all—that failed for one reason or another. As if he was careless. Or as if someone had a personal animus against him. But that didn’t make sense. No one was more prepared than he when they went on an op, and who hated him enough to want him to fail?
And yet...that was the only explanation he could come up with. An explanation he refused to admit except in the deepest recesses of his soul because he trusted every man in RMM with his life. But the only thing that made sense was...sabotage.
Which meant RMM had a traitor in its midst.
Chapter 15
Alana texted Jason right after dinner. “Juliana’s right,” she muttered to herself as she typed.
We need to talk.
But Jason didn’t call, and he didn’t return her text. So she messaged him again.
It’s important.
After more than an hour with no response, Alana turned off her smartphone in a fit of pique. If he called, it would go right to voice mail. Serve him right, she thought with righteous indignation. Then almost immediately a possible explanation popped into her mind, and guilt swamped her. What if Jason couldn’t respond because he was on some kind of mission involving RMM? That thought made her scramble to turn her phone back on again.
But her phone didn’t ring and it didn’t ding for an incoming text. It stayed stubbornly silent well past her normal bedtime. She finally gave up and went to bed, only to be startled awake in the wee hours by the shrill of the landline.
It was answered on the third ring, so Alana turned over and tried to go back to sleep. Three mi
nutes later she was roused by soft tapping on her bedroom door and Mei-li’s voice urgently calling her name.
She grabbed her bathrobe and was still struggling to tie the belt when she opened the door. “Mei-li?” Her voice was middle-of-the-night hushed. “What’s wrong?” Her heart clutched at the distress and concern on the other woman’s face. “Jason. Please don’t tell me something’s happened to Jason.” Her mind was racing frantically as she remembered her theory why he hadn’t called her that evening, and she stumbled over her words. “Something to do with RMM?”
“No. No. Not Jason,” Mei-li rushed to assure her. “It’s your cousin, Juliana.”
“Juliana?” Coldness enveloped her. She’d just been talking with her cousin earlier today. What could have—
“Her husband called Dirk. Juliana’s in hospital and she’s asking for you.”
“Oh, my God.” She stared blankly. “What—”
“Your cousin tripped going down the Grand Staircase in the palace and fell almost to the bottom. She started spotting and was rushed to hospital. They got the bleeding stopped but they’re still afraid she might miscarry.”
“Oh, no.” A sick feeling settled in the pit of her stomach. Juliana’s precious baby. Her goddaughter-to-be, the daughter her cousin’s husband was praying for.
Suddenly Dirk was there in the dark hallway beside his wife. “The king’s chartering a plane to take you to Zakhar. Mei-li and I will drive you to the airport. How quickly can you be dressed and packed?”
“Twenty minutes, max.” Then she realized... “But I can’t just leave you in the lurch like this. I—”
Dirk cut her off, his face grim. “If Juliana’s asking for you, it’s serious.” And Alana suddenly remembered Dirk had lost his first wife in heartbreaking fashion when his daughters were born. “I’d charter a plane myself to get you there if I had to.”
* * *
The rest of that night passed in a nightmarish blur for Alana. The nerve-racking ride to the airport. Being practically thrown aboard the jet, which taxied down the runway almost before she got her seat belt fastened. The endless flight, during which she slept only in snatches when her body practically shut down, forcing sleep upon her. Sporadic prayers. Please, God. Don’t let her lose the baby. Please.
The time difference between Hong Kong and Zakhar meant it was still nighttime when they landed, which was somewhat disorienting. A military escort met the plane, and Alana was hustled into a waiting limousine, which sped out of the airport preceded and followed by military police on motorcycles, sirens blaring.
They arrived at the hospital in no time at all. A tall blonde woman with sharply watchful eyes was waiting for her. “Miss Richardson? I am Captain Mateja-Jones, head of the queen’s security detail.”
“How is she?” Alana had heard nothing for hours, and she was desperate for news. “How’s the baby?”
“It is touch and go.” The captain quickly escorted Alana toward the elevator, her face reflecting the same unspoken dread Alana herself felt. “The queen is calling for you. There is some fever and her blood pressure is sky-high. The doctors say calm is essential at this time, but something is weighing on her mind, and she will not rest until she speaks to you. If you could put her mind at ease...?”
“Whatever I can do.” Alana couldn’t imagine what Juliana wanted to tell her, but she knew ill people sometimes stressed over the oddest things, things which didn’t always make sense. Whatever her cousin needed to calm her down, Alana would promise.
A nurse was standing right in front of the elevator doors when they opened. Flanked by the nurse and the captain, Alana was taken to Juliana’s private room and ushered inside.
The room seemed to be full of people, she noticed right away. A private nurse, a technician monitoring the plethora of medical equipment surrounding the bed, and two men who looked for all the world like bodyguards. Which they probably are, she mused.
The captain moved to the bedside and bent over the petite, dark-haired woman in the bed. “Your Majesty? Your cousin is here.” She held out a hand to Alana and wiggled her fingers, indicating Alana should move closer so Juliana could see her.
“Alana? Oh, thank God! I’ve been waiting and waiting.”
Alana ignored everyone, cradled her cousin’s face in her hands and leaned over to kiss her cheek in comforting fashion. Then she smoothed back the long, dark hair, so like her own, from the flushed face. “Hi, Jules,” she said, hiding her incipient fear behind a confident smile. “You called, I came. Just like you came to my homecoming dance when I asked you, remember?” Making light of her urgent summons to Juliana’s sickbed by comparing it to that lighthearted invitation nearly nine years ago. “And wasn’t Darlene’s nose put out of joint when my famous cousin came all the way from Hollywood to see me crowned homecoming queen!”
Juliana laughed as Alana had intended. “Oh, Lord, I remember that. And then the homecoming king—what was his name?—had the gall to ask me for a date!”
“Tommy Cooper. Captain of the football team. Senior class president. With an ego the size of Texas.” She winked at her cousin. “I’d already shocked him by saying ‘No way!’ when he tried to sweet-talk me into bed two weeks earlier, and he was still smarting from that rejection. Guess he was just trying to show me up by asking you out.”
Juliana laughed again, and Alana was heartened by the obvious lessening of stress in her cousin’s face, not to mention the steadily dropping line on the blood pressure monitor near the bed.
She glanced around the room, looking for a chair, and that was when she saw her cousin’s husband, Andre, standing in one corner, apparently leaning casually against the wall, his hands in his pockets. Then she saw the tenseness in his muscles and the terrible anxiety radiating from the green eyes set in an otherwise stoic face, and she knew he was far from casual.
Before she could ask, the captain was pulling up a chair for her. She sat and took Juliana’s hand in hers. “So you got me here by scaring the living daylights out of everyone, including me. What’s up?”
Juliana’s head tossed restlessly on the pillow. “I can’t talk with all these people in the room,” she fretted.
Alana’s meaningful gaze swung to the other occupants of the room, who quickly and silently exited. All except Andre. “Not while breath remains in my body,” he said evenly, and after a moment Alana nodded her understanding.
“Okay, Jules,” she said, stroking the hand that seemed far too warm. “It’s just you, me and your husband.”
“Andre?” The surprised wonder in Juliana’s voice came as a shock. Her cousin had to be far more ill than Alana had originally thought if she hadn’t been aware her beloved husband was in the room.
“Forget him for a moment, Jules, and tell me why I’m here.”
Juliana’s hand tightened on Alana’s. “Bree died,” she said obscurely, mentioning the name of the woman Alana knew had been Dirk’s first wife. “She was my best friend in all the world, and she died.”
“I know.” Alana’s voice was very gentle. “I remember how devastated you were when it happened.”
“Dirk loved her so much, and when she died, he—he went a little crazy, I think. He didn’t even want to have anything to do with Linden and Laurel at first. Almost as if he blamed them for being alive when Bree was dead.”
Alana hadn’t known this. Dirk adored his daughters now. She couldn’t imagine he hadn’t always. But all she said was, “Okay.” Waiting for the rest.
“Andre loves me so much,” Juliana confided, and Alana knew that in her fevered state her cousin had already forgotten her husband was right there in the room. “If something happens to me, I...I don’t think he’ll be able to bear it.”
Alana darted a glance at Andre. From the burning eyes in a face that had lost most of its color, she knew Juliana was more accurate in her assessmen
t than she realized. And for no reason at all a memory of Jason surfaced. Jason gazing down at her in the instant before he’d kissed her for the first time. The expression in his eyes that—as blasphemous as it sounded—said she was his salvation. And she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt Jason loved her with the same all-encompassing love Andre had for Juliana. The same way she loved him.
She brought her attention back to her cousin with an effort, just as Juliana was saying, “I’m so afraid he’ll react the way Dirk did. So I need you to promise me...”
“Anything, Jules. You know that.” The calm assurance in Alana’s voice seemed to help Juliana.
“Raoul didn’t mean to trip me,” she said, referring to her twenty-month-old son. “I was in a hurry and he was fidgety and I...you know how little boys are.”
Alana didn’t, but she desperately wanted to. And the little boys she wanted to know were Jason’s sons. She wanted to know his daughters, too.
“So if anything happens to me, please don’t let Andre blame Raoul,” Juliana said on a rush. “I’m so afraid... I love them both so much and I couldn’t bear it if...”
Alana sighed with thankfulness that Juliana had finally been able to voice the great fear weighing on her mind, the thing preventing her from getting the rest her body sorely needed. She stood and leaned over to kiss her cousin’s cheek again. “I won’t let Andre blame Raoul, Jules. I promise. And you know I always keep my promises. Now you have to promise me something in exchange.”
“What’s that?”
“Promise me you’ll sleep now and won’t worry anymore.” She touched a gentle hand to the slight bulge that was the baby Juliana carried. “My goddaughter needs her rest. And she needs her mother, too.” She forced a lightness into her voice she was far from feeling. “I want you to remember how you do everything in your power to make your husband happy,” she teased, “and get some rest. So five months from now you’ll be placing his daughter in his arms.”
* * *
Six weeks later Juliana was completely recovered and her pregnancy was safely out of harm’s reach—all signs indicated she would easily carry her baby to full term. And Alana was finally packing to leave Zakhar now that her cousin no longer needed her. The maid the master of the household had assigned to her had offered to do her packing, but she’d politely declined, preferring to do it herself.
