Chapter 15

Alana texted Jason right after dinner. “Juliana’s right,” she muttered to herself as she typed.

But Jason didn’t call, and he didn’t return her text. So she messaged him again.

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 minutes 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 assessment 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.

The king had intended to send Alana back to Hong Kong in his private jet, but Alana had adamantly refused. Charter a jet to get her here quickly when Juliana’s life seemed to hang in the balance? She could understand that. But there was no earthly reason to fly an entire plane to Hong Kong and back for one person.

“I’ll just take a commercial flight,” she’d insisted. And the king’s personal secretary had subsequently hand-delivered Alana’s first-class one-way ticket for Friday morning. “The limousine will take you to the airport in plenty of time, Miss Richardson,” the man had assured her. “Please ring for someone to bring your luggage down when you are ready.”

As she packed, Alana thought of the work waiting for her when she got back. She’d done her best to keep up as much as possible long distance—email and the internet helped greatly in that regard. But some of Dirk’s older fans still put pen to paper when writing to him, and those letters had probably piled up in her absence, along with a few other things.

Dirk had insisted she stay in Zakhar as long as Juliana needed her. How many bosses out there would be so understanding about a six-week hiatus? He’d still paid her full salary, too, which, considering she hadn’t worked for him all that long before her emergency trip to Zakhar, put Dirk right up there next to sainthood where bosses were concerned.

“No wonder his fans love him,” she murmured to herself as she tucked her panties in a corner of her suitcase. “He’s such a sweetheart.”

When she was completely packed except for what she’d need tonight and tomorrow morning, Alana sat on the bed next to her suitcase and contemplated for the umpteenth time what she’d done her best not to think about while she was here in Zakhar...and had failed miserably at doing.

Jason.

Jason and his “no children ever” stance.

He’d texted her that next day.

He’d obviously misunderstood. He’d seemed to think that because she’d tried to contact him she was conceding he was right. Which wasn’t the case at all. Before she could formulate a response, however, and text him back, another message had popped into her inbox.

It wasn’t possible to say what she wanted to say in a text—that medium wasn’t designed for eloquence. She’d seriously considered calling him immediately to discuss it, because at least then he would understand how important this was to her. But she’d decided against it because she wanted to see his eyes when they talked. And she wanted him to see hers.

But the days in Zakhar had turned into weeks, the weeks into a month, and still Juliana wasn’t completely out of the woods. There’d been one mini-scare after another, and Alana had had no intention of leaving her cousin until she was confident Juliana and the baby she carried were 100 percent healthy.

Jason had called her every afternoon at four on the dot. Which, considering the six-hour time difference between Hong Kong and Zakhar, meant it was already ten o’clock for him. So at first Alana had tried to keep their phone calls brief—no more than fifteen minutes. But after the third time he’d wormed the reason out of her. And from then on he’d refused to let her hang up until they’d talked for an hour or more.

Every morning she’d promised herself that the next time he called, she’d ask him again why he didn’t want children. But her courage had failed her every time. Instead they’d talked of inconsequential things...her day, his day. And not-so-inconsequential things...how much they missed each other. Alana had even confided in Jason about her strained relationship with her parents, and why, hoping that would prompt him to open up to her about his past.

That hadn’t happened, although occasionally he’d shared with her the progress RMM was making on the various cases they were pursuing, including the one that had almost ensnared her. Not the details, but still... She’d cherished those moments, because it had indicated a level of trust she knew was difficult for him.

Every day away from Jason was subtle torture, though, because just hearing his voice on the phone made her knees weak, made her stomach quiver and evoked intimate memories of all the things they’d done for and with each other. Now she knew what she was missing. Now she knew he could arouse her with just a look. A touch. And his smile? He had a thousand smiles, but the wicked one, the one that said she could trust him to satisfy her completely, she craved that smile the way she craved him. Alana had never so much as experimented with illegal drugs, but now she was addicted...to Jason. He was her drug of choice, and she never wanted to kick the habit.

The problem was, she might have to. Unless she could reach him somehow, unless she could help him conquer whatever deep-rooted fear prevented him from wanting children, unless she could heal him as Dirk had so bluntly put it, she would have to. Because she already knew she was carrying his child.