Simon replied, keeping his voice cool and even. He felt Sage’s shock and confusion emanating from her rigid body, but dared not take his eyes from the woman in front of him. The moment she and her companions had appeared, he’d recognized her. He’d gone cold and blank, and a wave of memories rushed over him, bringing him back to the nightmare, the lost, suffocating nightmare of his other life. It had paralyzed him for a moment, swathing him in darkness and loathing, until he pulled himself beyond the night, and his strength and purpose came roaring back. He was not that same person. He’d been given another chance. Now, Florita Tatiane—now known by her stage name Tatiana—looked down at him with the same dark eyes filled with fascination and lust that she’d trained on him more than fifty years ago. Almost fifty-seven, if one were counting. She looked the same as she had on the poster of her final movie and the cover of her last magazine shoot—thanks to Hollywood, more physically perfect than she had been when he knew her as his boss’s mistress.
