Alexis was only half focusing on her cousin's discussion of his recent expanse of the family holdings as she sat by the roaring fire in her fireplace. The rest of her brain was savoring the scents wafting in from the kitchen she never used and envisioning the man cooking in her kitchen without anything but an apron. Julian wasn't actually in a state of semi dress but she supposed she could dream.

Perhaps Stefan sensed her distraction because he terminated the call in just under two hours. Often their nightly "chats" could stretch out beyond three hours and result in several reams of faxed documents and contracts for her to review while he slept. Instead he wished her well and hung up a bit abruptly moments before Julian appeared in front of her extending a stoneware tureen.

Alexis reached for the dish and smiled when she saw that he had fixed her an Irish Omelet. She remembered those from her college days. Back then she had been aghast that someone would put potatoes into an omelet. He had laughed, educated her on the great potato famine, and then fixed her the best eggs she had ever tasted. Nothing had matched them, not even expensive room service eggs benedict when she had stayed at the Waldorf-Astoria.

"So, how is Cousin Stuffy?" Julian asked as they sat by the fireplace eating their omelets.

"He just purchased an island. This is amazing by the way, even better than I remembered."

"My culinary skills would make my mother proud. They are probably the only thing she would be proud of. I suspect most of the rest of it merely leaves her cursing down from heaven."

Alexis laid her free hand over Julian's. It was all she could do. She couldn't tell him his mother understood that he had only done what he had needed to do because, from all that she knew of Katherine Barron Jerome, she doubted she had. She suspected that she had accepted Julian's fate as the oldest surviving son only because it still spared his younger brother, Edgar Octavius Jerome, the same fate.

"Everyone says she was never the same after Evan disappeared. I guess they're right to an extent. But, truly, it wasn't his death that broke her heart as much as her learning the circumstances that led to it."

Katherine Barron Jerome had died from a heart attack shortly after it was revealed that her son had been in the act of raping Camellia McKay when she killed him in what her half-brother, Duke Lavery, considered legitimate self-defense. The judge had agreed and dismissed the charges.

"No mother wants to believe her son could be capable of something like that," Alexis said somberly. Although she realized her own experiences called much of that into question. Helena had been perversely proud of her eldest son's "conquests".

"No good mother and, in spite of who she married, she was a good mother," Julian said solemnly.

Alexis caught the subtle jab at his father. Years ago, she had been one of the few people who knew that there wasn't much love between Julian and his father. Nothing so far had convinced her that much had changed in their relationship over the past six years. If anything, she sensed that the bitterness and hatred of the heart had only intensified during the years Julian had worked under his father with a plan to succeed him. That made sense if you understood that heading the Jerome Crime family had never been one of Julian's goals. She had always understood that. She also understood that descendants of powerful families rarely had complete control of their own destiny. She certainly had not.

"The sad reality is that we don't always fall in love with those who treat our hearts kindly right?" Alexis asked.

"Not always, no. Please tell me I wasn't the man who helped you come to that profound realization," Julian said.

Julian's words surprised her for two reasons. Firstly, because she wouldn't compartmentalize him that way. She certainly wished things were different for both of them but she accepted that he hadn't chosen to be born into the Jerome family any more than she had chosen to be born into the Cassadine Clan. There was also the issue that the words were not her own. They had originally been uttered by some upstate New York Family Court Justice when the Crosston Custody hearings had been moved to a new venue. The case had been covered in one of her first-year family law courses at Yale.

"The words weren't even originally mine. It was a phrase from part of a child custody decision we studied my first year of law school," Alexis said.

"You remembered them for some reason," Julian challenged.

"They made me think of my mother. Although I'm still not convinced that the Davidovitch family might not have been viewed as a trade up from the Cassadines. Anything might have I suppose, at least when my mother was young."

"Does that mean you're starting to remember your earlier childhood when she was still alive?"

"No, nothing like that, except, I suppose the mind creates what it can't remember. Or perhaps the mind hides what it can't handle."

"Sometimes, I suppose. What has your mind created? Perhaps it is closer to the truth than you realize."

"The first summer I remember living with the Cassadines is the summer I had just turned nine, yet, according to records, my mother died in 1969. Stefan says I stayed with some relative of the Davidovitchs for a few years before I came to live with his family. I just don't understand why I have no memory of them, or that time at all."

"You weren't quite five when your mother died right? I was five when my cousin Jonathan was born. I remember his birth and his christening but not a lot of other random things from my pre-school years."

"I never went to school until I was thirteen. That was when Mikkos enrolled me at Briarton-Griggs Academy. Helena taunted me that I wasn't worth a proper European education. I have to say I enjoyed being on a separate continent from her. The only downside was that the school shut down completely over the summer so I had to return to the Cassadine compound. September could never come fast enough," Alexis said.

"I arranged to stay in Cambridge over the summers when I was in college. Those are some of my best memories with my mother, and Eddie. She really was a different person when she was away from Father. Eddie was too which is what inspired her to send him far away."

"You haven't spoken to your brother since before your mother died?"

"I wouldn't know where to find him. Mother made sure of that," Julian said. Then he quickly gathered up their dishes from the floor and started into the kitchen.

Alexis followed him. "You don't have to clean up," she said and then chided herself for the comment.

Julian turned from where he was filling the sink with water and soap. "Do you think these dishes will wash themselves? Or are you trying to tell me that your cousin decided to share his servants and you just have to go release them from their cages?"

After a quick roll of her eyes, Alexis could only shake her head and smile as Julian started washing the dishes.