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Jack absorbed the details with the situational awareness that was as much instinct as training. That alertness had kept him alive in Mali and served him well in so many other tense situations. But it shut down completely when he stretched Gina out on the soft, fluffy ocean of brown. Her hair spilled across the comforter in a river of pale gold. Her eyes were hot blue and heavy. Her long, lush body drove every thought from his mind but one.
Aching for her, he yanked down the zipper of his pleated black slacks. He discarded them along with his socks and jockey shorts, joined her on the bed and ran his hand over the flat planes of her belly.
“You are so incredibly gorgeous.”
Her stomach hollowed under his palm even as she gave a breathless, delighted chuckle.
“Flattery will get you everywhere, Ambassador.”
He slid his hand under the lace panties and found the wet heat at her center. Her head went back. Her lips parted. As Jack leaned down to cover her mouth with his, he realized he didn’t want to be anywhere but here, with this woman, tasting her, touching her, loving her.
He was rougher than he’d intended when he stripped off her underwear. More urgent than he ever remembered being when he pried her knees apart and positioned himself between her thighs. And when she hooked her calves around his and canted her hips to fit his, he lost it.
Driven by a need that would shock the hell out of him when he analyzed it later, he thrust into her. It was a primal urge. An atavistic instinct to claim his mate. To brand her as his. Leave his scent on her. Plant his seed in her belly.
Except he’d already done that.
The thought fought its way through the red haze of Jack’s mind. He went stiff, his member buried in the hot satin that was Gina. Hell! What kind of an animal was he? He levered up on his elbows, blinking away the sexual mists that clouded his vision. When they cleared, he saw Gina glaring up at him.
“What?” she demanded.
“I didn’t mean to be so rough. The baby...”
“Is fine! I, however, am not.”
To emphasize her point, she hooked her calves higher on his and clenched her vaginal muscles. Jack got the message. Hard not to, since it damned near blew off the top of his head. He slammed his hips into hers again. And again. And again.
* * *
They could only spend so many hours in bed. Theoretically, anyway. Jack would have kept Gina there all day Saturday but even he had to come up for air. Since they wouldn’t drive down to his parents’ house in Richmond until the following day, he offered to show her his favorite spots in D.C. She approved the proposed agenda, with two quick amendments.
“I’d like to see where you live. And where you work.”
Jack had no problem with either. Gina had packed clothes for the weekend but he had to get rid of his tux before he could appear in public again. That naturally lent itself to a first stop at his town house.
It was classic Georgetown. Three narrow stories, all brick. Black shutters. Solid brass door knocker in the shape of a horse’s head. Gina’s nose wrinkled when Jack mentioned that the detached garage at the back had once been slave quarters, but she was gracious enough to acknowledge he’d taken occupancy of the ivy-covered premises long after those tragic days.
The framed photo of Catherine still occupying a place of honor on the entryway table gave her pause, though. Almost as much as it gave Jack. He stood next to Gina as she gazed at the black-and-white photo.
It was one of his favorite shots. He’d taken it after losing yet another tennis match to his hypercompetitive wife. She laughed at the camera, her racquet resting on her shoulder. Her dark hair was caught back in a ponytail. A sweatband circled her forehead. All her energy, all her pulsing life, shone in her eyes.
“I bet she kept you jumping,” Gina murmured.
“She did.”
Almost too much.
The thought darted into Jack’s mind before he could block it. That energy, that formidable legal mind, the all-consuming passion for politics. He’d had to march double time to keep up with her. More than once he’d wished she’d just relax and drift for a while.
The thought generated a sharp jab of guilt. Jack had to work to shrug it off as he left Gina to explore the town house’s main floor and went upstairs to change. He came back down a half hour later, showered and shaved and feeling comfortable in jeans and his favorite University of Virginia crewneck.
“You sure you want to swing by my office? There’s not a whole lot to see but we can make a quick visit if you want.”
Gina forced a smile. The pictures of his wife scattered around the town house had gotten to her more than she would admit. She’d spotted several shots of Catherine alone. Several more of Catherine with Jack. The perfect marriage of smarts and ambition.
And here Gina was, trying desperately to anchor herself after years of flitting from job to job, man to man. Her life to this point seemed so frivolous, so self-centered. How could Jack have any respect for her?
She buried her crushing doubts behind a bright smile. “I’ve never been to the State Department. I’d like to see it.”
“Okay, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
* * *
Gina took Jack’s disclaimer with a grain of salt. It should have been a teaspoon, she decided when he escorted her through State’s echoing marble halls and into his impressive suite of offices.
The first thing she noticed was the view from the windows of the outer office. It cut straight down 21st Street to the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool and presented a narrow, if spectacular, slice of Washington.
The second item that caught her attention was the individual in jeans, a button-down yellow shirt and round eyeglasses hunched over a computer. She shouldn’t have been surprised that Jack’s people were dedicated enough to come in on weekends. And when he introduced her to his chief of staff, she tried hard to bury her antipathy behind a friendly smile.
“I’m glad to finally meet you, Dale.”
That was true enough. She’d been curious about this man. More than curious. She wasn’t usually into stereotypes, but her first glimpse of Dale Vickers pegged him immediately as a very short, very insecure male suffering from a rampaging Napoleon complex. He kept his desk between him and his boss. Also between him and Gina. She had to reach across it to shake his hand. He acknowledged her greeting with a condescending nod and turned to his boss.
“I didn’t know you were coming in this morning.”
What a prick! Gina couldn’t see why Jack put up with him until she spotted the framed 4x6 snapshot on the man’s workstation. Catherine and Jack and Dale Vickers with their arms looped over each other’s shoulders. All smiling. All wearing crimson sweatshirts emblazoned with the Harvard logo.
* * *
Images of Catherine Mason hovered at the back of Gina’s mind for the rest of the day. She managed to suppress them while Jack gave her a private tour of the State Department’s hallowed halls. Ditto when they took advantage of the glorious June afternoon to stroll the banks of the Potomac and cheer the scullers pushing against the vicious current.
After browsing the upscale shops in Georgetown Mall, Jack took Gina to his favorite Thai restaurant later that evening. The owner greeted him with a delighted hand pump.
“Mr. Ambassador! Long time since we see you.”
“Too long, Mr. Preecha.”
The slender Asian whipped around, checked his tables and beamed. “You want by the window, yes? You and...?”
He made a heroic effort to conceal his curiosity when Jack introduced Gina. She felt it, though, and as soon as they were seated and their drink order taken, the question tumbled out.
“Did you and Catherine come here often?”
“Not often. We’d only lived in D.C. four or five months before she died. Do you like shumai? They serve them here with steamed rice and a peanut ginger sauce that’ll make you swear you were in Bangkok.”
The change of subject was too deliberate to ignore. Gina followed the lead.
“Since I have no idea what shumai are and have never been to Bangkok, I’ll take your word on both.”
Shumai turned out to be an assortment of steamed dumplings filled with diced pork, chicken or shrimp. She followed Jack’s lead and dipped each morsel in ginger or soy sauce before gobbling it down. Between the dumplings, steamed rice, golden fried tofu triangles, some kind of root vegetable Gina couldn’t begin to pronounce and endless cups of tea, she rolled out of the restaurant feeling like a python just fed its monthly meal. Too stuffed for any more wandering through Georgetown. Almost too stuffed for sex. When she tried to convince Jack of that sad state of affairs, though, he just laughed and promised to do all the work.
He followed through on his promise. The chocolate-brown sheets were a tangled mess and Gina was boneless with pleasure when he finally collapsed beside her.
* * *
For the second night in a row she fell asleep in his arms. And for the second morning in a row, she greeted the day cradled in the same warm cocoon.
She came awake slowly, breathing in Jack’s scent, twitching her nose when his springy chest hair tickled her nose. It felt right to cuddle against his side. Safe and warm and right.
Slowly, without Gina willing them, the images she’d glimpsed of Jack’s wife yesterday took form and shape in her mind. For an uneasy moment, she almost sensed Catherine’s presence. Not hostile, not heartbroken at seeing her husband in bed with another woman, but not real happy, either.
“We’d better get up and get moving.”
Jack’s voice rumbled up from the chest wall her ear was pressed against. “Sunday brunch is a long-standing family tradition,” he warned, stroking her hair with a lazy touch. “Hopefully, it’ll just be us and my parents today but you should be prepared for the worst.”
“Great! Now he tells me.”
She could do this, Gina told herself as she showered and blow-dried her hair and did her makeup. She could run the gauntlet of Jack’s family, all of whom had known and no doubt adored his wife. She wasn’t looking forward to it, though.
And damned if she couldn’t almost hear Catherine snickering in the steamy air of the bathroom.
Nine (#uf787832a-bba3-5d25-8934-389f8b91f761)
Light Sunday–morning traffic was one of the few joys of driving in Washington. Jack’s Range Rover whizzed through near deserted streets and crossed the 14th Street Bridge. The Jefferson Memorial rose in graceful symmetry on the D.C. side of the bridge. The gray granite bulk of the Pentagon dominated the Virginia side. From there they shot south on 395.
Once south of the Beltway, though, Jack exited the interstate and opted instead to drive a stretch of the old U.S. Highway 1. Gina understood why when he pulled into the parking lot of the Gas Pump Café just outside Woodbridge.
“We won’t sit down for brunch until one or two. And this place,” he said with a sweeping gesture toward the tin-roofed cafe, “serves the best biscuits and gravy this side of the Mason-Dixon line.”
Gina hid her doubts as she eyed the ramshackle structure. It boasted a rusting, thirties-era gas pump out front. Equally rusty signs covered every square inch of the front of the building. The colorful barrage advertised everything from Nehi grape soda to Red Coon chewing tobacco to Gargoyle motor oil. The scents of sizzling bacon and smoked sausage that emanated from the café, though, banished any doubts the place would live up to Jack’s hype.
It didn’t occur to Gina that he’d made the stop for her sake until they were seated at one of the wooden picnic tables. He obviously didn’t consider the slice of toast and half glass of orange juice she’d downed while getting dressed adequate sustenance for mother and child. She agreed but limited her intake to one biscuit smothered in gravy, two eggs, a slab of sugar-cured ham and another glass of juice. Since it was just a little past nine when they rolled out of the café, Gina felt confident she would be able to do justice to brunch at one or two o’clock.
She also felt a lot more confident about meeting Jack’s family. Strapped into the Range Rover’s bucket seat, she patted her tummy. “Hope you enjoyed that, baby. I sure did.”
Jack followed the gesture and smiled. “Have you started thinking about names?”
She didn’t hesitate. “Charlotte, if it’s a girl.”
“What if it’s a boy?”
She slanted him a sideways glance. He’d left his window cracked to allow in the warm June morning. The breeze lifted the ends of his dark gold hair and rippled the collar of his pale blue Oxford shirt. He’d rolled the cuffs up on his forearms and they, too, glinted with a sprinkling of gold.
She guessed what was behind his too-casual question. If Jack won his on-going marriage campaign, he no doubt envisioned hanging a numeral after his son’s name. John Harris Mason IV. Not for the first time, Gina wondered if she was being a total bitch for putting her needs before Jack’s. Why did she have to prove that she could stand on her own two feet, anyway? This handsome, sophisticated, wealthy man wanted to take care of her and the baby. Why not let him?
She sighed, acknowledging the answers almost before she’d formulated the questions. She would hate herself for giving up now. That had been her modus operandi her entire adult life. Whenever she got bored or developed a taste for something new, she would indulge the whim.
But she couldn’t quit being a mother. Nor did she want to give up a job she’d discovered she was good at. Really good. Then again, who said she had to quit? The Tremayne Group’s Washington venue had plenty of business.
All of which was just a smoke screen. The sticking point—the real, honest-to-goodness sticking point—was that Jack didn’t love her. He’d been completely honest about that. Although...the past two nights had made Gina begin to wonder if what they did feel for each other might be enough. Uneasy with that thought, she dodged the issue of boys’ names.
“I haven’t gotten that far,” she said lightly. “Tell me about your parents. Where they met, how long they’ve been married, what they like to do.”
Jack filled the rest of the trip with a light-handed sketch of a family steeped in tradition and dedicated to serving others. His mother had been as active in volunteerism over the years as his father had in his work for a series of presidents.
Gina might have been just the tiniest bit intimidated if she hadn’t grown up on stories of the literary and social giants Grandmama had hobnobbed with in her heyday. Then, of course, there was her title. Lady Eugenia Amalia Therése St. Sebastian, granddaughter to the last Duchess of Karlenburgh. That and five bucks might get her a cup of coffee at Starbucks but it still seemed to impress some people. Hopefully, she wouldn’t have to resort to such obvious measures to impress Jack’s folks.
* * *
She didn’t. Fifteen minutes after meeting John II, Gina knew no title would dent the man’s rigid sense of propriety. He did not approve of her refusal to marry his only son and give his grandson the Mason name.
“Now, John,” his wife admonished gently. She was a soft-spoken Southern belle with a core of tempered steel beneath her Donna Karan slacks and jewel-toned Versace tunic. “That’s a matter for Gina and Jack to decide.”
“I disagree.”
“So noted,” Ellen Mason said dryly. “Would you care for more iced tea, Gina?”
There were only the four of them, thank goodness. They were sitting in a glass-enclosed solarium with fans turning overhead. A glorious sweep of green lawn shaded by the monster oaks that gave the place its name filled the windows. The Masons’ white-pillared, three-story home had once been the heart of a thriving tobacco plantation. The outlying acres had been sold off over the decades, but the current owner of Five Oaks had his lord-of-the-manner air down pat.
“I’d better not,” Gina replied in response to Ellen’s question. “I’m trying to cut out caffeine. Water with lemon would be great.”
Jack’s mother tipped ice water from a frosted carafe and used silver tongs to spear a lemon wedge. “We didn’t worry about caffeine all those years ago when I was pregnant. That might explain some of my son’s inexhaustible energy.”
Her guest kept a straight face, but it took some doing. Ellen’s son was inexhaustible, all right. Gina had the whisker burns on her thighs to prove it.
“I know you must have questions about this side of your baby’s family tree,” the older woman was saying with a smile in her warm brown eyes. “We have a portrait gallery in the upper hall. Shall I give you a tour while Jack and his father catch up on the latest political gossip?”
“I’d love that.”
The duchess had taken Gina and Sarah to all the great museums, both at home and abroad. The Louvre. The Uffizi. The Hermitage. The National Gallery of Art in Washington. As a result Sarah had developed both an interest in and an appreciation for all forms of art. Gina’s knowledge wasn’t anywhere near as refined but she recognized the touch of a master when she saw it. None of the portraits hanging in the oak-paneled upstairs hall had that feel. Still, the collection offered a truly fascinating glimpse of costumes and hairstyles from the 17th century right down to the present.
Gina paused before the oil of Jack’s grandfather. He wore the full dress uniform of an army colonel, complete with gold shoulder epaulets and saber. “My grandmother knew him,” she told Ellen. “She said he and your mother-in-law attended a reception she once gave for some sultan or another.”
“I’ve read about your grandmother,” her hostess commented as they moved to the next portrait, this one of Ellen and her husband in elegant formal dress. “She sounds like an extraordinary woman.”
“She is.” Lips pursed, Gina surveyed the empty space at the end of the row. “No portrait of Jack and Catherine?”
“No, unfortunately. We could never get them to sit still long enough for a formal portrait. And...” She stopped, drew in a breath. “And of course, we all thought there was plenty of time.”
She turned and held out both hands. Gina placed hers in the soft, firm fold.
“That’s why I wanted this moment alone with you, dear. Life is so short, and so full of uncertainties. I admire you for doing what your heart tells you is right. Don’t let Jack or his father or anyone else bully you into doing otherwise.”
* * *
The brief interlude with Ellen made her husband a little easier to bear. John II didn’t alter his attitude of stiff disapproval toward Gina but there was no disguising his deep affection for his son. He not only loved Jack. He was also inordinately proud of his son’s accomplishments to date.
“Did he tell you he’s the youngest man ever appointed as an ambassador-at-large?” he asked during a leisurely brunch that included twice-baked cheese grits, green beans almondine and the most delicious crab cakes Gina had ever sampled.
