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“No, he didn’t,” she replied, silently wishing she could sop up the béchamel sauce from the crab cakes with the crust of her flaky croissant.
“Then he probably also didn’t tell you some very powerful PACs have been suggesting he run for the U.S. Senate as a first step toward the White House.”
“Dad...”
“Actually,” Gina interrupted, “I read about that. I know those PACs love Jack. And he and I talked about his running for office the other night.”
John II paused with his knife and fork poised above his food. “You did?”
“Yep. I told him he should go for it.”
“Dad...”
Once again the father ignored the son’s low warning. His lip curled, and a heavy sarcasm colored his voice. “I’m sure our conservative base will turn out by the thousands to support a candidate with an illegitimate child.”
“That’s enough!”
Jack shoved away from the table and tossed down his napkin. Anger radiated from him in waves. “We agreed not to discuss this, Dad. If you can’t stick to the agreement, Gina and I will leave now.”
“I’m sorry.” The apology was stiff but it was an apology. “Sit down, son. Please, sit down.”
Ellen interceded, as Gina suspected she had countless times in the past. “Jack, why don’t you take our guest for a stroll in the rose garden while I clear the table and bring in dessert?”
Gina jumped up, eager for something to do. “Please, let me help.”
“Thank you, dear.”
* * *
A decadent praline cheesecake smoothed things over. Everyone got back to being polite and civilized, and Ellen deftly steered the conversation in less sensitive channels.
Gina thought they might make it through the rest of the visit with no further fireworks. She nursed that futile hope right up until moments before she and Jack left to drive back to Washington. At his mother’s request, he accompanied her into her study to pick up a flyer about an organization offering aid to abused children overseas she wanted him to look at.
That left Gina and John II standing side by side in the foyer for a few moments. An uncomfortable silence stretched between them, broken when he made an abrupt announcement.
“I had you investigated.”
“What?”
“I hired a private investigator.”
Gina’s brows snapped together, and her chin tipped in a way that anyone familiar with the duchess would have recognized immediately as a warning signal.
“Did you?”
“I wanted him to chase down rumors about the other men you might have been involved with.”
Her hand fluttered to her stomach in a protective gesture as old as time. “The other men I might have screwed, you mean.”
He blinked at the blunt reply, but made no apology. “Yes.”
The thought of a private investigator talking to her friends, asking questions, dropping insinuations, fired twin bolts of anger and mortification. Gina’s chin came up another inch. Her eyes flashed dangerously.
“Why go to the expense of a private investigator? A simple DNA test would have been much cheaper.”
“You were in that clinic in Switzerland. Jack flew over right after you called him. I told him to insist on a paternity test, but...” He broke off, grimacing. “Well, no need to go into all that now. What I want to say is I accept that you’re carrying my grandchild.”
“How very magnanimous of you.”
The icy response took him aback. He looked as though he wanted to say more, but the sound of footsteps stilled him. Both Jack and his mother sensed the tension instantly. Ellen sighed and shook her head. Her son demanded an explanation.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” Gina said before his father could respond. “Nothing at all. Thank you for a lovely lunch, Ellen.”
She kissed the older woman’s cheek before offering a cool glance and a lukewarm handshake to Jack’s father.
“Perhaps I’ll see you again.”
He stiffened, correctly interpreting the threat buried in that polite “perhaps.”
“I certainly hope so.”
* * *
“All right,” Jack said as the Range Rover cut through the tunnel of oaks shading the drive. “What was that all about?”
Gina wanted to be cool about it, wanted to take the high road and shrug off the investigation as inconsequential, but her roiling emotions got the better of her. She slewed around as much as the seat belt would allow. Anger, hurt and suspicion put a razor’s edge in her words.
“Did you know your father hired a P.I. to investigate me?”
“Yes, I...”
“With or without your approval?”
“Christ, Gina.” His glance sliced into her. “What do you think?”
She was still angry, still hurt, but somewhat mollified by his indignation. Slumping against the seat back, she crossed her arms. “Your father’s a piece of work, Ambassador.”
Which was true, but probably not the smartest comment to make. Jack could criticize his father. He wouldn’t appreciate an outsider doing so, however, any more than Gina would tolerate someone making a snide comment about the duchess. The tight line to Jack’s jaw underscored that point.
“I’m sorry,” she muttered. “I shouldn’t have said that.”
He accepted the apology with a curt nod and offered one of his own. “I’m sorry, too. I should have told you about the investigation. The truth is I didn’t know about it until after we got back from Switzerland and then it just didn’t matter.”
Her anger dissipated, leaving only an urgent question. “Why not, Jack? Didn’t you...? Don’t you have any doubts?”
“No. Not one.” The rigid set to his shoulders eased. His reply was quiet and carried the ring of absolute truth. “We may disagree on a number of important issues, marriage included, but we’ve always been honest with each other.”
Her eyes start to burn. She refused to cry, she flatly refused, but she suddenly felt miserable and weary beyond words. “Look,” she said tiredly, “this has been a busy few days. I may have overdone it a bit. I think...I think I’d better fly back to New York this evening.”
He knifed her a quick look. “Is it the baby?”
“No! The baby’s fine.”
“Then it’s my father.” Another sharp glance. “Or is it us?”
“Mostly us.” She forced a smile. “You have to admit we didn’t get much sleep the past two nights. I need to go home and rack out.”
“Is that what you really want?”
“It’s what I really want.”
* * *
The drive back to D.C. took considerably less time than the drive down to Richmond. No cutting off to ramble along Route 1. No stops at picturesque cafés. Jack stuck to the interstate, and Gina used the time to check airline schedules. She confirmed a seat on a 7:20 p.m. flight to New York. It was a tight fit, but she could make it if she threw her things in her weekender and went straight to the airport.
“You don’t have to wait,” she told Jack as he pulled into the parking garage at L’Enfant Plaza. “I can grab a cab.”
“I’ll drive you.”
She was in and out of TTG’s guest suite in less than twenty minutes. A quick call ensured the cleaning crew would come in the following day. The key cards she sealed in an envelope and slid under the door to the main office. Elaine Patterson, manager of the Washington venue, was due back tomorrow. Gina would coordinate the after-event report with her and tie up any other loose ends by email.
Her emotions were flip-flopping all over the place again when Jack pulled up at the airport terminal. Part of her insisted she was doing the right thing. That she needed to pull back, assess the damage to her heart done by the nights she’d spent in his arms. The rest of her ached for another night. Or two. Or three.
If Jack were experiencing the same disquiet, it didn’t show. He left the Range Rover in idle and came around to lift out her weekender. His expression was calm, his hand steady as he buried it in her hair and tilted her face to his.
“Call me when you get home.”
“I will.”
“And get some rest.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I’ll see you at our next doctor’s appointment, if not before.”
Before would be good, she thought as she closed her eyes for his kiss. Before would be very good.
* * *
When she climbed out of a cab outside the Dakota almost seven hours later, her ass was well and truly dragging. Her flight had been delayed due to mechanical problems before being canceled completely. The passengers had sat for well over an hour on the plane before being shuffled off and onto another. She’d called Jack once she was aboard the alternate aircraft so he wouldn’t worry, and again when she landed at LaGuardia.
Since they’d touched down at almost midnight, she didn’t call her grandmother. The duchess would have gone to bed hours ago and Gina didn’t want to wake her. Feeling dopey with exhaustion, she took a cab into the city. Jerome wasn’t on duty and she didn’t know the new night doorman except to nod and say hello. Wheeling her suitcase to the elevator, she slumped against the mirrored wall as it whisked her upward.
The delicate scent of orange blossoms telegraphed a welcome to her weary mind. She dropped her purse and key next to the Waterford crystal bowl filled with potpourri. Her weekender’s hard rubber wheels made barely a squeak as she rolled it over the marble tiles.
She’d crossed the sitting room and was almost to the hall leading to the bedrooms when she caught the sound of a muffled clink in the kitchen. She left the suitcase in the hall and retraced her steps. Light feathered around edges of the swinging door between the dining room and kitchen. Another clink sounded just beyond it.
“Grandmama?”
Gina put out a hand to push on the door and snatched it back as the oak panel swung toward her. The next second she was staring at broad expanse of black T-shirt. Her shocked glance flew up and registered a chin shadowed with bristles, a mouth set in a straight line and dark, dangerous eyes topped by slashing black brows.
Ten (#uf787832a-bba3-5d25-8934-389f8b91f761)
Everything Gina had ever learned or heard or read about self-defense coalesced into a single, instinctive act. Whipping her purse off her shoulder, she swung it with everything she had in her.
“Hé!” The intruder flung up his arm and blocked the savage blow. “Várj!”
“Várj yourself, you bastard!”
Gina swung again. This time his arm whipped out and caught the purse strap. One swift tug yanked it out of her hands.
“If you’ve hurt my grandmother...”
She lunged past him into the kitchen. Her fingers wrapped around the hilt of the largest knife in the upright butcher-block stand.
“Jézus, Mária és József!” The stranger chopped his hand down on her wrist, pinning it to the counter. “Stop, Eugenia. Stop.”
The terse command pierced her red haze of fear but her heart still slammed against her chest as the questions tumbled out. “How do you know my name? What are you doing here? Where’s my grandmother?”
“The duchess is in her bedroom, asleep, I presume. I am here because she invited my sister and me to stay. And I know your name because we’re cousins, you and I.”
“Cousins?”
“Of a sort.”
When she tugged her wrist, he released his brutal grip. A smile softened the stark angles of his face. “I’m Dominic. Dominic St. Sebastian. I live in Budapest, but my parents came from Prádzec. Your grandmother’s home,” he added when she looked at him blankly.
It took her a moment to recognize the name of the town on the border between Austria and Hungary, in the heart of what was once the Duchy of Karlenburgh.
“I don’t understand. When did you get here?”
“This afternoon.” He gestured behind him to the coffeemaker just starting to bubble and brew on the counter. “It’s midnight in New York, but morning in Hungary. My body has yet to adjust to the time change and craves its usual dose of caffeine. Will you join me for coffee and I’ll explain how Anastazia and I come to be here, in your home.”
“No coffee,” Gina murmured, her hand fluttering to her stomach as she tried to absorb the presence of this dangerous-looking man in her grandmother’s kitchen.
He was as sleek and as dark as a panther. Black hair, black shirt, black jeans slung low on his hips. The T-shirt stretched taut across a whipcord-lean torso. The hair was thick and razored to a ragged edge, as though he didn’t have time or couldn’t be bothered with having it styled.
“Tea, then?” he asked.
“Tea would be good.” Slowly getting her wind back, Gina nodded to the cabinet behind his head. “The tea caddy is in there.”
“Yes, I know.” His smile reached his eyes. “The duchess told me to make myself to home. I took her at her word and explored the cupboards.”
Whoa! This man’s face cast in hard angles and tight lines was one thing. The same face relaxing into a lazy grin was something else again. Gina had a feeling Dominic St. Sebastian could have his pick of any woman in Budapest. Or pretty much anywhere else in the world.
The fact that he knew his way around a tea caddy only added to the enigma. While the fresh-made coffee dripped into the carafe, he brewed a pot of soothing chamomile. Moments later he and Gina were sitting across from each other with steaming mugs in hand.
