Her Unforgettable Royal Lover
Merline Lovelace
“That comes naturally to you, doesn’t it?”
“Rescuing damsels in distress?”
“No, that slow, sexy, let’s-get-naked grin.”
“Is that the message it sends?”
“Yes.”
“Is it working?”
She pursed her lips. “No.”
“Ah, drágám,” he said, laughter springing into his eyes, “every time you do that, I want to do this.”
She’d thought it would end there. One touch. One pass of his mouth over hers. It should have ended there. Traffic was coursing along the busy street, for pity’s sake. A streetcar clanged by. Yet Natalie didn’t move as his arm went around her waist, drawing her closer, while her pulse pounded in her veins.
She was breathing hard when Dominic lifted his head. So was he, she saw with intense relief. She couldn’t remember if she’d ever kissed a man on a public sidewalk in the middle of the afternoon before. She didn’t think so. Somehow it didn’t seem like something she would do. If she had, though, she hoped it hit him with the same impact it had her.
* * *
Her Unforgettable Royal Lover is part of The Duchess Diaries series: Two royal granddaughters on their way to happily-ever-after!
Her Unforgettable Royal Lover
Merline Lovelace
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
A career Air Force officer, MERLINE LOVELACE served at bases all over the world. When she hung up her uniform for the last time she decided to combine her love of adventure with a flair for storytelling, basing many of her tales on her own experiences in uniform. Since then she’s produced more than ninety action-packed sizzlers, many of which have made the USA TODAY and Waldenbooks bestseller lists. Over eleven million copies of her books are available in some thirty countries.
When she’s not tied to her keyboard, Merline enjoys reading, chasing little white balls around the fairways of Oklahoma and traveling to new and exotic locales with her handsome husband, Al. Check her website at www.merlinelovelace.com (http://www.merlinelovelace.com) or friend her on Facebook for news and information about her latest releases.
To Neta and Dave, friends, traveling buds and the source of all kinds of fodder for my books. Thanks for the info on research grants and nasty bugs, Neta!
Contents
Cover (#uab21b33e-2a7f-5002-9f81-0b33d93e7251)
Introduction (#ub6f2ea0e-b545-57ab-9627-6876f6aec4ee)
Title Page (#u1a60b0ca-d03d-5642-8646-70d6ad79a9b1)
About the Author (#u5f86e91d-3129-5428-bb30-4d633de835ea)
Dedication (#u092138bf-34d5-5ca5-8816-78068ff700b0)
Prologue (#ulink_5b28982a-8cc3-53c9-b54d-f6486d882ef5)
One (#ulink_27017ae9-6f15-5c59-8250-efa9de1e128d)
Two (#ulink_c34af4e3-412a-55be-a5ec-8b71d14c7905)
Three (#ulink_65ce2aca-f10b-5427-b3ec-b003d35b281c)
Four (#ulink_e532edbb-222a-5765-8846-ba5f3204667c)
Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Extract (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
Prologue (#ulink_643bfc5a-c938-5e17-8d3c-c4eee98cce1d)
Who would have imagined my days would become this rich and full, and at such a late point in my life! My darling granddaughter Sarah and her husband, Dev, have skillfully blended marriage with their various enterprises, their charitable work and their travels to all parts of the world. Yet Sarah still finds time to involve me in the book she’s writing on lost treasures of the art world. My input has been limited, to be sure, but I’ve very much enjoyed being part of such an ambitious undertaking.
And Eugenia, my carefree, high-spirited Eugenia, has surprised herself by becoming the most amazing wife and mother. Her twins are very much like she was at that age. Bright-eyed and lively, with very distinct personalities. And best of all, her husband, Jack, is being considered for appointment as US Ambassador to the United Nations. If he’s confirmed, he and Gina and the babies would live only a few blocks away.
Until that happens, I have the company of my longtime friend and companion, Maria. And Anastazia, my lovely, so serious Anastazia. Zia’s in her second year of a residency in pediatric medicine and I played shamelessly on our somewhat tenuous kinship to convince her to live with me for the three-year program. She wears herself to the bone, poor dear, but Maria and I see that she eats well and gets at least some rest.
It’s her brother, Dominic, I fret about. Dom insists he’s not ready to settle down, and why should he with all the women who throw themselves at him? His job worries me, however. It’s too dangerous, too high-risk. I do wish he would quit working undercover, and may have found just the enticement to encourage him to do so. How surprised he’ll be when I tell him about the document Sarah’s clever research assistant has discovered!
From the diary of Charlotte,
Grand Duchess of Karlenburgh
One (#ulink_4c66786c-258b-535c-804a-e4660a7132db)
August was slamming New York City when Dominic St. Sebastian climbed out of a cab outside the castle-like Dakota. Heat waves danced like demented demons above the sidewalks. Across the street, moisture-starved leaves drifted like yellowed confetti from the trees in Central Park. Even the usual snarl of cabs and limos and sightseeing buses cruising the Upper West Side seemed lethargic and sluggish.
The same couldn’t be said for the Dakota’s doorman. As dignified as ever in his lightweight summer uniform, Jerome abandoned his desk to hold the door for the new arrival.
“Thanks,” Dom said with the faint accent that marked him as European despite the fact that English came as naturally to him as his native Hungarian. Shifting his carryall to his right hand, he clapped the older man’s shoulder with his left. “How’s the duchess?”
“As strong-willed as ever. She wouldn’t listen to the rest of us, but Zia finally convinced her to forego her daily constitutional during this blistering heat.”
Dom wasn’t surprised his sister had succeeded where others failed. Anastazia Amalia Julianna St. Sebastian combined the slashing cheekbones, exotic eyes and stunning beauty of a supermodel with the tenacity of a bulldog.
And now his beautiful, tenacious sister was living with Grand Duchess Charlotte. Zia and Dom had met their long-lost relative for the first time only last year and formed an instant bond. So close a bond that Charlotte had invited Zia to live at the Dakota during her pediatric residency at Mt. Sinai.
“Has my sister started her new rotation?” Dom asked while he and Jerome waited for the elevator.
He didn’t doubt the doorman would know. He had the inside track on most of the Dakota’s residents but kept a close eye on his list of favorites. Topping that list were Charlotte St. Sebastian and her two granddaughters, Sarah and Gina. Zia had recently been added to the select roster.
“She started last week,” Jerome advised. “She doesn’t say so, but I can see oncology is hard on her. Would be on anyone, diagnosing and treating all those sick children. And the hospital works the residents to the bone, which doesn’t help.” He shook his head, but brightened a moment later. “Zia wrangled this afternoon off, though, when she heard you were flying in. Oh, and Lady Eugenia is here, too. She arrived last night with the twins.”
“I haven’t seen Gina and the twins since the duchess’s birthday celebration. The girls must be, what? Six or seven months old now?”
“Eight.” Jerome’s seamed face folded into a grin. Like everyone else, he’d fallen hard for an identical pair of rosebud mouths, lake-blue eyes and heads topped with their mother’s spun-sugar, silvery-blond curls.
“Lady Eugenia says they’re crawling now,” he warned. “Better watch where you step and what you step in.”
“I will,” Dom promised with a grin.
As the elevator whisked him to the fifth floor, he remembered the twins as he’d last seen them. Cooing and blowing bubbles and waving dimpled fists, they’d already developed into world-class heartbreakers.
They’d since developed two powerful sets of lungs, Dom discovered when a flushed and flustered stranger yanked open the door.
“It’s about time! We’ve been…”
She stopped, blinking owlishly behind her glasses, while a chorus of wails rolled down the marble-tiled foyer.
“You’re not from Osterman’s,” she said accusingly.
“The deli? No, I’m not.”
“Then who…? Oh! You’re Zia’s brother.” Her nostrils quivered, as if she’d suddenly caught a whiff of something unpleasant. “The one who goes through women like a hot knife through butter.”
Dom hooked a brow but couldn’t dispute the charge. He enjoyed the company of women. Particularly the generously curved, pouty-lipped, out-for-a-good-time variety.
The one facing him now certainly didn’t fall into the first two of those categories. Not that he could see more than a suggestion of a figure inside her shapeless linen dress and boxy jacket. Her lips were anything but pouty, however. Pretty much straight-lined, as a matter of fact, with barely disguised disapproval.
“Igen,” Dom agreed lazily in his native Hungarian. “I’m Dominic. And you are?”
“Natalie,” she bit out, wincing as the howls behind her rose to high-pitched shrieks. “Natalie Clark. Come in, come in.”
Dom had spent almost seven years now as an Interpol agent. During that time, he’d helped take down his share of drug traffickers, black marketeers and the scum who sold young girls and boys to the highest bidders. Just last year he’d helped foil a kidnapping and murder plot against Gina’s husband right here in New York City. But the scene that greeted him as he paused at the entrance to the duchess’s elegant sitting room almost made him turn tail and run.
A frazzled Gina was struggling to hang on to a red-faced, furiously squirming infant in a frilly dress and a lacy headband with a big pink bow. Zia had her arms full with the second, equally enraged and similarly attired baby. The duchess sat straight-backed and scowling in regal disapproval, while the comfortably endowed Honduran who served as her housekeeper and companion stood at the entrance to the kitchen, her face screwed into a grimace as the twins howled their displeasure.
Thankfully, the duchess reached her limit before Dom was forced to beat a hasty retreat. Her eyes snapping, she gripped the ivory handle of her cane in a blue-veined, white-knuckled fist.
“Charlotte!” The cane thumped the floor. Once. Twice. “Amalia! You will kindly cease that noise at once.”
Dom didn’t know whether it was the loud banging or the imperious command that did the trick, but the howls cut off like a faucet and surprise leaped into four tear-drenched eyes. Blessed silence reigned except for the
babies’ gulping hiccups.
“Thank you,” the duchess said coolly. “Gina, why don’t you and Zia take the girls to the nursery? Maria will bring their bottles as soon as Osterman’s delivers the milk.”
“It should be here any moment, Duquesa.” Using her ample hips, the housekeeper backed through the swinging door to the kitchen. “I’ll get the bottles ready.”
Gina was headed for the hall leading to the bedrooms when she spotted her cousin four or five times removed. “Dom!” She blew him an air kiss. “I’ll talk to you when I get the girls down.”
“I, as well,” his sister said with a smile in her dark eyes.
He set down his carryall and crossed the elegant sitting room to kiss the duchess’s cheeks. Her paper-thin skin carried the faint scent of gardenias, and her eyes were cloudy with age but missed little. Including the wince he couldn’t quite hide when he straightened.
“Zia told me you’d been knifed. Again.”
“Just nicked a rib.”
“Yes, well, we need to talk about these nicked ribs and bullet wounds you collect with distressing frequency. But first, pour us a…” She broke off at the buzz of the doorbell. “That must be the delivery. Natalie, dear, would you sign for it and take the milk to Maria?”
“Of course.”
Dom watched the stranger head back to the foyer and turned to the duchess. “Who is she?”
“A research assistant Sarah hired to help with her book. Her name’s Natalie Clark and she’s part of what I want to talk to you about.”
Dominic knew Sarah, the duchess’s older granddaughter, had quit her job as an editor at a glossy fashion magazine when she married self-made billionaire Devon Hunter. He also knew Sarah had expanded on her degree in art history from the Sorbonne by hitting every museum within taxi distance when she accompanied Dev on his business trips around the world. That—and the fact that hundreds of years of art had been stripped off walls and pedestals when the Soviets overran the Duchy of Karlenburgh decades ago—had spurred Sarah to begin documenting what she learned about the lost treasures of the art world. It also prompted a major New York publisher to offer a fat, six-figure advance if she turned her notes into a book.
What Dom didn’t know was what Sarah’s book had to do with him, much less the female now making her way to the kitchen with an Osterman’s delivery sack in hand. Sarah’s research assistant couldn’t be more than twenty-five or twenty-six but she dressed like a defrocked nun. Mousy-brown hair clipped at her neck. No makeup. Square glasses with thick lenses. Sensible flats and that shapeless linen dress.
When the kitchen door swung behind her, Dom had to ask. “How is this Natalie Clark involved in what you want to talk to me about?”
The duchess waived an airy hand. “Pour us a pálinka, and I’ll tell you.”
“Should you have brandy? Zia said in her last email that…”
“Pah! Your sister fusses more than Sarah and Gina combined.”
“With good reason, yes? She’s a doctor. She has a better understanding of your health issues.”
“Dominic.” The duchess leveled a steely stare. “I’ve told my granddaughters, I’ve told your sister, and I’ll tell you. The day I can’t handle an aperitif before dinner is the day you may bundle me off to a nursing home.”
“The day you can’t drink us all under the table, you mean.” Grinning, Dom went to the sideboard and lined up two cut-crystal snifters.
Ah, but he was a handsome devil, Charlotte thought with a sigh. Those dark, dangerous eyes. The slashing brows and glossy black hair. The lean, rangy body inherited from the wiry horsemen who’d swept down from the Steppes on their sturdy ponies and ravaged Europe. Magyar blood ran in his veins, as it did in hers, combined with but not erased by centuries of intermarriage among the royals of the once-great Austro-Hungarian Empire.
The Duchy of Karlenburgh had been part of that empire. A tiny part, to be sure, but one with a history that had stretched back for seven hundred years. It now existed only in dusty history books, and one of those books was about to change Dominic’s life. Hopefully for the better, although Charlotte doubted he would think so. Not at first. But with time…
She glanced up as the instigator of that change returned to the sitting room. “Ah, here you are, Natalie. We’re just about to have an aperitif. Will you join us?”
“No, thank you.”
Dom paused with his hand on the stopper of the Bohemian crystal decanter he and Zia had brought the duchess as a gift for their first meeting. Thinking to soften the researcher’s stiff edges, he gave her a slow smile.
“Are you sure? This apricot brandy is a specialty of my country.”
“I’m sure.”
Dom blinked. Mi a fene! Did her nose just quiver again? As though she’d picked up another bad odor? What the hell kind of tales had Zia and/or Gina fed the woman?
Shrugging, he splashed brandy into two snifters and carried one to the duchess. But if anyone could use a shot of pálinka, he thought as he folded his long frame into the chair beside his great-aunt’s, the research assistant could. The double-distilled, explosively potent brandy would set more than her nostrils to quivering.
“How long will you be in New York?” the duchess asked after downing a healthy swallow.
“Only tonight. I have a meeting in Washington tomorrow.”
“Hmm. I should wait until Zia and Gina return to discuss this with you, but they already know about it.”
“About what?”
“The Edict of 1867.” She set her brandy aside, excitement kindling in her faded blue eyes. “As you may remember from your history books, war with Prussia forced Emperor Franz Joseph to cede certain concessions to his often rambunctious Hungarian subjects. The Edict of 1867 gave Hungary full internal autonomy as long as it remained part of the empire for purposes of war and foreign affairs.”
“Yes, I know this.”
“Did you also know Karlenburgh added its own codicil to the agreement?”
“No, I didn’t, but then I would have no reason to,” Dom said gently. “Karlenburgh is more your heritage than mine, Duchess. My grandfather—your husband’s cousin—left Karlenburgh Castle long before I was born.”
And the duchy had ceased to exist soon after that. World War I had carved up the once-mighty Austro-Hungarian Empire. World War II, the brutal repression of the Cold War era, the abrupt dissolution of the Soviet Union and vicious attempts at “ethnic cleansing” had all added their share of upheavals to the violently changing political landscape of Eastern Europe.
“Your grandfather took his name and his bloodline with him when he left Karlenburgh, Dominic.” Charlotte leaned closer and gripped his arm with fingers that dug in like talons. “You inherited that bloodline and that name. You’re a St. Sebastian. And the present Grand Duke of Karlenburgh.”
“What?”
“Natalie found it during her research. The codicil. Emperor Franz Joseph reconfirmed that the St. Sebastians would carry the titles of Grand Duke and Duchess forever and in perpetuity in exchange for holding the borders of the empire. The empire doesn’t exist anymore, but despite all the wars and upheavals, that small stretch of border between Austria and Hungary remains intact. So, therefore, does the title.”
“On paper, perhaps. But the lands and outlying manors and hunting lodges and farmlands that once comprised the duchy have long since been dispersed and redeeded. It would take a fortune and decades in court to reclaim any of them.”
“The lands and manor houses are gone, yes. Not the title. Sarah will become Grand Duchess when I die. Or Gina if, God forbid, something should happen to her sister. But they married commoners. According to the laws of primogeniture, their husbands can’t assume the title of Grand Duke. Until either Sarah or Gina has a son, or their daughters grow up and marry royalty, the only one who can claim it is you, Dom.”
Right, he wanted to drawl. That and ten dollars would get him a half-decent espresso at one of New York’s overpriced coffee bars.
He swallowed the sarcasm but lobbed a quick glare at the woman wearing an expression of polite interest, as if she hadn’t initiated this ridiculous conversation with her research. He’d have a thing or two to say to Ms. Clark later about getting the duchess all stirred up over an issue that was understandably close to her heart but held little relevance to the real world. Particularly the world of an undercover operative.
He allowed none of those thoughts to show in his face as he folded Charlotte’s hand between his. “I appreciate the honor you want to bestow on me, Duchess. I do. But in my line of work, I can hardly hang a title around my neck.”
“Yes, I want to speak to you about that, too. You’ve been living on the edge for too many years now. How long can you continue before someone nicks more than a rib?”
“Exactly what I’ve been asking him,” Zia commented as she swept into the sitting room with her long-legged stride.
She’d taken advantage of her few hours away from the hospital to pull on her favorite jeans and a summer tank top in blistering red. The rich color formed a striking contrast to her dark eyes and shoulder-length hair as black and glossy as her brother’s. When he stood and opened his arms, she walked into them and hugged him with the same fierce affection he did her.
She was only four years younger than Dom, twenty-seven to his thirty-one, but he’d assumed full responsibility for his teenage sibling when their parents died. He’d been there, too, standing round-the-clock watch beside her hospital bed when she’d almost bled to death after a uterine cyst ruptured her first year at university. The complications that resulted from the rupture had changed her life in so many ways.
What hadn’t changed was Dom’s bone-deep protectiveness. No matter where his job took him or what dangerous enterprise he was engaged in, Zia had only to send a coded text and he would contact her within hours, if not minutes. Although he always shrugged off the grimmer aspects of his work, she’d wormed enough detail out of him over the years to add her urging to that of the duchess.
“You don’t have to stay undercover. Your boss at Interpol told me he has a section chief job waiting for you whenever you want it.”
“You can see me behind a desk, Zia-mia?”
“Yes!”
“What a poor liar you are.” He made a fist and delivered a mock punch to her chin. “You wouldn’t last five minutes under interrogation.”
Gina had returned during their brief exchange. Shoving back her careless tumble of curls, she entered the fray. “Jack says you would make an excellent liaison to the State Department. In fact, he wants to talk to you about that tomorrow, when you’re in Washington.”
“With all due respect to your husband, Lady Eugenia, I’m not ready to join the ranks of bureaucrats.”
His use of her honorific brought out one of Gina’s merry, irreverent grins. “Since we’re tossing around titles here, has Grandmother told you about the codicil?”
“She has.”
“Well then…” Fanning out the skirts of her leafy-green sundress, she sank to the floor in an elegant, if theatrical, curtsy.
Dom muttered something distinctly unroyal under his breath. Fortunately, the Clark woman covered it when she pushed to her feet.
“Excuse me. This is a family matter. I’ll leave you to discuss it and go back to my research. You’ll call me when it’s convenient for us to continue our interview, Duchess?”
“I will. You’re in New York until Thursday, is that correct?”
“Yes, ma’am. Then I fly to Paris to compare notes with Sarah.”
“We’ll get together again before then.”
“Thank you.” She bent to gather the bulging briefcase that had been resting against the leg of her chair. Straightening, she nudged up her glasses back into place. “It was good to meet you, Dr. St. Sebastian, and to see you again, Lady Eugenia.”
Her tone didn’t change. Neither did her polite expression. But Dom didn’t miss what looked very much like a flicker of disdain in her brown eyes when she dipped her head in his direction.
“Your Grace.”
He didn’t alter his expression, either, but both his sister and his cousin recognized the sudden, silky note in his voice.
“I’ll see you to the door.”
“Thank you, but I’ll let myself… Oh. Uh, all right.”
Natalie blinked owlishly behind her glasses. The smile didn’t leave Dominic St. Sebastian’s ridiculously handsome face and the hand banding her upper arm certainly wouldn’t leave any bruises. That didn’t make her feel any less like a suspect being escorted from the scene of a crime, however. Especially when he paused with a hand on the door latch and skewered her with a narrow glance from those dark eyes.
“Where are you staying?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Where are you staying?”
Good Lord! Was he hitting on her? No, he couldn’t be! She was most definitely not his type. According to Zia’s laughing reports, her bachelor brother went for leggy blondes or voluptuous brunettes. A long string of them, judging by the duchess’s somewhat more acerbic references to his sowing altogether too many wild oats.
That more than anything had predisposed Natalie to dislike Dominic St. Sebastian sight unseen. She’d fallen for a too-handsome, too-smooth operator like him once and would pay for that stupidity for the rest of her life. Still, she tried, she really tried, to keep disdain from seeping into her voice as she tugged her arm free.
“I don’t believe where I’m staying is any of your business.”
“You’ve made it my business with this nonsense about a codicil.”
Whoa! He could lock a hand around her arm. He could perp-walk her to the door. He could not disparage her research.
Thoroughly indignant, Natalie returned fire. “It’s not nonsense, as you would know if you’d displayed any interest in your family’s history. I suggest you show a little more respect for your heritage, Your Grace, and for the duchess.”
He muttered something in Hungarian she suspected was not particularly complimentary and bent an elbow against the doorjamb, leaning close. Too close! She could see herself in his pupils, catch the tang of apricot brandy on his breath.
“My respect for Charlotte is why you and I are going to have a private chat, yes? I ask again, where are you staying?”
His Magyar roots were showing, Natalie noted with a skitter of nerves. The slight thickening of his accent should have warned her. Should have sent her scurrying back into the protective shell she’d lived inside for so long it was now as much a part of her life as her drab hair and clothes. But some spark of her old self tilted her chin.
“You’re supposed to be a big, bad secret agent,” she said coolly. “Dig out the information yourself.”
He would, Dom vowed as the door closed behind her with a small thud. He most definitely would.
Two (#ulink_2715f02b-7898-58f1-86c3-68764f5dd800)
All it took was one call to arm Dom with the essential information. Natalie Elizabeth Clark. Born Farmington, Illinois. Age twenty-nine, height five feet six inches, brown hair, brown eyes. Single. Graduated University of Michigan with a degree in library science, specializing in archives and presentation. Employed as an archivist with Centerville Community College for three years, the State of Illinois Civil Service Board for four. Currently residing in L.A. where she was employed by Sarah St. Sebastian as a personal assistant.
An archivist. Christ!
Dom shook his head as his cab picked its way downtown later that evening. He envisioned a small cubicle, her head bent toward a monitor screen, her eyes staring through those thick lenses at an endless stream of documents to be verified, coded and electronically filed. And she’d done it for seven years! Dom would have committed ritual hara-kiri after a week. No wonder she’d jumped when Sarah put out feelers for an assistant to help research her book.
Ms. Clark was still running endless computer searches. Still digging through archives, some electronic, some paper. But at least now she was traveling the globe to get at the most elusive of those documents. And, Dom guessed as his cab pulled up at the W New York, doing that traveling on a very generous expense account.
He didn’t bother to stop at the front desk. His phone call had confirmed that Ms. Clark had checked into room 1304 two days ago. And a tracking program developed for the military and now in use by a number of intelligence agencies confirmed her cell phone was currently emitting signals from this location.
Two minutes later Dom rapped on her door. The darkening of the peephole told him she was as careful in her personal life as she no doubt was in her work. He smiled his approval, then waited for the door to open.
When neither of those events happened, he rapped again. Still no response.
“It’s Dominic St. Sebastian, Ms. Clark. I know you’re in there. You may as well open the door.”
She complied but wasn’t happy about it. “It’s generally considered polite to call ahead for an appointment instead of just showing up at someone’s hotel room.”
The August humidity had turned her shapeless linen dress into a roadmap of wrinkles, and her sensible pumps had been traded for hotel flip-flops. She’d freed her hair from the clip, though, and it framed her face in surprisingly thick, soft waves as she tipped Dom a cool look through her glasses.
“May I ask why you felt compelled to come all the way downtown to speak with me?”
Dom had been asking himself the same thing. He’d confirmed this woman was who she said she was and verified her credentials. The truth was he probably wouldn’t have given Natalie Clark a second thought if not for those little nose quivers.
He’d told himself the disdain she’d wiped off her face so quickly had triggered his cop’s instinct. Most of the scum he’d dealt with over the years expressed varying degrees of contempt for the police, right up until they were cuffed and led away. His sister, however, would probably insist those small hints of derision had pricked his male ego. It was true that Dom could never resist a challenge. But despite Zia’s frequent assertions to the contrary, he didn’t try to finesse every female who snagged his attention into bed.
Still, he was here and here he intended to remain until he satisfied his curiosity about this particular female. “I’d like more information on this codicil you’ve uncovered, Ms. Clark.”
“I’m sure you would. I’ll be happy to email you the documentation I’ve…”
“I prefer to see what you have now. May I come in, or do we continue our discussion in the hall?”
Her mouth pursing, she stood aside. Her obvious reluctance intrigued Dom. And, all right, stirred his hunting instincts. Too bad he had that meeting at the National Central Bureau—the US branch of Interpol—in Washington tomorrow. It might have been interesting to see what it would take to get those prim, disapproving lips to unpurse and sigh his name.
He skimmed a glance around the room. Two queen beds, one with her open briefcase and neat stacks of files on it. An easy chair angled to get the full benefit of the high-definition flat-screen. A desk with a black ergonomic chair, another stack of files and a seventeen-inch laptop open to a webpage displaying a close-up of an elaborately jeweled egg.
“One of the Fabergé eggs?” he asked, moving closer to admire the sketch of a gem-encrusted egg nested in a two-wheeled gold cart.
“Yes.”
“The Cherub with a Chariot,” Dom read, “a gift from Tsar Alexander III to his wife, Maria Fyodorovna for Easter, 1888. One of eight Fabergé eggs currently lost.”
He glanced at the researcher hovering protectively close to her work, as if to protect it from prying eyes.
“And you’re on the hunt for it?”
“I’m documenting its history.”
Her hand crept toward the laptop’s lid, as if itching to slam it down.
“What have you found so far?”
The lips went tight again, but Dom was too skilled at interrogations to let her off the hook. He merely waited until she gave a grudging nod.
“Documents show it was at Gatchina Palace in 1891, and was one of forty or so eggs sent to the armory at the Kremlin after the 1917 Revolution. Some experts believe it was purchased in the 1930s by Victor and Armand Hammer. But…”
He could see when her fascination with her work overcame her reluctance to discuss it. Excitement snuck into her voice and added a spark to her brown eyes. Her very velvety, very enticing brown eyes, he thought as she tugged off her glasses and twirled them by one stem.
“I found a reference to a similar egg sold at an antiques shop in Paris in 1930. A shop started by a Russian émigré. No one knows how the piece came into his possession, but I’ve found a source I want to check when I’m in Paris next week. It may…”
She caught herself and brought the commentary to an abrupt halt. The twirling ceased. The glasses whipped up, and wariness replaced the excitement in the doe-brown eyes.
“I’m not trying to pump you for information,” Dom assured her. “Interpol has a whole division devoted to lost, stolen or looted cultural treasures, you know.”
“Yes, I do.”
“Since you’re heading over to Paris, I can set up a meeting for you with the division chief, if you like.”
The casual offer seemed to throw her off balance. “I… Uh… I have access to their database but…” Her glance went to the screen, then came back to Dom. “I would appreciate that,” she said stiffly. “Thank you.”
A grin sketched across his face. “There now. That didn’t taste so bad going down, did it?”
Instant alarms went off in Natalie’s head. She could almost hear their raucous clanging as she fought to keep her chin high and her expression politely remote. She would not let a lazy grin and a pair of glinting, bedroom eyes seduce her. Not again. Never again.
“I’ll give you my business card,” she said stiffly. “Your associate can reach me anytime at my mobile number or by email.”
“So cool, so polite.” He didn’t look at the embossed card she retrieved from her briefcase, merely slipped it into the pocket of his slacks. “What is it about me you don’t like?”
How about everything!
“I don’t know you well enough to dislike you.” She should have left it there. Would have, if he hadn’t been standing so close. “Nor,” she added with a shrug, “do I wish to.”
She recognized her error at once. Men like Dominic St. Sebastian would take that as a challenge. Hiding a grimace, Natalie attempted some quick damage control.
“You said you wanted more information on the codicil. I have a scanned copy on my computer. I’ll pull it up and print out a copy for you.”
She pulled out the desk chair. He was forced to step back so she could sit, but any relief she might have gained from the small separation dissipated when he leaned a hand on the desk and bent to peer over her shoulder. His breath stirred the loose tendrils at her temple, moved lower, washed warm and hot against her ear. She managed to keep from hunching her shoulder but it took an iron effort of will.
“So that’s it,” he said as the scanned image appeared, “the document the duchess thinks makes me a duke?”
“Grand Duke,” Natalie corrected. “Excuse me, I need to check the paper feed in the printer.”
There was nothing wrong with the paper feed. Her little portable printer had been cheerfully spitting out copies before St. Sebastian so rudely interrupted her work. But it was the best excuse she could devise to get him to stop breathing down her neck!
He took the copy and made himself comfortable in the armchair while he tried to decipher the spidery script. Natalie was tempted to let him suffer through the embellished High German, but relented and printed out a translation.
“I stumbled across the codicil while researching the Canaletto that once hung in the castle at Karlenburgh,” she told him. “I’d found an obscure reference to the painting in the Austrian State Archives in Vienna.”
She couldn’t resist an aside. So many uninformed thought her profession dry and dull. They couldn’t imagine the thrill that came with following one fragile thread to another, then another, and another.
“The archives are so vast, it’s taken years to digitize them all. But the results are amazing. Really amazing. The oldest document dates back to 816.”
He nodded, not appearing particularly interested in this bit of trivia that Natalie found so fascinating. Deflated, she got back to the main point.
“The codicil was included in a massive collection of letters, charters, treaties and proclamations relating to the Austro-Prussian War. Basically, it states what the duchess told you earlier. Emperor Franz Joseph granted the St. Sebastians the honor of Karlenburgh in perpetuity in exchange for defending the borders for the empire. The duchy may not exist anymore and so many national lines have been redrawn. That section of the border between Austria and Hungary has held steady, however, through all the wars and invasions. So, therefore, has the title.”
He made a noise that sounded close to a snort. “You and I both know this document isn’t worth the paper you’ve just printed it on.”
Offended on behalf of archivists everywhere, she cocked her chin. “The duchess disagrees.”
“Right, and that’s what you and I need to talk about.”
He stuffed the printout in his pocket and pinned her with a narrow stare. No lazy grin now. No laughter in those dark eyes.
“Charlotte St. Sebastian barely escaped Karlenburgh with her life. She carried her baby in her arms while she marched on foot for some twenty or thirty miles through winter snows. I know the story is that she managed to bring away a fortune in jewels, as well. I’m not confirming the story…”
He didn’t have to. Natalie had already pieced it together from her own research and from the comments Sarah had let drop about the personal items the duchess had disposed of over the years to raise her granddaughters in the style she considered commensurate with their rank.
“…but I am warning you not to take advantage of the duchess’s very natural desire to see her heritage continue.”
“Take advantage?”
It took a moment for that to sink in. When it did, she could barely speak through the anger that spurted hot and sour into her throat.
“Do you think…? Do you think this codicil is part of some convoluted scheme on my part to extract money from the St. Sebastians?”
Furious, she shoved to her feet. He rose as well, as effortlessly as an athlete, and countered her anger with a shrug.
“Not at this point. If I discover differently, however, you and I will most certainly have another chat.”
“Get out!”
Maybe after she cooled down Natalie would admit flinging out an arm and stabbing a finger toward the door was overly melodramatic. At the moment, though, she wanted to slam that door so hard it knocked this pompous ass on his butt. Especially when he lifted a sardonic brow.
“Shouldn’t that be ‘Get out, Your Grace’?”
Her back teeth ground together. “Get. Out.”
* * *
As a cab hauled him back uptown for a last visit with the duchess and his sister, Dom couldn’t say his session with Ms. Clark had satisfied his doubts. There was still something he couldn’t pin down about the researcher. She dressed like a bag lady in training and seemed content to efface herself in company. Yet when she’d flared up at him, when fury had brought color surging to her cheeks and fire to her eyes, the woman was anything but ignorable.
She reminded him of the mounts his ancestors had ridden when they’d swept down from the Steppes into the Lower Danube region. Their drab, brown-and-dun-colored ponies lacked the size and muscle power of destriers that carried European knights into battle. Yet the Magyars had wreaked havoc for more than half a century throughout Italy, France, Germany and Spain before finally being defeated by the Holy Roman Emperor Otto I.
And like one of those tough little ponies, Dom thought with a slow curl in his belly, Ms. Clark needed taming. She might hide behind those glasses and shapeless dresses, but she had a temper on her when roused. Too bad he didn’t have time to gentle her to his hand. The exercise would be a hell of a lot more interesting than the meetings he had lined up in Washington tomorrow. Still, he entertained himself for the rest of the cab ride with various techniques he might employ should he cross paths with Natalie Elizabeth Clark anytime in the near future.
He’d pretty much decided he would make that happen when Zia let him into the duchess’s apartment.
“Back so soon?” she said, her eyes dancing. “Ms. Clark didn’t succumb to your manly charms and topple into bed with you?”
The quip was so close to Dom’s recent thoughts that he answered more brusquely than he’d intended. “I didn’t go to her hotel to seduce her.”
“No? That must be a first.”
“Jézus, Mária és József! The mouth on you, Anastazia Amalia. I should have washed it with soap when I had the chance.”
“Ha! You would never have been able to hold me down long enough. But come in, come in! Sarah’s on FaceTime with her grandmother. I think you’ll be interested in their conversation.”
FaceTime? The duchess? Marveling at the willingness of a woman who’d been born in the decades between two great world wars to embrace the latest in technology, Dom followed his sister into the sitting room. One glance at the tableau corrected his impression of Charlotte’s geekiness.
She sat upright and unbending in her customary chair, her cane close at hand. An iPad was perched on her knees, but she was obviously not comfortable with the device. Gina sat cross-legged on the floor beside her, holding the screen to the proper angle
Sarah’s voice floated through the speaker and her elegant features filled most of the screen. Her husband’s filled the rest.
“I’m so sorry, Grandmama. It just slipped out.”
“What slipped out?” Dom murmured to Zia.
“You,” his sister returned with that mischievous glint in her eyes.
“Me?”
“Shh! Just listen.”
Frowning, Dom tuned back into the conversation.
“Alexis called with an offer to hype my book in
Beguile,” Sarah was saying. “She wanted to play up both angles.” Her nose wrinkled. “My former job at the magazine and my title. You know how she is.”
“Yes,” the duchess drawled. “I do.”
“I told Alexis the book wasn’t ready for hype yet. Unfortunately, I also told her we’re getting there much quicker since I’d hired such a clever research assistant. I bragged about the letter Natalie unearthed in the House of Parma archives, the one from Marie Antoinette to her sister describing the miniature of her painted by Le Brun that went missing when the mob sacked Versailles. And…” She heaved a sigh. “I made the fatal mistake of mentioning the codicil Nat had stumbled across while researching the Canaletto.”
Although the fact that Dom’s cousin had mentioned that damned codicil set his internal antennae to vibrating, it didn’t appear to upset the duchess. Mention of the Canaletto had brought a faraway look to her eyes.
“Your grandfather bought me that painting of the Grand Canal,” she murmured to Sarah. “Right after I became pregnant with your mother.”
She lapsed into a private reverie that neither of her granddaughters dared break. When she emerged a few moments later, she included them both in a sly smile.
“That’s where it happened. In Venice. We were supposed to attend a carnival ball at Ari Onassis’s palazzo. I’d bought the most gorgeous mask studded with pearls and lace. But…how does that rather obnoxious TV commercial go? You never know when the mood will hit you? All I can say is something certainly hit your grandfather that evening.”
Gina hooted in delight. “Way to go, Grandmama!”
Sarah laughed, and her husband issued a joking curse. “Damn! My wife suggested we hit the carnival in Venice this spring but I talked her into an African photo safari instead.”
“You’ll know to listen to her next time,” the duchess sniffed, although Dom would bet she knew the moment could strike as hot and heavy in the African savannah as it had in Venice.
“I don’t understand,” Gina put in from her perch on the floor. “What’s the big deal about telling Alexis about the codicil?”
“Well…” Red crept into Sarah’s cheeks. “I’m afraid I mentioned Dominic, too.”
The subject of the conversation muttered a curse, and Gina let out another whoop. “Ooh, boy! Your barracuda of an editor is gonna latch on to that with both jaws. I foresee another top-ten edition, this one listing the sexiest single royals of the male persuasion.”
“I know,” her sister said miserably. “It’ll be as bad as what Dev went through after he came out on Beguile’s top-ten list. When you see Dominic tell him I’m so, so sorry.”
“He’s right here.” Hooking a hand, Gina motioned him over. “Tell him yourself.”
When Dominic positioned himself in front of the iPad’s camera, Sarah sent him a look of heartfelt apology. “I’m so sorry, Dom. I made Alexis promise she wouldn’t go crazy with this, but…”
“But you’d better brace yourself, buddy,” her husband put in from behind her shoulder. “Your life’s about to get really, really complicated.”
“I can handle it,” Dom replied with more confidence than he was feeling at the moment.
“You think so, huh?” Dev returned with a snort. “Wait till women start trying to stuff their phone number in your pants pocket and reporters shove mics and cameras in your face.”
* * *
The first prospect hadn’t sounded all that repulsive to Dom. The second he deemed highly unlikely…right up until he stepped out of a cab for his scheduled meeting at Washington’s Interpol office the following afternoon and was blindsided by the pack of reporters, salivating at the scent of fresh blood.
“Your Highness! Over here!”
“Grand Duke!”
“Hey! Your lordship!”
Shaking his head at Americans’ fixation on any and all things royal, he shielded his face with his hands like some damned criminal and pushed through the ravenous newshounds.
Three (#ulink_d1a857d2-0390-5b5c-8c5c-f9fc48d36361)
Two weeks later Dominic was in a vicious mood. He had been since a dozen different American and European tabloids had splashed his face across their front pages, trumpeting the emergence of a long-lost Grand Duke.
When the stories hit, he’d expected the summons to Interpol Headquarters. He’d even anticipated his boss’s suggestion that he take some of the unused vacation time he’d piled up over the years and lie low until the hoopla died down. He’d anticipated it, yes, but did not like being yanked off undercover duty and sent home to Budapest to twiddle his thumbs. And every time he thought the noise was finally dying down, his face popped up in another rag.
The firestorm of publicity had impacted his personal life, as well. Although Sarah’s husband had tried to warn him, Dom had underestimated the reaction to his supposed royalty among the females of his acquaintance. The phone number he gave out to non-Interpol contacts had suddenly become very busy. Some of the callers were friends, some were former lovers. But many were strangers who’d wrangled the number out of their friends and weren’t shy about wanting to get to know the new duke on a very personal level.
He’d turned most of them off with a laugh, a few of the more obnoxious with a curt suggestion they get a life. But one had sounded so funny and sexy over the phone that he’d arranged to meet her at a coffee bar. She turned out to be a tall, luscious brunette, as bright and engaging in person as she was over the phone. Dom was more than ready to agree with her suggestion they get a second cup to go and down it at her apartment or his loft. Before he could put in the order, though, she asked the waiter to take their picture with her cell phone. Damned if she hadn’t zinged it off by email right there at the table. Just to a few friends, she explained with a smile. One, he discovered when yet another story hit the newsstands, just happened to be a reporter for a local tabloid.
In addition to the attention from strangers, the barrage of unwanted publicity seemed to make even his friends and associates view him through a different prism. To most of them he wasn’t Dominic St. Sebastian anymore. He was Dominic, Grand Duke of a duchy that had ceased to exist a half century ago, for God’s sake.
So he wasn’t real happy when someone hammered on the door of his loft apartment on a cool September evening. Especially when the hammering spurred a chorus of ferocious barking from the hound who’d followed Dom home a year ago and decided to take up residence.
“Quiet!”
A useless command, since the dog considered announcing his presence to any and all visitors a sacred duty. Bred originally to chase down swiftly moving prey like deer and wolves, the Magyar Agár was as lean and fast as a greyhound. Dom had negotiated an agreement with his downstairs neighbors to dog-sit while he was on assignment, but man and beast had rebonded during this enforced vacation. Or at least the hound had. Dom had yet to reconcile himself to sharing his Gold Fassl with the pilsner-guzzling pooch.
“This better not be some damned reporter,” he muttered as he kneed the still-barking hound aside and checked the spy hole. The special lens he’d had installed gave a 180-degree view of the landing outside his loft. The small area was occupied by two uniformed police officers and a bedraggled female Dom didn’t recognize until he opened the door.
“Mi a fene!” he swore in Hungarian, then switched quickly to English. “Natalie! What happened to you?”
She didn’t answer, being too preoccupied at the moment with the dog trying to shove his nose into her crotch. Dom swore again, got a grip on its collar and dislodged the nose, but he still didn’t get a reply. She merely stared at him with a frown creasing her forehead and her hair straggling in limp tangles around her face.
“Are you Dominic St. Sebastian?” one of the police officers asked.
“Yes.”
“Aka the Grand Duke?”
He made an impatient noise and kept his grip on the dog’s collar. “Yes.”
The second officer, whose nametag identified him as Gradjnic, glanced down at a newspaper folded to a grainy picture of Dom and the brunette at the coffee shop. “Looks like him,” he volunteered.
His partner gestured to Natalie. “And you know this woman?”
“I do.” Dom’s glance raked the researcher, from her tangled hair to her torn jacket to what looked like a pair of men’s sneakers several sizes too large for her. “What the devil happened to you?”
“Maybe we’d better come in,” Gradjnic suggested.
“Yes, yes, of course.”
The officers escorted Natalie inside, and Dom shut the dog in the bathroom before joining them. The Agár whined and scratched at the door but soon nosed out the giant chew-bones Dom stored in the hamper for emergencies like this.
Aside from the small bathroom, the loft consisted of a single, barn-like attic area that had once stored artifacts belonging to the Ethnological Museum. When the museum moved to new digs, their old building was converted to condos. Zia had just nailed a full scholarship to medical school, so Dom had decided to sink his savings into this loft apartment in the pricy Castle Hill district on the Buda side of the river. He’d then proceeded to sand and varnish the oak-plank floors to a high gloss. He’d also knocked out a section of the sloping roof and opened up a view of the Danube that usually had guests gasping.
Tonight’s visitors were no exception. All three gawked at the floodlit spires, towering dome, flying buttresses and stained-glass windows of the Parliament Building across the river. Equally elaborate structures flanked the massive building, while the usual complement of river barges and brightly lit tour boats cruised by almost at its steps.
Ruthlessly, Dom cut into their viewing time. “Please sit down, all of you, then someone needs to tell me what this is all about.”
“It’s about this woman,” Gradjnic said in heavily accented English when everyone had found a place to perch. He tugged a small black notebook from his shirt pocket. “What did you say her name was?”
Dom’s glance shot to Natalie. “You didn’t tell them your name?”
“I…I don’t remember it.”
“What?”
Her frown deepened. “I don’t remember anything.”
“Except the Grand Duke,” Officer Gradjnic put in drily.
“Wait,” Dom ordered. “Back up and start at the beginning.”
Nodding, the policeman flipped through his notebook. “The beginning for us was 10:32 a.m. today, when dispatch called to report bystanders had fished a woman out of the Danube. We responded, found this young lady sitting on the bank with her rescuers. She had no shoes, no purse, no cell phone, no ID of any kind and no memory of how she ended up in the river. When we asked her name or the name of a friend or relative here in Budapest, all she could tell us was ‘the Grand Duke.’”
“Jesus!”
“She has a lump the size of a goose egg at the base of her skull, under her hair.”
When Dom’s gaze shot to Natalie again, she raised a tentative hand to the back of her neck. “More like a pigeon’s egg,” she corrected with a frown.
“Yes, well, the lump suggests she may have fallen off a bridge or a tour boat and hit her head on the way down, although none of the tour companies have reported a missing passenger. We had the EMTs take her to the hospital. The doctors found no sign of serious injury or concussion.”
“No blurred vision?” Dom asked sharply. He’d taken—and delivered—enough blows to the head to know the warning signs. “No nausea or vomiting or balance problems?”
“Only the memory loss. The doctor said it’s not all that unusual with that kind of trauma. Since we had no other place to take her, it was either leave her at the hospital or bring her to the only person she seems to know in Budapest—the Grand Duke.”
Hit by a wicked sense of irony, Dom remembered those quivering nostrils and flickers of disdain. He suspected Ms. Clark would rather have been left at a dog pound than delivered to him.
“I’ll take care of her,” he promised, “but she must have a hotel room somewhere in the city.”
“If she does, we’ll let you know.” Gradjnic flipped to an empty page and poised his pen. “Now what did you say her name was?”
“Natalie. Natalie Clark.”
“American, we guessed from her accent.”
“That’s right.”
“And she works for your cousin?”
“Yes, as research assistant.” Angling around, Dom tried a tentative probe. “Natalie, you were supposed to meet with Sarah sometime this week. In Paris, right?”
“Sarah?”
“My cousin. Sarah St. Sebastian Hunter.”
Her first response was a blank stare. Her second startled all three men.
“My head hurts.” Scowling, she pushed out of her chair. “I’m tired. And these clothes stink.”
With that terse announcement, she headed for the unmade bed at the far end of the loft. She kicked off the sneakers as she went. Dom lurched to his feet as she peeled out of the torn jacket.
“Hold on a minute!”
“I’m tired,” she repeated. “I need sleep.”
Shaking off his restraining hand, she flopped facedown across the bed. The three men watched with varying expressions of surprise and resignation as she buried her face in the pillow.
Gradjnic broke the small silence that followed. “Well, I guess that does it for us here. Now that we have her name, we’ll trace Ms. Clark’s entry into the country and her movements in Hungary as best we can. We’ll also find out if she’s registered at a hotel. And you’ll call us when and if she remembers why she took that dive into the Danube, right?”
“Right.”
The sound of their departure diverted the Agár’s attention from the chew-bone he’d dug out of the hamper. To quiet his whining, Dom let him out of the bathroom but kept a close watch while he sniffed out the stranger sprawled sideways across the bed. Apparently deciding she posed no threat, the dog padded back to the living area and stretched out in front of the window to watch the brightly lit boats cruising up and down the river.
Dom had his phone in hand before the hound’s speckled pink belly hit the planks. Five rings later, his sleepy-sounding cousin answered.
“Hullowhozzis?”
“It’s Dom, Sarah.”
“Dom?”
“Where are you?”
“We’re in…uh…Dalian. China,” she added, sounding more awake…and suddenly alarmed by a call in what had to be the middle of the night on the other side of the globe. “Is everyone okay? Grandmama? Gina? Zia? Oh, God! Is it one of the twins?”
“They’re all fine, Sarah. But I can’t say the same for your research assistant.”
He heard a swift rustle of sheets. A headboard creaking.
“Dev! Wake up! Dom says something’s happened to Natalie!”
“I’m awake.”
“Tell me,” Sarah demanded.
“The best guess is she fell off a bridge or a cruise boat. They fished her out of the river early this morning.”
“Is she…? Is she dead?”
“No, but she’s got a good-size lump at the base of her skull and she doesn’t remember anything. Not even her name.”
“Good Lord!” The sheets rustled again. “Natalie’s been hurt, Dev. Would you contact your crew and have them prep the Gulfstream? I need to fly back to Paris right away.”
“She’s not in Paris,” Dom interjected. “She’s with me, in Budapest.”
“In Budapest? But…how? Why?”
“I was hoping you could tell me.”
“She didn’t say anything about Hungary when we got together in Paris last week. Only that she might drive down to Vienna again, to do more research on the Canaletto.” A note of accusation slipped through Sarah’s concern. “She was also going to dig a little more on the codicil. Something you said about it seemed to have bothered her.”
He’d said a lot about it, none of which he intended to go into at the moment. “So you don’t know why she’s here in Hungary?”
“I have no clue. Is she there with you now? Let me speak to her.”
He flicked a glance at the woman sprawled across his bed. “She’s zoned out, Sarah. Said she was tired and just flopped into bed.”
“This memory thing? Will she be all right?”
“Like you, I have no clue. But you’d better contact her family just in case.”
“She doesn’t have any family.”
“She’s got to have someone. Grandparents? An uncle or aunt stashed away somewhere?”
“She doesn’t,” Sarah insisted. “Dev ran a detailed background check before I hired her. Natalie doesn’t know who her parents are or why she was abandoned as an infant. She lived with a series of foster families until she checked herself out of the system at age eighteen and entered the University of Michigan on full scholarship.”
That certainly put a different spin on the basic age-height-DOB info he’d gathered.
“I’ll fly to Budapest immediately,” Sarah was saying, “and take Natalie home with me until she recovers her memory.”
Dom speared another glance at the researcher. His gut told him he’d live to regret the suggestion he was about to make.
“Why don’t you hang loose for now? Could be she’ll be fine when she wakes up tomorrow. I’ll call you then.”
“I don’t know…”
“I’ll call you, Sarah. As soon as she wakes up.”
When she reluctantly agreed, he cut the connection and stood with the phone in hand for several moments. He’d worked undercover too long to take anything at face value…especially a woman fished out of the Danube who had no reason to be in Budapest that anyone knew. Thumbing the phone, he tapped in a number. His contact at Interpol answered on the second ring.
“Oui?”
“It’s Dom,” he replied in swift, idiomatic French. “Remember the query you ran for me two weeks ago on Natalie Clark?”
“Oui.”
“I need you to dig deeper.”
“Oui.”
The call completed, he contemplated his unexpected houseguest for a few moments. Her rumpled skirt had twisted around her calves and her buttoned-to-the-neck blouse looked as though it was choking her. After a brief inner debate, Dom rolled her over. He had the blouse unfastened and was easing it off when she opened her eyes to a groggy squint and mumbled at him.
“Whatryoudoin?”
“Making you comfortable.”
“Mmm.”
She was asleep again before he got her out of her blouse and skirt. Her panties were plain, unadorned white cotton but, Dom discovered, covered slender hips and a nice, trim butt. Nobly, he resisted the urge to remove her underwear and merely tucked the sheets around her. That done, he popped the cap on a bottle of a pilsner for himself, opened another for the hound and settled in for an all-night vigil.
* * *
He rolled her over again just after midnight and pried up a lid. She gave a bad-tempered grunt and batted his hand away, but not before he saw her pupil dilate and refract with reassuring swiftness.
He woke her again two hours later. “Natalie. Can you hear me?”
“Go away.”
He did a final check just before dawn. Then he stretched out on the leather sofa and watched the dark night shade to gold and pink.
* * *
Something wet and cold prodded her elbow. Her shoulder. Her chin. She didn’t come awake, though, until a strap of rough leather rasped across her cheek. She blinked fuzzily, registered the hazy thought that she was in bed, and opened her eyes.
“Yikes!”
A glistening pink mouth loomed only inches from her eyes. Its black gums were pulled back and a long tongue dangled through a set of nasty-looking incisors. As if in answer to her startled yip, the gaping mouth emitted a blast of powerful breath and an ear-ringing bark.
She scurried back like a poked crab, heart thumping and sheets tangling. A few feet of separation gave her a better perspective. Enough to see the merry eyes above an elongated muzzle, a broad forehead topped with one brown ear and one white, and a long, lean body with a wildly whipping tail.
Evidently the dog mistook her retreat for the notion that she was making space for him in the bed. With another loud woof, he landed on the mattress. The tongue went to work again, slathering her cheeks and chin before she could hold him off.
“Whoa! Stop!” His joy was contagious and as impossible to contain as his ecstatically wriggling body. Laughing now, she finally got him by the shoulders. “Okay, okay, I like you, too! But enough with the tongue.”
He got in another slurp before he let her roll him onto his back, where he promptly stuck all four legs into the air and begged for a tickle. She complied and raised quivers of ecstasy on his short-haired ribs and speckled pink-and-brown belly.
“You’re a handsome fellow,” she murmured, admiring his sleek lines as her busy fingers set his legs to pumping. “Wonder what your name is?”
“He doesn’t have one.”
The response came from behind her. Twisting on the bed, she swept her startled gaze across a huge, sparsely furnished area. A series of overhead beams topped with A-frame wooden trusses suggested it was an attic. A stunningly renovated attic, with gleaming oak floors and modern lighting.
There were no interior walls, only a curved, waist-high counter made of glass blocks that partitioned off a kitchen area. The male behind the counter looked at home there. Dark-haired and dark-eyed, he wore a soccer shirt of brilliant red-and-black stripes with some team logo she didn’t recognize emblazoned on one breast. The stretchy fabric molded his broad, muscular shoulders. The wavy glass blocks gave an indistinct view of equally muscular thighs encased in running shorts.
She watched him, her hand now stilled on the dog’s belly, while he flicked the switch on a stainless-steel espresso machine. Almost instantly the machine hissed out thick, black liquid. Her eyes never left him as he filled two cups and rounded the glass-block counter.
When he crossed the huge room, the dog scrambled to sit up at his approach. So did she, tugging the sheet up with her. For some reason she couldn’t quite grasp, she’d slept in her underwear.
He issued an order in a language she didn’t understand. When he repeated it in a firmer voice, the dog jumped off the bed with obvious reluctance.
“How do you feel?”
“I…uh… Okay.”
“Head hurt?”
She tried a tentative neck roll. “I don’t… Ooh!”
Wincing, she fingered the lump at the base of her skull.
“What happened?”
“Best guess is you fell off a bridge or tour boat and hit your head. Want some aspirin?”
“God, yes!”
He handed her one of the cups and crossed to what she guessed was a bathroom tucked under one of the eaves. She used his brief absence to let her gaze sweep the cavernous room again, looking for something, anything familiar.
Panic crawled like tiny ants down her spine when she finally accepted that she was sitting cross-legged on an unmade bed. In a strange apartment. With a hound lolling a few feet away, grinning from ear to ear and looking all too ready to jump back in with her.
Her hands shaking, she lifted the china cup. The rim rattled against her teeth and the froth coated her upper lip as she took a tentative sip.
“Ugh!”
Her first impulse was to spit the incredibly strong espresso back into the cup. Politeness—and the cool, watchful eyes of the bearer of aspirin—forced her to swallow.
“Better take these with water.”
Gratefully, she traded the cup for a glass. She was reaching for the two small white pills in his palm when she suddenly froze. Her heart slamming against her chest, she stared down at the pills.
Oh, God! Had she been drugged? Did he intend to knock her out again?
A faint thread of common sense tried to push through her balled-up nerves. If he wanted to drug her, he could just as easily have put something in her coffee. Still, she pulled her hand back.
“I…I better not. I, uh, may be allergic.”
“You’re not wearing a medical alert bracelet.”
“I’m not wearing much of anything.”
“True.”
He set the pills and her cup on a low bookshelf that doubled as a nightstand. She clutched the water glass, looked at him, at the grinning dog, at the rumpled sheets, back at him. Ants started down her spine again.
“Okay,” she said on a low, shaky breath, “who are you?”
Four (#ulink_ec243fb8-d8d9-52aa-a332-74e5b6a161b7)
“I’m Dominic. Dominic St. Sebastian. Dom to my friends and family.”
He kept his eyes on her, watching for the tiniest flicker of recognition. If she was faking that blank stare, she was damned good at it.
“I’m Sarah’s cousin,” he added.
Nothing. Not a blink. Not a frown.
“Sarah St. Sebastian Hunter?” He waited a beat, then decided to go for the big guns. “She’s the granddaughter of Charlotte, Grand Duchess of Karlenburgh.”
“Karlenburgh?”
“You were researching a document pertaining to Karlenburgh. One with a special codicil.”
He thought for a moment he’d struck a chord. Her brows drew together, and her lips bunched in an all-too-familiar moue. Then she blew out a breath and scooted to the edge of the bed, pulling the sheet with her.
“I don’t know you, or your cousin, or her grandmother. Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to get dressed and be on my way.”
“On your way to where?”
That brought her up short.
“I…I don’t know.” She blinked, obviously coming up empty. “Where…? Where am I?”
“Maybe this will help.”
Dom went to the window and drew the drapes. Morning light flooded the loft. With it came the eagle’s-eye view of the Danube and the Parliament’s iconic red dome and forest of spires.
“Ooooh!” Wrapping the sheet around her like a sari, she stepped to the glass wall. “How glorious!”
“Do you recognize the building?”
“Sort of. Maybe.”
She sounded anything but sure. And, Dom noted, she didn’t squint or strain as she studied the elaborate structure across the river. Apparently she only needed her glasses for reading or close work. Yet…she’d worn them during both their previous meetings. Almost like a shield.
“I give up.” She turned to him, those delicate nostrils quivering and panic clouding her eyes. “Where am I?”
“Budapest”
“Hungary?”
He started to ask if there was a city with that same name in another country but the panic had started to spill over into tears. Although she tried valiantly to gulp them back, she looked so frightened and fragile that Dom had to take her in his arms.
The sobs came then. Big, noisy gulps that brought the Agár leaping to all fours. His ears went flat and his long, narrow tail whipped out, as though he sensed an enemy but wasn’t sure where to point.
“It’s all right,” Dom said, as much to the dog as the woman in his arms. She smelled of the river, he thought as he stroked her hair. The river and diesel spill and soft, trembling female still warm from his bed. So different from the stiff, disdainful woman who’d ordered him out of her New York hotel room that his voice dropped to a husky murmur.
“It’s all right.”
“No, it’s not!”
The tears gushed now, soaking through his soccer shirt and making the dog whine nervously. His claws clicked on the oak planking as he circled Dom and the woman clinging to his shirt with one hand and the sheet with her other.
“I don’t understand any of this! Why can’t I remember where I am? Why can’t I remember you?” She jerked back against his arm and stared up at him. “Are we…? Are we married?”
“No.”
Her glance shot to the bed. “Lovers?”
He let that hang for a few seconds before treating her to a slow smile.
“Not yet.”
Guilt pricked at him then. Her eyes were so huge and frightened, her nose red and sniffling. Gentling his voice, he brushed a thumb across her cheek to wipe the tears.
“Do you remember the police bringing you here last night?”
“I…I think so.”
“They took you to a hospital first. Remember?”
Her forehead wrinkled. “Now I do.”
“A doctor examined you. He told the police that short-term memory loss isn’t unusual with a head injury.”
She jumped on that. “How short?”
“I don’t know, drágám.”
“Is that my name? Drágám?”
“No, that’s a nickname. An endearment, like ‘sweetheart’ or ‘darling.’ Very casual here in Hungary,” he added when her eyes got worried again. “Your name is Natalie. Natalie Elizabeth Clark.”
“Natalie.” She rolled it around in her head, on her tongue. “Not a name I would pick for myself,” she said with a sniffle, “but I guess it’ll do.”
The brown-and-white hound poked at her knee then, as if demanding reassurance that all was well. Natalie eased out of Dom’s arms and knuckled the dog’s broad, intelligent forehead.
“And who’s this guy?”
“I call him kutya. It means ‘dog’ in Hungarian.”
Her eyes lifted to his, still watery but accusing. “You just call him ‘dog’?”
“He followed me home one night and decided to take up residence. I thought it would be a temporary arrangement, so we never got around to a baptismal ceremony.”
“So he’s a stray,” she murmured, her voice thickening. “Like me.”
Dom knew he’d better act fast to head off another storm of tears. “Stray or not,” he said briskly, “he needs to go out. Why don’t you shower and finish your coffee while I take him for his morning run? I’ll pick up some apple pancakes for breakfast while I’m out, yes? Then we’ll talk about what to do next.”
When she hesitated, her mouth trembling, he curled a knuckle under her chin and tipped her face to his. “We’ll work this out, Natalie. Let’s just take it one step at a time.”
She bit her lip and managed a small nod.
“Your clothes are in the bathroom,” Dom told her. “I rinsed them out last night, but they’re probably still damp.” He nodded to the double-doored wardrobe positioned close to the bath. “Help yourself to whatever you can find to fit you.”
She nodded again and hitched the sheet higher to keep from tripping over it as she padded to the bathroom. Dom waited until he heard the shower kick on before dropping into a chair to pull on socks and his well-worn running shoes.
He hoped to hell he wasn’t making a mistake leaving her alone. Short of locking her in, though, he didn’t see how he could confine her here against her will. Besides which, they needed to eat and Dog needed to go out. A point the hound drove home by retrieving his leash from its hook by the door and waiting with an expression of acute impatience.
* * *
Natalie. Natalie Elizabeth Clark.
Why didn’t it feel right? Sound right?
She wrapped her freshly shampooed hair in a towel and stared at the steamed-up bathroom mirror. The image it reflected was as foggy as her mind.
She’d stood under the shower’s hot, driving needles and tried to figure out what in the world she was doing in Budapest. It couldn’t be her home. She didn’t know a word of Hungarian. Correction. She knew two. Kutya and… What had he called her? Dragon or something.
Dominic. His name was Dominic. It fit him, she thought with a grimace, much better than Natalie did her. Those muscled shoulders, the strong arms, the chest she’d sobbed against, all hinted at power and virility and, yes, dominance.
Especially in bed. The thought slipped in, got caught in her mind. He’d said they weren’t lovers. Implied she’d slept alone. Yet heat danced in her belly at the thought of lying beneath him and feeling his hands on her breasts, his mouth on her…
Oh, God! The panic came screaming back. She breathed in. Out. In. Then set her jaw and glared at the face in the mirror.
“No more crying! It didn’t help before! It won’t help now.”
She snatched up a dry washcloth and had started to scrub the fogged glass when she caught the echo of her words. Her fist closed around the cloth, and her chest squeezed.
“Crying didn’t help before what?”
Like the steam still drifting from the shower stall, the mists in her mind seemed to curl. Shift. Become less opaque. Something was there, just behind the thin gray curtain. She could almost see it. Almost smell it. She spun around and hacked out a sound halfway between a sob and a laugh.
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